On Thursday, December 17th the New Orleans City Council will finally vote on a proposed ordinance to ban the use of facial recognition technology in New Orleans.
Use the form below to submit a public comment to the City Council and ask them to support ordinance 33,021 to ban facial recognition technology and increase oversight of the city’s surveillance tools. (Make sure to select item 27a on the comment form)
Studies have shown that facial recognition technology is more likely to misidentify Black faces, increasing the risk of wrongful arrest and worsening racial disparities. In addition to being inherently biased, facial recognition is ineffective at combDisable rich-textating crime – diverting scarce resources away from other community services.
For years, New Orleans officials denied they were using facial recognition technology – but just recently we discovered otherwise. Public records we obtained through an open records request revealed NOPD has been using facial recognition through the Louisiana State Police since at least 2018.
This is our chance to stop these abuses – and we don’t have much time.
The deadline to submit a public comment on the ordinance is Thursday at 10am, so make your voice heard TODAY. Tell the City Council to invest in communities, not more militarized surveillance.
