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Government & Education · EFF Atlas of Surveillance

Watching the Watchers

Automated license-plate readers and their kin are spreading across American towns, department by department, mostly approved with little public notice. This is what the public record shows - and, just as important, what it cannot.

4,084 documented ALPR deployments 64% of them one vendor: Flock Safety Full

The Map of the Documented Dragnet

I. Where the Readers Are

One hexagon per state, brighter for more documented automated license-plate readers. Deployments turn up in 49 of 50 states plus DC - dense across the industrial Midwest, the South, and a startling cluster in New Jersey. Pale is not proof of absence; it is the edge of what has been recorded.

Real - counted from the EFF Atlas Documented ALPR deployments per state
AK: no documented ALPR deployments AK ME: 1 documented ALPR deployment, 1 Flock ME WI: 120 documented ALPR deployments, 112 Flock WI VT: no documented ALPR deployments VT NH: 3 documented ALPR deployments NH WA: 83 documented ALPR deployments, 73 Flock WA ID: 14 documented ALPR deployments, 6 Flock ID MT: 3 documented ALPR deployments MT ND: 3 documented ALPR deployments, 2 Flock ND MN: 85 documented ALPR deployments, 15 Flock MN IL: 258 documented ALPR deployments, 222 Flock IL MI: 125 documented ALPR deployments, 116 Flock MI NY: 88 documented ALPR deployments, 34 Flock NY MA: 32 documented ALPR deployments, 17 Flock MA RI: 15 documented ALPR deployments, 15 Flock RI OR: 21 documented ALPR deployments, 16 Flock OR NV: 13 documented ALPR deployments, 5 Flock NV WY: 3 documented ALPR deployments, 2 Flock WY SD: 5 documented ALPR deployments, 4 Flock SD IA: 33 documented ALPR deployments, 30 Flock IA IN: 217 documented ALPR deployments, 202 Flock IN OH: 255 documented ALPR deployments, 220 Flock OH PA: 35 documented ALPR deployments, 9 Flock PA NJ: 451 documented ALPR deployments, 6 Flock NJ CT: 28 documented ALPR deployments, 12 Flock CT CA: 324 documented ALPR deployments, 195 Flock CA UT: 32 documented ALPR deployments, 28 Flock UT CO: 60 documented ALPR deployments, 42 Flock CO NE: 20 documented ALPR deployments, 14 Flock NE MO: 113 documented ALPR deployments, 95 Flock MO KY: 59 documented ALPR deployments, 53 Flock KY WV: 5 documented ALPR deployments, 1 Flock WV VA: 152 documented ALPR deployments, 52 Flock VA MD: 18 documented ALPR deployments, 1 Flock MD DE: 6 documented ALPR deployments, 2 Flock DE AZ: 41 documented ALPR deployments, 28 Flock AZ NM: 14 documented ALPR deployments, 7 Flock NM KS: 53 documented ALPR deployments, 42 Flock KS AR: 39 documented ALPR deployments, 38 Flock AR TN: 110 documented ALPR deployments, 98 Flock TN NC: 128 documented ALPR deployments, 113 Flock NC SC: 74 documented ALPR deployments, 45 Flock SC DC: 1 documented ALPR deployment DC OK: 65 documented ALPR deployments, 37 Flock OK LA: 27 documented ALPR deployments, 19 Flock LA MS: 39 documented ALPR deployments, 29 Flock MS AL: 114 documented ALPR deployments, 109 Flock AL GA: 230 documented ALPR deployments, 150 Flock GA HI: 1 documented ALPR deployment HI TX: 319 documented ALPR deployments, 222 Flock TX FL: 147 documented ALPR deployments, 88 Flock FL
Documented ALPR 0 1-24 25-74 75-149 150-299 300+

Most-documented: New Jersey (451), California (324), Texas (319). No documented ALPR at all in AK or VT - almost certainly an artifact of what has been reported, not of a reader-free state. Outside the 50 states + DC, the Atlas also documents deployments in PR, VI, GU, NB, PS.

