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The one hard EPS procurement trace to an Israeli firm — and the same class of tech the police chief toured in occupied East Jerusalem

Original source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-police-emails-documents-provide-new-information-on-canada-first-ai-facial-recognition-bodycam-pilot-9.7157991 Additional: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202512/edmonton-police-first-to-to-test-facial-recognition-body-cams-from-axon · https://investigate.afsc.org/company/corsight · https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/optisrael-google-corsight-technologies-used-in-israels-expansive-facial-recognition-program-in-gaza/ · https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/28/uk-police-to-use-ai-facial-recognition-tech-linked-to-israels-war-on-gaza Retrieved: 2026-07-05 (CBC fetched via search summaries + corroboration; direct WebFetch 403s. Cross-ref sibling project ../eps-black-box-budget/sources/budgets/eps-axon-corsight-ai-bodycam-pilot.md.)

DOCUMENTED FACT — the EPS pilot

EPS said it would be "the first police force in the world" to trial Axon Enterprise's facial-recognition-enabled bodycams. The pilot ran December 2025: up to 50 officers, a watch list of 6,341 flagged individuals ("violent or assaultive; armed and dangerous; weapons; escape risk; high-risk offender"). Per an internal EPS email: "Corsight AI is the vendor that Axon has partnered with for the [proof of concept], their model will be doing the initial comparison of faces." Investigative reporting by Taylor Lambert (CBC) obtained the documents.

DOCUMENTED FACT — what Corsight AI is

  • A private Israeli facial-recognition company, jointly owned by the Israeli firm Cortica and Canadian VC Awz Ventures (AFSC Investigate).
  • Corsight developed an AI facial-recognition tool for the Israeli military, which used it for mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza — soldiers entering Gaza were given cameras with the tech, and checkpoints on roads Palestinians used to flee scanned faces (NYT, via AFSC / Business & Human Rights Centre).
  • Its board has included figures with Israeli intelligence/military backgrounds (reported: a former Israeli intelligence officer, a former Shin Bet officer, and a former Major-General) — reported in secondary coverage; flag as reported, not primary.
  • The same Corsight tech UK police moved to adopt was flagged by Al Jazeera (Jan 2026) as "linked to Israel's war on Gaza" — i.e. Edmonton is one node in a wider export of this specific system.

The throughline this creates (DOCUMENTED, not inferred)

The pipeline is not abstract here. In Feb 2026 EPS Chief Driechel toured Mabat 2000, a facial-recognition/CCTV surveillance centre in occupied East Jerusalem that Amnesty International calls part of an "automated apartheid" system (see driechel-israel-delegation-2026.md). Weeks earlier (Dec 2025) his own force had trialled Israeli-military-built facial recognition on Edmontonians. Same category of technology; one tests it on a colonized population, the other imports it home. This is the material, checkable version of the "deadly exchange" — a documented vendor relationship and a documented visit, not a claim about control.

Honest scope

  • The EPS↔Corsight link is a proof-of-concept pilot, not a signed long-term contract; cost was not disclosed (likely vendor-subsidized). Say "trialled," not "bought."
  • Every OTHER EPS surveillance system traces elsewhere, NOT to Israel: Clearview AI (US/Australian), NeoFace Reveal (NEC, Japanese), any Stingray/IMSI-catcher (Harris, US, and EPS use is unconfirmed). Corsight is the sole Israeli-firm trace — name it precisely and don't inflate it into a pattern of Israeli procurement.