Montgomery County IT | Clearview AI
Montgomery County has held a sole source service agreement with Clearview AI since March 2021. The Commissioners Court approved it on the consent agenda, and no county record says what the service does.
At a glance
- Approved
- 9 March 2021, as a discretionary sole source exemption for a "Service Agreement with Clearview AI", for the county's information technology department [1]
- How it was approved
- Inside the consent agenda, item C6b under Purchasing, in a single motion covering agenda items 10A to 10O, approved unanimously [1]
- Price
- Not stated in the minutes. The contract is an attachment on the county website [1]
- Term, and whether it is still running
- Not stated. No renewal, amendment or cancellation appears in any later minutes [1] [2]
- What the service is
- The item does not say. The words "facial recognition", "face recognition" and "biometric" appear in no Montgomery County Commissioners Court minutes, from September 1983 to August 2026 [1] [2]
- Who uses it, and how often
- Not stated in any county record [1]
How it happened
- Procurement
A sole source exemption, on the consent agenda
The Court approves a discretionary sole source exemption for a service agreement with Clearview AI for the county's information technology department, citing Chapter 262 of the Local Government Code. It sits in the consent block beside an exemption for traffic sensor products. [1]
Clearview AI sells a face search. A user uploads a photograph of a face and the service returns images of similar faces, with links to the web pages they came from. The images are scraped from the public internet, which is what makes it different from a search of a police department’s own booking photos.
One line, on the consent agenda
On 9 March 2021 the Montgomery County Commissioners Court approved its consent agenda, items 10A through 10O, in a single motion moved by Commissioner Noack and seconded by Commissioner Riley. Inside that block, under Purchasing, item C6 granted discretionary sole source exemptions for two things. The first was traffic sensor products. The second reads, in full:
b. Service Agreement with Clearview AI as an item that can be obtained from only one source pursuant to Chapter 262, Local Govt. Code for IT.[1]
That is the entire county record of the decision. A sole source exemption under Chapter 262 of the Texas Local Government Code is the finding that lets a county buy something without seeking competitive bids, on the basis that only one supplier can provide it. The item names the company, the statute and the department. It does not name the product, the price, the term or the purpose.
The word that is never used
The Montgomery County Clerk publishes a full-text search of every set of Commissioners Court minutes the county has, running from September 1983 to August 2026. Searched on 17 September 2026, that index returns no document at all containing “facial recognition”, none containing “face recognition”, and none containing “biometric”.[2]
So a resident reading the county’s own record cannot learn from it that the county bought a face search, because the record does not say so. The name of the company is the only thing that carries the information, and it is in a sub-item of a consent block.
What we are not saying
The EFF Atlas of Surveillance records Clearview AI face recognition for the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office and for Constable Precinct 4. That is a compilation from other people’s reporting, not a county record, and this page does not repeat it as a finding. What the county record supports is narrower and is set out above: the Court approved a sole source service agreement with Clearview AI in March 2021, and it never described it.
The agreement itself is a public record. It is an attachment to that item, scanned and published on the county’s own website, and a records request would produce it along with the sole source justification that had to be written to support the exemption.
What we do not know
- What the Clearview AI service agreement covers, at what price and for how long.
- Whether it is still in force, and whether it has been renewed since 2021.
- Which county employees can run a search, and how many searches have been run.
- Whether the county or the Sheriff's Office has any written policy on facial recognition.
- Whether a Clearview match has ever supported an arrest or a warrant in Montgomery County, and whether the defendant was told.
What you can do
Show up
Systems like this one are approved by boards, councils and committees that meet in public. We have confirmed where each of them meets in Montgomery County and how public comment works there.
How to show up in Montgomery County →Protect yourself
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Surveillance Self-Defense →Sources
- 1. Montgomery County Commissioners Court, minutes, 9 March 2021, consent item C6b · Meeting record · · accessed
- 2.
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