Montgomery County
County record. Includes every city and agency within Montgomery 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
Montgomery County Sheriff's Office
The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office uses automated license plate readers, according to 2024 data.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): MuckRock
The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office operates two Physical Sciences drones as of 2019, 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 Collegewww.wsls.com
Christiansburg Police Department
The Christiansburg Police Department uses automated license plate readers, according to 2024 data.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): MuckRock
Virginia Tech Police Department
The Virginia Tech Police Department uses automated license plate readers, according to 2024 data.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): MuckRock
Blacksburg Police Department
The Blacksburg Police Department added an ELSAG license plate reader to at least one of their vehicles as early as 2010.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Hokie PrivacyUniversity of Richmond
The U.S. Department of Justice awarded $44,906 to the Blacksburg Police Department in 2017 as part of the Bureau of Justice Assistance's body-worn camera grant program.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): U.S Department of Justice
Radford University Police Department
The Radford University Police Department has had a body-worn camera policy in place since 2012.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Radford University Police Department Policy
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026