California
Fresno County
On record
Checked 20 Aug 2026- Technologies
- 1
- Systems
- 1
- Devices mapped
- 268
Fresno County, California. Device data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), with community reporting via DeFlock. Open the full map →
In February 2020 the California State Auditor published a review of how four California law enforcement agencies ran their automated licence plate readers. The Fresno Police Department was one of the four. So were the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office and the Marin County Sheriff’s Office, both of which have pages on this site, which makes this one of the few places where several California agencies can be compared against a single standard, measured by the same people on the same dates.
What the audit found in Fresno was a small system with a wide reach. Eight cameras, all vehicle-mounted, no fixed cameras at all, and 231 people with access to what they collected. The department had authorised 982 outside entities to receive its images, spanning most of the fifty states, and the auditor could not establish how it had decided that any particular one needed them.
One page covers that system. Everything on it describes 2019 and says so: we could not find the department’s current plate reader policy, and we do not know what changed after the audit.
The rest of the county is unresearched. The police department’s real-time crime centre, its drones, its gunshot detection and its predictive policing software have not been examined, nor has the Sheriff’s Office. Clovis, the county’s second city, has 337 council documents in our corpus and a $6 million regional theft task force in its record that we have deliberately not written up yet, because the document does not make clear which department operates the equipment it lists.
What's in use here
A state audit counted eight cameras, no fixed cameras, and 231 people with access to what they collected. The department had authorised sharing the images with 982 outside entities.
Who runs it
The agency is the accountability unit: who voted, whose policy applies, and who answers a records request.
| Agency | Jurisdiction | Systems |
|---|---|---|
| Fresno Police Department | City of Fresno | 1 |
| 1 agency on record. A jointly run system counts against each of its operators, so this column is not a county total. | ||
Trackers
Meetings, contracts, records
Nothing listed yet. The trackers launch here, and facts appear only with their sources.
How the inventory works →What you can do
Civic action
Show up
Public comment is open to any resident, and you do not have to be an expert to use it. We have not yet confirmed where the bodies that decide for Fresno County meet. How the inventory works explains what we check and how to check it yourself.
How the inventory works →Personal protection
Protect yourself
Practical steps to shrink your personal data trail. Our guides publish at launch; until then, EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense is the best starting point.
Surveillance Self-Defense ↗Get the digest
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.