Everyone hates reading emails. Processing thousands of pages of NOPD emails is beyond tedious. While there are many violations of New Orleans laws and NOPD policy, most of the emails are rote and bureaucratic. But occasionally there are surprises where we discover evidence of new types of violations.
Recently reviewed emails show that NOPD is using facial recognition technology (FRT) against suspects already in custody. Specifically, we see NOPD contacting Project NOLA to match a name with a face from their database, and we see NOPD submitting a picture of a suspect to back-track the suspect’s activities.
In the above image you see the first case. NOPD has a man they believe is named Joshua Cooper in custody. Officer Biscoe emails Bryan Lagarde to confirm a name of a man being interrogated. This Orwellian tactic is problematic for several reasons:
- Racial Bias and Higher Error Rates
- Research shows facial recognition algorithms have significantly higher false positive rates for people of color. A 2017 National Institute of Standards and Technology study of 140 face recognition algorithms found that false positive rates are highest for East and West African and East Asian people, with a factor of 100 more false positives between some countries. Most documented wrongful arrests involve Black individuals.
- Technology Treated as Definitive Rather Than Investigative
- Despite warnings that facial recognition should only generate investigative leads, police often treat matches as proof of identity. In all known cases of wrongful arrest, police arrested someone without independently connecting the person to the crime Once the technology suggests a match, it can “poison the investigation,” leading officers to overlook contradictory evidence.
- Lack of Transparency and Disclosure
- Police departments rarely disclose their use of facial recognition technology. A Washington Post investigation found hundreds of Americans have been arrested after being connected to a crime by facial recognition software, but many never know because police seldom disclose their use of the technology. Without disclosure, defendants cannot challenge the reliability of the evidence.
For our second case, we see NOPD taking a picture of a man in custody and then using the Project NOLA spy network to search for criminal behavior — especially near his work.
This practice raises several serious legal, ethical, and practical problems:
- Reverse Dragnet Search
- Instead of investigating a specific crime and looking for suspects, police are starting with a person and searching backward through all their movements to find potential crimes. This inverts traditional investigative methods and effectively puts someone under retroactive total surveillance without probable cause for any specific offense.
- Just Fishing
- This enables pure “fishing expeditions” – searching through someone’s life hoping to find something incriminating rather than investigating known crimes. It’s particularly problematic because:
- The person may be arrested on weak or incorrect grounds initially
- Even if the original arrest doesn’t lead to charges, police have already mapped their movements
- It can be used to build unrelated cases against someone who was wrongly detained
- Chilling Daily Life
- If you surveil anyone long enough you will find crimes
- If police can retroactively track anyone they arrest through citywide cameras, it creates surveillance of:
- Where people work
- What businesses they visit
- Who they associate with
- Their daily routines and patterns
Alas, now I’m back to pile of emails to review. Follow me on twitter or IG for the latest updates. Please reach out to our new mayor and your city councilmember if you’re tired of NOPD spying on New Orleans.
