Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
Feed Link: https://www.engadget.com/
---

Title: New Orleans police secretly used facial recognition on over 200 live
camera feeds

Date: Mon, 19 May 2025 22:37:23 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/ai/new-orleans-polic...

New Orleans' police force secretly used constant facial recognition to seek
out suspects for two years. An investigation by The Washington Post
discovered that the city's police department was using facial recognition
technology on a privately owned camera network to continually look for
suspects. This application seems to violate a city ordinance passed in 2022
that required facial recognition only be used by the NOLA police to search
for specific suspects of violent crimes and then to provide details about the
scans' use to the city council. However, WaPo found that officers did not
reveal their reliance on the technology in the paperwork for several arrests
where facial recognition was used, and none of those cases were included in
mandatory city council reports.

"This is the facial recognition technology nightmare scenario that we have
been worried about,ΓÇ¥ said Nathan Freed Wessler, an ACLU deputy director.
"This is the government giving itself the power to track anyone ΓÇö for that
matter, everyone ΓÇö as we go about our lives walking around in public."
Wessler added that the is the first known case in a major US city where
police used AI-powered automated facial recognition to identify people in
live camera feeds for the purpose of making immediate arrests.

Police use and misuse of surveillance technology has been thoroughly
documented over the years. Although several US cities and states have placed
restrictions on how law enforcement can use facial recognition, those limits
won't do anything to protect privacy if they're routinely ignored by
officers.

Read the full story on the New Orleans PD's surveillance program at The
Washington Post.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/ai/new-orleans-polic...
recognition-on-over-200-live-camera-feeds-223723331.html?src=rss

---
VRSS v2.1.180528