343,179 surveillance devices. One public record.
The Public Accountability Camera Network maps every surveillance device documented in open data - automated plate readers, cameras, gunshot detectors - across 156 countries. It is the largest such accounting that currently exists.
We built it because the information was scattered and nobody had assembled it. What you conclude from it is yours to decide.
Open the interactive map
Plate readers concentrate in one country
110,789 of the 115,324 documented worldwide are in the United States. The remaining 4,535 are spread across every other country. In the US, 70.5% of documented surveillance devices are plate readers; elsewhere the figure is 2.5%.
Most devices have no recorded owner
253,758 of 343,179 carry no operator in any public source. Neither an agency nor a company is identified.
Manufacturer concentration is high
Among devices with a named manufacturer, Flock Safety accounts for 82% of the public record.
Every figure recalculates as the underlying data changes. The map lets you check any of them for your own county.
Where we stand
Law enforcement has legitimate uses for plate recognition. A stolen vehicle, an Amber Alert, a specific car wanted in a specific crime - these are real, and none of them requires keeping a record of people who are not suspected of anything.
What we object to is the retained database: the continuous logging of ordinary movement, held and searchable afterward. That is a design choice, not a requirement, and it can be built the other way.
So we are building it the other way. An open standard where the camera holds a hashed list, compares on the device, and destroys the read where it was made when there is no match. Free to implement, free to require.
Institutions, not people
The declared subject of every PACN camera site is a facility, never a residence and never a person. Where a camera stands matters less than what it is pointed at, and what it is pointed at is published before it operates.
Capture is not processing
Bystanders appear in frame and nothing further happens to them. Plate indexing covers government fleet vehicles only. Faces are never indexed.
We ask first
The map opens on the world. It only learns where you are if you tell it, and your coordinate never leaves your browser. None of the devices on this map ever asked.