Author: Karen Hao and Heidi Swart
Publisher: MIT Technology Review
Publication Year: 2022
Summary: In the following article, Karen Hao writes the second story in a 5 part series on artificial intelligence (AI) colonialism. Heidi Swart, a South African freelance investigative journalist joins her to write this story. This story focuses on how private surveillance firms in South Africa have implemented a centralized and coordinated mass surveillance operation, taking video footage from over 6,600 cameras and using AI tools to track population movement and trace individuals. These security companies dominate the duties usually associated with policing, despite not having legal powers. This is due to the apartheid, when the ruling National Party deployed police to protect its political interests over actual police work, leaking an opening for private players. South Africa has more private security guards than the police and military combined. Civil rights activists say it has been “fueling a digital apartheid and unraveling people’s democratic liberties.” They argue that in some ways the cameras have re-created the digital equivalent of passbooks, or internal passports, an apartheid-era system, used to limit Black people’s physical movements in white enclaves. This technology being used in South Africa continues to develop with the U.S. market in mind. AI Surveillance, for example, wants to find clients in the U.S., hoping the cheaper local wages will make the company competitive.