The recent jailbreak has plenty of New Orleans residents on edge. Although facial recognition cameras have been a useful tool for law enforcement as they seek to apprehend fugitives at large, there are privacy concerns, as it has been revealed that New Orleans police used facial recognition software in secret to identify the unknown culprits.
Speaking to WWL’s Tommy Tucker, Brian Lagarde, the Executive Director of Project NOLA, says the city has a wide coverage area. “We have over 5,000 cameras around the city of New Orleans. Approximately 200 of those cameras are piping into our facial recognition servers where we’re able to do live facial recognition,” Lagarde emphasizes.
However, with many calling for wider usage of the technology, Lagarde warns that privacy concerns could curb the use of the cameras in some areas.
“There’s also the privacy side of this. While we’re comfortable putting facial recognition technology in commercial, entertainment areas, and mixed residential … the question becomes, ‘should we use facial recognition in residential neighborhoods’ and that’s a much larger discussion,” Lagarde goes on to say.
In terms of their function, Lagarde says the cameras will automatically alert law enforcement once a wanted subject is identified via the facial recognition software. “All these cameras are streaming to our national real-time crime center at the University of New Orleans. But it also streams to real-time crime centers across the metro area. So, many different entities have monitoring stations for this data,” explains Lagarde.
He concedes that more cameras in more areas would ultimately be very helpful for law enforcement. However, pushback from privacy advocates could slow the larger spread of the technology. Lagarde says Project NOLA is a non-profit organization giving facial recognition cameras away and encourages residents to take part.
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