CIA used image of Hajj pilgrims to showcase surveillance and AI capabilities
Photo appeared in presentation on how cloud computing is helping spy agency 'stay one step ahead of the enemy'
The image appeared in a presentation by a senior official in the CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate (Screengrab)
Published date: 23 June 2023
The CIA used a photo of pilgrims attending the Hajj to
illustrate the potential capabilities of new surveillance and
artificial intelligence technologies, Middle East Eye can reveal.
Digital rights and Muslim civil society organisations said the use of
the photo highlighted grave concerns about fast-developing tools such
as facial recognition software and was part of a pattern of Islamophobia
within intelligence and law enforcement agencies in which Muslims were
portrayed as a threat.
The image appeared in a presentation by a senior official in the
CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate on how the spy agency’s shift to
cloud-based technologies was transforming its intelligence-gathering
capabilities.
Speaking at a public sector conference organised by Amazon Web
Services (AWS) in 2018, Sean Roche said: “The age of expeditionary
intelligence means going to very unfriendly places very quickly to solve
very tough problems.”
He said that small teams of programmers, data scientists and analysts
“coding in the field” had delivered “amazing capabilities in the case
of finding people we care about”.
“Knowing who they are, what they’re doing, their intentions, where
they are,” said Roche, the CIA’s then-associate deputy director for
digital innovation.
The presentation then showed a photograph of pilgrims gathered in an
outer precinct of Mecca’s Masjid al-Haram, the holiest place in Islam
and the site of the Kaaba.
The photo appears to be a stock image from a photography website
taken during the Hajj in January 2017. But the image has been edited
with a yellow circle added to highlight the face of a man in the crowd.
De facto targets
MEE has not identified the man. There is no suggestion he is a subject of interest to the CIA.
MEE asked the CIA whether it had the capabilities to deploy
surveillance technologies to monitor people attending the Hajj, and
whether it would do so during this year’s pilgrimage which begins on
Monday. But the CIA did not respond to MEE’s questions.
But the use of the image has prompted concerns among Muslim advocacy
organisations and legal experts on surveillance technologies.
'Muslims should not be used as the de facto example of how government technology can be deployed'
- Edward Mitchell, CAIR
Edward Mitchell, the national deputy director of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told MEE there was a long history of
Muslims being depicted as a threat in government training material and
presentations.
“Muslims should not be used as the de facto example of how government
technology can be deployed. That is especially true of Muslims engaging
in worship during the Hajj pilgrimage,” said Mitchell.
Ashley Gorski, senior staff attorney with the American Civil
Liberties Union’s National Security Project told MEE: “Facial
recognition technology poses grave risks to privacy and civil liberties.
People have the right to pray and worship freely, without fear that
they’re being tracked by the government.
“This is yet another example of how US intelligence agencies promote
surveillance tools as a way of monitoring and controlling religious
communities, even abroad.”
Machine learning
Roche went on to describe how the agency was deploying artificial intelligence to collect and process data.
“We are doing machine learning for what? Our job is humans,” said Roche.
“So we are taking those databases that exist about you. The data that
is already there. The data that is structured and unstructured, some
data that is being created, and aggregating that data very quickly in
the cloud environment to build a digital signature, to understand our
digital self.”
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Roche’s presentation
to the AWS Public Sector Summit came after the CIA signed a $600m
contract for cloud computing services with the technology giant in 2014.
Introducing Roche, Teresa Carlson, then a senior executive at AWS,
said he would talk about how the company had “empowered the CIA to
maintain their security posture and increase the pace of innovation to
stay one step ahead of the enemy at all times”.
Roche left the CIA in 2019 and is now national security director at AWS. A spokesperson for AWS declined to comment.
Jumana Musa, director of the Fourth Amendment Center at the National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), which advises lawyers
in cases involving new surveillance tools, said the presentation
highlighted questions about how technology was being used beyond US
borders where constitutional protections did not apply.
“Historically, the US government has definitely a different set of
standards when they consider themselves to be outside the US collecting
intelligence information rather than evidence for a prosecution. And the
rules are much looser," Musa told MEE.
Facial recognition
Clare Garvie, a privacy lawyer working at NACDL, with a focus on
facial recognition technology, said: “It's not just business as usual to
be able to scan a crowd of a hundred thousand people or more and
purport to be able to identify who they are.
'It's not surprising for the CIA to certainly see an appeal in that extremely powerful surveillance mechanism'
- Clare Garvie, privacy lawyer
"It's not surprising for the CIA to certainly see an appeal in that extremely powerful surveillance mechanism."
Addressing the potential dangers of AI technology, Roche said: “Some people are worried about AI. Don’t be.”
Quoting German futurist Gerd Leonhard, he said: “Human flourishing
must remain the core objective of all technological progress. Humanistic
futurism. The machines will not be taking over.”
Last month, dozens of AI experts signed a public statement warning that rapidly developing technology posed an existential threat to humanity.
Risks highlighted by the Center for AI Safety, which published the
statement, included weaponisation, and the use of the technology to
“enforce narrow values through pervasive surveillance and oppressive
censorship”.
Other AI experts have said concerns about the technology are exaggerated.
This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.