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

4 rows where vendor = "NEC" sorted by amount descending

✎ View and edit SQL

This data as json, CSV (advanced)

Suggested facets: city, amount_type, state_norm, spend_date (date)

state 3

vendor 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
3198 3198 NEC Tulare County CA 2021-11-02 live scan equipment (purchase) 353000.0 Approve the capital asset purchase of live scan equipment, and an agreement for maintenance and support of the equipment from NEC Corporation of America to support the day-to-day operations of the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office and County Law enforcement agencies, in an amount not to exceed $353,000, in Fiscal Year 2021/22. https://tularecounty.primegov.com/Public/CompiledDocument/27131 https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/tularecounty/2021/#m665969 sv:face:nec ceiling 1 0 0 CA
3758 3758 NEC Cincinnati OH 2025-06-11 AFIS maintenance support (authorize payment) 104405.0 AUTHORIZING a payment of $104,405.52 from County Law Enforcement Applied Regionally (CLEAR) Fund non-personnel operating budget account no. 457x093x1100x7367 as a moral obligation to NEC Corporation of America for maintenance support of the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. https://cincinnatioh.legistar1.com/cincinnatioh/meetings/2025/6/10547_M_Cincinnati_City_Council_25-06-11_Meeting_Minutes.pdf https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/cincinnatioh/2025/#m241470 sv:face:nec stated 1 0 0 OH
3493 3493 NEC Mobile AL 2023-04-04 Smartscan Fingerprint Identification (approve purchase order) 57890.0 Approve purchase order to NEC Corporation of America for Smartscan Fingerprint Identification hardware and software for MPD; $57,890.00 https://mobileal.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=589,plainText=false) https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/mobileal/2023/#m454776 sv:face:nec stated 1 0 0 AL
3503 3503 NEC Mobile AL 2021-07-13 fingerprint ID software (approve purchase order) 17782.0 Approve purchase order to NEC Corporation of America for annual software for fingerprint ID system, $17,782.00 (sponsored by Mayor Stimpson) (submitted by John Paine, Purchasing Department). https://mobileal.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=391,plainText=false) https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/mobileal/2021/#m454687 sv:face:nec stated 1 0 0 AL

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);