Far from the front lines of the climate crisis, 100 men and women in air-conditioned offices, 61 of them millionaires, are making decisions that could increase United States carbon dioxide emissions, and the warming of the climate they are driving, for decades to come.
In the latest political wrangle over energy and climate policy, a group of Republican senators over the weekend added provisions to the US federal budget bill that, as currently written, would end clean energy tax credits at the personal level and at utility scale and increase taxes on foreign-made parts for solar power equipment.
Ending federal subsidies for most renewable energy projects, including residential heat pumps, for example, would affect thousands of projects that are already in planning or development and jeopardize future investments in manufacturing renewable energy equipment.
Friday, June 27, hours before the Senate released the latest draft of the reconciliation bill just after midnight, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright claimed on the Department of Energy website that wind and solar are unreliable and that federal subsidies have made energy more expensive, although he did not cite any official reports or peer-reviewed studies to support that claim.
On the Department of Energy website, Wright wrote, “wind and solar brings us the worst of two worlds: less reliable energy delivery and higher electric bills …If sources are truly economically viable, let’s allow them to stand on their own,” he wrote, ignoring that the fossil fuel industry gets annual subsidies of about $20 billion annually, according to estimates by Oil Change International, a nonprofit watchdog group.
But hundreds of studies show that renewable energy is much less expensive and, in a well-planned grid, can make energy supplies more secure.
“The proposed GOP tax on wind and solar is a danger to the United States,” Mark Z. Jacobson, a Stanford University renewable energy researcher who has authored numerous studies on wind and solar power, wrote via email.
The new tax provisions “lock in death and illness to up to 100,000 Americans every year due to fossil-fuel and bioenergy-fuel air pollution that wind and solar help to eliminate,” he said.
An early evaluation shows the administration’s planned energy policies would result in the drilling of 50,000 new oil wells every year for the next few years, he said, adding that it “ensures the continuation of land devastation… the poisoning of soil and groundwater due to fossil fuels and the continuation of gas blowouts and fires.”
There is nothing beneficial about the tax, he said, “only guaranteed misery.”
An analysis by the Rhodium Group, and energy policy research institute, projected that the Republican regime’s proposed energy policies would result in about 4 billion tons more greenhouse gas emissions than a continuation of current policies—enough to raise the average global temperature by .0072° Fahrenheit.
The overall budget bill was also panned in a June 28 statement by the president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, Sean McGarvey.
McGarvey called it “a massive insult to the working men and women of North America’s Building Trades Unions and all construction workers.”
He said that, as written, the budget “stands to be the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country,” potentially costing as many jobs as shutting down 1,000 Keystone X pipeline projects, threatening an estimated 1.75 million construction jobs and over 3 billion work hours, which translates to $148 billion in lost annual wages and benefits.
“These are staggering and unfathomable job loss numbers, and the bill throws yet another lifeline and competitive advantage to China in the race for global energy dominance,” he said.
Research in recent years shows how right-wing populist and nationalist ideologies have used anti-renewable energy arguments to win voters, in defiance of environmental logic and scientific fact, in part by using social media to spread misleading and false information about wind, solar and other emissions-free electricity sources.
The same forces now seem to be at work in the US, said Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Bristol who studies how people respond to misinformation and propaganda, and why people reject well-established scientific facts, such as those regarding climate change.
“This is a bonus for fossil fuels at the expense of future generations and the future of the American economy,” he said. “Other countries will continue working towards renewable-energy economies, especially China. That competitive advantage will eventually pay out to the detriment of American businesses. You can’t negotiate with the laws of physics.”
We did not record a podcast last week because Donna was traveling to Austin, where her family was celebrating Fourth of July AND the arrival of a new baby (her grand-niece!).
She expected hot, humid weather. What she got was four days of torrential rain, and the specter of over one hundred deaths from flooding in the nearby hill counties – including children at a sleep away camp that was overcome by the deluge.
One week later, this tragedy is ongoing. People are wondering how much DOGE’s cuts to the National Weather Service and NOAA factored into it. Journalist Marisa Kabas has reported that as of Monday, only 86 FEMA employees were on the ground in Texas (they usually deploy hundreds of people to disaster zones like this). “We are doing a lot less than normal,” a FEMA staffer told her.
No shit.
In the meantime, $450 million from FEMA’s budget has been allocated to that concentration camp in the swamps of Florida. And Trump’s big, ugly budget bill allocates billions to expand ICE and build more “detention centers” throughout the country.
ICE continues to terrorize immigrant communities, kidnapping law-abiding parents, gardeners, day laborers, and others who just happen to have brown skin (including US citizens).Donna returned home to Los Angeles in time for a show of military cosplay in MacArthur Park. No one got hurt in that one – but it felt like a dress rehearsal for something worse.
We talked about that and more in this week’s podcast.
We are living through history and it really sucks. Aliza says that the best way to deal with the continual onslaught of terrible events is to DO something. Anything. Volunteer in the community. Participate in events. Write postcards for candidates, donate to good causes.
