The recent use of artificial intelligence-equipped surveillance cameras by Montreal police is raising questions about privacy rights and how the technology will be used, as the use of similar cameras in the United States has become a major issue. The Genetec Cloudrunner cameras are similar to those made by company Flock Safety, an AI surveillance system widely used in the U.S. that has faced widespread public resistance. But how do the two types of cameras differ, and what information are the smart cameras providing to the Montreal police? The Gazette spoke with experts in AI ethics and a representative from Genetec to answer to growing concerns over automatic licence plate reading cameras. What, exactly, makes these cameras controversial? While traditional security cameras only create video, automated licence plate reading (ALPR) cameras can capture information about the type of car, colour of car, direction of travel, and the licence plate, explained Andrew Elvish, an executive at the Montreal-based company Genetec. “It’s looking at the outside of the vehicle. So it’s designed specifically to do that,” he said in an interview. In the U.S., the Flock cameras can tie the licence plate information to a person’s identity, which can be searched in a centralized database system shared between the camera operators. But according to Elvish, Genetec doesn’t have a central database shared with all the company’s camera users in the same way Flock does in the U.S. “We do not as a company sell access to data. Our business model isn’t predicated on aggregating and then selling data to customers, or giving customers as a benefit access to a vast amount of data,” Elvish said. It’s that shared database that’s caused so much concern in the U.S. “People don’t like surveillance. But when you tie surveillance to location, and you tie surveillance