Cop Companies Want All Your Data and Other Takeaways from This Year’s IACP Conference

Artificial intelligence dominated the technology talk on panels, among sponsors, and across the trade floor at this year’s annual conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP).

IACP, held Oct. 19 - 22 in Boston, brings together thousands of police employees with the businesses who want to sell them guns, gadgets, and gear. Across the four-day schedule were presentations on issues like election security and conversations with top brass like Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. But the central attraction was clearly the trade show floor. 

Hundreds of vendors of police technology spent their days trying to attract new police customers and sell existing ones on their newest projects. Event sponsors included big names in consumer services, like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Verizon, and police technology giants, like Axon. There was a private ZZ Top concert at TD Garden for the 15,000+ attendees. Giveaways — stuffed animals, espresso, beer, challenge coins, and baked goods — appeared alongside Cybertrucks, massage stations, and tables of police supplies: vehicles, cameras, VR training systems, and screens displaying software for recordkeeping and data crunching.

And vendors were selling more ways than ever for police to surveillance the public and collect as much personal data as possible. EFF will continue to follow up on what we’ve seen in our research and at IACP.

A partial view of the vendor booths at IACP 2024

Doughnuts provided by police tech vendor Peregrine

“All in On AI” Demands Accountability

Police are pushing forward full speed ahead on AI. 

EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance tracks use of AI-powered equipment like face recognition, automated license plate readers, drones, predictive policing, and gunshot detection. We’ve seen a trend toward the integration of these various data streams, along with private cameras, AI video analysis, and information bought from data brokers. We’ve been following the adoption of real-time crime centers. Recently, we started tracking the rise of what we call Third Party Investigative Platforms, which are AI-powered systems that claim to sort or provide huge swaths of data, personal and public, for investigative use. 

The IACP conference featured companies selling all of these kinds of surveillance. Also, each day contained multiple panels on how AI could be integrated into local police work, including featured speakers like Axon founder Rick Smith, Chula Vista Police Chief Roxana Kennedy, and Fort Collins Police Chief Jeff Swoboda, whose agency was among the first to use Axon’s DraftOne, software using genAI to create police reports. Drone as First Responder (DFR) programs were prominently featured by Skydio, Flock Safety, and Brinc. Clearview AI marketed its face recognition software. Axon offered a whole set of different tools, centering its whole presentation around AxonAI and the computer-driven future. 

The booth for police drone provider, Brinc

The policing “solution” du jour is AI, but in reality it demands oversight, skepticism, and, in