And allow yourself the down time you need to muster up the energy to do it again.
We talked about some of the everyday heroes who are helping us all muster through this.
Like Joshua Aaron, the developer of the ICEBlock app that alerts people of ICE activity in their area. (Currently just for iPhones; we are anxiously awaiting news that this app will become available to Android users.)
The ACLU has done heroic work for over a century. After recording this week’s podcast, we were dismayed to learn that their Mobile Justice app Aliza has relied upon for years is no longer available.
To ensure compliance with a growing number of consumer privacy laws and the ACLU’s own privacy policies and to minimize risk with surveillance technologies currently used by law enforcement, the national office has made the decision not to renew our contract with Quadrant 2, the vendor behind Mobile Justice, and shut down the app on February 28, 2025.
But the ACLU is still a source of valuable information. Here are a couple of pages that you may want to bookmark:
There are things you can do as a bystander, too. This Yahoo article talks about New York City, but much of it applies anywhere in the U.S. It’s completely legal to film an ICE encounter, and the article has great suggestions for how to narrate and what details to include. There is advice on how your video can help, but it’s also important not to post your videos online without the consent of the person being detained.
The National Immigrant Justice Center is just one of many organizations with so much information on how to handle encounters with ICE or DHS, whether you are the target or a bystander.
The coalition of anti-authoritarian groups that has risen since the start of this regime continue to organize. The next big nationwide gathering is “Good Trouble Lives On,” which will be held in honor of the late John Lewis, around the July 17 anniversary of his death. Find an event near you here.
And in case you’re one of those “DO SOMETHING” people who love to bash Democrats, remember that they ARE doing something. A LOT. If you want to know what, you should follow Ariella Elm on any of the socials. She makes posts like the ones below, and daily posts like this one that list the wins for democracy and actions all over the country that are helping stem the tide of fascism, and we need to thank and elevate these soldiers for democracy.
July 7, 1863 The first military draft was instituted in the U.S. to provide troops for the Union army in the American Civil War. Once called, a draftee had the opportunity to either pay a commutation fee of $300 to be exempt from a particular battle, or to hire a replacement that would exempt him from the entire war.
July 7, 1903 The March of the Mill Children watch a video – highly recommended Labor organizer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones led the “March of the Mill Children” over 100 miles from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt’s Long Island summer home in Oyster Bay, New York, to publicize the harsh conditions of child labor and to demand a 55-hour work week. It is during this march, on about the 24th, she delivered her famed “The Wail of the Children” speech. Roosevelt refused to see them. “Fifty years ago there was a cry against slavery and men gave up their lives to stop the selling of black children on the block. Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.” –from Mother Jones’s autobiography Read more about Mother Jones
July 7, 1957 Convened at the onset of the Cold War, a group of scientists held their first peace conference in the village of Pugwash, Nova Scotia, Canada. The mission of the Pugwash Conference was to “. . . bring scientific insight and reason to bear on threats to human security arising from science and technology in general, and above all from the catastrophic threat posed to humanity by nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction . . . .” Bertrand Russell Wealthy industrialist and Pugwash son Cyrus Eaton had invited the world’s greatest minds to his family home in Nova Scotia and address the emerging threat of nuclear war. The Conference became the basis for an ongoing organization that deals with issues of weapons of mass destruction. The 1995 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Joseph Rotblat (one of the original signatories of the Pugwash Manifesto) and to the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Albert Einstein Pugwash home
Fifty years later . . . 25 scientists, diplomats and former military officers from 15 countries gathered for a “Revitalizing Nuclear Disarmament” strategy workshop. The meeting was held near the Thinkers’ Lodge, the site of the first meeting in 1957. “Fifty years ago from Pugwash, Nova Scotia, nuclear scientists helped alert the world to the dangers of nuclear weapons, and especially the newly developed hydrogen bomb,” said Paolo Cotta-Ramusino, Secretary General, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. “Today, we are working with experts from around the world for global action to revitalize nuclear disarmament and the final elimination of nuclear weapons.” Senator Roméo Dallaire, Honorary Patron of the Pugwash Peace Exchange, said “It is appalling to observe the increasing potential for many regional nuclear arms races, shameless plans to modernize nuclear arsenals and bald-faced threats of pre-emptive nuclear use,” said Senator Dallaire. “Only by revitalizing discussion and implementation of disarmament leading to abolition can we ensure that these genocidal devices will never again be used.”
July 7, 1977 The United States conducted its first test of the neutron bomb. The neutron bomb was a tactical thermonuclear weapon designed to cause very little physical damage through limited blast and heat but was designed to kill troops through localized but intense levels of lethal radiation. A neutron bomb explosion at a test site
July 7, 1979 2,000 American Indian activists and anti-nuclear demonstrators marched through the Black Hills of western South Dakota to protest the development of uranium mines on sacred native lands.
In the late 20th century, a gay social club became a major political force in the California tech industry, eventually influencing corporate policies as well as state and federal laws across the country.
