The defining feature is that the police neither own nor operate the system. A private body runs the cameras, sets the watchlist, and decides when to contact police. That places the deployment outside the procurement, policy and oversight arrangements that would apply to a police-owned system, while still producing police action.

Project NOLA is the clearest documented case. A non-profit founded in 2009 by a former police officer and based on the University of New Orleans campus, it acts as a hub for live video from thousands of cameras installed on private volunteer properties, whose owners pay annual connectivity fees. Around 200 of the most sophisticated cameras run live facial recognition, continuously matching passers-by against Project NOLA hot lists of roughly 250 individuals. When a camera matches, an automated voice alerts Project NOLA staff, who review it and, once the operator judges an evidentiary threshold met, relay information to police, including unsolicited tips.

From early 2023 until April 2025 the New Orleans Police Department received real-time facial recognition alerts from a network of over 5,000 cameras, more than 200 of them facial-recognition equipped, despite city restrictions on police facial recognition use. The ACLU alleges this breached the city ordinance. NOPD suspended the real-time alert partnership pending a legal compliance review; the camera network was later reopened to the department while facial recognition alerts stayed suspended. The City Council has moved towards an ordinance that would make New Orleans the first US city to formally authorise this form of facial recognition policing.

The UK parallel worth reading alongside this is Facewatch, covered separately: a commercial retail system whose alerts now flow automatically to police. The mechanism differs but the underlying question is the same, namely what oversight applies when the surveillance is privately owned and the enforcement is public.