surveillance_spending

A DISCOVERY INDEX of surveillance and police-technology dollar figures found in local government meeting records across 130+ named vendors — NOT a table of confirmed spending, and NOT safe to SUM. An audit on 2026-07-29 found aggregate views were adding amounts that must not be added: the same procurement recurs at committee, council, approval, amendment and renewal stages; "not to exceed" figures are authorization ceilings, not payments. Use the canned query "the CONSERVATIVE total" for any number you intend to publish, and "data-quality report" to see what is flagged. Columns added for this: `amount_type` (stated / ceiling / proposed / recommended / estimated), `dup_rank` (>1 = redundant copy), `geo_suspect` (city disagrees with the source link), `anomaly` (implausible figure), `state_norm` (normalized state). Vendors covered include ALPR (Flock, Vigilant, Genetec), body cameras/tasers (Axon, WatchGuard, Utility, Getac), gunshot detection (ShotSpotter/SoundThinking), face recognition (Clearview AI, DataWorks Plus), fingerprint biometrics (Idemia AFIS/Livescan, filed separately under `sv:biometrics`), data fusion and OSINT (Fusus, Peregrine, LexisNexis Accurint, Thomson Reuters CLEAR), phone forensics (Cellebrite, GrayKey, Magnet), drones (Skydio, BRINC, DJI), cameras/VMS (Verkada, Avigilon), cell-site simulators, CAD/RMS records systems, photo enforcement, jail-call and student monitoring. Every row carries a VERBATIM quote from the minutes and a link to the source document, and a row only publishes if that quote was found character-for-character in the source text. READ THE `ledger` COLUMN: `sv:<category>:<vendor>`. `radio_infra` (two-way radios), `rms` (records/CAD software), `biometrics` (fingerprints) and `not_surveillance` are NOT surveillance sensors — exclude them before quoting any surveillance figure.

Data license: CC BY 4.0 · Data source: MyTown

2 rows where ledger = "sv:jail:smartcomm" and state = "NC" sorted by amount descending

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  • sv:jail:smartcomm · 2 ✖
Link rowid vendor city state spend_date product amount ▲ quote source_document mytown_record ledger amount_type dup_rank geo_suspect anomaly state_norm
3538 3538 Smart Communications Winston-Salem NC 2021-05-17 inmate mail scanning software (award purchase order) 181200.0 Resolution Awarding Purchase Order for Street Smart Communications Software - Street Smart, LLC - $181,200. (Recommended by Finance Committee) https://winston-salem.legistar1.com/winston-salem/meetings/2021/5/2332_A_City_Council_21-05-17_City_Council_Agenda.pdf https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/winston-salem/2021/#m365147 sv:jail:smartcomm recommended 1 0 0 NC
3539 3539 Smart Communications Winston-Salem NC 2021-05-10 inmate mail scanning software (award purchase order) 181200.0 Resolution Awarding Purchase Order for Street Smart Communications Software - Street Smart, LLC - $181,200. https://winston-salem.legistar1.com/winston-salem/meetings/2021/5/2364_A_Finance_Committee_21-05-10_Committee_Agenda.pdf https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/winston-salem/2021/#m365143 sv:jail:smartcomm stated 1 0 0 NC

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CREATE TABLE surveillance_spending (
  vendor TEXT, city TEXT, state TEXT, spend_date TEXT, product TEXT,
  amount REAL, quote TEXT, source_document TEXT, mytown_record TEXT, ledger TEXT, amount_type TEXT, dup_rank INTEGER, geo_suspect INTEGER, anomaly INTEGER, state_norm TEXT);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_vendor ON surveillance_spending(vendor);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_state ON surveillance_spending(state);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_amount ON surveillance_spending(amount);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_ledger ON surveillance_spending(ledger);