A move by a New Orleans nonprofit to make the city “safer” could be circumventing legal protections, Co-Director Ryan Calo said in a recent NPR article.

Project NOLA has built a network of cameras that allow for facial recognition with the goal of making it easier to find suspects after a crime is committed. But this type of public surveillance by a non-law enforcement agency may circumvent protections afforded citizens.

“My concern would be that if the surveillance is done ‘by the community,’ by people that are not official actors, that it will circumvent those protections,” Calo warns.

He notes law enforcement has employed similar workarounds with other surveillance technologies over the years, such as purchases of dossiers about potential suspects from private data brokers.

There is also a concern about who has access to the camera data, given there is no official city ordinance about formal cooperation guidelines between law enforcement and Project NOLA.

Click here to read the full article: https://www.npr.org/2025/12/16/nx-s1-5616681/new-orleans-live-facial-recognition-surveillance?mkt_tok=NTI3LUFIUi0yNjUAAAGey2CE9uXHPEv8Al9eakPwxcHmxNltbmGr5BObxEdpsbH8PblAG-4NYN4gv4s-Q4mKPxO8Gg3rPayw5AAxw5-6B-7vntZ3hHq3PsZ4s4EG6ag