Blount County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Blount 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
Blount County Sheriff's Office
The Blount County Sheriff's Office operates 17 Flock Safety automated license plate readers as of September 2025.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Pittsboro Police Department
The Blount County Sheriff's Office has access to a predictive analytics system developed by IBM to identify locations where vehicle crashes and DUIs are likely to occur. All 95 county sheriffs in the state access the system, which is managed by the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland SecurityTennessee Department of Safety and Homeland SecurityFox17
Maryville Police Department
The Maryville Police Department operates 16 Flock Safety automated license plate readers and other cameras as of June 2025. The agency stores ALPR data for 30 days.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Flock Safety
Alcoa Police Department
The Alcoa Police Department installed 10 Flock Safety automated license plate readers in 2020 and two additional cameras in FY 2021-2022.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Alcoa Police Department
The Alcoa Police Department, citing dissatifaction with their performance, moved to replace their L-3 Mobile Vision body-worn cameras in 2016.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): The Daily Times
The Alcoa Police Department implemented Project TIPLINE software in 2010 and planned to incorporate predictive policing softwares in the years 2020 to 2026.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Alcoa Police DepartmentThe Police Chief
Blount County Sheriff’s Office
The Blount County Sheriff's Office began using L-3 body-worn cameras in 2016 and planned to upgrade to Axon body-worn cameras in 2020.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): The Daily TimesUnited States District Court for the Eastern District of TennesseeThe Daily Times
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026