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Banjo is a Utah-based
surveillance Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as c ...
software company that claimed to use AI to identify events for public safety agencies. It was founded in 2010 by
Damien Patton Damien Patton (born July 11, 1972) is known for being a founder of the American software company Banjo and as a NASCAR mechanic. He is a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. After Patton's links to the KKK were discovered, in 2020, Banjo had sever ...
. The company gained notoriety in 2020 when the State of Utah signed a $20 million contract for their "panopticon" software. In May, the company experienced backlash and suspending of contracts after Patton's membership in the
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
and participation in a drive-by terrorist attack on a synagogue was revealed. In 2020, the company had approximately 200 employees in
South Jordan, Utah South Jordan is a city in south central Salt Lake County, Utah, United States, south of Salt Lake City. Part of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, the city lies in the Salt Lake Valley along the banks of the Jordan River between the Oquirrh ...
,
Park City, Utah Park City is a city in Utah, United States. The vast majority is in Summit County, and it extends into Wasatch County. It is considered to be part of the Wasatch Back. The city is southeast of downtown Salt Lake City and from Salt Lake City' ...
,
Washington D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...
, and
Menlo Park, California Menlo Park is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County within the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; ...
and had received approximately $126 million in funding. In 2021, an audit requested by the
State of Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its we ...
that tried to assess
algorithmic bias Algorithmic bias describes systematic and repeatable errors in a computer system that create " unfair" outcomes, such as "privileging" one category over another in ways different from the intended function of the algorithm. Bias can emerge from ...
in the AI declared that "Banjo does not use techniques that meet the industry definition of artificial Intelligence".


History


Social media application

After building a "friend-finding" app called Peer Compass for a
Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...
hackathon A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of hacking and marathon) is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours. Th ...
in 2010 and then a
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
hackathon in 2011 (the app won both events),
Damien Patton Damien Patton (born July 11, 1972) is known for being a founder of the American software company Banjo and as a NASCAR mechanic. He is a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. After Patton's links to the KKK were discovered, in 2020, Banjo had sever ...
founded Banjo as a social media application for phones to aggregate and discover live events by scraping public, geotagged content from
Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...
,
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
,
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
,
Foursquare Four square is a ball game. Four square may also refer to: Internet and entertainment * Foursquare City Guide, a local search and discovery app * ''4 Square'' (game show), a British game show * ''4 Square'' (TV series), a Canadian children's s ...
,
Path A path is a route for physical travel – see Trail. Path or PATH may also refer to: Physical paths of different types * Bicycle path * Bridle path, used by people on horseback * Course (navigation), the intended path of a vehicle * Desire p ...
,
Google Plus Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus; sometimes called G+) was a social network owned and operated by Google. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challenge other social networks, linking other Google ...
,
VKontakte VK (short for its original name ''VKontakte''; russian: ВКонтакте, meaning ''InContact'') is a Russian online social media and social networking service based in Saint Petersburg. VK is available in multiple languages but it is predomin ...
and
EyeEm EyeEm (originally Eye'em), pronounced "I am", is a German technology company that provides services related to photography. It was co-founded by Florian Meissner, Ramzi Rizk, Gen Sadakane, and Lorenz Aschoff in Berlin in 2011. Eyeem.com and the E ...
, then indexed by location, time and content. In 2016, Banjo was gathering information from more than 1.2 billion public social media accounts. Shortly after the Google event, BlueRun Ventures invested $800,000 in the company.
Techcrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...
called it "the creepy/awesome cyber-stalking app" and stated it had 500,000 downloads by December 2011, when the company launched a web version. The app had one million users by April 2012. After attending
South by Southwest South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in m ...
in 2011 and seeing other friend-finding apps like Glancee, Sonar, and Highlight, Patton told his investors in 2012 that he was pivoting to Banjo and fired all but one employee. Banjo's location-enabled social aggregation application launched in November 2012, though it was still described in December 2012 as an app to find friends who are nearby.


