Philadelphia County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Philadelphia 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.
- Fusion & investigative platforms
- Third-party platforms that fuse data across sources, sometimes including other surveillance feeds, for law-enforcement search and analysis, sold or licensed to multiple agencies rather than built by any one of them: examples include Palantir, Peregrine Systems, C3.ai, and SoundThinking's CrimeTracer (formerly Coplink X). Adjacent: an analytics layer that sits above the surveillance feeds this site otherwise tracks, rather than a sensing deployment of its own.
The record, by agency
Drafted with AI
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page. How this site is made
Philadelphia Police Department
Philadelphia Police Department have installed more than 700 automatic license plate readers on police cars and poles.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): NBC PhiladelphiaWHYY
The Philadelphia Police Department uses Thomson Reuter's CLEAR investigative platform.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Police Department Budget
The Philadelphia Police Department purchased a cell-site simulator from Tactical Support Equipment in 2020 for $400,532.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Philadelphia Department of Commerce
The Philadelphia Police Department instituted a drone as first responder program in 2024. Prior to that, SWAT operated a drone program, 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 CollegeLink Compiled by Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard CollegeCenter for the Study of the Drone at Bard College
The Philadelphia Police Department's Delaware Valley Intelligence Center includes a real-time crime center with access to more than 1,800 surveillance cameras, automated license plate readers and 14 police databases.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Philadelphia Police DepartmentTechnical.lyCBS Philly
Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority Transit Police
The U.S. Department of Justice awarded $500,000 to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority Transit Police in 2019 as part of the Bureau of Justice Assistance's body-worn camera grant program.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): U.S Department of Justice
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance