At the Brink: How AI Supports Border Security with the Latest Spending Bill
Summary:
- Congress unveiled a new spending bill that aims to tackle border security.
- The bill includes support for key government agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, including the U.S. Border Patrol, in the form of salary increases and funding for technology.
- Artificial intelligence will play a key role in helping federal agencies secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
Yesterday, Congress unveiled a $1.2 trillion spending bill focusing on the security of the U.S.-Mexico border. Previously, on March 8th, Congress passed a $467.5 billion “minibus” that included funding for the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Transportation, Commerce, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Food and Drug Administration and military construction.
With record numbers of migrants crossing into the United States, border security agents get a much-needed boost in salary and support, including resources to invest in new technology to help stymie the flow. Gaining border control has been extremely challenging for federal and state agencies. For example, in December last year, border patrol agents encountered 250K migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Since last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been adopting a nationwide body-worn camera program for officers and agents. Other federal law enforcement agencies are also in the process of adopting body-worn cameras across federal law enforcement. Combining this footage with other video surveillance sources, such as drones and security cameras, has made managing this media extremely burdensome and complex. The workflow of managing, sharing and publicly disclosing the video, and making it available to the public, was a very manual process. Fortunately, advancements in investigative tools that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) have started to help agencies understand and effectively leverage this mission-critical media.
Around the same time the March 8 “minibus” bill passed, Veritone announced the release of its intelligent digital evidence management system, or iDEMS for short. Veritone iDEMS leverages artificial intelligence to modernize existing digital evidence management systems that have fallen behind the requirements of modern investigations.
With Veritone iDEMS, U.S. public safety and judicial agencies can extract the data and insights to gain rapid visibility into their massive audio and video evidence archives. Through the power of AI, the actual people on the frontlines in the battle to secure the border can increase situational awareness over their digital evidence by having that “magnifying glass” to scour these files so they can understand and take appropriate actions in an expedited fashion.
Veritone has years of experience applying AI to managing audio, video, and unstructured data. With the iDEMS product suite, Veritone is hyperfocused on supporting local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies nationwide and continues to support the public sector with its challenges. Border security is one of many complex issues that has challenged the technology status quo in government. In alignment with our belief in AI for Good, artificial intelligence can empower men and women in uniform and the support staff behind the scenes to do their jobs more effectively. In doing so, they can ensure the continued safety of our communities.
Learn more about Veritone iDEMS
Further Reading:
Overcoming the Top Challenges of Digital Evidence Management
The Transformative Power of AI for Government
Oregon PD Cuts Video Reaction Time by 66% with Veritone Redact
Sources:
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/accountability-and-transparency/body-worn-camera-video-releases