New Orleans police secretly used facial recognition on over 200 dwell digital camera feeds

New Orleans’ police power secretly used fixed facial recognition to hunt out suspects for 2 years. An investigation by found that town’s police division was utilizing facial recognition expertise on a privately owned digital camera community to repeatedly search for suspects. This utility appears to violate a metropolis ordinance handed in 2022 that required facial recognition solely be utilized by the NOLA police to seek for particular suspects of violent crimes after which to offer particulars in regards to the scans’ use to town council. Nevertheless, WaPo discovered that officers didn’t reveal their reliance on the expertise within the paperwork for a number of arrests the place facial recognition was used, and none of these circumstances have been included in necessary metropolis council stories.

“That is the facial recognition expertise nightmare situation that we’ve been frightened about,” stated Nathan Freed Wessler, an ACLU deputy director. “That is the federal government giving itself the ability to trace anybody — for that matter, everybody — as we go about our lives strolling round in public.” Wessler added that the is the primary identified case in a significant US metropolis the place police used AI-powered automated facial recognition to determine folks in dwell digital camera feeds for the aim of constructing instant arrests.

Police use and misuse of surveillance expertise has been completely documented through the years. Though a number of US have positioned restrictions on how regulation enforcement can use facial recognition, these limits will not do something to guard privateness in the event that they’re routinely ignored by officers.

Learn the complete story on the New Orleans PD’s surveillance program at The Washington Post.