Are facial recognition cameras intrusive surveillance or a tool helping to make the public safer? Opinions are divided and privacy concerns are at the forefront of many people’s minds. In speaking to WWL’s Tommy Tucker, Bryan Lagarde, Criminologist and Executive Director of Project NOLA, says that many of those fears are misguided. “We’re using special chip sets and higher definition cameras that can see faces hundreds of feet away regardless of lighting conditions and skin tone. This is enough to do facial recognition at an accuracy rate of 99% over the past few years,” noted Lagarde,
Bob Murrell, Coalition member of Eye On Surveillance, has his concerns about the uses of facial recognition cameras and software. “If I were to follow someone with my camera block by block, trying to figure out who they were, that would be weird. But, if the camera is mounted on a pole with red and blue lights by an unnamed entity that could be NOPD, Homeland Security, or ICE. That’s where the privacy concerns come about,” Murrell told WWL’s Tommy Tucker.
NOPD currently has a pause on the use of real-time facial recognition alerts from Project NOLA’s network of cameras. This comes after investigations revealed police were using the system in ways that violated a local ordinance. “Even before the pause, the NOPD did not have the ability to run searches, edit databases, add names, or anything of that sort,” Project NOLA’s Bryan Lagarde noted…