What is in the record

A device is in the record if somebody documented it in a public dataset. That is the whole test. We did not survey streets or file requests for this; we assembled what was already public and had never been put together.

What it holds

As of this page load: 338,741 devices across 156 countries, of which 116,038 are automated plate readers, 198,610 are cameras, and 2,523 are gunshot detectors. 152,723 are in the United States, spread across 1,542 counties.

Each row carries what the source recorded: coordinates, device type, manufacturer and model where known, the operator where named, how it is mounted, which direction it faces, and the date it first appeared in public data. Where a field is empty on this site, it is empty because no public source filled it.

What it cannot tell you

It is not complete. Documentation is uneven. A device nobody has recorded does not appear here, and there is no way to know how many those are. The record is a floor, not a total.

Coverage effort varies by place. Some regions have been documented far more thoroughly than others, so a low count can mean few devices or few people looking. We say this plainly because it cuts against our own headline figures, and a reader deserves to weigh it.

The date is a documentation date. "First documented" records when a device entered a public dataset, not when it was installed. A spike in the timeline means people started looking, not that cameras appeared. The gap between installation and documentation is not knowable from this data, and that gap is itself the accountability problem.

253,758 devices have no operator recorded and 224,565 have no manufacturer. That is not a gap in our collection. It is a gap in the public record, and it is one of the findings rather than a caveat about it.

How it stays current

The record refreshes on a schedule. New devices are added, existing ones updated where the source has changed, and every figure on this site is computed from the current state when a page loads. No number here is stored, typed in, or left over from a previous version.

Geographic resolution — which country, state and county a device sits in — is computed from its coordinates against boundary data, not taken from the source. County resolution is available in the United States; elsewhere the record resolves to state or country level, because county-equivalent boundaries are not available for most of the world.

Corrections

If a device in the record is wrong, missing, or has been removed, tell us. The underlying public datasets are also editable by anyone, which is a strength rather than a weakness: a record anyone can correct is more trustworthy than one only its owner can.

Every row is listed in the registry and every one can be located on the map. Nothing on this site asks you to take our word for a number.