In the 1980s, at a time when the federal government turned its back on the LGBTQ community, gay men and lesbians found an unlikely partner in their fight for equality: corporations.
In the face of the AIDS crisis, hostility toward LGBTQ employees forced the community to “turn from the state to business for protection, according to Margot Canaday’s Queer Career: Sexuality and Work Modern America.” Corporate America did more than federal or state governments in this regard, outpacing both the labor movement and the non-profit sector.
And it started in Silicon Valley.
While Silicon Valley was dominated by the kind of straight white men mocked in the HBO series of the same name, it also wasn’t the establishment. In these early days, for example, women made up a larger proportion of those working in computer programming. Nonconformity was seen as valuable rather than problematic. In 1987, Lotus became the “first highly visible, for-profit company” to provide same sex couples with partner benefits, according to Canaday.
Today, Silicon Valley dominates the public narrative and the economy. Granted, in our current moment, it seems paradoxical that the same industry that gave us social media platforms that often perpetuate misogyny and homophobia also served as an important battleground for the assertion of employment rights for LGBTQ workers. Yet it did, and it happened internally through employee resource groups and externally through advocacy groups.
One of the most prominent of these external advocacy organizations was the High Tech Gays (HTG). Formed in the living rooms of Silicon Valley’s San Jose in 1983, it began largely as a social group for the region’s LGTBQ tech workforce, but over time it served as an incubator for other organizations dedicated to LGBTQ political rights, inspiring members to start their own employee resource groups at their places of employment and organizing against anti-gay state referendums.
The 1980s and Silicon Valley
While San Francisco, has long been identified with LGBTQ activism, suburban Silicon Valley proved more conservative. “Even though I was ‘out’ with friends and family who knew me…I found myself being very reserved in expressing affection, talking in any depth about gay culture with them,” says Bob Correa, a California native, San Jose resident (1971-1986), and an early HTG member. “Even in the early ’80s there was a lot of prejudice back then, a heck of lot more than today,” adds his husband and one of HTG’s founders, Denny Carroll, in their 2018 interview.
Denny Carroll and Bob Correa after donating the HTG collection to the San Jose State Martin Luther King Library (Photo courtesy of HTG, Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, San Jose State University)
Yes, this passed in the Senate, thanks to the VP’s tiebreaking vote. However, it’s still got rows to hoe in the US House; Spkr. Johnson wants to vote tomorrow. The thing to remember about our US Reps is, they’re up for election each 2 years. So, while firmly directing them in dealing with this dreadful bill, also firmly yet lovingly remind them that the OBBB will be hanging around their necks every step of the way of their campaigns like a bubblegum machine golden giant dollar sign necklace, if they vote in favor.
(Actually, if you didn’t when you contacted your Senators last week, you can still remind them of the same thing, unless they voted against, in which case, Thank Them. It took bravery to vote against, and they need to know we have their backs. And thank you very much. Now call.)
Crackdown on Pride is part of effort to curb democratic freedoms ahead of a hotly-contested election next year
Tens of thousands march against Hungary’s government for LGBT rights – video
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Budapest in defiance of the Hungarian government’s ban on Pride, heeding a call by the city’s mayor to “come calmly and boldly to stand together for freedom, dignity and equal rights”.
Jubilant crowds packed into the city’s streets on Saturday, waving Pride flags and signs that mocked the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, as their peaceful procession inched forward at a snail’s pace.
Organisers estimated that a record number of people turned up, far outstripping the expected turnout of 35,000-40,000 people.
“We believe there are 180,000 to 200,000 people attending,” the president of Pride, Viktória Radványi told AFP. “It is hard to estimate because there have never been so many people at Budapest Pride.”
The mass demonstration against the government was a bittersweet marking of Budapest Pride’s 30th anniversary; while the turnout on Saturday was expected to reach record levels, it had come after the government had doubled down on its targeting of the country’s LGBTQ+ community.
Hungary Pride participants in the march cross the Elisabeth Bridge in Budapest, Hungary. Photograph: Rudolf Karancsi/AP
“We came because they tried to ban it,” said Timi, 49. The Hungarian national was marching with her daughter, Zsófi, 23, who had travelled from her home in Barcelona to join the rally.
After the ruling Fidesz party, led by the rightwing populist Orbán, fast-tracked a law that made it an offence to hold or attend events that involve the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to minors, many Hungarians vowed to show their disapproval by attending Pride for the first time.
Viki Márton was among those who had made good on the promise, turning up with her nine-year-old daughter.
The pair had come equipped with hats, water spray, and a swimsuit, more worried about heat than rightwing protesters. “I want her to see the reality,” said Márton. “And I’m so excited to be here!”
Tens of thousands of Hungarians took to the streets on Saturday, despite Orbán’s warning on Friday that those who attend or organise the march will face ‘legal consequences’. Photograph: János Kummer/Getty Images
Earlier this month, police announced they would follow the government’s orders and ban the march. The progressive mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karácsony, was swift to respond, saying that the march would instead go ahead as a separate municipal event, with Karácsony describing it as a way to circumvent the need for official authorisation.
