Mark43 start-up backed by Jeff Bezos to provide NSW Police Force software

One of the country’s biggest police departments will soon be relying on technology from a company backed by the world’s richest man.

New South Wales Police officers will soon receive orders and log crimes using software backed by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos as one of the world’s biggest law enforcement agencies receives a massive tech overhaul.

New York based tech start-up Mark43 on Friday announced it had been selected as the NSW Police Force’s next “technology partner”, through a partnership with local provider Unisys.

The deal means about 17,000 officers will soon use Mark43’s Records Management System (RMS) and its Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) software.

The company that makes the software said it would bring “unprecedented efficiency and ease of use to day-to-day operations” for NSW police.

In the US, the company’s software is already used by more than 70 police departments, including the Boston Police Department and Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department.

RELATED: 20 year drag into ‘police state’

Mark43’s software has already been in police cruisers throughout the US for years now.

The RMS is designed to help police finish paperwork quicker and keep it organised and accessible.

The RMS also uses Amazon Web Services cloud-storage, like the new COVIDSafe coronavirus contact tracing app.

The CAD works in tandem with the RMS to help inform police about scenes they’re being dispatched too.

Mark43’s product listing claims the CAD will “leverage the data your agency already collects to keep first responders safer and better informed” by giving them as much information as possible, including recent crimes and events in the area that could be a factor.

“Mark43 is ready to broaden its international presence, and this is just the first step,” Mark43 co-founder and head of marketing Matthew Polega said.

“No matter their country or size, all public safety agencies deserve a premier technology partner to make a very hard job just a little easier.”

An illustration of the Computer Aided Dispatch program made by Mark43

Mark43 is backed by $US78 million ($A119 million) in funding from investors including General Catalyst, Spark Capital and Bezos Expeditions, the investing arm of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Commentators including Glenn Greenwald, who broke many of the stories relating to Edward Snowden’s disclosures about government surveillance in the US, have questioned Mr Bezos’s interest in technology-backed solutions to surveillance and public order.

“Amazon’s extensive relationship with the NSA, FBI, Pentagon and other surveillance agencies in the west is multifaceted, highly lucrative and rapidly growing,” Mr Greenwald wrote in The Intercept last year.

Others have expressed concerns about Amazon’s Ring security systems, which feature cloud-connected security cameras and video doorbells.

RELATED: Amazon sued after cameras hacked

RELATED: Google boss calls for facial recognition tech ban

An example of Mark43’s CAD software.

The new software reduces paperwork and could keep police safer on the job.

The doorbells facing toward the street record anyone walking by the house, and installing one in your home also provides a live video feed of what’s going on inside.

Video captured by Ring cameras are also uploaded to servers, and sometimes later passed on to law enforcement at their request, who can keep and use it however they want for as long as they like.

“If you’re an adult walking your dog or a child playing on the sidewalk, you shouldn’t have to worry that Ring’s products are amassing footage of you and that law enforcement may hold that footage indefinitely or share that footage with any third parties,” US Senator Edward Markey said in a statement after scrutinising Amazon’s deals with law enforcement last year.

NSW Police Force has been contacted for comment.