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ORWELL INDEX

Who runs license plate readers in Canyon County?

Also listed here because the record shows it

These systems are documented primarily as something else. They appear here because a cited record shows the deployment also does this.

On the map

0
Verified by us
120
Community-reported

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), including community reporting via the DeFlock project. Tiles by OpenFreeMap.

What we do not know

Caldwell Police

  • What the agreement between the city and Flock Safety says, when it was originally approved, and by whom.
  • What the Caldwell Housing Authority reimbursement agreement covers, and how many cameras sit on Housing Authority property.
  • Whether the proposal to move from Flock to Axon was adopted in the budget, and what an Axon package would change about retention, sharing and the published policy.
  • How many cameras are in service and where they stand.
  • Whether any audit has been run under policy 428, and what it found.
  • Whether Caldwell plate reader data is shared with the Canyon County Sheriff's Office or with the Nampa system, both of which read plates in the same county.
  • Whether the department operates Flock Safety gunshot detection, which the EFF Atlas records here, and under what policy.

Canyon County Sheriff

  • How many cameras were installed, and at which locations.
  • What agreement no. 21-013 and agreement no. 21-121 actually say. Both are referenced by number in the minutes and neither is published.
  • Which agencies can query the shared database, and whether those queries are logged.
  • How long plate reads are kept in the vendor's cloud, and who pays for the storage now that the three years of federal funding have run.
  • Whether the Sheriff's Office has any written policy governing use of the system.

Nampa Police

  • How many plate readers were installed, and at which of the 39 intersections.
  • How long the city keeps plate reads, who may query them, and whether queries are logged.
  • Whether the Nampa Police Department has a written plate reader policy.
  • Whether the plate reader data is shared with any other agency, including the Canyon County Sheriff's Office, which runs its own readers on the same state structures.
  • What the Idaho Transportation Department and State Communications do with their access to the feeds.

A million-dollar video analytics system for the police department [Nampa Police]

  • Where the 60 cameras are, and which 30 intersections they cover.
  • Whether the video analytics workstation with facial recognition was bought, whether the function is enabled, and under what policy.
  • How long video is kept, who may search it, and whether searches are logged.
  • What "vehicles of interest" means in practice, and whether the system reads plates.
  • Whether the council was shown the BriefCam datasheet's face recognition capability when it voted.

A real time crime center inside a traffic project [Nampa Police]

  • Whether the real time crime center opened, when, and who staffs it.
  • What software or platform it runs, and which camera and data feeds reach it.
  • What document sits behind the "Amazon/ITD" line of $1,200,000 in the project funding.
  • Whether the plate reader feeds from the 39 state-controlled intersections terminate here.
  • Whether any policy governs what the center may watch, search or retain.

What license plate readers are

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.

How they work, why agencies buy them, and every county we have documented →

What you can do

Civic action

Show up

This technology is bought and renewed by boards, councils and committees that meet in public. We have confirmed where each of them meets in Canyon County and how public comment works there.

How to show up in Canyon County →

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 ↗