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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

3 rows where state = "MS" and vendor = "BRINC Drones" sorted by amount descending

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vendor 1

  • BRINC Drones · 3 ✖

state 1

  • MS · 3 ✖

ledger 1

  • sv:drone:brinc 3
Link rowid vendor city state spend_date product amount ▲ quote source_document mytown_record ledger amount_type dup_rank geo_suspect anomaly state_norm
2938 2938 BRINC Drones Rankin County MS 2025-07-03 drone services (approve contract) 58793.0 Authority for the Sheriff’s Department to enter into a five-year agreement with Brinc for drone services in the amount of $58,793.20/year; this agreement includes unlimited repair/replacements for drones and will be paid through the State Drug Fund. https://rankincoms.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=1993,plainText=false) https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/rankincoms/2025/#m806289 sv:drone:brinc stated 1 0 0 MS
2937 2937 BRINC Drones Rankin County MS 2025-08-15 drone program (enter into an agreement) 29999.0 Authority for EOC to enter into an agreement for a drone program through Motorola, which is a reseller for Brinc. The agreement is for 5 years at $29,999 per year. This will include drone, support, and software. https://rankincoms.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=2037,plainText=false) https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/rankincoms/2025/#m806295 sv:drone:brinc stated 1 0 0 MS
2940 2940 BRINC Drones Rankin County MS 2024-06-03 drone services (approve contract) 29599.0 Authority for the Sheriff’s Department to enter into a five -year agreement with Brinc for drone services in the amount of $29,599.20/year; this agreement includes a total of 6 Lemur drones with unlimited repair/replacements and will be paid through the State Drug Fund. https://rankincoms.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=1870,plainText=false) https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/rankincoms/2024/#m806248 sv:drone:brinc stated 1 0 0 MS

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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);
Powered by Datasette · Queries took 977.548ms · Data license: CC BY 4.0 · Data source: MyTown