LOS ANGELES/ WASHINGTON: Dozens of rights groups are demanding a crackdown on an artificial intelligence system used to eavesdrop on US prisoners’ phone calls, after a Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation highlighted the risk of rights violations. Documents from eight US states showed prison and jail authorities were using surveillance software called Verus, which scans for key words and leverages Amazon’s voice-to-text transcription service, to monitor prisoners’ phone calls. California-bas

That move came despite ongoing allegations of poor conditions and improper treatment of detainees in many private prisons. Shareholders in those companies expect a huge payday under Trump.... In 2021, Biden again ordered the federal Bureau of Prisons to stop contracting with private prisons, because of concerns similar to those behind Obama’s order five years earlier.... By the end of Biden’s term, private prisons held nearly 90 percent of immigrant detainees, nearly identical to the percent a