Image: The Intercept
The NYPD says it never actually used these features, hoping to avoid the “suggestion of appearance of any kind of technological racial profiling.” A spokesperson told The Intercept,“While tools that featured either racial or skin tone search capabilities were offered to the NYPD, they were explicitly declined by the NYPD.”
However, former IBM researcher Rick Kjeldsen, who said he worked on the NYPD project between 2009 and 2013, claims this is misleading. “We would have not explored [the search functionality] had the NYPD told us, ‘We don’t want to do that,’” Kjeldsen told The Intercept. “No company is going to spend money where there’s not customer interest.”
Kjeldsen says that a number of IBM researchers involved in the project were worried about the technology’s potential misuse. He adds that one of his main objections was the lack of public disclosure around how these potentially invasive tools might be deployed. “That’s where we need the conversation,” said Kjeldsen. “That’s exactly why knowledge of this should become more widely available — so that we can figure that out.”
The NYPD says it stopped using IBM’s technology in 2016. When contacted by The Verge, IBM would not answer specific questions, but it gave a statement saying it “remains absolutely committed to responsibly advancing new technologies.”