Clay County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Clay 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
Dilworth Police Department
The Dilworth Police Department has a three-year contract with Clearview AI for face recognition technology.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): DL-Online
Clay County Sheriff's Office
The Clay County Sheriff's Office spent $14,000 on drones in 2023.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Minnesota Department of Public SafetyMinnesota Bureau of Criminal ApprehensionCenter for the Study of the Drone at Bard College
The Clay County Sheriff's Office has 24 WatchGuard body-worn cameras, according to a 2023 audit.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Clay County - Clay County Sheriff's OfficeRampart Audit LLC
Hawley Police Department
The Hawley Police Department has five WatchGuard body-worn cameras, according to a 2023 audit.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): City of Hawley - Hawley Police DepartmentMinn. Legislature - Legislative Commission on Data PracticesRampart Audit LLC
Moorhead Police Department
The Moorhead Police Department flew an unmanned aerial vehicle without a warrant once in 2020.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension
The Moorhead Police Department has two L3 body-worn cameras, according to a 2018 audit.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): LEADS Consulting
The Moorhead Police Department began using automated license plate readers in 2014.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Moorhead Police DepartmentCity of MoorheadLaw Enforcement Audit and Data Services
The Moorhead Police Department maintains a voluntary registry of private and personal surveillance cameras through Motorola Solutions' CityProtect platform.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): CityProtect
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026