The surveillance technology New Zealand's public bodies operate
What New Zealand Police, Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, and territorial authority councils run on the public record: automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), facial recognition, and council CCTV networks, with a citation behind every entry. By territorial authority; 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, and New Zealand.
The observatory
Deployments on the public record, aggregated by territorial authority. Filter by technology; select a territorial authority for its full record. National programmes are listed under national operators below.
Source: the public record. New Zealand Police and government publications, council tenders, and council Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA) responses; per-entry citations on each record · retrieved July 2026
By territorial authority
Cities
| Territorial authority | Deployments |
|---|---|
| Christchurch City | 1 |
| Invercargill City | 1 |
| Wellington City | 1 |
| Dunedin City | 0 |
| Hamilton City | 0 |
| Hutt City | 0 |
| Napier City | 0 |
| Palmerston North City | 0 |
| Porirua City | 0 |
| Tauranga City | 0 |
| Upper Hutt City | 0 |
Districts
Unitary authorities
| Territorial authority | Deployments |
|---|---|
| Auckland | 1 |
| Gisborne | 0 |
| Marlborough | 0 |
| Nelson | 0 |
| Tasman | 0 |
National operators
Programmes run by national bodies apply across territorial authorities; they are recorded once here rather than per territorial authority.
| Operator | Deployments |
|---|---|
| New Zealand Police | 2 |
| Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency | 1 |
The technologies in New Zealand
Counts are New Zealand 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.
3 on recordFixed cameras & RTCC
Agency-operated fixed video cameras and the real-time crime centers (RTCC) that aggregate live and recorded feeds for monitoring.
4 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.
none 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.
none 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 recordPrivate-network access
Surveillance these agencies reach through networks they do not own. 2 access relationships on record.
- New Zealand Police accesses Auror (ANPR). Police queries against Auror's ANPR data reached about 250,000 a year as of October 2025, up about 4 percent a year. Source: RNZ, Police use of number plate spotting technology continues to rise (29 Oct 2025); as of October 2025.
- New Zealand Police accesses vGRID / SaferCities (Fixed cameras & RTCC). As of September 2022 the vGRID network hosted nearly 5,000 cameras at 246 sites, accessible by smartphone to about 4,000 police officers. Source: RNZ, Police step up surveillance activity, tap into CCTV footage from other businesses (23 Sep 2022); as of September 2022.
About this record
New Zealand's deployment data is compiled from the public record: police and government publications, council tenders, and council Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA) responses. Each entry keeps its citation. The oversight around each system is the record's next layer, built from requests under New Zealand's Official Information Act and LGOIMA; see the New Zealand records-law analysis. Until a body's records arrive, its oversight status reads not yet requested. Full notes on the methodology page.