The surveillance technology the Netherlands' public bodies operate
What the National Police and Dutch gemeenten (municipalities) run on the public record: automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), facial-comparison technology, camera surveillance (cameratoezicht), and body-worn cameras, with a citation behind every entry. By gemeente; the oversight around each system is the next layer of the record. Part of a worldwide record that so far covers the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Netherlands.
The observatory
Deployments on the public record, aggregated by gemeente. Filter by technology; select a gemeente for its full record. National programmes are listed under national operators below.
Source: the public record. National Police and government publications, and municipal camera-surveillance policy decisions published in Dutch local regulation repositories; per-entry citations on each record · retrieved July 2026
By gemeente
Municipalities
National operators
Programmes run by national bodies apply across gemeenten; they are recorded once here rather than per gemeente.
| Operator | Deployments |
|---|---|
| Politie (National Police) | 3 |
The technologies in the Netherlands
Counts are Netherlands deployments on the public record; a zero means none on record, not necessarily none in operation.
ANPR
Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR): camera systems that automatically capture, read, and log vehicle number plates with location and time, producing a searchable record of vehicle movements.
1 on recordFixed cameras & RTCC
Agency-operated fixed video cameras and the real-time crime centers (RTCC) that aggregate live and recorded feeds for monitoring.
5 on recordFace recognition
Software that matches faces in images or video against a reference database to identify or verify individuals.
1 on recordDrones / UAS
Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), commonly called drones, operated by an agency for overhead observation, imaging, or sensing.
none on recordGunshot detection
Networks of acoustic sensors that detect and locate suspected gunfire and alert an agency.
none on recordBody-worn & dashcam
Officer body-worn and in-vehicle dashboard cameras that record encounters; public access to the footage is frequently restricted.
2 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.
1 on recordCell-site simulators
adjacentDevices that mimic cell towers to locate or identify nearby mobile phones. They are 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.
none 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.
none 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 recordAbout this record
The Netherlands' deployment data is compiled from the public record: National Police and government publications, and municipal camera-surveillance policy decisions (aanwijzingsbesluiten) published in Dutch local regulation repositories. Each entry keeps its citation. The oversight around each system is the record's next layer, built from requests under the Netherlands' Open Government Act (Wet open overheid, Woo); see the Netherlands records-law analysis. Until a body's records arrive, its oversight status reads not yet requested. Full notes on the methodology page.