Council member Lesli Harris was asking the right questions.
Couple of important points from the meeting:
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ICE and state police are confirmed to already be using the technology via unregulated cameras owned by Project Nola.
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The police chief keeps arguing the fact that they’re already using it, is why she wants this ordinance. That way the city can actually regulate the publicly owned cams.
She keeps mentioning in Oakland there were ways to protect data from the federal government, but that was a sanctuary city protected within a sanctuary state.
That is not anywhere near the current situation in Louisiana. Not only is this not a sanctuary state, the Senate bill that just passed, SB-15, makes it a crime for any public employee in Louisiana, including Police, to hinder or delay with federal immigration. This means refusing to hand over access or control of the city owned cameras to the federal government, or any of the state agencies partnering with the federal government on immigration via Operation Geaux, could be considered a crime…
- One of the pro facial recognition arguments made was that the studies showing it is flawed and biased were from 10 years ago, and the tech has improved.
The parish next door to Orleans (Jefferson Parish), literally just had to settle with someone this month for $200K after they issued a warrant for an innocent man’s arrest using facial recognition tech. He spent 6 days in jail for crime committed in a place he’d never even been to.
- As far as the argument that the private cameras are already using this technology, it turns out the city of Portland was able to ban use of facial recognition technology by private companies in public spaces. This wasn’t discussed at the meeting, but seems to be the only way to protect the general public from being targeted.