New Orleans police continue live face recognition despite city law
Preliminary Why: Publisher not yet named · subject to change
Status: no action reported
No source states: loss or records, developer and model, agent tool, could do, deployer, industry.
New Orleans police officers used live face recognition through Project NOLA, a private organization that runs the camera network and watch lists without a contract with the department. City law allowed only limited investigative use and banned use as a surveillance tool. A Washington Post investigation revealed the program last year, and it was claimed to be paused. Records obtained by a privacy researcher show officers still sent photos to Project NOLA to locate suspects at least as of November 2025. The police department dismissed a complaint, saying the requests were not a use of face recognition. The system’s security was also reported as poor, with suspect videos sent through publicly accessible folders and shared passwords.
What happened
What was done
No source states an action or fix.
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Controls
Not yet read for controls. Controls that mitigate the primary risk:
Evidence
No source states: what the AI was doing, what went wrong, what it reached or did, when it happened, when it was found, how many records were exposed, the direct loss, a count of the other parties affected, any court case, the cause, what set it off, what was done.
Show the full account: 3 items from the primary sources
What happened, in order
- 2025-11 Officers were still sending photos to Project NOLA to locate suspects, after the claimed pause.
- 2025-11-05 An email from the Project NOLA operator tells a detective that the system will soon be switched back on for NOPD and that an account was reactivated.
Not dated in the sources:
- A Washington Post investigation revealed the program.
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What happened
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Notes on gaps
The NOPD denial and complaint dismissal are reported by the ACLU, not by a primary record. The Washington Post article is not among the sources. No remediation was reported; the police chief's stated intent is not a reported change. Control outcomes are judged from the reported gaps and attributed to Project NOLA as the operator.
LR-2026-0518 · version 1 · published 2026-11-01 after automatic checks; not yet checked field by field by a person · JSON