At Mardi Gras, Dance Like The FBI’s Watching

If you’re heading to Mardi Gras next month, prepare to be watched.

This year, New Orleans’ alcohol-soaked tribute to hedonism will have an "unprecedented" level of surveillance, according to the FBI.

Aiming to protect partygoers from violent incidents or terrorist attacks, the bureau says it will use new technology to scan for potential threats. At a press conference Tuesday, New Orleans Special Agent in Charge Jeffrey Sallet didn't get into specifics about the new tech, but he told reporters that the agency would be monitoring social media posts and stepping up video surveillance.

“Assume you are being filmed wherever you are and whatever you are doing," Sallet said, per local news outlet NOLA.com

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For visitors hoping to parade around during the festivities, which kick off at the end of January and spill over into February, the prospect of being constantly monitored is probably pretty unappealing.

Traditionally, Mardi Gras is a booze-fueled celebration of collective abandon, freedom and subversion. But authorities insist that heightened security measures are necessary, even if they're not quite in the spirit of things.

"We're trying to make sure we can keep New Orleans and Mardi Gras safe," Craig Betbeze, a spokesperson for the FBI field office in New Orleans, told The Huffington Post on Wednesday.

He added that the plan to heighten security and surveillance is not a response to a specific threat.

ASSOCIATED PRESS New Orleans is beefing up its police presence for this year's Mardi Gras celebration.

In addition to video surveillance, police will use “behavioral detection” techniques, which basically means officers will be staring into crowds of people in an attempt to identify suspicious behavior. 

Similar surveillance techniques have come under fire in the past: The Government Accountability Office in 2013 studied the use of the Transportation Security Administration's behavioral detection techniques and concluded that they were "the same as or slightly better than chance.” Who knows what those odds come out to when cops are dealing with scores of drunken Mardi Gras revelers.

New Orleans authorities are also relying on civilians to report suspicious activity to police. "We're taking every complaint that comes in here as something serious," Betbeze told HuffPost. 

"But in the end," he said, "it boils down to doing what we think is common sense."