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Senior Policy Analyst ,

ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project

April 29, 2026

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A troubling New Orleans face recognition program revealed by a Washington Post investigation last year continues to operate despite violating a city law and a claim that it has been paused, and is being used in more problematic ways than first reported, according to emails obtained through an activist’s public records requests. If allowed to stand, this one-of-a-kind program would represent an alarming new expansion of how face recognition is used in America.

Face recognition is used by a number of police agencies around the nation, but almost always to discover the identity of an alleged perpetrator who appears in a photo. New Orleans police officers, however, have used — and appear to be continuing to use — live face recognition through an organization called Project NOLA. That means that they can do:

Real time monitoring.…