The New York subway admits to using cameras equipped with artificial intelligence to detect fraudsters entering without paying. A device presented as a “counting tool” which raises fears for the privacy of the inhabitants of the city.
Since 2020, the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority), the body supervising public transport in New York, has been gradually deploying surveillance cameras boosted with artificial intelligence in the city’s metro. When a person passes through the gates without paying a ticket, the camera spots her and sends a video of the fraud on the company’s servers. They are stored “for a limited time”, without further details. The system must extend to at least 24 additional stations by the end of the yearand more will follow.
The tool originates from Spain. Developed by AWAAIT, its objective is to spot fraudsters andsend their photos to nearby controllers and security agents for verbalization. In New York, it’s not used for that. It is above all a “counting tool” to “determine how many people do not pay their ticket and how they do [pour frauder]”, explains Tim Minton, Director of Communications for the MTA.
Artificial intelligence spots fraudsters in the New York subway
The artificial intelligence of the New York subway cameras therefore does not use facial recognition, unlike Eurostar, which uses it to check train tickets and passenger passports. The data collected by the MTA is not sent to controllers or law enforcement agencies, but the authority did not say whether that might become the case soon. She insists on the miss to win generated by fraud. In 2022, it amounted to $690 million.
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On their side, privacy advocates oppose the project started 3 years ago. Alex Fox Cahn, director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, notes that New York “has never been so closely watched”. The main fear is that the recorded videos will be passed on to law enforcement, but that this concerns all travelers and not just fraudsters. For Alex Fox Cahn, New York is becoming more and more a city in which “it is becoming impossible to move around in a private way”.
Source: NBC News