On Saturday, the mayor reiterated why the city had decided to host the event, hinting at how the march had become a symbol of discontent against a government that has long faced criticism for weakening democratic institutions and gradually undermining the rule of law.
“The government is always fighting against an enemy against which they have to protect Hungarian people,” said Karácsony.
“This time, it is sexual minorities that are the target … we believe there should be no first and second class citizens, so we decided to stand by this event.”
Akos Horvath, 18, who had travelled two hours from his city in southern Hungary to take part in the march, described it as an event of “symbolic importance”.
Speaking to news agency AFP, he added: “It’s not just about representing gay people, but about standing up for the rights of the Hungarian people.”
The sentiment was echoed by fellow marcher Eszter Rein-Bódi. “This is about much more, not just about homosexuality,” Rein-Bódi told Reuters “This is the last moment to stand up for our rights.”
‘This is about much more, not just about homosexuality,’ one participant told Reuters. Photograph: Lisa Leutner/Reuters
Tens of thousands of Hungarians, including senior citizens and parents with their children, plus politicians and campaigners from 30 countries, took to the streets on Saturday, despite Orbán’s warning on Friday that those who attend or organise the march will face “legal consequences”.
The Hungarian prime minister sought to minimise concerns over violence, however, saying that Hungary was a “civilised country” and police would not “break it up … It cannot reach the level of physical abuse”.
Still, in a video posted to social media this week, the country’s justice minister, Bence Tuzson, warned the Budapest mayor that organising a banned event or encouraging people to attend is punishable by up to a year in prison.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, the mayor brushed off the threat and downplayed concerns that police would later impose heavy fines on attende s. “Police have only one task tomorrow: to guarantee the safety and security of those gathered at the event,” said Karácsony.
The potential for violence had been amplified after three groups with ties to the extreme right said they were planning counter-marches. As the Pride march got under way, local news site Telex reported that the route of the march had to be changed after one of these groups blocked off a bridge.
Analysts had described the government’s bid to crackdown on Pride as part of a wider effort to curb democratic freedoms ahead of a hotly contested national election next year.
Orbán is facing an unprecedented challenge from a former member of the Fidesz party’s elite, Péter Magyar, leading Pride organisers to suggest they are being scapegoated as Orbán scrambles to shore up support among conservative voters.
Orbán’s government had also prompted concerns across Hungary and beyond after it said it would use facial recognition software to identify people attending any banned events, potentially fining them up to €500 (£425).
Ahead of the march, as campaigners scrambled for clarity on whether or how this technology would be used, AFP reported that newly installed cameras had appeared on the lamp-posts that dotted the planned route.
The threat had been enough to rattle some. Elton, 30, a Brazilian living in Hungary wore a hat and sunglasses as he took part on Saturday, explaining that he had been worried about jeopardising his job and immigration status, but that his Hungarian boyfriend had persuaded him to attend.
“This is my second time at Pride, but the first time I feel insecure about it,” he said.
Orbán’s government had also prompted concerns across Hungary and beyond after it said it would use facial recognition software to identify people attending any banned events. Photograph: Lisa Leutner/Reuters
Mici, a 21-year-old Budapest resident, said she had attended Pride marches in the past but this time had weighed whether to join in after she was spooked by reports of the facial recognition system.
“At first, I was scared to come out because of the news, but I feel safe with so many people.”
She hoped that the massive turnout for the march would be enough to push the Orbán government to change its stance.
“I think the crowd that has come from across Europe, the record numbers, will make Hungarian people see that this cause is well-supported.”
Explanation: APOD is 30 years old today. In celebration, today’s picture uses past APODs as tiles arranged to create a single pixelated image that might remind you of one of the most well-known and evocative depictions of planet Earth’s night sky. In fact, this Starry Night consists of 1,836 individual images contributed to APOD over the last 5 years in a mosaic of 32,232 tiles. Today, APOD would like to offer a sincere thank you to our contributors, volunteers, and readers. Over the last 30 years your continuing efforts have allowed us to enjoy, inspire, and share a discovery of the cosmos.
The undocumented migrant community in the United States is using social networks and other digital platforms to send alerts about raids and the presence of immigration agents around the US.
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (Chirla) estimates that in recent days, around 300 migrants have been detained in California as part of raids carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in compliance with an order issued by the Trump administration.
This figure is based on collaborative reports compiled by the Rapid Response Network, an alliance comprised of dozens of organizations that provide support to migrants and disseminate information about immigration detentions and operations.
Angelica Salas, director of Chirla, described the raids as a phenomenon “never seen before” in the three decades she has been defending migrant communities, according to statements reported by The Los Angeles Times.
Jorge Mario Cabrera, spokesman for the same organization, told the EFE news agency that most of the detainees are not criminals, “as the US government has tried to portray them.” He indicated that most of those arrested are workers from Los Angeles, although arrests have also been documented in other parts of the state.
