Veritone Track updated to include AI-assisted vehicle tracking at scale

Veritone has announced “significant enhancements” to Veritone Track, a video forensics tool that enables authorities to track people – and now vehicles – through large quantities of video without relying on personally identifiable information or time-consuming manual review.

Track was introduced as an object-recognition service that uses spatial and visual cues to identify and track people. It does not use facial recognition – or, according to Veritone, any biometrics at all. Now, with its vehicle updates, it offers the same service, without relying on license plate tracking.

A press release says the update enables users to track vehicles of interest by make and model across multiple video sources including closed-circuit television, body camera footage, drone camera footage, social media feeds and citizen uploads. A redesigned user interface simplifies workflows and adds functionality by automatically stitching together video clips to create a “cohesive timeline.”

In comments on the update, Jon Gacek, general manager of Public Sector for Veritone, makes reference to Veritone’s intelligent digital evidence management system, iDEMS, which houses Veritone Track and is equipped with enterprise AI platform, aiWARE.

“Veritone Track’s latest enhancements significantly improve search and performance by utilizing the latest aiWARE functionality, adding vehicle tracking and up-leveling the ability for public safety and investigative teams to efficiently respond to and investigate public safety threats,” Gaek says. “The enhancements to Veritone Track also further strengthen our Intelligent Digital Evidence Management System (iDEMS), our AI-powered intelligent digital evidence management suite.”

Veritone Track also promises to increase overall video surveillance efficiency and offers the capability to monitor large-scale events and public gatherings, enhance building security, and share data across jurisdictions. Gaeck says potential future uses could include tracking military vehicles.

But does it violate the U.S. Constitution?

Veritone itself does not have a stellar security record. In May, it was discovered that the U.S. government AI contractor’s massive database of sensitive documents had been exposed on the open Internet. The 550GB of internal and client data included audio, video and biometric image media, employee PII, police body camera footage, FOIA requests and related documents, employee credentials, system logs with authorization tokens, and more.

Regardless, it soldiers on in its mission, as law enforcement globally looks to increasingly technologized surveillance methods. Facial recognition for policing has become a hot-button issue, and arguments about bias in biometric algorithms have their deepest roots in law enforcement use cases, which have led to wrongful arrests.

That said, Veritone and its competitors in the AI-assisted surveillance space may find themselves running into legal walls. A report from 404 Media says Flock Safety, which provides automated license plate readers (ALPRs) to more than 5000 communities in the U.S., is facing a federal lawsuit from a civil liberties group in Virginia that says its technology violates the Fourth Amendment.

“The City of Norfolk, Virginia, has installed a network of cameras that make it functionally impossible for people to drive anywhere without having their movements tracked, photographed, and stored in an AI-assisted database that enables the warrantless surveillance of their every move,” says the lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice. “In Norfolk, no one can escape the government’s 172 unblinking eyes.”

Local police have conceded that its 172 surveillance cams make it “difficult to drive anywhere of any distance without running into a camera.”

Norfolk was chosen specifically for the filing, says 404, because “the Fourth Circuit of Appeals – which Norfolk is part of – recently held that persistent, warrantless drone surveillance in Baltimore is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment in a case called Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department.”

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  Flock Safety  |  license plate readers  |  object detection  |  Veritone  |  video surveillance