Stephenson County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Stephenson 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
Stephenson County Sheriff's Office
The Stephenson County Sheriff's Office operates five Flock Safety automated license plate readers as of September 2025.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Pittsboro Police Department
Stephenson County Sheriff’s Office
The Stephenson County Sheriff’s Office has 38 Axon body-worn cameras.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board
Freeport Police Department
The Freeport Police Department has 16 VIEVU body-worn cameras.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards BoardSRT BWC ProgramIllinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board
The Freeport Police Department purchased automated license plate readers from Vigilant Solutions in 2020-2021.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): My StatelineJournal-Standard
The Freeport Police Department acquired ShotSpotter gunshot detection technology in 2020.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): ShotSpotterJournal Standard
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026