In the midst of intense protests against Trump’s immigration policies, these operations are expected to continue in Los Angeles for at least 30 days, according to US representative Nanette Barragan, citing data provided by the White House. Likewise, an escalation of these actions is anticipated nationwide, after the administration announced its goal of making up to 3,000 arrests per day.
Several migrant-rights organizations have warned about possible violations of due process of people targeted by ICE. They have denounced ICE for restricting access to detainees on multiple occasions, which could limit their right to adequate legal representation.
Watching ICE
This situation has generated concern among the undocumented population, most of whom are of Hispanic origin, which has intensified the use of social networks to alert people about the presence of immigration agents in different regions of the US.
In a search conducted by the WIRED en Español team, several groups and pages were identified on digital platforms dedicated to receiving, verifying, and disseminating reports about ICE checkpoints, patrols, and raids. The origin of these profiles is diverse: Some are managed by well-known nongovernmental organizations and activist collectives, while others were created by private members of the migrant community.
Alerts about operations are disseminated through direct messages, WhatsApp, or posts on each page’s feed. In turn, it is possible to anonymously report the presence of immigration agents through private text messages or calls to specific phone numbers.
In general, users are asked for basic data such as time, date, city, state, and exact location of the operation, as well as photographs or videos when it is possible to document them. In addition to issuing real-time alerts, many of these pages offer free legal guidance, not only on migration issues, but also on labor rights, access to health, education, and other key services.
Some of the networks active in this work include:
Union del Barrio California
This grassroots pro-immigrant organization maintains an active presence on Facebook. It conducts community patrols to detect ICE movement, shares urgent alerts, and organizes workshops on legal rights.
Chirla
With constant activity on Facebook and other platforms, Chirla publishes notifications about raids, provides legal advice, and calls for citizen mobilizations in the face of new raids.
Stop ICE Raids Alert Network
This network distributes emergency alerts and offers assistance to people affected by ICE raids. In addition to its social network accounts, it has a web page that allows people to receive geolocalized notifications in real time.
Siembra NC
This organization operates primarily in North Carolina. Through its Facebook page, it promotes a whistleblower hotline (336-543-0353). Although its focus is on Alamance, Durham, Forsyth, Guilford, Orange, Wake, Randolph, and Rockingham counties, it has a statewide presence across North Carolina.
RadarSafe
This project uses the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), a system for sending out digital emergency alerts, to provide secure information on immigration stops and operations. It also publishes community-submitted reports and verifies information with support from local residents.
Inmigración y Visas
Focused on immigration issues, this portal offers a WhatsApp channel where users can report raids, exchange experiences, and receive advice. It also shares informative content on its Facebook page and website.
SignalSafe
Adding to this assistance network is SignalSafe, an application created by a team of anonymous developers that provides real-time alerts on ICE activity. Through collaborative reporting, the app maps sightings of federal agents and unidentified vehicles, allowing migrants to avoid potential checkpoints.
Since Trump’s return to the presidency, SignalSafe has gained widespread popularity. The tool allows the integration of various filters based on the user’s location, type of activity by immigration authorities, and time range.
This platform is fed by citizen reports, which are verified by a group of specialized moderators. The system is bilingual, with support for Spanish and English, and has advanced security protocols to help protect user privacy.
Key Access
Given the growing number of raids in the United States and the lack of certainty about the safety of those detained in these operations, examples such as the above show that some sectors of the citizenry seem to have taken an active role in digital spaces against the implementation of immigration policies.
In this context, the widespread use of social networks among the migrant community has turned these platforms into key tools within the resistance movement. According to data from the International Organization for Migration, by 2023, 64 percent of migrants in transit through Central America, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic—mostly bound for the United States—had access to a smartphone and internet connection during their journey. Of these, 47 percent of men and 35 percent of women used these devices to access social networks.
This story was originally published onWIRED en Españoland has been translated from Spanish.
Following records requests from The Post, officials paused the first known, widespread live facial recognition program used by police in the United States.
A Project NOLA security camera keeps watch over the corner of Conti and Burgundy streets in New Orleans on May 8. (Edmund D. Fountain/For The Washington Post)
NEW ORLEANS — 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.
Police increasingly use facial recognition software to identify unknown culprits from still images, usually taken by surveillance cameras at or near the scene of a crime. New Orleans police took this technology a step further, utilizing a private network of more than 200 facial recognition cameras to watch over the streets, constantly monitoring for wanted suspects and automatically pinging officers’ mobile phones through an app to convey the names and current locations of possible matches.
This appears out of step with a 2022 city council ordinance, which limited police to using facial recognition only for searches of specific suspects in their investigations of violent crimes and never as a more generalized “surveillance tool” for tracking people in public places. Each time police want to scan a face, the ordinance requires them to send a still image to trained examiners at a state facility and later provide details about these scans in reports to the city council — guardrails meant to protect the public’s privacy and prevent software errors from leading to wrongful arrests.
