Robocop to start patrolling streets by 2014, perform unwarranted searches

Kristan T. Harris
Cudhay Now
Tue, 22 Apr 2014 22:09 UTC

As we reported earlier, a Silicon Valley company called Knightscope has developed a prototype robot that has all the capabilities that Hollywood has projected to be available by 2050. William Santana Li, CEO of Knightscope, says the robot is, "everything that's great about Silicon Valley, its robotics, big data, predictive analytics, its sensors," and will be patrolling streets in 2014.

The robot is known as the Knightscope 5 (K5). The Knightscope 5 was designed to have a more friendly look, similar to R2D2, so it is easier to interact with according to Knightscope. The Knightscope 5 will be equipped with state-of-the-art technology that will cross-reference your appearance with social media networks and use analytical data to "predict future crimes." K5 is also loaded with a 360 degree 3d mapping system, thermal imaging, facial recognition and a license plate recognition system that collects 300 license plates a minute.

The Developers website states:

Data collected through these sensors is processed through our predictive analytics engine, combined with existing business, government and crowd sourced social data sets, and subsequently assigned an alert level that determines when the community and the authorities should be notified of a concern.

If an alert is pushed, the K5 machine will turn on all of its sensors to allow the entire community to review everything and also contribute important real-time information. Our approach alleviates any privacy concerns, engages the community on a social level to effectively crowd source security, and provides an important feedback loop to the prediction engine.

Developers say in the video above "there are a few uninformed analysts that say, you know, this is the type of technology. This is the type of surveillance technology that puts people on edge. You know when you go to the ATM machine, what's your expectation of privacy? You're in public right?".

Does this suggest you should not worry about robots equipped with thermal body scanners doing intrusive warrantless searches which will lead to harassing citizens and an increased police state?

Let me ask you this, would it be OK for someone to stick their hands in your pockets without asking first? What do you have in your pockets? How about your car?