Public records show GOHSEP’s Director of Intelligence was personally provisioned Project NOLA credentials. Nobody told the people being watched.
On January 29, 2025, Mark Fontenot, Director of Intelligence for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP), emailed Project NOLA founder Bryan Lagarde: “I just wanted to follow up regarding our conversation to request access to the Project NOLA cameras.” Four hours later, Lagarde sent him everything: client software, server IP, username, temporary password, and a mobile app so he could watch cameras “while on the street.” The next day, when Fontenot’s login failed, Lagarde reset his password over email.
I obtained these emails through a public records request. The original documents, credentials redacted, are available here. They document something never publicly disclosed: the state’s top intelligence officer has direct, personal, remote access to the private surveillance network watching New Orleans.
This was not a courtesy view of a few feeds. Lagarde’s onboarding covers live monitoring of “a large number” of New Orleans cameras, playback of recorded video, automated alerts on request, and pan-tilt-zoom control — steering cameras with WASD keys, “like in a video game,” to “zoom in on and track targets.” Lagarde volunteered more: “Working for GOHSEP, I may also be able to connect you to Project NOLA Crime Cameras outside Louisiana, should a need arise.” All of it extended at one man’s discretion, over email, with no agreement, no privacy assessment, and no public notice. The thread also shows GOHSEP handing Project NOLA two state 700MHz radios ahead of Super Bowl LIX — but the login wasn’t scoped to the Super Bowl. It was a standing credential, and nothing in the record suggests it was ever revoked.
Why this is dangerous
A quiet camera login for a state intelligence director would be a transparency failure anywhere. Here, it lands in open hostility between the capital and the city under the cameras. Governor Jeff Landry’s legislature eliminated the Orleans criminal court clerk’s office days before exoneree Calvin Duncan was to be sworn in — a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional. He pushed to cut three New Orleans judges and five ADAs. After an Orleans grand jury indicted his attorney general for allegedly threatening city officials, Landry publicly downgraded the state’s relationship with New Orleans until the indictment disappears. He put 350 National Guard troops in the French Quarter and welcomed Border Patrol into the city — all while violent crime was falling.
Then there’s the immigration machinery. In May 2025, Landry ordered the State Police, Corrections, Wildlife and Fisheries, the Fire Marshal, and the National Guard into ICE’s 287(g) program. DHS’s “Swamp Sweep” sent 250 federal agents into Louisiana with Landry’s backing. And GOHSEP sits atop LA-SAFE, the state fusion center, whose listed federal partners include CBP and DHS. Project NOLA insists its data stays “within the public safety community” and isn’t used against people facing deportation. Those are policies, not walls. As the ACLU put it: provide a live feed to an agency partnered with ICE, and ICE has that access.
New Orleans has fought publicly, repeatedly, over what its own police may do with these cameras — a 2022 facial recognition ordinance, suspensions, hearings. The whole time, the Governor’s intelligence chief held a username and password that no ordinance touches, no council oversees, and no New Orleanian was told about.
What must be answered
GOHSEP, Project NOLA, and the Landry administration owe the public answers: Is the access still active, and who else has it? Under what written agreement? Has Project NOLA video accessed by GOHSEP ever reached CBP, DHS, or ICE, or supported any immigration operation? And the City Council should note that regulating NOPD’s access regulates one door into this network — these records prove there are others. Any ordinance that doesn’t force Project NOLA to disclose and log every government entity with access is regulating the shadow, not the thing.
When a governor openly hostile to this city, allied with a mass-deportation campaign, quietly holds a joystick to its cameras, that isn’t public safety. It’s leverage. The people under the lens have a right to know who’s holding it.
Source documents: public records production (Google Drive), credentials and connection details redacted.
