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:student:goguardian" and state = "CT" sorted by amount descending

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vendor 1

state 1

ledger 1

  • sv:student:goguardian · 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
4311 4311 GoGuardian New Haven Public Schools CT 2024-09-16 virtual classroom monitoring licenses (purchase) 77880.0 Purchase Order with Liminex Inc. GoGuardian to provide virtual classroom monitoring system licenses to monitor student activity online, filters content, and alert school officials of potential issues from June 6, 2024 to June 30, 2025 in an amount not to exceed $77,880.00. https://go.boarddocs.com/ct/nhps/Board.nsf/BD-GetMinutes?open&id=D8YGUW459052 https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/bd-ct-nhps/2024/#m196381 sv:student:goguardian ceiling 1 1 0 CT
4317 4317 GoGuardian New Haven Public Schools CT 2024-09-23 virtual classroom monitoring licenses (purchase) 77880.0 Purchase Order: 8.05 Purchase Order with Liminex Inc. GoGuardian to provide virtual classroom monitoring system licenses to monitor student activity online, filters content, and alert school officials of potential issues from June 6, 2024 to June 30, 2025 in an amount not to exceed $77,880.00. https://go.boarddocs.com/ct/nhps/Board.nsf/BD-GetMinutes?open&id=D97HU64A23FF https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/bd-ct-nhps/2024/#m196288 sv:student:goguardian ceiling 1 1 0 CT

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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);