The new era of surveillance: from DARPA to the streets of Miami

A fully autonomous vehicle has been announced in Miami: the police patrol car will be powered by artificial intelligence. The vehicle is equipped with 360-degree cameras, license plate readers, audio sensors, thermal imaging and a drone launch system. In addition, other features of the car include patrol functions guided by artificial intelligence and real-time crime analysis.
The company that developed the vehicle (Perrone Robotics) has as its managing director Paul J. Perrone, who has participated in at least two editions of the DARPA Grand Challenge, an autonomous car competition organized by the agency.

DARPA stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and has focused on projects in the following areas:

– Global surveillance: the agency pioneered large-scale surveillance with the Total Information Awareness project, created after the September 11 attacks. The initiative integrated citizen databases to detect “terrorist threat patterns“.

– Neurotechnology and brain-machine interface: since the 2000s, DARPA has funded programs aimed at connecting the human brain to computers;

However, the project was canceled in 2003 and, at the same time, Palantir emerged, a company that has developed analytical tools similar to those of the TIA and which supplies analysis software to the CIA, FBI and ICE. In addition, Palantir received initial investment from the CIA via In-Q-Tel. The company’s founders are Peter Thiel, Alex Karp and Joe Lonsdale (who worked with the CIA via In-Q-Tel).

– Digital record and privacy: DARPA became involved in the LifeLog Project, a program that aimed to create a continuous digital diary of a person’s life through sensors, communications and location data. LifeLog existed between 2003 and 2004 and was officially canceled for privacy reasons on February 4, 2004. Coincidentally, Facebook was founded on exactly the same date.

It should be noted that in the movie Vanilla Sky, starring Tom Cruise, we also see a system that records the protagonist’s entire life, allowing him to reconstruct it within a simulation after death. This concept is linked to the idea of “digital immortality“, where every detail of life can be relived in a virtual environment. In the movie, the term is called “Life Extension” instead of “LifeLog”.

– Autonomous robotics and smart weapons: the film Singularity dramatizes concepts similar to those explored by DARPA in programs such as OFFSET and Mosaic Warfare, which investigate the autonomous coordination of drones and robots in urban combat scenarios;

The DARPA Robotics Challenge ran from 2012 to 2015 and aimed to develop humanoid robots capable of operating in environments dangerous to humans – such as nuclear disaster zones, industrial fires or natural disasters.

– Information control and cognitive warfare: DARPA invests in programs to detect disinformation and digital manipulation.

The National Cyber Range consisted of a program that simulated cyber attacks and developed digital defenses on a national scale.

Official DARPA image illustrating the concept of Big Data and research into massive data analysis.

Not least, DARPA and the US Army funded experiments with lasers that ionize the air, creating an ionized air path that conducts electricity (a kind of artificial lightning). For example, the US Air Force had a Boeing YAL-1, as part of the Airborne Laser program, which destroyed ballistic missiles with high-energy laser beams (a kind of directed energy weapon).

To conclude, we are witnessing a revolution in the technologies used to fight crime – the PUG vehicle marks a new generation. However, there is always a cost associated with our security: freedom. For example, Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that the global surveillance programs conducted by the NSA were not intended to protect the American people from an “external enemy” such as Russia or China, but rather to monitor the lives of every American citizen in detail.