News application

After Patton realized Banjo's potential application to the
Boston Marathon bombing The Boston Marathon bombing was a domestic terrorist attack that took place during the annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Two terrorists, brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted two homemade pressure cooker bombs, w ...
manhunt, Banjo went from social media to
brand marketing A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create a ...
and to service news companies, launching in January 2014 and calling it Banjo Enterprise. He also said the company quickly uncovered the 2014 Shooting of Michael Brown, and was alerted about the 2015 East Village gas explosion 58 minutes before the Associated Press reported it. The company's revenue in 2014 was under $1 million. In March 2014 the company completed a $16 million Series B round of financing from Balderton Capital with BlueRun Ventures investing again and VegasTechFund as a new investor. In May 2015 the company received their Series C financing when
SoftBank is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the ...
invested $100 million into the company. At the time it had 60 employees on staff, including their chief
data scientist Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a bro ...
Pedro Alves, a Mensa member. The company was based in Las Vegas. Patton said the company was looking into applications in the financial markets and had no intention on doing business with federal law enforcement agencies, stating "I don't think those agencies could fucking deal with someone like me". A profile of Patton in 2015 called him a "damn good driver" and gave an anecdote about their software uncovering a Florida State University shooting in 2014, explaining that is why
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
and
ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
were paying customers. Other customers included
Anheuser Busch Anheuser-Busch Companies, LLC is an American brewing company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Since 2008, it has been wholly owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (AB InBev), now the world's largest brewing company, which owns multiple glo ...
, the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, and Sinclair Broadcasting. In 2016
Entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...
said the software was used by "thousands of news outlets, insurance firms, security contractors and more".


Live Time Intelligence application

The company pivoted to their Live Time Intelligence application, used to highlight events on surveillance cameras for police and fire, in 2019. Social media is only used with any PII removed. Banjo suggests their service can be used for car crashes, school shootings, and fires. Banjo courted the state of Utah with its services, moving the company from Vegas to
Park City, Utah Park City is a city in Utah, United States. The vast majority is in Summit County, and it extends into Wasatch County. It is considered to be part of the Wasatch Back. The city is southeast of downtown Salt Lake City and from Salt Lake City' ...
in 2018 and signed a $750,000 contract in November 2018 with the attorney general's office. Park City signed a contract for free access to their services as part of a pilot program in February 2019, and the city reported about half of the city's private business surveillance cameras were feeding the system. In 2019 a lobbyist for the company told the Salt Lake Valley Emergency Communications Center that the company "essentially do what Palantir does, but they do it live." In 2020 the state of Utah signed a $20.7 million five-year contract with Banjo, leading to increased scrutiny. ''Vice'' said they were "Turning Utah Into a Surveillance Panopticon". Senator
Mike Lee Michael Shumway Lee (born June 4, 1971) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Utah, a seat he has held since 2011. He is a member of the Republican Party. Lee began his career as a clerk for the U ...
, who said he's known Patton for several years, complimented Live Time and their commitment to privacy. The Utah Attorney General's Office, Utah's Department of Public Safety, and
University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...
all signed contracts with the company, though the
Utah Transit Authority The Utah Transit Authority (UTA) is a special service district responsible for providing public transportation throughout the Wasatch Front of Utah, in the United States, which includes the metropolitan areas of Ogden, Park City, Provo, Salt ...
demurred. Utah's Libertas Institute has expressed concern about Live Time, as has
American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
's Utah branch and the
Electronic Freedom Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore (activist), John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor ...
. In March 2020, VICE's Motherboard uncovered a "shadow company" named Pink Unicorn Labs that developed apps for iPhone and Android with no outward connection to Banjo. The apps were designed to harvest social media data and "secretly farming peoples' user tokens", with app names like "One Direction Fan App", "EDM Fan App", and "Formula Racing App." It led to comparisons to
Cambridge Analytica Cambridge Analytica Ltd (CA), previously known as SCL USA, was a British political consulting firm that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It was started in 2013, as a subsidiary of the private intelli ...
. The
Salt Lake Tribune ''The Salt Lake Tribune'' is a newspaper published in the city of Salt Lake City, Utah. The ''Tribune'' is owned by The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc., a non-profit corporation. The newspaper's motto is "Utah's Independent Voice Since 1871." History A ...
discovered that Utah's
Intermountain Healthcare Intermountain Healthcare is a not-for-profit healthcare system and is the largest healthcare provider in the Intermountain West of the United States. Intermountain Healthcare provides ambulatory and acute health services, along with other medi ...
had a $60,000 contract with Banjo, signed in April 2020. Intermountain would provide patient counts (room occupancy) and receive access to the LiveTime app.
Goshen, Indiana Goshen ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Elkhart County, Indiana, United States. It is the smaller of the two principal cities of the Elkhart-Goshen Metropolitan Statistical Area, which in turn is part of the South Bend-Elkhart-Mishawaka ...
's Police Department signed a $20,000 contract with Banjo in early March 2020.


