Carlton County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Carlton 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
Carlton County Sheriff's Office
The Carlton County Sheriff's Office spent $7067 on its unmanned aerial vehicle program in 2023 and flew a drone 31 times without a warrant that year.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Minnesota Department of Public SafetyMinnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension
The Carlton County Sheriff's Office has 27 WatchGuard body-worn cameras, according to a 2023 audit.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Carlton County - Carlton County Sheriff's OfficeRampart Audit LLC
Cloquet Police Department
The Cloquet Police Department received $38,209 from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to purchase 24 body-worn cameras through the 2022 Small, Rural, Tribal BWC Microgrant program.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Small, Rural, and Tribal Body-Worn Camera microgrant grantee list
Fond Du Lac Tribal Police Department
The Fond Du Lac Tribal Police Department operates a drone program, according to its policy manual.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Fond Du Lac Law Enforcement Operations Manuel
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026