The entrance to Rikers Island, home to the main jail complex, is shown from the borough of Queens as shown on October 19, 2021 in New York City, the US.

When the sheriff in Suffolk County, New York, requested $700,000 from the US government for an artificial intelligence system to eavesdrop on prison phone conversations, his office called it a key tool in fighting gang-related and violent crime.

But the county jail ended up listening to calls involving a much wider range of subjects, according to public records from the county obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Beginning in 2019, Suffolk County was an early pilot site for the Verus AI-scanning system sold by California-based LEO Technologies, which uses Amazon speech-to-text technology to transcribe phone calls flagged by key word searches.

The company and law enforcement officials say it is a crucial tool to keep prisons and jails safe, and fight crime, but critics say such systems trample the privacy rights of prisoners and other people, like family members, on the outside.

"The ability to surveil and listen at scale in this rapid way - it is incredibly scary and chilling," said Julie Mao, deputy director at Just Futures Law, an immigration legal group.

Suffolk County is among dozens of county jails and state prisons in seven US states including major metro areas such as Houston, Texas, and Birmingham, Alabama, that LEO says have so far implemented the Verus system to monitor inmates' calls.

Undersheriff Kevin Catalina, who helped run the program in Suffolk County, said the system "unquestionably benefits public safety, and the safety of staff and inmates."

Emails and contracts from eight states show the tool is used to scan a wide range of calls, for example conversations involving mention of the Spanish word for lawyer or accusations that detention facilities were covering up COVID-19 outbreaks.

In Suffolk County, emails from the sheriff's office show officials sometimes searched for words with multiple or benign meanings such as "mara," which can mean gang or simply a group of friends.

Sheriff's deputies in Suffolk County also circulated a regular intelligence brief of prisoners the system flagged for illegally collecting unemployment benefits while in the jail.

A series of court rulings have given US authorities wide scope to use surveillance of prisoners' conversations as long as they are working to ensure safety and fight crime.

LEO Technologies, which declined to comment, says on its website that Verus is an "objective" way to flag threats to incarcerated people, "disrupt criminal operations within correctional facilities and assist ongoing investigations with critical evidence."

Innocent people

The company is one of several that are offering or working to provide surveillance services, including the two main firms that already provide the infrastructure for prison phone calls, Securus and GTL, both of which market monitoring services.

"We are committed to protecting the civil liberties of all those who use our products," a spokesperson for Securus said in a written statement.

GTL declined to comment when asked whether it was still proceeding with the technology and what safeguards were in place.

LEO advertises Verus as the most advanced system on the market.

In documents obtained through a records request to the Missouri Department of Corrections, it is described as unique among competitors in offering near-real-time analysis and actionable reports.

It is also hailed as a means to help law enforcement identify gang members by flagging "patterns of behavior among inmates and their associates."

Instead of trawling through hours of recorded calls, Catalina said the system "allows staff to be more efficient with their time by honing in on keywords that meet specific objectives."

But using Verus to link people on prison phone calls to gang activity risks sweeping in innocent people, too, said Beryl Lipton, a researcher with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) who investigates prison surveillance systems.

Suffolk County did not respond to a request for comment on Lipton's criticism.

'Stretch the limit'

Intelligence gleaned from the Verus system is already shared with current and potential LEO clients around the US, and more than two dozen law enforcement and immigration agencies and divisions, according to documents from Suffolk County.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, LEO - in partnership with prison authorities - expanded its focus to monitoring telephone conversations about the virus in detention facilities, documents show.

A data table circulated by the company to clients showed it had flagged thousands of calls based on keywords including "cough" and "infection" in the spring of 2020, highlighting its role in containing outbreaks among prisoners.

The technology was not just used to detect possible COVID-19 outbreaks, however.

In Calhoun County, Alabama, prison authorities used Verus to identify phone calls in which prisoners vouched for the cleanliness of the facility, looking for potential ammunition to fight lawsuits, email records show.

As part of an emailed sales pitch to the jail in Cook County, Illinois, LEO's chief operating officer, James Sexton, highlighted the Alabama case as an example of the system's potential uses.

"[The] sheriff believes [the calls] will help him fend off pending liability via civil action from inmates and activists," he wrote.

A spokesman for Cook County said it had explored a pilot with LEO to help identify instances of "self-harm" in its facilities, but decided the technology was too expensive.

Prisons are allowed to undertake surveillance related to "legitimate penological goals," said Stephanie Krent, staff attorney with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

Public records show Verus is routinely deployed, for example, to identify inmates who might be contemplating self-harm or suicide, or find murderers and rapists inside and outside of correctional facilities.

But Krent said surveillance operations like the one carried out in Alabama "really stretched the limit."

AFP