Neo-Nazi links

In April 2020, Matt Stroud of
OneZero Medium is an American online publishing platform developed by Evan Williams and launched in August 2012. It is owned by A Medium Corporation. The platform is an example of social journalism, having a hybrid collection of amateur and professio ...
uncovered CEO Patton's involvement with the
Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the List of muni ...
-based Dixie Knights chapter of the
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
. When Patton was 17 (June 1992), he drove Grand Knight
Leonard William Armstrong Leonard William Armstrong was a Grand Dragon of the White Knights, Tennessee's Ku Klux Klan. On the night of June 10, 1990 with Damien Patton driving, Armstrong shot at the West End Synagogue, which was empty, with a TEC-9. The two were later a ...
during a
drive-by shooting A drive-by shooting is a type of assault that usually involves the perpetrator(s) firing a weapon from within a motor vehicle and then fleeing. Drive-by shootings allow the perpetrator(s) to quickly strike their target and flee the scene before ...
with a
TEC-9 The Intratec TEC-9, TEC-DC9, KG-99 and AB-10 are a line of blowback-operated semi-automatic pistols. They were developed by Intratec, an American subsidiary of the Swedish firearms manufacturer Interdynamic AB. Introduced in 1984, the TEC-9 was ...
on the
West End Synagogue West End Synagogue, originally Khal Kodesh Adath Israel and known for a while as the Gay Street Synagogue, is a congregation in Nashville, Tennessee. It is affiliated with the Conservative movement and dates to the 1850s. Percival Goodman designed ...
. Police arrested Patton and confiscated an
AK-47 The AK-47, officially known as the ''Avtomat Kalashnikova'' (; also known as the Kalashnikov or just AK), is a gas operated, gas-operated assault rifle that is chambered for the 7.62×39mm cartridge. Developed in the Soviet Union by Russian s ...
. He was then released to the custody of Christian music producer
Jonathan David Brown Jonathan David Brown (November 20, 1955 – September 27, 2016) was an American record producer and audio engineer known for his work on albums released in the Contemporary Christian music industry. Brown served federal prison time as an acces ...
. Patton then fled the state with the assistance of Brown. Patton confirmed his membership in the KKK and involvement with the white power skinheads, which he called "the foot soldiers for groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the
Aryan Nations Aryan Nations is a North American antisemitic, neo-Nazi, white supremacist organization that was originally based in Kootenai County, Idaho, about miles (4.4 km) north of the city of Hayden Lake. Richard Girnt Butler founded the group i ...
". OneZero republished a picture printed in ''
The Tennessean ''The Tennessean'' (known until 1972 as ''The Nashville Tennessean'') is a daily newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee. Its circulation area covers 39 counties in Middle Tennessee and eight counties in southern Kentucky. It is owned by Gannett, ...
'' of Patton at an
Aryan Nations Aryan Nations is a North American antisemitic, neo-Nazi, white supremacist organization that was originally based in Kootenai County, Idaho, about miles (4.4 km) north of the city of Hayden Lake. Richard Girnt Butler founded the group i ...
meeting where he and other members are giving the
Nazi salute The Nazi salute, also known as the Hitler salute (german: link=no, Hitlergruß, , Hitler greeting, ; also called by the Nazi Party , 'German greeting', ), or the ''Sieg Heil'' salute, is a gesture that was used as a greeting in Nazi Germany. Th ...
. Patton served in the
U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage o ...
and admitted to fraternizing with skinheads. In a 2015 Inc. profile, he said he wanted to enlist after seeing the 1990
Gulf War The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...
on TV. He said he rose up the ranks on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, leaving after two tours, ending up in
San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
. He then became the chief mechanic on a
NASCAR The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. The privately owned company was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1948, and hi ...
racecar sponsored by
Lowe's Lowe's Companies, Inc. (), often shortened to Lowe's, is an American retail company specializing in home improvement. Headquartered in Mooresville, North Carolina, the company operates a chain of retail stores in the United States and Canada. A ...
after starting on a pit crew in 1993.


