A public record · United States
The surveillance technology America's governments operate
WatchWatch documents government surveillance technology on the public record — which agencies operate license-plate readers, cameras, face recognition, drones, and acoustic sensors, where, with a citation behind every entry. State by state; the oversight around each system is the next layer of the record.
The observatories
One observatory per jurisdiction — each with its county map, technology filters, and per-county records.
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026
The technologies
The categories the observatory tracks, counted across every launched state. A zero means none on record, not necessarily none in operation.
ALPR
Automated license plate readers (ALPR): camera systems that automatically capture, read, and log vehicle license plates with location and time, producing a searchable record of vehicle movements.
4,083 on recordFixed cameras & RTCC
Agency-operated fixed video cameras and the real-time crime centers (RTCC) that aggregate live and recorded feeds for monitoring. Extends the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Atlas, which enumerates real-time crime centers and camera registries but not standalone fixed-camera estates.
321 on recordFace recognition
Software that matches faces in images or video against a reference database to identify or verify individuals.
975 on recordDrones / UAS
Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), commonly called drones, operated by an agency for overhead observation, imaging, or sensing.
1,804 on recordGunshot detection
Networks of acoustic sensors that detect and locate suspected gunfire and alert an agency.
246 on recordBody-worn & dashcam
Officer body-worn and in-vehicle dashboard cameras that record encounters; public access to the footage is frequently restricted.
5,465 on recordDoorbell & camera registry
Programs that give an agency access to privately owned camera footage — doorbell-camera partnerships, citizen camera registries, and private-camera integration platforms.
755 on recordCell-site simulators
adjacentDevices that mimic cell towers to locate or identify nearby mobile phones — often called Stingrays, or IMSI catchers after the international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) number that identifies each phone on a network. Adjacent: communications surveillance outside the visual/sensor core.
83 on recordPredictive policing
adjacentSoftware that forecasts where crime may occur or who may be involved, to direct policing. Adjacent: analytics rather than a sensing deployment.
200 on recordSocial-media monitoring
adjacentTools that collect and analyze public social-media activity for an agency. Adjacent: open-source/communications monitoring outside the visual/sensor core.
none on recordThe oversight layer
The record currently documents deployments: that a system is in operation, per public sources. It does not yet record the oversight around each system — whether the agency has published a use policy, whether the public has a path to the footage or data, what data-sharing is disclosed, and what legislation governs the technology.
Those records come from public-records requests, filed within each state's law. Until a jurisdiction's records arrive, its oversight status reads not yet requested — a status, not a verdict.
Methodology, in brief
Deployment data comes from the EFF Atlas of Surveillance, a public dataset compiled by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the University of Nevada, Reno — published under CC BY 4.0 and credited on every page that renders it. Each deployment keeps its original citations. Where an agency matches a government entity in the UnGovr registry, the entry links to that entity's page. The full notes, including what this data is and is not, are on the methodology page.
Beyond the United States
The model is jurisdiction-portable: a deployment record, a category taxonomy, and an oversight layer built from each jurisdiction's own public-records law. The same structure extends to any country with a freedom-of-information regime. Public-records law coverage: United States · worldwide.