Have you ever noticed your friends getting tagged automatically after you upload a group picture? Though the technology has now gained widespread attention, its history can be traced back to the 1960s. Woodrow Wilson (Woody) Bledsoe, an American mathematician and computer scientist, is one of the founders of pattern and facial recognition technology. Back in the 1960s, he developed ways to classify faces using gridlines. A striking fact was, even during the experimental and inception phase, the application was able to match 40 faces per hour.

The City of New Orleans has been adamant that it "does not use facial recognition software." Though there is no city ordinance outright banning the technology, city officials often repeat that claim, and have even included a line in the privacy policy of its Real-Time Crime Center surveillance hub stating "Facial recognition is not utilized by the System." But that is an incomplete picture of how facial recognition technology is being used in New Orleans. Now, court evidence reveals that Louisiana state police officers can and have utilized a searchable facial recognition database to assist New Orleans police in their investigations. In at least one NOPD investigation, facial recognition was used to identify and indict a suspect.