Next week, the New Orleans City Council is slated to vote on a groundbreaking and highly controversial ordinance that would make New Orleans the first U.S. city to formally authorize the use of facial recognition technology for real‑time surveillance in policing.
If enacted, the new ordinance would empower either the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) or a third-party operator to monitor public spaces live and dispatch automated alerts when an individual matches a watchlist.
The ordinance also bans the use of collected data for immigration enforcement and excludes its application against people seeking abortions or engaging in consensual adult sex, though critics say these are weak safeguards…