Saturday, August 8 · 2:00 PM · The Healing Center, 2372 St. Claude Ave · Free · No sign-up, no technical background required
For years, I’ve pulled on a thread. NOPD kept telling the City Council one thing about surveillance; the records I requested told another. Thousands of pages later, here’s a sample of what they show:
- A private nonprofit runs live facial recognition across 5,000+ cameras. The City Council restricted NOPD’s use of mass surveillance, but it’s still happening.
- Everyone is treated as a suspect. No process, no audit, no way to know if you’re on it.
- NOPD said it “paused” the program. Officers kept emailing photos to run months later.
- NOPD flies AI-powered surveillance drones. There were 273 flights in three months. NOPD had no justification for 206 of them.
- Jeff Landry is at war with New Orleans. His intelligence chief has direct, unregulated access to the Project NOLA spy network.
- No one in authority is holding NOPD accountable. If you want your right to privacy, you have to fight for it.
I’ve written all of it up, with the documents attached. But publishing isn’t enough. One voice doesn’t move a city. Together we can fight back. Together we can effect change. That’s why I’m running a free session on August 8, and why I want you there.
Not a lecture — a starter kit
I’ll show you what’s actually operating in this city and how it slipped past the law. If you’ve never thought about this before, you’re who it’s for.
Then I hand you the tools:
- My records templates — the exact documents I use to pull files from NOPD, LA-SAFE, Louisiana State Police, and others. When NOPD went quiet on me, the other agencies kept talking. That’s the crack in the wall, and I’ll show you how to work it.
- We file a request together, in the room. Bring your phone; you’ll send a real one before you leave.
- My complaint process, start to finish — how I turn one email into a formal complaint, what happens after you send it, and what I’ve learned filing 100+ of them. Most get dismissed. One of mine ended with an officer held accountable for the first time.
- How to reach the people who can change this — who to call, and the one sentence that makes it count.
- All the data I’ve collected — everything is available to anyone fighting surveillance in New Orleans.
Stay after and we’ll start working on your own request or complaint together.
Why I need you
I spent my career building systems that make machines recognize what they’re looking at. I know what this technology does and how it fails. But I’m one person with a laptop and a stack of FOIA responses, and the agencies running these systems are betting that people like me get outnumbered.
The way you beat that bet is more people who know how to ask the right questions and won’t stop asking. You don’t need a tech background. You don’t need to have done this before. You just need to show up.
Saturday, August 8. 2:00 PM. The Healing Center, 2372 St. Claude Ave. Free, nothing to sign up for. Bring your phone, your questions, and a friend who thinks they can’t do anything about this. Saturday we fight back.
Questions? projectmayhem@insomniac.tech
