County surveillance transparency
What is the state of surveillance in your county?
Find out what surveillance is operating where you live, who approved it, and what you can do about it.
On record, across every county
- Systems documented
- 342
- Operating now
- 278
- Devices mapped
- 55,970
Start here
What we believe
Mass surveillance and the loss of liberty and privacy doesn't happen all at once, it creeps up one camera at a time. Orwell Index attempts to document the true state of surveillance in the United States so that citizens can better understand how they are being watched and tracked so they can have a say in what technologies are used in their community.
Read more →“You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.”
1984, George Orwell
Recently updated
The surveillance systems whose records we changed most recently, across every county we cover.
- Lemhi County, ID Updated
The county put cameras at its rural waste sites in 2021 to slow illegal dumping. In 2026 it was quoted about $50,000 for more.
- Cameron County, TX Updated
In November 2023 the Sheriff's Office brought the Commissioners' Court an item to buy five Clearview AI facial recognition licenses for $10,325.01, on a purchasing cooperative contract. It sat on the consent agenda between a vending machine award and eleven body armor vests.
- Clearwater County, ID Updated
Five license plate readers stand at Orofino. The city says they belong to the county, and the county does not publish its minutes.
- Cameron County, TX Updated
Cameron County's plate readers are bought with border grant money, drug forfeiture money and federal drug task force money, and one pair of them reads every car that drives onto a public beach. No county record says how many there are or how long a read is kept.
- Midland County, TX Updated
Midland County's plate reader network began as a way to watch illegal dump sites, was exempted from competitive bidding as a public health measure, and was paid for out of the Sheriff's donation account. The Sheriff's own count to the Court is fifty-two, and no county policy says who may search them.
Recent news
Surveillance coverage from outlets around the country. Every item links to the original reporting.
- Decrypt (via Yahoo News)
- Office of Senator Josh Hawley
- The Texas Tribune
What we track
Each technology gets a plain-language definition, the state law that governs it where one exists, and a county page wherever we have documented a system.
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An automated license plate reader photographs every passing vehicle and records the plate, the time and the place. It does not watch suspects. It logs everyone, and the record is usually kept on a vendor’s servers.
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An unmanned aircraft carrying a camera, flown by a public agency. Where a state classes drones as military equipment, as California does, a public policy and a governing-body vote are required before an agency uses one.
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A camera worn by an officer, recording encounters with the public. What it captures, how long the footage is kept and who may watch it are set by department policy rather than by one statewide rule.
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Camera networks Fixed and steerable cameras run by a public agency, often networked so footage from many locations can be watched or searched from one place.
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Software that measures a face in an image and searches for a match in a database of known faces. It can be run on live camera feeds or on recorded footage after the fact.
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Networked microphones placed around a neighborhood that listen for gunfire and report a location to police. The microphones are always on.
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A list, kept by a police department, of privately owned security cameras and where they are. Officers use it to ask owners for footage. Some registries also let an agency request footage through the camera vendor’s app.
What you can do
- 1
Look up your county
Start with where you live. Every county page lists what we have documented there and what the public record does not yet answer.
Find your county → - 2
See what is operating
Each documented system gets a dossier: what the technology does, who runs it, what it cost, and where every fact came from.
What we track → - 3
Civic action
Make your opinion heard
Surveillance contracts are approved at public meetings any resident can attend and speak at. A resident who has read the record changes the room.
Find where your county meets → - 4
Personal protection
Protect your privacy
Practical steps to shrink your personal data trail, ordered by effort. The first guides publish at launch. Until then, EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense is the best starting point.
EFF Surveillance Self-Defense ↗
The newsletter
Follow what we publish
A regular digest of what changed in the world of surveillance: the counties we published, the devices that appeared on the map, and the public meetings where these decisions get made.
We send it when there is enough to report. One click to unsubscribe. What we do with your address is on the newsletter page.