Madison County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Madison 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
Madison County Sheriff's Office
The Madison County Sheriff's Office received $72,460 from the Ohio Department of Public Safety to purchase body-worn cameras in 2026.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Ohio State GovernorOhio State Governor
Plain City Police Department
The Plain City Police Department operates five Flock Safety automated license plate readers as of September 2025.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Pittsboro Police Department
The Plain City Police Department received more than $6,000 in grant funds for the Ohio's Governor's Office for body-worn cameras in 2023.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Ohio Governor's OfficeWTVG
Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation
The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation operates a massive face recognition system. Hundreds of local, state, and federal agencies were able to access the system until fall 2019, when the Ohio Attorney General cut off access. However, agencies may still make formal face recognition requests to BCI. The Attorney General is pursuing a $21.4 million upgrade through the vendor NEC in 2021.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Cincinnatti EnquirerCleveland.com
London Police Department
The London Police Department operates one drone, according to data compiled by the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard Collegeci.london.oh.us
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026