Since early 2023, the network of facial recognition cameras hasplayed a role in dozens of arrests, including at least four people who were only charged with nonviolent crimes, according to police reports, court records and social media postsby Project NOLA, a crime preventionnonprofit company that buys and manages many of the cameras. Officers did not disclose their reliance on facial recognition matches in police reports for most of the arrests for which the policeprovideddetailed records, and none of the cases were included in the department’s mandatory reports to the city council on its use of the technology. Project NOLA has no formal contract with the city, but has been working directly with police officers.
“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.”
New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick during an interview this month. (Edmund D. Fountain/For The Washington Post)
Anne Kirkpatrick, who heads the New Orleans Police Department, paused the program in early April, she said in an interview, after a captain identified the alerts as a potential problem during a review. In an April 8 email reviewed by The Post, Kirkpatrick told Project NOLA that the automated alerts must be turned off until she is “sure that the use of the app meets all the requirements of the law and policies.” The Post began requesting public records about the alerts in February.
The police department “does not own, rely on, manage, or condone the use by members of the department of any artificial intelligence systems associated with the vast network of Project Nola crime cameras,” Reese Harper, a spokesman for the agency, said in an emailed statement.
Police across the country rely on facial recognition software, which uses artificial intelligence to quickly map the physical features of a face in one image and compare it to the faces in huge databases of images — usually drawn from mug shots, driver’s licenses or photos on social media — looking for possible matches. New Orleans’s use of automated facial recognition has not been previously reported and is the first known widespread effort by police in a major U.S. city to use AI to identify people in live camera feeds for the purpose of making immediate arrests, Wessler said.
The Post has reported that some police agencies use AI-powered facial recognition software in violation of local laws, discarding traditional investigative standards and putting innocent people at risk. Police at times arrested suspects based on AI matches without independent evidence connecting them to the crime, raising the chances of a false arrest. Often, police failed to inform defendants about their use of facial recognition software, denying them the opportunity to contest the results of a technology that has been shown to be less reliable for people of color, women and older people.
A facial recognition system deployed by police in London’s Oxford Circus on May 13. London is one of the few places where live facial recognition is known to be in wide use. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
One of the few places where live facial recognition is known to be in wide use is London, where police park vans outside of high-traffic areas and use facial recognition-equipped cameras to scan the faces of passersby, and confront people deemed a match to those on a watch list. While the city says the program has never led to a false arrest since launching in 2016, Big Brother Watch, a London-based civil liberties group, argues that the practice treats everyone as a potential suspect, putting the onus on the people who were falsely matched to prove their innocence.
Real-time alerts
The surveillance program in New Orleans relied on Project NOLA, a private group run by a former police officer who assembled a network of cameras outside of businesses in crime-heavy areasincluding the city’s French Quarter district.
Project NOLA configured the cameras to search for people on a list of wanted suspects. When the software determined it had found a match, it sent real-time alerts via an app some officers installed on their mobile phones. The officers would then quickly research the subject, go to the location and attempt to make arrests.
Police did not set up the program nor can they directly search for specific people, or add or remove people from the camera system’s watch list,according to Bryan Lagarde, Project NOLA’s founder.
Little about this arrangement resembles the process described in the city council ordinance from three years ago, which imagined detectives using facial recognition software only as part of methodical investigations with careful oversight. Each time police want to scan a face, the ordinance requires them to send a still image to a state-run “fusion center” in Baton Rouge, where various law enforcement agencies collaborate on investigations. There, examiners trained in identifying faces use AI software to compare the image with a database of photos and only return a “match” if at least two examiners agree.
Investigators have complained that process takes too long and often doesn’t result in any matches, according to a federally mandated audit of the department in 2023. It has only proved useful in a single case that led to an arrest since October 2022, according to records police provided to the city council.
A surveillance camera mounted to the underside of a balcony on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. (Edmund D. Fountain/For The Washington Post)
Freddie King, a New Orleans council member who represents the district that includes the French Quarter, voted in support of a 2022 ordinance that authorized police to use facial recognition as long as they adhered to certain guardrails. (Edmund D. Fountain/For The Washington Post)
By contrast, Project NOLA claims its facial recognition cameras played a role in at least 34 arrests since they were activated in early 2023, according to the group’s Facebook posts — a number that cannot be verified because the city does not track such data and the nonprofit does not publish a full accounting of its cases. Without a list of the cases, it’s impossible to know whether any of the people were misidentified or what additional steps the officers took to confirm their involvement in the crimes.
Kirkpatrick said her agency has launched a formal review into how many officers used the real-time alerts, how many people were arrested as a result, how often the matches appear to have been wrong and whether these uses violated the city ordinance.
“We’re going to do what the ordinance says and the policies say, and if we find that we’re outside of those things, we’re going to stop it, correct it and get within the boundaries of the ordinance,” she said.
