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 state = "TX" and vendor = "Fivecast" sorted by amount descending

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vendor 1

  • Fivecast · 2 ✖

state 1

ledger 1

Link rowid vendor city state spend_date product amount ▲ quote source_document mytown_record ledger amount_type dup_rank geo_suspect anomaly state_norm
4373 4373 Fivecast Houston TX 2022-01-19 FiveCast Insight software license (sole source purchase) 144248.0 THUNDERCAT TECHNOLOGIES, LLC for Sole Source Purchase for FiveCast Insight Software License Annual Fee for Public Safety and Homeland Security on behalf of the Houston Police Department - $144,248.00 - Grant Fund https://houstontx.primegov.com/Public/CompiledDocument/2618 https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/houstontx/2022/#m681843 sv:fusion:fivecast stated 1 0 0 TX
4374 4374 Fivecast Houston TX 2021-02-09 FiveCast Insight software license (award sole source purchase) 115200.0 THUNDERCAT TECHNOLOGIES, LLC for Sole Source Purchase of FiveCast Insight Software License Annual Fee for Public Safety and Homeland Security on behalf of the Houston Police Department - $115,200.00 - Grant Fund https://houstontx.primegov.com/Public/CompiledDocument/2574 https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/houstontx/2021/#m681798 sv:fusion:fivecast stated 1 0 0 TX

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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);