The surveillance technology California's governments operate
Which agencies operate license-plate readers, cameras, face recognition, drones, and acoustic sensors — where, with a citation behind every entry. The oversight around each system is the next layer of the record.
The observatory
Deployments on the public record, aggregated by county. Filter by technology; select a county for its full record.
Adjacent categories are tracked in the record but sit outside the observatory's core imaging-and-sensor scope.
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026
By county
| County | Deployments |
|---|---|
| Los Angeles | 196 |
| Contra Costa | 73 |
| Orange | 62 |
| Alameda | 52 |
| Riverside | 48 |
| Santa Clara | 44 |
| San Diego | 42 |
| San Bernardino | 36 |
| San Mateo | 31 |
| Sacramento | 28 |
| Monterey | 26 |
| Solano | 26 |
| Sonoma | 26 |
| San Joaquin | 24 |
| Fresno | 20 |
| Marin | 20 |
| Stanislaus | 20 |
| Ventura | 20 |
| Kern | 17 |
| San Luis Obispo | 16 |
| Merced | 15 |
| Placer | 14 |
| Tulare | 14 |
| San Francisco | 13 |
| Santa Cruz | 11 |
| Yolo | 10 |
| Butte | 9 |
| Imperial | 9 |
| Nevada | 9 |
| Kings | 8 |
| El Dorado | 7 |
| Humboldt | 7 |
| Napa | 7 |
| Santa Barbara | 7 |
| Shasta | 7 |
| Mendocino | 6 |
| Tehama | 6 |
| Madera | 5 |
| Sutter | 5 |
| Calaveras | 4 |
| Lake | 4 |
| Yuba | 4 |
| Mono | 3 |
| San Benito | 3 |
| Siskiyou | 2 |
| Tuolumne | 2 |
| Alpine | 1 |
| Colusa | 1 |
| Del Norte | 1 |
| Glenn | 1 |
| Modoc | 1 |
| Plumas | 1 |
| Sierra | 1 |
| Amador | 0 |
| Inyo | 0 |
| Lassen | 0 |
| Mariposa | 0 |
| Trinity | 0 |
3 deployments in the record are not yet assigned to a county; they still count in the totals above.
The technologies in California
Counts are California deployments on the public record; 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.
329 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.
32 on recordFace recognition
Software that matches faces in images or video against a reference database to identify or verify individuals.
92 on recordDrones / UAS
Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), commonly called drones, operated by an agency for overhead observation, imaging, or sensing.
134 on recordGunshot detection
Networks of acoustic sensors that detect and locate suspected gunfire and alert an agency.
29 on recordBody-worn & dashcam
Officer body-worn and in-vehicle dashboard cameras that record encounters; public access to the footage is frequently restricted.
281 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.
92 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.
18 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.
21 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 recordIn the press
Recent coverage naming California or a jurisdiction within it.
About this record
Deployment data comes from the EFF Atlas of Surveillance (CC BY 4.0), keeping each entry's original citations. The oversight around each system — published policy, public-access path, disclosed data-sharing, legislative limits — is the record's next layer, built from public-records requests; until a jurisdiction's records arrive its oversight status reads not yet requested. Full notes on the methodology page.