There are no federal regulations around the use of AI by local law enforcement. Four states — Maryland, Montana, Vermont and Virginia — as well as at least 19 cities in nine other states explicitly bar their own police from using facial recognition for live, automated or real-time identification or tracking, according to the Security Industry Association, a trade group.
Lawmakers in these places cited concerns in public meetings that the technology could infringe on people’s constitutional rights or lead police to make mistakes when they rush to arrest a potential suspect before taking steps to confirm their connection to the crime, as many people look alike. At least eight Americans have been wrongfully arrested due to facial recognition, The Post and others have reported.
The unsanctioned surveillance program in New Orleans highlights the challenge of regulating a technology that is widely available, at a time when some police see AI as an invaluable crime fighting tool. Even in some places where officials have banned facial recognition, including Austin and San Francisco, officers skirted the bans by covertly asking officers from neighboring towns to run AI searches on their behalf, The Post reported last year.
Violent crime rates in New Orleans, like much of the country, are at historic lows, according to Jeff Asher, a consultant who tracks crime statistics in the region. But city officials have seized on recent instances of violent crime to argue that police need the most powerful tools at their disposal.
Last month, an independent report commissioned after the New Year’s Day attack that left 14 people dead on Bourbon Street found the New Orleans police to be understaffed and underprepared. The report, overseen by former New York City police commissioner William Bratton, advised New Orleans to explore adopting several new tools, including drones, threat prediction systems and upgrades to the city’s real-time crime center — but did not recommend adding any form of facial recognition.
Kirkpatrick, the city’s top police official, and Jason Williams, its top prosecutor, both said they are in discussions with the city council to revise the facial recognition ordinance. Kirkpatrick says she supports the idea of the city legally operating its own live facial recognition program, without the involvement of Project NOLA and with certain boundaries, such as prohibiting use of the technology to identify people at a protest.
“Can you have the technology without violating and surveilling?” she asked. “Yes, you can. And that’s what we’re advocating for.”
5,000 cameras
Few people have as much visibility into the everyday lives of New Orleans residents as Lagarde, a former patrol officer and investigator who started his own video surveillance business in the late 1990s before launching Project NOLA in 2009.
Funded by donations and reliant on businesses that agree to host the cameras on their buildings or connect existing surveillance cameras toits centralized network,Lagarde saidProject NOLA has access to 5,000 crime cameras across New Orleans, most of which are not equipped with facial recognition. The cameras all feed into a single control room in a leased office space on the University of New Orleans campus, Lagarde said in an interview at the facility. Some camera feeds are also monitored by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, he said.
Bryan Lagarde, who founded Project NOLA in 2009, in a real-time video monitoring room at the University of New Orleans in 2017. (Max Becherer/The Advocate)
Project NOLA made $806,724 in revenue in 2023, tax filings show. Much of it came from “cloud fees” the group charges local governments outside of New Orleans — from Monticello, Florida, to Frederick, Colorado — which install Project NOLA cameras across their own towns and rely onLagarde’s assistance monitoring crime. He’s experimented with facial recognition in Mississippi, he said, but his “first instance of doing citywide facial recognition is New Orleans.” New Orleans does not pay Project NOLA.
For more than a decade,Lagarde used standard cameras outside businesses to monitor crime and offer surveillance clips for officers to use in their investigations. Lagarde’s cameras became so widespread that police began calling him when they spotted a Project NOLA camera hovering near a crime scene they were investigating, according to police incident reports, interviews with police and emails obtained through a public records request.
Lagarde began adding facial recognition cameras to his network in early 2023, after an $87,000 bequest from a local woman. Lagarde used the money to buy a batch of cameras capable of detecting people from about 700 feet away and automatically matching them to the facial features, physical characteristics and even the clothing of people in a database of names and faces he has compiled.
Lagarde says he built his database partly from mug shots from local law enforcement agencies.It includes more than 30,000 “local suspected and known criminals,” Project NOLA wrote on Facebook in 2023. Lagarde can quickly identify anyone in the database the moment they step in front of a Project NOLA camera, he said. He can also enter a name or image to pull up all the video clips of that person Project NOLA captured within the last 30 days, after which Lagarde says videos get automatically deleted“for privacy reasons.”
Project NOLA found enthusiastic partners in local business owners, some of who were fed up with what they saw as the city’s inability to curb crime in the French Quarter — the engine of its tourism economy that’s also a hub for drug dealers and thieves who prey on tourists, said Tim Blake, the owner of Three Legged Dog, a bar that was one of the first places to host one of Project NOLA’s facial recognition cameras.
“Project NOLA would not exist if the government had done its job,” Blake said.
Tim Blake’s bar, the Three Legged Dog, was one of the first places to host a Project NOLA camera. (Edmund D. Fountain/For The Washington Post)
While Lagarde sometimes appears alongside city officials at news conferences announcing prominent arrests, he is not a New Orleans government employee or contractor. Therefore, Lagarde and the organization are not required to share information about facial recognition matches that could be critical evidence in the courtroom, said Danny Engelberg, the chief public defender for New Orleans.
