The Map · Free forever · Live now

See what sees you.

Plate readers, traffic cameras, and public surveillance, mapped by volunteers into a public database. Most of it sits on ordinary streets and almost nobody has been told it is there.

Free forever, and staying that way

This map is public records mapped by volunteers. We did not create it and we do not own it, so we are never going to charge you for looking at it. Knowing what is watching your street is not a premium feature.

What SOVRAN+ will add later is the work on top: being told when a new reader appears near somewhere you care about, having public records requests filed for you, and getting retention terms and council agendas tracked without you having to watch for them. That is ongoing labour with a real cost. The map underneath it stays free.

This page makes no outside request at all

Like everything else here, it works with your connection switched off. The camera data is a file stored on our own servers, and choosing a region loads it straight from this site.

We never ask for your location. There is no address search either, on purpose — typing your street into a box is how tools like this usually leak the exact thing they claim to protect. You pick a region; we learn nothing more than that, and even that stays in your browser.

And no map tiles. A normal map downloads images as you pan and zoom, which tells the tile server precisely where you are looking and how closely — a sharper trail than your GPS would leave. We draw the map ourselves from coordinates instead.

Plate readers Cameras Other Scroll or pinch to zoom · drag to pan · tap any device to act on it · keep zooming for street names

Who operates them

Where the operator is recorded. A blank field is itself a finding — it usually means nobody has published who runs the thing.

A police or sheriff's departmentPublic surveillance. Subject to public records law, council oversight, and whatever retention policy your jurisdiction set. This is the category you can actually question and change.

A city, county, or transport agencyUsually traffic monitoring, tolling, or parking enforcement. Often shared with police on request, which is rarely obvious from the signage.

A retailer — Lowe's, Home Depot, a supermarketPrivate cameras covering their own car park and entrances. They are not watching the public road on purpose, but a car park camera sees every plate that enters. Most chains hand footage to police on request without requiring a warrant. Private property means no public records law applies, so you cannot compel disclosure — you can only ask.

A homeowners' association or private communityIncreasingly common, and increasingly plate readers rather than cameras. Often run through a service that shares data with police automatically. If you live there, the association's rules are usually changeable by its members.

A vendor name like Flock Safety or MotorolaThe manufacturer, not the operator. Someone bought it — a city, an HOA, a business. Which of those it is, is exactly the question worth filing.

BlankNobody has recorded it. Sometimes that is just an unfinished map entry. Sometimes it is a device nobody announced. Both are worth asking about, and the second is worth asking loudly.

What kinds

These labels come from OpenStreetMap's tagging. Here is what they mean in practice.

ALPR / ANPRAutomated licence plate reader. Photographs every passing plate, converts it to text, and timestamps the location. Builds a searchable history of where a specific car has been. This is the category with the most reach and the least public awareness.

cameraAn ordinary surveillance camera pointed at a place rather than at traffic. Records what happens in view. Whether anyone is watching live, and how long it is kept, depends entirely on who runs it.

guardA guard post or staffed observation point rather than a device. Recorded for completeness.

(type not specified)Mapped as surveillance but never categorised. Usually a camera. Worth improving in OpenStreetMap if you can see what it is.

Take it further

A dot on a map is awareness. The questions below are what actually changes anything — and they are all public record requests any resident can make.

How long is footage kept, and who decides when it is deleted?
Which other agencies can query this data, and is any of it shared federally?
What is the contract value, and when does it come up for renewal?
Was there a public vote, and is there an audit of how searches are used?

Found one that isn’t here? Add it.

Every dot on this map was put there by a person who noticed something and wrote it down. Blank areas do not mean quiet streets — they mean nobody has looked yet. This is the rare civic problem where an hour of your time genuinely moves the number.

Note it from the pavement. A plate reader is usually a small camera on a pole, often solar-powered with a black rectangular box, pointed along the roadway rather than at a building. Never enter private property, never climb anything, and never argue with anyone about it. Photographing infrastructure from a public place is lawful in the US; a confrontation helps nobody.
Get the location. The corner it sits on is enough. If you can also see a manufacturer name on the housing, or a city or agency logo, note that too — the operator is the field most often missing, and the most useful one.
Add it to OpenStreetMap. Go to openstreetmap.org, make a free account, find the spot, and press Edit. Drop a point and search the feature list for “surveillance”.
Or use DeFlock. The DeFlock project has a simpler submission flow built for exactly this, and it writes into the same database. If the editor feels fiddly, start there.

The tags that matter, if you are editing directly. Only the first is required — everything else is a bonus.

man_made=surveillanceThe base tag. Without it, nothing finds the device.

surveillance:type=ALPRMarks it as a plate reader. Use camera for ordinary CCTV.

operator=Who runs it — a city, a police department, a company. The most valuable and most often blank.

manufacturer=The brand on the housing, if visible.

direction=Which way it faces, in compass degrees or as N/S/E/W.

surveillance=publicThat it watches a public space rather than a private interior.

Why this is worth an hourSurveillance infrastructure is usually approved in a routine council vote with nobody in the room, and stays invisible because no one has counted it. A map is the thing that turns “I think there might be some cameras” into a number a journalist or a council member has to answer for. It works because it is public, open, and belongs to nobody — which is also why we will never put it behind a payment.

Data © OpenStreetMap contributors, licensed under the Open Database License. Surveillance tagging is largely the work of volunteers, including the DeFlock project. Coverage is incomplete and uneven — an empty area means nobody has mapped it yet, not that nothing is there.