Its extremely important that we track these enabling relationships, and push back against the large players enabling the rise of fascist technology, whether or not this tech is explicitly branded Google.

All rights reserved Terms of use Privacy The Intercept Donate Donate Photo illustration: Soohee ChoThe Intercept, Getty Images Photo illustration: Soohee ChoThe Intercept, Getty Images Google AI Tech Will Be Used for Virtual Border Wall, CBP Contract Shows Google Cloud will be used in conjunction with Anduril Industries surveillance tech on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Lee Fang Sam Biddle Lee Fang, Sam Biddle October 21 2020, 7:06 p.m.

Photo illustration: Soohee ChoThe Intercept, Getty Images Photo illustration: Soohee ChoThe Intercept, Getty Images After years of backlash over controversial government work, Google technology will be used to aid the Trump administrations efforts to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border, according to documents related to a federal contract.

Among other projects, INVNT is working on technologies for a new virtual wall along the southern border that combines surveillance towers and drones, blanketing an area with sensors to detect unauthorized entry into the country.

In response to the controversy, Google ended its involvement with the initiative, known as Project Maven, and established a new set of AI principles to govern future government contracts.

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Im in The employees also protested the companys deceptive claims about the project and attempts to shroud the military work in secrecy.

Googles involvement with Project Maven had been concealed through a third-party contractor known as ECS Federal.

Thundercat is a reseller that bills itself as a premier information technology provider for federal contracts.

The brash 28-year-old executive also the founder of Oculus VR, acquired by Facebook for over 2 billion in 2014 is an open supporter of and fundraiser for hard-line conservative politics; he has been one of the most vocal critics of Googles decision to drop its military contract.

Anduril operates sentry towers along the U.S.-Mexico border that are used by CBP for surveillance and apprehension of people entering the country, streamlining the process of putting migrants in DHS custody.

Google spokesperson Jane Khodos declined to comment on or discuss the contract.

CBP, Anduril, and Thundercat Technology did not return requests for comment.

Photo: CBP According to a statement of work document outlining INVNTs use of Google, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) will be utilized for doing innovation projects for C1s INVNT team like next generation IoT, NLP (Natural Language Processing), Language Translation and Andril sic image camera and any other future looking project for CBP.

The GCP has unique product features which will help to execute on the mission needs.

CBP confirmed that Andril is a misspelling of Anduril.).

Using Googles AI Platform would allow CBP to leverage the companys immense computer processing power to train an algorithm on a given set of data so that it can make educated inferences and predictions about similar data in the future.

No pages Although it presents no physical obstacle, Andurils virtual wall system works by rapidly identifying anyone approaching or attempting to cross the border (or any other perimeter), relaying their exact location to border authorities on the ground, offering a relatively cheap, technocratic, and less politically fraught means of thwarting would-be migrants.

The last major effort, known as SBInet, was awarded to Boeing during the George W.

Bush administration, and resulted in multibillion-dollar cost overruns and technical failures.

In recent years, both leading Democrats and Republicans in Congress have favored a renewed look at technological solutions as an alternative to a physical barrier along the border.

Surveillance imagery from both the camera-toting drones and sensor towers is ingested into Lattice, Andurils artificial intelligence software platform, where the system automatically flags suspicious objects in the vicinity, like cars or people.

No pages And a 2018 Wired profile of Anduril noted that one sentry tower test site alone helped agents catch 55 people and seize 982 pounds of marijuana in a 10-week span, though for 39 of those individuals, drugs were not involved, suggesting they were just looking for a better life.

But Google has excelled in the increasingly competitive artificial intelligence field; creating a computer system from scratch capable of quickly and accurately interpreting complex image data without human intervention requires an immense investment of time, money, and computer power to train a given algorithm on vast volumes of instructional data.

Big Tech is providing core infrastructure for racist and harmful border regimes, Whittaker added.

Without these infrastructures, Palantir and Anduril couldnt operate as they do now, and thus neither could ICE or CBP.

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