Table view - documented ALPR, Flock share, and total surveillance footprint by state
St ALPR Flock All tech
NJ 451 6 1048
CA 324 195 1084
TX 319 222 903
IL 258 222 862
OH 255 220 828
GA 230 150 531
IN 217 202 411
VA 152 52 349
FL 147 88 938
NC 128 113 295
MI 125 116 717
WI 120 112 491
AL 114 109 243
MO 113 95 245
TN 110 98 677
NY 88 34 321
MN 85 15 430
WA 83 73 229
SC 74 45 376
OK 65 37 178
CO 60 42 380
KY 59 53 138
KS 53 42 135
AZ 41 28 195
MS 39 29 142
St ALPR Flock All tech
AR 39 38 102
PA 35 9 449
IA 33 30 94
MA 32 17 605
UT 32 28 96
CT 28 12 175
LA 27 19 187
OR 21 16 129
NE 20 14 100
MD 18 1 154
RI 15 15 73
NM 14 7 97
ID 14 6 62
NV 13 5 80
DE 6 2 33
SD 5 4 55
WV 5 1 51
NH 3 0 62
ND 3 2 59
WY 3 2 38
MT 3 0 31
ME 1 1 107
HI 1 0 16
DC 1 0 10

The Flock Effect

II. One Vendor, Most of the Market

Automated license-plate reading in America is not a scattered market. Of the 4,084 documented ALPR deployments, 64% - 2,628 of them - are a single company, Flock Safety, whose cameras a town council can approve in an evening. The next-largest vendor on record, Vigilant Solutions, accounts for 130.

Flock Safety 2,628 64% Other vendors 337 8% Vendor not recorded 1,119 27%

Documented ALPR deployments by vendor

  • Flock Safety 2,614
  • Vigilant Solutions 130
  • Motorola Solutions 60
  • ELSAG 35
  • Rekor Systems 28
  • Selex 17

Vendor is blank on 1,119 ALPR records, so Flock's real share is bounded between 64% (naming only the records that say so) and 92% (if the unrecorded skew the same way). Either way, one firm dominates.

Beyond the Plate Reader

III. The Documented Toolkit

License-plate readers are one line in a longer inventory. Across 15,071 documented deployments, the same departments run body cameras, drones, face recognition, gunshot detection, and predictive-policing software - often together.

  • Body-worn Cameras 5,465
  • Automated License Plate Readers this page 4,084
  • Drones 1,805
  • Third-party Investigative Platforms 1,055
  • Face Recognition 975
  • Camera Registry 755
  • Gunshot Detection 246
  • Real-Time Crime Center 238
  • Predictive Policing 200
  • Video Analytics 84
  • Cell-site Simulator 83
  • Fusion Center 81

A single agency can appear on many of these lines at once - see the surveillance stacks below. Counts are documented deployments, so each is a floor.

The Deepest Stacks

IV. Agencies by Breadth of Surveillance

Surveillance tools rarely arrive alone. These departments have the widest documented stacks in the country - Chicago Police Department tops the list with 10 distinct technologies on record, from plate readers to cell-site simulators. Ranked by how many kinds of surveillance the Atlas can source, not how many cameras.

  1. 01

    Chicago Police Department IL 10/12 tech types

    • ALPR
    • Body cams
    • Camera registry
    • Cell-site sim
    • Drones
    • Face rec
    • Gunshot
    • RTCC
    • 3P intel
    • Video analytics
  2. 02

    Houston Police Department TX 10/12 tech types

    • ALPR
    • Body cams
    • Camera registry
    • Cell-site sim
    • Drones
    • Gunshot
    • Predictive
    • RTCC
    • 3P intel
    • Video analytics
  3. 03

    Atlanta Police Department GA 9/12 tech types

    • ALPR
    • Body cams
    • Camera registry
    • Drones
    • Face rec
    • Gunshot
    • Predictive
    • RTCC
    • 3P intel
  4. 04

