The city says it won’t lend this tool to ICE for surveillance. But a state law requires that local officials assist ICE, and New Orleans also wants to end a court order restricting compliance.

Advocates point, in part, to a new state law, Act 399, which went into effect Aug. 1 and establishes criminal penalties for law enforcement officials who decline ICE requests for cooperation. “If ICE were to ask for any records that NOPD would hold, they would have to risk violating a state law and facing criminal charges [to comply with] what the ordinance is asking them to do,” Sarah Whittington, advocacy director at the ACLU of Louisiana, told Bolts.

Should federal agents get access, Whittington said, “this technology would allow them to use facial recognition to try and further their reach into our communities and track people.” She thinks ICE could “use the network of cameras to target specific people and communities and wait for the technology to alert them to a match and then use it to track that person to a location for arrest—likely away from their home and away from the public.”

Even setting aside these new state laws, experts say the only real way to prevent ICE from accessing sensitive data is to forgo collecting it in the first place. “It is very hard to wall off data collected from lawful government use,” George Washington University law professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, the author of several books on big data policing, told Bolts. “The simple truth of digital surveillance is that if you build it, it will be used, and likely used against those with the least amount of political power.”

Su argues, though, that the city council’s attempts at safeguarding facial recognition technology seem to be designed according to an “an old idea” of how governments interact: “federal insulated from state, state insulated from local, and you can still have some stability or control for your own little community.”

In the era of Trump 2.0, he said, those rules no longer apply: “We’re probably at the lowest point with regard to local democratic control.”

  • Jumbie@lemmy.zip
    9·
    3 days ago

    It’s worse than that. It’ll be used for abuse.

    There have been examples of stalkers within organizations using this technology to target ex-girlfriends or women they find pretty.

    What happens when a masked proud boy decides your wife or your daughter or your mother or sister looks pretty enough to track?

    • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
      3·
      3 days ago

      This is my biggest fear.

      Especially during a time when masked kidnappings have somehow become normalized.

      An entire gang of masked pedophiles in unmarked cars could just show up to take a child and claim they’re with ICE. Fuck this nonsense, this is a fucking nightmare.

  • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
    11·
    3 days ago

    Council Member Eugene Green, Jr., who co-authored the ordinance, dismissed concerns about the exigencies created by Act 399 in an interview with Bolts. “I don’t expect police officers to, for example, be arrested because they aren’t following state and federal guidelines,” he said. But he also said questions about his proposal’s immigration ramifications would be better directed at a “state or federal official or lawyer,” saying, “I am in the business of overseeing the creation of and the implementation and operation of city laws.”

    June 10, 2025: In final days of session, legislature advances Landry immigration agenda

    Senate Bill 15, sponsored by Sen. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, criminalizes the failure of local officials – including sheriffs and other law enforcement officers – to cooperate with federal immigration agencies, with penalties of up to 10 years in prison. It also criminalizes acts by everyday Louisiana residents deemed to obstruct or “thwart” federal immigration enforcement efforts. It passed 71-30.

    Green argues that this technology is a critical aid in the fight to catch alleged criminals, referencing two recent cases where Project NOLA’s cameras identified a suspect. “What about the fact that the citizens are safer because those two people are off the streets only because of the use of facial recognition technology?” he asked. “It can give and it can take away. But I’m not going to ignore the fact that it can give safety and comfort to our residents.”

    “Everybody has it and uses it,” he added. “Please point to me the instances where the technology has been abused.” 👇

    June 18, 2025: A bad facial recognition match costs Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joe Lopinto’s office.

    New Orleans and Jefferson Parish both use facial recognition. It just led to the arrest of an innocent man.

    This man is on city council. He has a staff of people who are paid to keep him informed about this. I am nobody. I just read the news in my spare time. I find it very hard to believe he’s actually just unaware of this information.