A public record · Montana
The surveillance technology Montana's governments operate
Which agencies operate license-plate readers, cameras, face recognition, drones, and acoustic sensors — where, with a citation behind every entry. The oversight around each system is the next layer of the record.
The observatory
Deployments on the public record, aggregated by county. Filter by technology; select a county for its full record.
Adjacent categories are tracked in the record but sit outside the observatory's core imaging-and-sensor scope.
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026
By county
| County | Deployments |
|---|---|
| Cascade | 3 |
| Gallatin | 3 |
| Lewis and Clark | 3 |
| Missoula | 3 |
| Flathead | 2 |
| Glacier | 2 |
| Stillwater | 2 |
| Big Horn | 1 |
| Blaine | 1 |
| Carbon | 1 |
| Dawson | 1 |
| Hill | 1 |
| Madison | 1 |
| Ravalli | 1 |
| Roosevelt | 1 |
| Sheridan | 1 |
| Silver Bow | 1 |
| Valley | 1 |
| Yellowstone | 1 |
| Beaverhead | 0 |
| Broadwater | 0 |
| Carter | 0 |
| Chouteau | 0 |
| Custer | 0 |
| Daniels | 0 |
| Deer Lodge | 0 |
| Fallon | 0 |
| Fergus | 0 |
| Garfield | 0 |
| Golden Valley | 0 |
| Granite | 0 |
| Jefferson | 0 |
| Judith Basin | 0 |
| Lake | 0 |
| Liberty | 0 |
| Lincoln | 0 |
| McCone | 0 |
| Meagher | 0 |
| Mineral | 0 |
| Musselshell | 0 |
| Park | 0 |
| Petroleum | 0 |
| Phillips | 0 |
| Pondera | 0 |
| Powder River | 0 |
| Powell | 0 |
| Prairie | 0 |
| Richland | 0 |
| Rosebud | 0 |
| Sanders | 0 |
| Sweet Grass | 0 |
| Teton | 0 |
| Toole | 0 |
| Treasure | 0 |
| Wheatland | 0 |
| Wibaux | 0 |
The technologies in Montana
Counts are Montana deployments on the public record; a zero means none on record, not necessarily none in operation.
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.
3 on recordFixed 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.
none on recordFace recognition
Software that matches faces in images or video against a reference database to identify or verify individuals.
1 on recordDrones / UAS
Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), commonly called drones, operated by an agency for overhead observation, imaging, or sensing.
7 on recordGunshot detection
Networks of acoustic sensors that detect and locate suspected gunfire and alert an agency.
none on recordBody-worn & dashcam
Officer body-worn and in-vehicle dashboard cameras that record encounters; public access to the footage is frequently restricted.
18 on recordDoorbell & camera registry
Programs that give an agency access to privately owned camera footage — doorbell-camera partnerships, citizen camera registries, and private-camera integration platforms.
1 on recordCell-site simulators
adjacentDevices that mimic cell towers to locate or identify nearby mobile phones — 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.
none on recordPredictive policing
adjacentSoftware that forecasts where crime may occur or who may be involved, to direct policing. Adjacent: analytics rather than a sensing deployment.
none on recordSocial-media monitoring
adjacentTools that collect and analyze public social-media activity for an agency. Adjacent: open-source/communications monitoring outside the visual/sensor core.
none on recordAbout this record
Deployment data comes from the EFF Atlas of Surveillance (CC BY 4.0), keeping each entry's original citations. The oversight around each system — published policy, public-access path, disclosed data-sharing, legislative limits — is the record's next layer, built from public-records requests; until a jurisdiction's records arrive its oversight status reads not yet requested. Full notes on the methodology page.