Start where you live
You do not need our permission, our name, or an organisation behind you. Everything we use is on this site, and it is all reusable.
Why there is no list of cities here. Some organisations publish a page for every state with a “coming soon” label. We think that is a small dishonesty: it implies a presence that does not exist, and an organisation whose entire argument rests on being checkable cannot afford to look bigger than it is. A chapter appears on Where We Work when a real person is doing real work there.
The realistic first six weeks
This is the sequence we actually followed, compressed. It assumes a few hours a week and no prior experience with public records.
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Week 1
Find out what your town actually has
Before anything else, establish facts. Search the Atlas of Surveillance for your agency, check DeFlock’s map for readers near you, and search your city’s website for "license plate" or the vendor name. Read the council minutes where it was approved — that document tells you who voted, what they were promised, and what the contract term is.
You end up with: A one-page summary: vendor, camera count, approval date, contract expiry.
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Week 2
File the records request
Send the request letter for the contract, the written policy, the retention schedule, the data-sharing configuration, and any audit records. Ask for documents, not answers. Give a date range. This is the single highest-value hour you will spend, and you do not need permission or an organisation to do it.
You end up with: A filed request with a reference number, and a calendar reminder to follow up.
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Weeks 3–6
Read what comes back, and check the expiry date
The contract expiry is usually the real decision point — in Chandler, the program ended by administrative non-renewal, and the scheduled council vote never happened. Work out when your jurisdiction next has to actively decide, and count backwards from there.
You end up with: A date on the calendar, and a list of the specific facts that will surprise people.
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Ongoing
Show up with numbers, not adjectives
Council comment is usually two or three minutes. Use it on one specific, checkable fact and one answerable question. "How many searches of our data were run by outside agencies last month?" lands harder than a statement of principle, because it has an answer and somebody has to give it.
You end up with: A public record of a question that now has to be answered.
The toolkit
Everything below is free to copy, adapt, and republish under CC BY 4.0. Use it under your own name; you are not required to mention us.
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The research checklist
The twelve things to request about any ALPR system, in the order that matters. Two of them — who else receives the data, and whether a warrant is required — do most of the work.
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The records request letter
How to write a request that cannot be refused as overly broad, addressed to the right office, asking for documents rather than answers.
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The Decision Record
What comparable jurisdictions decided and what happened afterwards. The fastest way to answer "has anywhere like us already done this?"
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Documented Harms
Sourced cases with visible sourcing tiers, built for citing in public comment.
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The policy ask
Six provisions to request, written to be vendor-neutral so a change of supplier does not reset the protections.
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Answers to the counter-arguments
Sixteen arguments made for these systems, answered calmly — with a short version written to be said out loud in a two-minute comment.
What actually worked in Chandler
Worth knowing, because it was unglamorous. Residents read the contract. About forty people spoke at council meetings. They forced a renewal vote to be postponed twice. A council member asked publicly who oversees the data once it leaves the city, and there was no good answer. When the department’s own audit later found something, the ground had already been prepared for the city to stop rather than to promise better controls.
None of that required a lawyer, a budget, or a nonprofit. It required people who had read the documents.
A caution worth taking seriously
Public-records requests and council testimony create public records containing your name. That is usually fine and is the ordinary price of civic participation. But if you have a specific reason to need distance — you work for the city, you have a safety concern, you are in a small community where this gets personal — think it through before you file, and consider whether someone else is better placed to put their name on it.
Tell us what you find
If you obtain records, learn what your jurisdiction decided, or find a case worth documenting, send it to us. We will add it to the Decision Record with proper sourcing, credited or anonymous as you prefer. That record is only useful if it approaches completeness, and no single group can cover the country alone.