May 19, 2025Confirmed
New Orleans Police Reportedly Used Real-Time Facial Recognition Alerts Supplied by Project NOLA Despite Local Ordinance
Rogue: Caused harmAI loose in the worldData exfiltrationDERIVED
Approved by person, Oct 11, 2026. How entries are approved
New Orleans police reportedly received real-time facial recognition alerts from a privately operated surveillance network run by Project NOLA, reportedly leading to dozens of arrests. This purported use of AI surveillance appears to conflict with a 2022 city ordinance that restricts facial recognition to specific post-incident investigations. Police are alleged to have not consistently disclosed the technology's use.
What this means for youAt home, if you live in a city with rules on police face scanning, check whether your city has a similar ordinance and whether police must disclose the tools they use. At work and in government, this shows that a local ban on a tool can be bypassed through private contractors unless oversight and disclosure are enforced.
Sources
- AI Incident Databasehttps://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1075
Data from the AI Incident Database (incidentdatabase.ai), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. IAAI-21.
Source data license: CC BY-SA 4.0 (database). Report contents keep their own rights; reports.text, submissions, images and videos are excluded from the data license.
rogue:R4
Covered by snapshot 45
da93f03b406f409940d0a6ef47b526607f82ebf457d98f69299b88aceede576a
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