Some of our largest tech giants are building comprehensive systems intended to optimize our daily lives, and those scoring systems have appeal beyond their original use cases.

For example, Amazon applied for a U.S. patent for an unmanned aerial vehicle that can perform surveillance from the air and generate images that could be used by others.

Surveillance Scoring-as-a-Service (SSaas) would be a monetized byproduct of its drone delivery service, and it would fit into its broader constellation of surveillance scoring technologies.

In February 2018, Amazon acquired the video-equipped smart doorbell company Ring, and three months later it launched Neighbors, a crime-reporting social network that encourages Ring users to upload videos from their security cameras and doorbells for others to see.

Now, more than 400 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. use data from Ring.