The COVID-19 pandemic has inspired public and private officials to pursue an array of policies enacting otherwise unimaginable restrictions, controls and surveillance. While some compromises are necessary for the sake of public health, other measures — like a new AI-powered call-monitoring system in several U.S. prisons and jails — reek of opportunism.

Verus, a monitoring software by the Los Angles-based LEO Technologies, was first deployed several years ago to help prison officials detect suicide attempts, investigate incidents and more. “It automatically downloads, analyzes and transcribes all recorded inmate calls, proactively flagging them for reviews,” according to a Verus product description. Apart from calls to attorneys, prison phone calls are regularly recorded and monitored. Verus simply aims to improve the efficacy of the system.

The company’s growth has been modest, as the software has found its way into 26 facilities in 11 states. Studies of software that transcribes and analyzes voice recordings have found concerning rates of error, meaning that prison officials could receive and then act on faulty information.

But with the COVID-19 pandemic, LEO Technologies is making a marketing push for Verus, positioning the software as a crucial tool in preventing the spread of the virus. Prisons and jails in at least three states — Georgia, Alabama and California — are now using Verus under the guise that it could save lives.

The efficacy of this proposal has been called into question by advocates for civil liberties. In an interview with The Intercept, Shilpi Agarwal, a senior attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, described the push for Verus as an “opportunistic branding of a problematic technology.”

As COVID-19 is the talk of the world, mere mentions of the virus on a phone call should not be enough to spark investigations or prison lockdowns, but that is a possibility under the Verus system.

Even more troubling is the system’s potential to record privileged conversations between inmates and attorneys. Other prison phone systems, including Securus Technologies, have been found to have recorded privileged communications in the past. Because Verus is merely installed on top of a prison’s existing system, and is run through both LEO Technologies and Amazon Web Services, the potential for privileged communications to be recorded or analyzed increases exponentially.

If prison officials are concerned with the welfare of inmates, there are more direct and effective solutions that could be implemented to protect people’s health and save lives. Policies of decarceration — releasing nonviolent, low-risk offenders — or relocation should be considered. Or prisons could invest in improved health care facilities and resources, using the $500,000 needed for a Verus system to tend to inmates.

Officials who ignore these impactful solutions, splurging instead for a system like Verus, are less concerned with the welfare of inmates than their ’round-the-clock observation and control.

First Published: May 8, 2020, 10:15 a.m.