    Clay County Sheriff's Office FL 9/12 tech types

    • ALPR
    • Body cams
    • Camera registry
    • Drones
    • Face rec
    • Predictive
    • RTCC
    • 3P intel
    • Video analytics
  5. 05

    Dallas Police Department TX 9/12 tech types

    • ALPR
    • Body cams
    • Camera registry
    • Drones
    • Face rec
    • Gunshot
    • Predictive
    • RTCC
    • 3P intel
  6. 06

    Fort Myers Police Department FL 9/12 tech types

    • ALPR
    • Body cams
    • Drones
    • Face rec
    • Gunshot
    • Predictive
    • RTCC
    • 3P intel
    • Video analytics
  7. 07

    Glendale Police Department AZ 9/12 tech types

    • ALPR
    • Body cams
    • Drones
    • Face rec
    • Gunshot
    • Predictive
    • RTCC
    • 3P intel
    • Video analytics
  8. 08

    Memphis Police Department TN 9/12 tech types

    • ALPR
    • Body cams
    • Camera registry
    • Cell-site sim
    • Drones
    • Face rec
    • Gunshot
    • RTCC
    • 3P intel
  9. 09

    Miami Gardens Police Department FL 9/12 tech types

    • ALPR
    • Body cams
    • Camera registry
    • Face rec
    • Gunshot
    • Predictive
    • RTCC
    • 3P intel
    • Video analytics
  10. 10

    Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office FL 9/12 tech types

    • ALPR
    • Body cams
    • Cell-site sim
    • Drones
    • Face rec
    • Gunshot
    • Predictive
    • RTCC
    • 3P intel
  11. 11

    New York City Police Department NY 9/12 tech types

    • ALPR
    • Body cams
    • Cell-site sim
    • Drones
    • Face rec
    • Gunshot
    • Predictive
    • RTCC
    • Video analytics
  12. 12

    West Palm Beach Police Department FL 9/12 tech types

    • ALPR
    • Body cams
    • Camera registry
    • Drones
    • Face rec
    • Gunshot
    • RTCC
    • 3P intel
    • Video analytics
Compare tool Put two states side by side See how the documented surveillance mix differs between any two states.

Methodology

Notes on the Data

Every figure on this page comes from the EFF / UNLV Atlas of Surveillance (Downloaded 2026-07-09), a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It is a single public CSV of 15,071 documented surveillance-technology deployments across 7,747 U.S. law-enforcement agencies. We ingest it whole and count it directly - the numbers here are real.

One row is one documented deployment

Each record pairs an agency with a technology the Atlas has at least one sourced citation for - a news story, a public record, a budget line. So "4,084 ALPR deployments" means 4,084 agency-and-plate-reader pairs that someone has documented, each carrying its own dated source link. It is a count of the record, not of cameras: an agency running two hundred readers and an agency running two both count once.

What this is not: a census

This is the caveat that governs everything above. Flock Safety and its competitors publish nothing - no camera locations, no counts, no reads. The Atlas is assembled from the outside, so its coverage is uneven and always partial. A state shaded pale, or a town absent entirely, has very likely not been shown to be surveillance-free - it has only gone undocumented. Read every number as a floor: the true footprint is larger than the record, never smaller. That is also why we badge this Full (a real, complete ingest of the source file) while saying loudly that the source itself under-counts the world.

Vendor attribution and geography

Vendor is recorded on most but not all ALPR rows; where it is blank we label the deployment "vendor not recorded" rather than guessing, and we report Flock's share as a bounded range. States use USPS codes; the map covers the 50 states and DC, and a handful of territories are counted but shown only in the notes. Combined-vendor entries (e.g. "Flock Safety, Motorola Solutions") are credited to their lead vendor.

Generated 2026-07-09 11:38 UTC. Source: EFF / UNLV Atlas of Surveillance, atlasofsurveillance.org. Refresh steps: repo HANDOFF.md.