The City of New Orleans was found to be in league with Palantir under a deal made by the mayor, with no knowledge or discussion with the city council nor with the police chief. That mayor? Mitch Landrieu, brother of former democratic stalwart Mary Landrieu, who had retired after holding many high-ranking committee positions as the senator from Louisiana. Mitch now works as some secretary or undersecretary form of sinecure under the present executive branch of the USA. Of course, once the scandal was revealed, the contract was cancelled.

Of course it was. There is absolutely no way that another contract was immediately restored, maybe with the requisite hush money paid to those who may reveal it, as soon as the former contract was "annulled". The city was presented with a report that facial recognition, paid for by ???, was a miserable failure in crime-ridden New Orleans, with one (yes, a single one) conviction being yielded from the city wide surveillance, and that the software was indeed as racially unfair as had been reported elsewhere, yielding false positives for mostly african-americans in a city that is 76% populated by that demographic. The city response? "Ramping up use of facial recogntion in 2024" with equipment on literally every corner of the French Quarter tourist district. This Mardi Gras was the bloodiest ever in the French Quarter, with up to six fatalities on just the weekend from Saturday to Fat Tuesday in that heavily surveilled area. But don't worry! Although the cameras, microphones and surveillance software failed to stop even a single bullet, there is plenty of video that may be provided to the bereaved so that they may at least relive the terror of their loved ones in their death throes.