Newton County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Newton 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
Oxford Police Department
The Oxford Police Department operates three Flock Safety automated license plate readers as of September 2025.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Pittsboro Police Department
Covington Police Department
The Covington Police Department scanned license plates using Vigilant Solutions automated license plate readers in 2019.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Covington Police Department
The Covington Police Department purchased 60 ProVision body-worn cameras in 2016.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): The Covington News
Newton County Sheriff's Office
The Newton County Sheriff's Office operates one drone as of 2016, according to data compiled by the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard Collegewww.covnews.com
The Newton County Sheriff's Office began using Axon body-worn cameras in 2016. The U.S. Department of Justice awarded $134,199 to the Newton County Sheriff's Office from 2015-2017 as part of the Bureau of Justice Assistance's body-worn camera grant program.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): The CitizensNewton County Sheriff's Office Sheriff NewsletterU.S Department of Justice
Newton County Sheriff's Department
The Newton County Sheriff's Department maintains a camera registry via Axon.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Axon
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026