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The Beat<\/strong><\/p>\n Body cameras and artificial intelligence<\/em><\/p>\n The Intercept<\/em> profiled a controversial development<\/a> at the tech world this week. Taser (now Axon) made news last month when it offered a free year-long trial of its body cameras to every police officer in America. That\u2019ll mean a lot of data, and Axon\u2019s looking to use it\u2014it\u2019s been recruiting artificial intelligence gurus<\/a> to set up algorithms that\u2019ll use the police encounters to help \u2018anticipate criminal activity\u2019 (see Axon\u2019s Law Enforcement Technology Report<\/a>).<\/p>\n The trouble with these big data-driven systems is that bias can be learned or reinforced by the algorithms. Proponents at Axon argue that prioritising video over text presents a \u2018huge gain in information fidelity and transparency\u2019, which will help offset the skew. But those opposed worry that existing trends (like racial profiling<\/a>) will be cemented by automated classification, and that the input (which needs to be labelled before it\u2019s fed into the network) mightn\u2019t be objective. It\u2019s a debate that we expect will play out along the same lines as the AI-based sentencing<\/a> that\u2019s creeping<\/a> into the US legal system.<\/p>\n Looking gift cards in the mouth<\/em><\/p>\n AUSTRAC\u2019s risk assessment of stored value cards was released<\/a> on 2 May (PDF<\/a>). Alarmingly but maybe unsurprisingly, there were 12 incidences in the last two years<\/a> where it was judged highly likely that gift cards had been used to finance terror, although the overall threat was judged to be \u2018medium\u2019.<\/p>\n CT Scan <\/strong><\/p>\n Understanding the newfangled far-right<\/em><\/p>\n For those with some time on their hands, this lengthy article from New York <\/em>magazine helps readers to understand the emergence of America\u2019s new far-right movement<\/a>. According to the authors, it\u2019s useful to conceptualise this group not as a fringe movement<\/a> but rather as a \u2018powerful counterculture\u2019 whose \u2018weirdness\u2019 stems from rapid growth \u2018without any strong ideological direction\u2019.<\/p>\n On a similar note, award-winning Australian documentary-maker John Safran<\/a> recently released his new book, Depends What You Mean by Extremist: Going Rogue with Australian Deplorables<\/em><\/a>. The fascinating study explores the diverse community of radicals including white nationalists, Islamic State (IS) supporters, anarchists and others, presenting a \u2018confronting portrait\u2019 of contemporary Australian society.<\/p>\n The true measure of Islamist terror <\/em><\/p>\n Lowy\u2019s Rodger Shanahan<\/a> recently argued that many incorrectly conflate<\/a> the \u2018threat of death from terrorism with the threat from terrorism.\u2019 Indeed, statistics will show that in terms of sheer numbers, deaths from terrorism remain low<\/a>\u2014for more check out this article on The Strategist<\/em> regarding society\u2019s counterterrorism industrial complex<\/a>. And yet, Shanahan warns that by only taking into consideration actual deaths from terrorism as a measure of the threat, we risk underestimating the widespread and enduring<\/a> nature of the new brand of terrorism bought about by groups like IS and al-Qaeda. To this end, Former Deputy Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas has claimed<\/a> that Australia\u2019s falling behind the rest of the world in our approach to terrorism.<\/p>\n Checkpoint<\/strong><\/p>\n Hungary completes second border fence<\/em><\/p>\n The Hungarian government announced<\/a> last Friday that it\u2019s finished constructing a 155km fence along its border with Serbia to stem the flow of migrants bound for Western Europe. It\u2019s the second border fence Hungary\u2019s installed, after the fences it put up along its borders with Croatia and Serbia in 2015 after 400,000 migrants passed through the country. Having referred to migration as \u2018poison\u2019<\/a>, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban doesn\u2019t want to use<\/a> migrants to address Hungary\u2019s labour shortages and demographic woes<\/a>, and refutes<\/a> the EU\u2019s mandatory refugee resettlement quotas.<\/p>\n China tightens Xinjiang border security<\/em><\/p>\n China plans to deploy drones<\/a> to patrol the borders that its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region shares with eight other countries. Aimed at curbing terrorist infiltrations, this broader effort to tighten security also includes<\/a> installing barbed wire and surveillance cameras along the more than 5,600km border. Chinese authorities believe the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks, which have killed more than 200 people<\/a> in the past two years, have been trained in neighbouring countries before entering China illegally.<\/p>\n So you think you can smuggle?<\/em><\/p>\n Finally, what do a catapult drug-launcher, human eyeballs and a broken leg cast made entirely of cocaine all have in common? Well, they\u2019re all among this list<\/a> of weird items, and even weirder methods of smuggling, that\u2019ve been foiled by border security officials.<\/p>\n First Responder<\/strong><\/p>\n Dakar leads the way<\/em><\/p>\n Dakar, Senegal has become the first African city to release a city resilience strategy<\/a>, as part of the Rockefeller Foundation\u2019s 100 Resilient Cities project. Dakar\u2019s strategy adopts a broad approach to resilience, encompassing not just preparation and recovery planning for natural disasters but also for \u2018the stresses that weaken the fabric of a city on a day-to-day or cyclical basis.\u2019<\/a> In Dakar, that includes rapid population growth, a dramatic youth bulge (72% of residents are under 35) and severe social inequalities. It\u2019s hoped Dakar may serve as a testing ground for local solutions to those challenges, which are common to many African cities undergoing rapid urbanisation. To see if yours has made the list, check out more of the 100 Resilience Cities plans here<\/a>.<\/p>\n