The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into our criminal justice system is one of the most worrying developments across policing and the courts, and EFF [Electronic Frontier Foundation] has been tracking it for years. EFF recently contributed a chapter on AI’s use by law enforcement to the American Bar Association’s annual publication, The State of Criminal Justice 2024.

The chapter describes some of the AI-enabled technologies being used by law enforcement, including some of the tools we feature in our Street-Level Surveillance hub, and discusses the threats AI poses to due process, privacy, and other civil liberties.

Face recognition, license plate readers, and gunshot detection systems all operate using forms of AI, all enabling broad, privacy-deteriorating surveillance that have led to wrongful arrests and jail time through false positives. Data streams from these tools—combined with public records, geolocation tracking, and other data from mobile phones —are being shared between policing agencies and used to build increasingly detailed law enforcement profiles of people, whether or not they’re under investigation. AI software is being used to make black box inferences and connections between them. A growing number of police departments have been eager to add AI to their arsenals, largely encouraged by extensive marketing by the companies developing and selling this equipment and software.

“As AI facilitates mass privacy invasion and risks routinizing—or even legitimizing—inequalities and abuses, its influence on law enforcement responsibilities has important implications for the application of the law, the protection of civil liberties and privacy rights, and the integrity of our criminal justice system,” EFF Investigative Researcher Beryl Lipton wrote.

The ABA’s 2024 State of Criminal Justice publication is available from the ABA in book or PDF format.