CAPE CORAL, FLORIDA - The Public Accountability Camera Network today published what it believes to be the largest public accounting of surveillance devices in existence: a searchable map of every automated license plate reader, camera and gunshot detector documented in open data, across 156 countries.

The record contains more than 330,000 devices. Three findings stand out.

First, automated plate readers are concentrated in one country. Of the plate readers documented worldwide, roughly 96 percent are in the United States. Every other country combined accounts for the remainder. In the United States, plate readers make up about three quarters of all documented surveillance devices. Outside it, the figure is under three percent. Other countries document cameras. The United States documents vehicle tracking.

Second, most devices have no recorded owner. Roughly three quarters of the devices in the record carry no operator in any public source - neither a government agency nor a company. In many jurisdictions no public body is able to say how many such devices are operating, where they are, or who paid for them.

Third, manufacturer concentration is high. Among devices with a named manufacturer, a single firm accounts for the large majority of the public record.

PACN takes no position on whether any particular device should exist. It publishes what is documented and lets readers reach their own conclusions. The map recalculates continuously as the underlying data changes, and any figure can be checked at county level.

"Law enforcement has legitimate uses for plate recognition," said S. Vincent Anthony, founder of NeuraWeb Global Inc. "A stolen vehicle, an Amber Alert, a specific car wanted in a specific crime. None of those requires keeping a record of people who are not suspected of anything. The retained database is a design choice, not a requirement."

Alongside the record, PACN is publishing an open technical standard for plate recognition that preserves those legitimate uses without retention: the camera holds a hashed watch list, compares on the device, and destroys the read where it was made when there is no match. Nothing is transmitted and nothing is stored unless there is a hit. The standard is free to implement and free for any jurisdiction to require.

The map is available at neuraweb.io/pacn.nw. It opens on the world and does not request a visitor location unless asked to.