For two years, police in New Orleans secretly used facial recognition technology to monitor city streets searching for suspects—a surveillance practice with no clear precedent in any major American city and one that may have violated local restrictions on such tools, according to an investigation by The Washington Post.
While facial recognition is commonly used by law enforcement to match suspects to images from surveillance footage, New Orleans police went further. They accessed a private network of more than 200 facial recognition cameras that constantly scanned the streets. When a match was detected, an app would automatically alert officers on their phones, providing the names and real-time locations of individuals flagged by the system.
This kind of surveillance reflects a broader trend. CCTV, or closed-circuit television, has become so embedded in daily life that many barely notice it anymore. While these cameras can enhance security, there is growing concern over how far modern surveillance technology reaches. But how did this essential but often contentious piece of equipment evolve, and where in the world are you watched the most?
Click through and focus on the history and wide-ranging applications of CCTV.