Randal Reid<\/a>, for example. He was wrongfully arrested based on faulty Louisiana facial recognition technology, despite never having set foot in the state. The false match cost him his freedom, his dignity, and thousands of dollars in legal fees. That misidentification happened based on a still image run through a facial recognition search in an investigation; the Project NOLA real-time surveillance system supercharges the risks.<\/p>\n\u201cWe cannot ignore the real possibility of this tool being weaponized against marginalized communities, especially immigrants, activists, and others whose only crime is speaking out or challenging government policies. These individuals could be added to Project NOLA’s watchlist without the public\u2019s knowledge, and with no accountability or transparency on the part of the police departments,\u201d said Alanah Odoms, Executive Director of the ACLU of Louisiana.<\/strong> “Facial recognition technology poses a direct threat to the fundamental rights of every individual and has no place in our cities. We call on the New Orleans Police Department and the City of New Orleans to halt this program indefinitely and terminate all use of live-feed facial recognition technology. The ACLU of Louisiana will continue to fight the expansion of facial recognition systems and remain vigilant in defending the privacy rights of all Louisiana residents.\u201d<\/p>\nKey details revealed in the reporting include:<\/p>\n
\n- Real-time tracking: More than 200 surveillance cameras across New Orleans, particularly around the French Quarter, are equipped with facial recognition software that automatically scans passersby and alerts police when someone on a \u201cwatch list\u201d is detected.<\/li>\n
- Privately run, publicly weaponized: The watch list is assembled by the head of Project NOLA and includes tens of thousands of faces scraped from police mugshot databases\u2014without due process or any meaningful accuracy standards.<\/li>\n
- Police use to justify stops and arrests: Alerts are sent directly to a phone app used by officers, enabling immediate stops and detentions based on unverified purported facial recognition matches.<\/li>\n
- Searchable database: Project NOLA also has the capability to search stored video footage for a particular face or faces appearing in the past. So in other words, they could upload an image of someone\u2019s face, and then search for all appearances of them across all the camera feeds over the last 30 days, thus retracing their movements, activities, and associations. Pervasive technological location tracking raises grave concerns under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.<\/li>\n
- No retention, no oversight: NOPD reportedly does not retain records about the alerts it receives and officers rarely record their reliance on the Project NOLA FRT results in investigative reports, raising serious questions about compliance with constitutional requirements to preserve and turn over evidence to people accused of crimes and to courts, thus undermining accountability in criminal prosecutions.<\/li>\n
- Violates city law: When the New Orleans City Council lifted the city\u2019s ban on face recognition and imposed guardrails in 2022, it maintained a ban on use of facial recognition technology as a surveillance tool. This system baldly circumvents that ban. The system also circumvents transparency and reporting requirements imposed by City Council. Officials never disclosed the program in mandated public reports.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
In 2021, the ACLU of Louisiana sued the Louisiana State Police for information about secretly deploying facial recognition technology, despite years of officials assuring the public it wasn\u2019t in use. Time and again, officials claim these tools are only used responsibly, but history proves otherwise. After the Washington Post began investigating this time around, city officials acknowledged the program and said they had \u201cpaused\u201d it and that they \u201care in discussions with the city council\u201d to change the city\u2019s facial recognition technology law to permit this pervasive monitoring.<\/p>\n
The ACLU is now urging the New Orleans City Council to launch a full investigation and reimpose a moratorium on facial recognition use until robust privacy protections, due process safeguards, and accountability measures are in place.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil now, no American police department has been willing to risk the massive public blowback from using such a brazen face recognition surveillance system,\u201d said Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of ACLU\u2019s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. \u201cBy adopting this system\u2013in secret, without safeguards, and at tremendous threat to our privacy and security\u2013the City of New Orleans has crossed a thick red line. This is the stuff of authoritarian surveillance states, and has no place in American policing.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Louisiana are raising urgent concerns following an investigation that shows the New Orleans Police Department has secretly used real-time face recognition technology to track and arrest residents without public oversight or City Council approval. This not only flouts local law, but endangers all of our civil liberties. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-noticias"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}