"Over the past several years, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) has quietly built out an expansive surveillance apparatus—one that’s increasingly powered by artificial intelligence. Many of these technology acquisitions have been made under the auspices of Governor Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, an $11 billion program that has supercharged the state’s decades-long border militarization.
The powerful and well-funded state police agency has not just expanded its existing surveillance capabilities, which include a fleet of spy planes, unmanned drones, and a network of wildlife game cameras that are deployed all across the borderlands of Texas, but it also is increasingly using AI-powered software to perform intelligence gathering.
DPS records obtained and reviewed by the Texas Observer in recent months shed new light on the scope of the state police’s surveillance toolbox. The agency has spent millions acquiring an array of powerful—and controversial—artificial intelligence software tools that can mine billions of images to provide facial recognition, track vehicle locations from automatic license plate readers, monitor phone conversations of inmates in Texas prisons and jails, break into and search for data evidence from seized cell phones and computers, and even track cell phones without a warrant."
https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-dps-surveillance-arsenal-artificial-intelligence-lege/
