Last July, San Jose issued an open invitation to technology companies to mount cameras on a municipal vehicle that began periodically driving through the city’s district 10 in December, collecting footage of the streets and public spaces. The images are fed into computer vision software and used to train the companies’ algorithms to detect the unwanted objects, according to interviews and documents the Guardian obtained through public records requests.
Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
Basically a dowsing rod, totally incapable of detecting bombs, drugs, etc. But possibly still useful as a probable cause generator.
That was probably one of the more depressing Wiki articles I’ve read in a minute.