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 = "PenLink" sorted by amount descending

✎ View and edit SQL

This data as json, CSV (advanced)

Suggested facets: spend_date (date)

vendor 1

  • PenLink · 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
3511 3511 PenLink Amarillo TX 2025-10-14 Tangles Bronze subscription (purchase) 90469.0 This item considers the purchase of PenLink Tangles Bronze annual subscription, a secure web-based service that provides investigators with the ability to access, search and analyze mobile device communication records in support of criminal investigations. Award to: Insight (Omnia Partners Public Sector #23-6692-03) Amount: $90,469.96 https://amarillotx.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=5882,plainText=false) https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/amarillotx/2025/#m437026 sv:fusion:penlink stated 1 0 0 TX
3165 3165 PenLink Houston TX 2024-11-14 Pen-Link software licenses (approve spending authority) 62809.0 APPROVE spending authority in an amount not to exceed $62,809.50 for Purchase of Pen-Link Software Licenses for the Houston Police Department, from PEN-LINK, LTD. - 12 Months - General Fund https://houstontx.primegov.com/Public/CompiledDocument/537 https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/houstontx/2024/#m681990 sv:fusion:penlink ceiling 1 0 0 TX

Advanced export

JSON shape: default, array, newline-delimited

CSV options: 

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);