Category: Uncategorized
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Asking NOPD for Its Axon License Plate Reader Audit Logs
Today 404 Media asked readers across the country to request Axon’s license plate reader (ALPR) activity reports from their local police. 404 calls these reports Axon’s version of Flock’s network audits. Those Flock audits were the basis for 404’s reporting that ICE was getting Flock data, and that a Texas officer searched cameras nationwide for…
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NOPD Mass Surveillance: October 2025
I’ve obtained another public records production from the City of New Orleans — request 26-650, 80 pages of email between NOPD officers and Bryan Lagarde of Project NOLA, the private nonprofit that runs a facial-recognition-equipped camera network across the city. Every complaint described below is in this folder. What’s in it The emails run from…
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NOPD April–August 2026 Drone Flights: Better Paperwork Same Mass Surveillance
NOPD’s drone flight log through early August 2026 arrived in response to public records request 26-10297. This post covers flights from April 1 forward. NOPD’s record-keeping is markedly better than what it has produced before. The problem is what the improved records reveal. Most flights are still not tied to a police incident, and the…
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NOPD Ran Facial Recognition on a Robbery Victim
On October 29, 2025, an NOPD detective emailed a private facial recognition surveillance company a photograph of a crime victim and asked them to find him on camera. Eighty-seven minutes later he got an answer — plus something he never asked for: a month of covert surveillance on a woman who had done nothing but…
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August 2026 in Review
In August I trained a room at the Healing Center to pull NOPD records, published my request templates, filed four complaints against NOPD detectives for illegal use of facial recognition and mass surveillance, and launched a petition to end illegal surveillance in New Orleans. I worked through two records productions — one nearly 2,000 pages,…
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NOPD Remains Unaccountable: Drone Report Numbers Don’t Match Flight Logs
On August 31, NOPD published drone flight statistics for the first half of 2026, filed under “Transparency.” The release reports 209 flights in Q1 with a tidy breakdown: 164 for special events (121 during Mardi Gras), 13 for fatality scene reconstruction, 2 rescues, 1 tactical operation, 11 training flights, and 18 exempt from disclosure under…
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November 2025 NOPD Unlawful Requests for Facial Recognition
I’m publishing public records request 26-651 — 69 pages of email between NOPD and Project NOLA’s Bryan Lagarde, covering November 2025. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XcQOBKRaVUbNkJvEcowVZxuvilPc8qno/view?usp=drive_link The pattern The threads are repetitive, which is the point. A detective emails Lagarde directly from a NOPD email address, often attaching a still image, and asks Project NOLA to locate, backtrack, or…
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Sign the Petition: Stop Illegal Surveillance in New Orleans
I’ve spent the past year and a half documenting how NOPD surveils this city — public records requests, PIB complaints, and a growing stack of the department’s own documents. The record is no longer ambiguous. It’s time to put it in front of the New Orleans City Council with signatures behind it. Sign the petition…
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Need to Illegally Spy on New Orleans? Just Email Project NOLA
A 311 complaint was enough to bypass New Orleans City Ordinances and start the paperwork to install banned face-tracking camera. January 15, 2025. A Third District NOPD officer is working a trash complaint — illegal dumping under the France Road overpass. She’d filed a 311. Sanitation said two to three months. So she emailed Bryan…
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One Request to Rule Them All: Responsive Document 25-20667
Filing public records requests is a tedious process that often leads to disappointment and sometimes incremental progress. But on occasion the fates give you a precious gift that can change the course of the future. For me, that was New Orleans Public Records Request 25-20667. The responsive document to request 25-2067 is nearly 2,000 pages.…
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My Public Records Templates are Public
Last weekend I stood in a room at the Healing Center and walked a crowd of people through what I’ve found out about surveillance in New Orleans. Drone flights with the reason field left blank. A state intelligence director quietly handed access to Project NOLA — a massive 5000+ camera private face tracking spy network.…
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Go Read: “AI-Powered Surveillance Networks are Worse Than You Know”
A drone is an AI-powered aerial surveillance system. It’s a camera, and cameras don’t stop crime or provide first aid. Instead of a police officer responding to your call, he’s sitting at headquarters watching a screen. The response time metric looks fantastic. But help isn’t any closer. The drone isn’t for you. To quote The Wire, “You…
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Don’t Spy on Me
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…
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Jeff Landry’s Intelligence Chief is Spying on New Orleans with Project NOLA
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…
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Watching City Council Agendas with a Claude Skill
I follow surveillance and policing-tech issues in New Orleans — drones, facial recognition, license plate readers. The decisions happen in council and committee meetings, but the only warning is an agenda PDF posted a few days beforehand. Miss the posting, miss the meeting. Lots of people have this problem: journalists, advocates, anyone tracking zoning or…
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Who’s Spying on New Orleans? A Citizen’s Guide to Fighting Local Surveillance
Saturday, August 8 at 2:00 PM | The Healing Center, 2372 St. Claude Ave | Free — no registration required New Orleans has quietly become one of the most surveilled cities in America. A private nonprofit operates a network of over 5,000 cameras across the city, running live facial recognition on residents despite a city…
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NOPD’s Drone Policy Is Worthless.
404 Media just published an important story: New Orleans Cops Published Policy Document Allowing Weaponized Drones. Go read it. Matthew Gault and 404 Media do exactly the kind of journalism this city needs and rarely gets — actually reading the documents, catching the discrepancies, and asking the police department to explain itself. Thank you, 404. Subscribe…
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NOPD Flew 273 Drone Flights in Three Months. It Can’t Say Why for 206 of Them!
Through a public records request, I obtained the New Orleans Police Department’s drone flight logs covering January 1 through April 1, 2026. These are the department’s own records, exported from its Skydio flight management system. What they show is a surveillance program operating largely outside its own rules — and an oversight process that declined…
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Letter to Senators Opposing the KIDS Act
Dear Senator Cassidy and Senator Kennedy, I am a constituent in New Orleans and a cybersecurity engineer with 20 years in the field. Senator Cassidy, I know you co-sponsored KOSA and co-authored COPPA 2.0, and that your goal is protecting children. I am writing to ask you to reconsider the KIDS Act (H.R.7757) as passed…
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NOPD is Still Using FRT, Still Lying, and Now Covering It Up — Part 5
Welcome back to part 5 of NOPD’s coverup of unlawful use of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT). Today we’re looking at my allegation that SPO Levi Atkins requested the use of FRT from Project NOLA on March 22, 2025. NOPD Public Integrity Bureau (PIB) conducted a thorough investigation and determined that SPO Atkin did NOT request…