Otter Tail County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Otter Tail 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
Otter Tail County Sheriff's Office
The Otter Tail County Sheriff's Office spent $3,500 on its unmanned aerial vehicle program and flew a drone 25 times without a warrant 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
City of Battle Lake
Nothing on the public record. The sources compiled so far document no surveillance technology here. That means none on record, not necessarily none in operation.
Agency name: FBI Crime Data Explorer agency directory
City of Fergus Falls
Nothing on the public record. The sources compiled so far document no surveillance technology here. That means none on record, not necessarily none in operation.
Agency name: FBI Crime Data Explorer agency directory
City of Henning
Nothing on the public record. The sources compiled so far document no surveillance technology here. That means none on record, not necessarily none in operation.
Agency name: FBI Crime Data Explorer agency directory
City of New York Mills
Nothing on the public record. The sources compiled so far document no surveillance technology here. That means none on record, not necessarily none in operation.
Agency name: FBI Crime Data Explorer agency directory
City of Parkers Prairie
Nothing on the public record. The sources compiled so far document no surveillance technology here. That means none on record, not necessarily none in operation.
Agency name: FBI Crime Data Explorer agency directory
City of Pelican Rapids
Nothing on the public record. The sources compiled so far document no surveillance technology here. That means none on record, not necessarily none in operation.
Agency name: FBI Crime Data Explorer agency directory
City of Perham
Nothing on the public record. The sources compiled so far document no surveillance technology here. That means none on record, not necessarily none in operation.
Agency name: FBI Crime Data Explorer agency directory
Sources: FBI Crime Data Explorer · EFF Atlas of Surveillance