Jail and prison officials in numerous facilities in the United States are using technology driven by AI to monitor inmate phone calls to help prevent and solve crimes, as well as to scan calls for mentions of the coronavirus. One such software is Verus, created by LEO Technologies. Some civil society groups and journalists have expressed concerns that this type of software could violate inmates' right to privacy, be used to retaliate against those raising alarms about prison conditions, increase costs for the families of people who are incarcerated, and have negative ramifications on people using COVID-19-related keywords in their conversations. According to David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, “While this may be well intentioned, it’s absurd to rely on eavesdropping on prisoners’ phone calls to identify those who may have Covid-19... If prisons and jails want sick prisoners to self-identify, they should stop charging them for medical care, and eliminate the many other barriers and disincentives to seeking care that currently exist.”

We invited LEO Technologies to respond; the company's full response is below. The company said that Verus was "developed to be a non-biased, objective tool" and that the tool has helped support inmate health and safety, including preventing suicides, and has helped solve kidnapping and murder cases, among other types of crime.