Rowan County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Rowan 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
Rowan County Sheriff's Office
The Rowan County Sheriff’s Office purchased 49 body-worn cameras in 2016.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Rowan County Board of CommissionersWBTV local news
Salisbury Police Department
The City of Salisbury received a $500,000 grant in 2019 from the U.S. Department of Justice to help fund the Rowan Regional Crime Intelligence Center. The RCIC will serve as a central location for federal, state, and local officers to work together while also integrating technologies for case investigation and intelligence sharing. The Salisbury Police Department began accessing video feeds throughout the city as part of the project.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): WBTVSalisbury PostSalisbury Post
The Salisbury Police Department has used body-worn cameras since at least 2016.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): City of SalisburySalisbury Post
The Salisbury Police Department maintains a voluntary registry of private and personal surveillance cameras.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): City of Salisbury
Rowan County Sheriff’s Office
The Rowan County Sheriff's Office has installed 14 Flock Safety automated license plate readers.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Salisbury Post
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026