“When you make this a private entity, all those guardrails that are supposed to be in place for law enforcement and prosecution are no longer there, and we don’t have the tools to do what we do, which is hold people accountable,” he said.
Lagarde says he tries to be transparent by posting about some of his successful matches on Facebook, though he acknowledges that he only posts a small fraction of them and says it would be “irresponsible” to post information about open investigations. Project NOLA, he added,is accountable to the businesses and private individuals who host the cameras and voluntarily opt to share their feeds with the network.
“It’s a system that can be turned off as easily as it’s been turned on,” he said. “Were we to ever violate public trust, people can individually turn these cameras off.”
Banned devices
Lagarde declined to say who makes the equipment he uses, saying he doesn’t want to endorse any company.
Several Project NOLA cameras in the French Quarter look nearly identical to ones on the website of Dahua, a Chinese camera maker, and product codes stamped on the backs of these devices correspond to an identical camera sold by Plainview, New York-based equipment retailer ENS Security, which has acknowledged reselling Dahua cameras in the past. Project NOLA’s website also contains a link to download an app where police officers can view and manage footage. The app, called DSS, is made by Dahua.
Congress banned federal agencies from using products or services made by Dahua and a list of other Chinese companies in 2018, citing concerns that the equipment could be used by President Xi Jinping’s government to spy on Americans. Since 2020, the law has barred any agency or contractor that receives federal funds from using those funds on the banned products.
“This technology requires accountability,” said Stella Cziment, a lawyer who heads a watchdog agency overseeing the practices of the New Orleans Police Department. “I am never going to be satisfied with the accountability it receives if it’s in a private entity’s hands.” (Edmund D. Fountain/For The Washington Post)
A Project NOLA security camera mounted to the Hotel Monteleone. (Edmund D. Fountain/For The Washington Post)
A Dahua spokesperson declined to comment on the New Orleans cameras and said the company stopped selling equipment in the U.S. last year.
The New Orleans Police Department has received tens of millions of dollars from the federal government in recent years and confirmed that someofficers have installed this DSS app on mobile phones and police workstations. Kirkpatrick said she was not aware of who made the app or cameras but would look into it.
Lagarde said Project NOLA uses “American-made, brand-name servers to operate our camera program.”
Some city officials argue that police are not violating the city’s facial recognition ordinance because they do not own the cameras or contract with Lagarde; they are merely receiving tips from an outside group that is performing facial recognition scans on its own.
“If Bryan Lagarde calls an officer and says ‘I think a crime is occurring on the 1800 Block of Bienville,’ that’s no different than Miss Johnson looking out of her window and saying ‘I think a crime is occurring on 1850 Bienville,’” Williams, the Orleans Parish district attorney, said in an interview.
But in many cases, police have gone to Lagarde to request footage or help identifying and locating suspects, according to police reports, Project NOLA social media posts and internal police emails.
Tracking a suspect
In one case last year, a police detective investigating a snatched cellphone relied on Project NOLA to identify the perpetrator and track him down using facial recognition alerts, according to accounts of the investigation drawn partly from the police incident report and partly from Project NOLA’s Facebook post.
The detective contacted Lagarde “to assist locating the perpetrator on Project NOLA cameras,” according to the police report, providing still shots taken from the city’s surveillance camera footage. Lagarde used Project NOLA’s clothing recognition tool to find previous video footage of a suspect. With the new, better images of his face, Project NOLA used facial recognition to learn his possible identity and share that with the detective.
The detective took that name and found photos of a man on social media whose appearance and tattoos matched the phone-snatcher. Police got a warrant for his arrest. Lagarde added that name and face to Project NOLA’s watch list, and a few days later, cameras automatically identified him in the French Quarter and alerted police, who found and arrested him. The man was charged with robbery but pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of theft, court records show.
The police report mentioned that Lagarde helped identify the suspect, but did not mention that he used facial recognition to do so or used live facial recognition and automated alerts to monitor for and locate him.
New Orleans Police Sgt. David Barnes. (Edmund D. Fountain/For The Washington Post)
David Barnes, a New Orleans police sergeant overseeing legal research and planning, said officers are trained toalways find probable cause before making an arrest. He said Lagarde sometimes overstates in Facebook posts the role his technology played in some of the cases. He said the detective investigating the phone-snatching case was only asking Lagarde to find videos of the suspect, not the location of the suspect.
On a rainy May morning outside the Three Legged Dog, a Project NOLA camera swiveled about, blinking red and blue lights, and twitching side to side as it followed cars and people based on an automated program. The camera is no longer pinging the police on an app — at Kirkpatrick’s request.
“Like you and everybody else, I do not want to lose any cases of violent criminals based on policy violations or violations of our ordinances,” Kirkpatrick said in her email last month to Lagarde.
But the alerts still go to Project NOLA staff, who Lagarde said convey the location of wanted suspects to the police via phone calls, texts and emails.
Schaffer reported from Washington. Nate Jones and Jeremy Merrill contributed to this report.
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