Anchorage County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Anchorage County.
Technology presence
What these categories mean
- 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.
- Fixed 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.
- Face recognition
- Software that matches faces in images or video against a reference database to identify or verify individuals.
- Drones / UAS
- Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), commonly called drones, operated by an agency for overhead observation, imaging, or sensing.
- Gunshot detection
- Networks of acoustic sensors that detect and locate suspected gunfire and alert an agency.
- Body-worn & dashcam
- Officer body-worn and in-vehicle dashboard cameras that record encounters; public access to the footage is frequently restricted.
- Doorbell & camera registry
- Programs that give an agency access to privately owned camera footage: doorbell-camera partnerships, citizen camera registries, and private-camera integration platforms.
- Cell-site simulators
- Devices 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.
- Predictive policing
- Software that forecasts where crime may occur or who may be involved, to direct policing. Adjacent: analytics rather than a sensing deployment.
- Social-media monitoring
- Tools that collect and analyze public social-media activity for an agency. Adjacent: open-source/communications monitoring outside the visual/sensor core.
The record, by agency
Anchorage Police Department
The Anchorage Police Department operates drones as of 2024.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Anchorage Police DepartmentCenter for the Study of the Drone at Bard Collegewww.muni.org
The Anchorage Police Department uses Axon body-worn cameras.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Alaska's News SourceAlaska's News SourceAnchorage Police Department Website
The Anchorage Police Department acquired cell-site simulator technology in 2009.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Anchorage Daily NewsMunicipality of Anchorage2KTUU
Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles
The Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles responds to face recognition requests from various law enforcement agencies as well as federal agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other state transportation departments
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Electronic Frontier Foundation
Alaska Department of Public Safety
The Alaska Department of Public Safety began using Motorola body-worn cameras in 2023.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Alaska Department of Public Safety
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026