New Orleans police are spying on you...
The short version: ReasonTV exposes how New Orleans police ran real-time facial recognition surveillance in direct violation of the city's own rules, proving that policy without enforcement is meaningless.
Our Take
ReasonTV's reporting on New Orleans is a textbook case of why "we have rules against that" means nothing if nobody's watching the watchers. The city passed restrictions on real-time facial recognition specifically because residents didn't want a 24/7 AI lineup running on their faces. Police used it anyway. That's not a loophole, that's a department deciding the law doesn't apply to it.
This matters way beyond New Orleans. Flock Safety and similar vendors keep selling cities on the promise that these systems come with guardrails, audit logs, and local control. But guardrails only work if someone enforces them, and in practice, oversight boards and city councils rarely have the staff, subpoena power, or political will to catch violations until a journalist or a lawsuit forces it into the open. If it happened there, with an actual ordinance on the books, assume it's happening quietly in cities with no rules at all.
Credit to ReasonTV for digging into this and putting a spotlight on a department that decided its own city's law was optional. If you want to see what's watching you in your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on unchecked ALPR and facial recognition deployment where you live, our take-action page has next steps.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of ReasonTV, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.