New Orleans police secretly used facial recognition on over 200 reside digicam 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 know-how on a privately owned digicam community to repeatedly search for suspects. This software 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 concerning the scans’ use to town council. Nevertheless, WaPo discovered that officers didn’t reveal their reliance on the know-how within the paperwork for a number of arrests the place facial recognition was used, and none of these circumstances had been included in obligatory metropolis council experiences.

“That is the facial recognition know-how nightmare situation that we’ve been nervous about,” mentioned 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 serious US metropolis the place police used AI-powered automated facial recognition to determine folks in reside digicam feeds for the aim of creating instant arrests.

Police use and misuse of surveillance know-how has been totally documented over time. Though a number of US have positioned restrictions on how legislation 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 total story on the New Orleans PD’s surveillance program at The Washington Post.