DHS Wants a Fleet of AI-Powered Surveillance Trucks

The US Department of Homeland Security is seeking to create a caller mobile surveillance level that fuses artificial intelligence, radar, high-powered cameras, and wireless networking into a azygous system, according to national contracting records reviewed by WIRED. The exertion would equine connected 4x4 vehicles tin of reaching distant areas and transforming into rolling, autonomous study towers, extending nan scope of separator surveillance acold beyond its existent fixed sites.

The projected strategy surfaced Friday aft US Customs and Border Protection softly published a pre-solicitation announcement for what it’s calling a Modular Mobile Surveillance System, aliases M2S2. The listing includes draught method documents, information requirements, and creation objectives.

DHS did not respond to a petition for comment.

If M2S2 performs arsenic described, separator patrol agents could parkland their vehicles, raise a telescoping mast, and wrong minutes commencement detecting mobility respective miles away. The strategy would trust heavy connected alleged machine vision, a benignant of “artificial intelligence” that allows machines to construe ocular information framework by framework and observe shapes, power signatures, and activity patterns. Such algorithms—previously developed for use successful warfare drones—are trained connected thousands if not millions of images to separate betwixt people, animals, and vehicles.

The improvement of M2S2 comes amid nan Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown connected undocumented immigrants crossed nan US. As portion of this push, which has sparked widespread protests and condemnation for nan brutal tactics utilized by migration authorities, Congress boosted DHS’s discretionary fund authority to astir $65 billion. The GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” allocates complete $160 cardinal for migration enforcement and separator measures—most of it directed to DHS—with nan costs scheduled to beryllium distributed complete aggregate years. The management has sought to summation DHS backing by astir 65 percent, proposing nan largest description successful nan agency’s history to money caller separator enforcement, detention capacity, and migration surveillance initiatives.

According to documents reviewed by WIRED, locations of objects targeted by nan strategy would beryllium pinpointed connected integer maps wrong 250 feet of their existent location (with a agelong extremity of astir 50 feet) and transmit that information crossed an app called TAK—a government-built tactical mapping level developed by nan US Defense Department to thief troops coordinate movements and debar friends fire.

DHS envisions 2 modes of operation: 1 pinch an supplier connected tract and different wherever nan trucks beryllium mostly unattended. In nan second case, nan vehicle’s onboard AI would behaviour nan surveillance and nonstop distant operators alerts erstwhile it detects activity. Missions are to beryllium logged commencement to finish, pinch video, maps, and sensor information retained for a minimum of 15 days, locked against deletion “under immoderate circumstances.”