Sacramento County Sheriff | S.E.E. Program camera registry
Residents and businesses register where their own security cameras are, and the office emails them when a crime happens nearby. It is a mailing list, not a camera network, and the difference is worth being precise about.
At a glance
- What it is
- A voluntary registry of privately owned video surveillance systems and their locations [1]
- How it is used
- The office emails registered owners in an area where a crime occurred, asking them to check their own footage [1]
- What registrants receive
- A window sticker showing they take part [1]
- Does the office get access to footage?
- Nothing on the programme page describes any access to a registered camera or its recordings [1]
- Cameras registered
- not stated anywhere we looked [1]
- How long a registration is kept
- not stated [1]
- Whether the registry is shared
- not stated. The page does not say whether any other agency or vendor can see it [1]
- How to withdraw
- not stated on the page [1]
How it happened
- Context
What the programme page said when we read it
The office's S.E.E. Program page describes a voluntary registry, an email-based request for footage, and a window sticker. It gives no count of registered cameras, no retention period for a registration, and no statement about whether the registry is shared. [1]
What this actually is
The Sheriff’s Electronic Eye programme asks residents and business owners to tell the office where their own security cameras are. The office’s description of what happens next is short and specific:
When a crime occurs, the Sheriff’s Office will be able to identify the locations of video surveillance systems and enlist the assistance of citizens to help us collect video evidence.
And the mechanism:
Using the geographic locations of the registered cameras, the Sheriff’s Office will be able to directly e-mail citizens in an area in which a crime occurred. A common e-mail may ask the citizen to check their video surveillance system for a specific date and time for video capturing a suspect, getaway car or a crime.
People who sign up get a window sticker.
What it is not
Nothing on that page describes the office having any access to a registered camera, its live feed or its recordings. What it describes is a map of who to email, and an email asking the owner to go and look.
We are being deliberate about this. A registry of private cameras and a network of private cameras are different things, and it would be easy, and wrong, to write about one as though it were the other. Some camera registries elsewhere do more: they run through a vendor platform where an agency can request footage inside an app, and some integrate with real-time crime centres. This page describes none of that, and neither do we.
If that changes, or if there is more to it than the page says, we want to know. Until then the honest description is a voluntary mailing list organised by address.
Why it is on this site at all
Because the questions it raises are real ones and none of them are answered.
The page does not say how many cameras are registered. It does not say how long the office keeps a registration, or whether one can be withdrawn, or what happens to it when someone sells the house. It does not say whether the registry is shared with any other agency, or whether it is held by a vendor.
A list of who has a camera and where is a useful thing for a police agency to have, and it is also a list about private homes and businesses that exists indefinitely by default. Those two facts sit together comfortably enough that nobody has to answer for either.
The programme asks people to volunteer information. Volunteering is easier to do well when the terms are written down, and here they are not.
What we do not know
- How many cameras are registered, and roughly where. Without a figure there is no way to know whether this is a few dozen doorbells or a substantial share of the county's private cameras.
- How long a registration is kept, and what happens to it if someone moves or sells the property.
- Whether the registry is shared with any other agency, or held by any vendor on the office's behalf.
- How a registrant withdraws, and whether their entry is deleted or simply marked inactive.
- Whether the office keeps any record of which registrants were emailed and who responded.
What you can do
Show up
Systems like this one are approved by boards, councils and committees that meet in public. We have not yet confirmed where each of them meets in Sacramento County.
What we have documented in Sacramento County →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 →Sources
- 1. Sacramento County Sheriff's Office, S.E.E. Program (Sheriff's Electronic Eye) · Primary document · accessed · archived copy
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