New Orleans’ battle over facial recognition

On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, says that the broad use of facial recognition technology by New Orleans police extends even beyond endangering the city’s residents, but invites outside actors to take advantage of its surveillance environment. The police, which were recently revealed to have been using facial recognition against city policy, are now seeking broad approval to use the tech, in part as a response to a recent jailbreak. Marlow says the proposal is not only an overreaction to the rare jailbreak event, but potentially a support to the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation policies and anti-protestor actions. “This is the situation that the New Orleans City Council needs to realize,” he says. “If they set up this system in their city, they can not insulate it from these other bad actors.”

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Lawmakers in New Orleans are set to consider a proposal at the end of the month from police that would allow broad use of facial recognition technology during investigations. The proposal comes after an investigation by The Washington Post last month that showed police have already been using the tech against current city policy.

Bill Kehoe, Washington’s chief information officer, said that when funding from the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program ends, state governments will have to collaborate more closely with their municipalities. The grant money, he said, has been key to efforts to bolster local cybersecurity.

After an extensive effort last year to examine her state’s technological shortcomings, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued an executive order that will rearrange the state’s IT efforts and place a greater emphasis on cybersecurity. The order requires the state’s IT division to reform as the Department of Shared Administrative Services, Office of State Technology.

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