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Milei's government will monitor social media with AI to 'predict future crimes'

Argentina’s new Artificial Intelligence Unit Applied to Security will be tasked with surveillance in the real and virtual worlds. Experts warn about privacy violations

After restoring the State Intelligence Secretariat and assigning it millions of reserved funds —for which he does not have to account— the president has now created a special unit that will deal with cyberpatrolling on social media and the internet, the analysis of security cameras in real time and aerial surveillance using drones, among other things. Its tasks will include “patrolling open social platforms, applications and websites,” where it will seek to “detect potential threats, identify movements of criminal groups or anticipate disturbances.” It will also be dedicated to “analyzing images from security cameras in real time in order to detect suspicious activities or identify wanted persons using facial recognition.” The resolution also awards it powers worthy of science fiction: “Using machine learning algorithms to analyze historical crime data and thus predict future crimes.” Another purpose will be to discover “suspicious financial transactions or anomalous behavior that could indicate illegal activities.” For Natalia Zuazo, a digital policy specialist, the initiative essentially means “illegal intelligence disguised as the use of ‘modern’ technologies.” Among the implicit risks, she explained that there will be little control and many different security forces with access to the information that’s collected.

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