Hacked data sheds light on Homeland Security’s AI surveillance ambitions

Hacked data from the Department of Homeland Security’s technology incubator shows the department is funding a number of companies that would add artificial intelligence to its surveillance capabilities, the Guardian can reveal.

Office of Industry Partnership (OIP) projects include automated surveillance of airports; Adapters that allow agents to use phones for biometric scanning; and an AI platform that takes all 911 call data nationwide and creates “geospatial heat maps” to “predict incident trends,” which appears to be a form of predictive policing.

The data shed new light on the department’s surveillance ambitions in the wake of the agency’s unprecedented $165 billion funding boost in last year’s tax and spending law and controversy over agents’ apparent collection of visual and biometric data from protesters in Minneapolis.

The data was collected by a pseudonymous “cyber hacktivist” and provided to reporters by the nonprofit transparency organization Distributed Denial of…