Cities nationwide are quietly deploying facial recognition technology to track your every move

In a few cities, like Milwaukee and New Orleans, there has been a public debate and pushback. If we fail to stop this technology, every city will become a Smart City and eventually a 15-minute city.

by Leo Hohmann

May 24, 2025

Police in cities across America want to deploy AI-driven facial-recognition technology that’s capable of tracking and identifying every human being who enters public spaces in real time.

Even politicians in some cities are calling for a pause or outright banishment of this technology from ever getting into the hands of cops. But the battle is shaping up to be a big one in cities nationwide, and if I was a betting man I would put my money on the technocrats and the cops. They will likely win out over the few politicians and taxpaying citizens who are concerned about privacy and civil liberties. They almost always do. They have the money and the media propaganda machine on their side.

According to an article in Biometric Update, two-thirds of Milwaukee’s city council says no, they don’t want this technology given to cops. An article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel says 11 of 15 city alderpersons signed a letter opposing use of the facial recognition technology by the Milwaukee Police Department, citing concerns about bias, ethics and potential overreach.

Below is an excerpt from the article in Biometric Update, and notice the rationale — it’s always the same whenever technocrats are involved: Safety, speed and efficiency.

Milwaukee police currently don’t have a facial recognition system — but they want one, and have tested the technology. They say it makes solving crimes faster, and “can be done with the appropriate parameters in place to ensure that the use will not violate individual civil rights.” They say it would not be, and had never been, used as exclusively as probable cause to arrest someone. They have pledged to engage in public consultation as part of any formal acquisition process.

Nonetheless, the Council’s letter, written “in strong opposition to the deployment of facial recognition technology by the Milwaukee Police Department,” says that “while we understand the desire to enhance public safety and the promises people have made for this emerging technology, we believe these benefits are significantly outweighed by the risks.”

The article goes on to note that the council’s letter “names potential overreach by the administration of President Donald Trump as a risk factor, as well as studies showing that the majority of facial-recognition algorithms are more likely to misidentify people with darker skin, women and the elderly.

How absurdly shortsighted that their major concern is Trump using this technology. This suggests they’d be perfectly fine with facial-recognition being deployed if we just had a different person in the White House, someone with a “D” in front of their name like Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin has asked the Milwaukee Council to adopt a two-year pause on any new surveillance technology across city services, including police.

But this issue is coming to the fore not just in Milwaukee.

Another city where it’s suddenly up for debate is New Orleans, where Project NOLA is being considered for use by police. Project NOLA is a nonprofit that manages a nationwide crime camera network for police. A hearing is set to determine whether Project NOLA’s facial-recognition integration should be banned, regulated or brought under New Orleans’ municipal authority.

New Orleans police say they are continuing to use Project NOLA, but have paused the receipt of real-time, AI-generated facial recognition alerts.

WHAT’S THE REAL ISSUE HERE?

What we are really dealing with here are powerful and very wealthy technocrats pressuring municipalities worldwide to become Smart Cities. Let’s face it, most members of city councils are not the sharpest people in their community. They have absolutely zero knowledge of where AI and the surveillance state is taking us, nor do they care to educate themselves. They think it’s sexy and cool to purchase and activate the latest surveillance technology, and don’t realize they are playing right into the hands of the elitists at the United Nations, World Economic Forum and other globalist organizations seeking total control over human movement and overall human behavior.

Smart Cities Dive recently published its list of the Top 10 most rapidly developing Smart Cities in America for 2025. Atlanta tops the list, followed by Boston, San Fransisco, Washington, DC, Chicago and Seattle. The list is rounded out by Miami, New York City, Los Angeles and San Jose.

The next stage is to become a 15-minute city. A 15-minute city is just a weaponized Smart City, where authorities weaponize the surveillance technology they’ve already installed and finally admit it’s no longer being used just for our “safety” but to enforce their radical climate agenda and other nefarious agendas related to controlling our behavior.

Facial-recognition scanners combined with vehicle license-plate scanners will allow law enforcement to track the movement of everyone, whether on foot, on a bicycle, on a subway, or in a vehicle. Do we really want to live in an Orwellian society?

While some cities like Milwaukee and New Orleans are publicly grappling with whether to deploy this technology, it’s quietly being implemented in city after city, regardless of size, often with federal funding. Is your city surrepticiously tracking your vehicle and scanning your face everywhere you go within its jurisdiction? You should find out, and make a public issue out of it.

Martin comments: Obviously, Hoffman’s article is squarely aimed at the US audience, but every concern he raises here applies to pretty every developed nation extant.