Because of fucking course they did
For two years, New Orleans police secretly relied on facial recognition technology to scan city streets in search of suspects, a surveillance method without a known precedent in any major American city that may violate municipal guardrails around use of the technology, an investigation by The Washington Post has found.
“This is the facial recognition technology nightmare scenario that we have been worried about,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy director with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, who has closely tracked the use of AI technologies by police. “This is the government giving itself the power to track anyone — for that matter, everyone — as we go about our lives walking around in public.”
I don't know wtf this is all about, but it seems at least partially related to a very long convoluted story involving the New Orleans Sheriff, even before the recent jailbreak on Friday. She has been trying to get money from the city to repair issues in the overcrowded jail, such as broken locks, which apparently led to Friday's escape. There was a vote about continuing funding for the jail a few weeks ago that barely passed.
Then somebody filed a recount request under an alias. I looked the person up and realized it was somebody who had previously run for elected office in Louisiana, and was previously involved in revealing an astroturfing scandal against the city The recount ultimately increased the number of yes votes so the millage still passed by 4 votes to fund the jail, weeks before the jailbreak on Friday.
The most bizarre part of all of this, that I still don't know how to explain, is that the guy that called for the recount (and also revealed an astroturfing event with the current DA,.when the DA was still on city council) also ran all of his failed campaigns from a bar where Project Nola seems to have first established its cameras??
Project NOLA Executive Director Bryan LaGarde said, “We’re very thankful to Tim Blake, owner of the Three Legged Dog, for hosting the Project NOLA Crime Cameras that helped the Ricou family and the DA’s Office find justice for Russell. Over the past ten years, Project NOLA Crime Cameras on the Three Legged Dog have helped the NOPD investigate a large number of major crimes that regrettably occurred in the French Quarter, leading to a large number of arrests, which has very significantly benefited public safety.”
Frankly, kinda feels like I know too much already, but fuck. This literally all started bc I just wanted to make sure that incarcerated people in New Orleans still had access to mental healthcare.
Another article was written about the guy that filed the recount on May 9th. Tried to post it on the Nola subreddit, but it turns out Rouses is having an urgent sale on pot pies at the same time so not sure if anybody noticed.
Turns out there were 2 weird surprise military votes opposing in the recount that were "found at the last minute." Luckily the recount has increased the number of winning yes votes from 2 to 4, so the 2 found military votes ended up making the final count still yes by 2 votes
So did they ever stop?
A few weeks ago, I realized that the person that filed a recount for the vote to continue the millage for funding for the jail was actually using an alias to file for a recount. I figured he was just some asshole that owned an str and didn't want to pay property tax, but it's some guy that's run for office in Louisiana multiple times and allegedly worked with city council to expose an Entergy astroturfing event.
The guy also ran all of his failed campaigns from the bar where Project Nola seems to have first established its cameras??