Contract suspensions

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes suspended the $20 million contract in late April 2020 after the KKK ties came out and would review its use. The
University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...
suspended its use, stating it has "no tolerance for racism or bias. The university expects this of itself and its business partners." In May 2020 the university terminated its $500,000 contract and demanded all data be returned.
NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...
's Salt Lake Branch president stated they were "appalled" and it was "extremely alarming as to the data that he has acquired". The Indiana contract was also suspended. On April 29, 2020, Banjo stated they would suspend all contracts in the state, though they did not mention Intermountain Healthcare. Rep. Andrew Stoddard stated the investigation into the company was "long overdue", and Rep. Cory Maloy also expressed concern. On May 4, Utah's Attorney General Office asked Utah State Auditor John Dougall to review their contracts with Banjo, to look for
algorithmic bias Algorithmic bias describes systematic and repeatable errors in a computer system that create " unfair" outcomes, such as "privileging" one category over another in ways different from the intended function of the algorithm. Bias can emerge from ...
, and to ensure privacy. The
AI Now Institute The AI Now Institute at NYU (AI Now) is an American research institute studying the social implications of artificial intelligence. AI Now was founded by Kate Crawford and Meredith Whittaker in 2017 after a symposium hosted by the White House und ...
linked Banjo with
Clearview AI Clearview AI is an American Facial recognition system, facial recognition company, providing software to companies, law enforcement, universities, and individuals. The company's algorithm matches faces to a database of more than 20 billion images ...
, as both have far-right ties. While Banjo doesn't have explicit far-right algorithmic goals like Clearview does, it still raises concerns about algorithmic bias, even if unintentional. Other historic Silicon Valley links to far-right ideology mentioned include
Jeffrey Epstein Jeffrey Edward Epstein ( ; January 20, 1953August 10, 2019) was an American sex offender and financier. Epstein, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, began his professional life by teaching at the Dalton School in Manhattan, des ...
,
William Shockley William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American physicist and inventor. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointly ...
, and
James Damore "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber", commonly referred to as the Google memo, is an internal memo, dated July 2017, by US-based Google engineer James Damore () about Google's culture and diversity policies. The memo and Google's subsequent di ...
.


Resignation

On May 8, 2020, Patton resigned from the board and as CEO of Banjo, removing all decisionmaking authority. Justin R. Lindsey, who has been CTO for less than a year, has been named CEO. Lindsey had been CTO of the FBI immediately after 9/11.


Rebranding as safeXai

In February 2021, it was discovered that the company quietly renamed itself as safeXai. The name had been filed in September 2020; Patton remains a minority shareholder.


References


External links

* {{official, https://www.ban.jo/ Mobile software Mobile social software