Verified Unsurveilled · Privacy-first communities
Here are communities doing it right.
Most of this site documents what governments are building. Verified Unsurveilled documents the ones that decided not to — and gives everyone else a concrete target to aim at.
This is the mark. No community has earned it yet. When one does, the seal on their page and on their own website will link straight back to the evidence that got them there.
No community has been verified yet.
The standard has 12 criteria, and a designation requires every one of them resolved against current evidence, a factual pre-publication summary sent to the municipality, and a scheduled re-review date. That work is not finished for any jurisdiction.
3 jurisdictions are under research. “Candidate” means investigate first. It is not an endorsement, it is not a partial award, and it does not entitle anyone to display a badge.
We would rather launch this program with an empty directory than with a designation that cannot survive a records request.
What the designation means
Verified Unsurveilled is an independent civil-liberties designation based on publicly documented municipal policies, systems, and practices, evaluated against Unsurveilled’s published standard.
It is not issued by any government, standards body, regulator, or court. No municipality certifies itself. Evidence may be submitted, but Unsurveilled evaluates it independently against a public rubric.
Verification is renewable, never permanent. Status may be suspended or withdrawn if qualifying policies change or contradictory evidence appears.
The core principle
The standard is not “no cameras.” It distinguishes targeted investigation from persistent or indiscriminate identification and tracking of the general public.
Body-worn cameras, building security, and traffic sensors that do not identify people are not what this measures. A city can run all three and still qualify.
Under research
Jurisdictions whose published law or governance makes a full audit worth the cost. Inclusion means “investigate first,” not “award the badge.”
Eugene, Oregon
Eugene ended its Flock contract in December 2025 and, in 2026, its council began work on a broader city surveillance policy. The outcome turns entirely on what that policy says once adopted — specifically, whether it rejects equivalent mass ALPR capability from any vendor, or only settles the Flock question. Under review pending the adopted text.
0 met 12 unexamined
Research candidateYellow Springs, Ohio
Yellow Springs has a broad surveillance-technology ordinance that treats technologies including ALPRs and biometric surveillance as surveillance technology subject to an approval process, requires review of preexisting uses, requires annual reporting for approved systems, and makes conflicting contracts prohibited. That is the strongest governance framework among our current leads. The decisive open question is what is actually approved and in use.
3 met 9 unexamined
Research candidateYpsilanti, Michigan
Ypsilanti adopted Ordinance No. 1401 in 2022, prohibiting the installation or use of electronic license-plate scanning devices in the city. That is unusually direct and makes Ypsilanti the strongest immediate candidate to audit against the Verified Unsurveilled standard. It is not a designation. Nine of the twelve criteria are currently unexamined.
3 met 9 unexamined
Assessed and not currently qualifying
Published because the reasons are more useful than a shorter list would be. Two of these are cities most people would assume qualify.
Austin, Texas
Austin's Flock contract was cancelled in 2025 after a sustained organizing campaign — a real win. EFF subsequently reported that Austin continued to use ALPR through Axon. Austin is published here as the explicit demonstration of the vendor-neutral rule: cancelling one company does not qualify a community if substantially equivalent mass ALPR capability remains in place.
Why not EFF reported that Austin continued to use ALPR through Axon after the Flock contract was cancelled. Substantially equivalent mass ALPR capability remaining in place is disqualifying under criteria 1, 2, and 12.
Does not currently qualifyCambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge has a surveillance-technology ordinance, a municipal facial recognition ban, and terminated its Flock deployment in 2025. It is among the better-governed cities in the country on this issue. It still does not currently qualify, because the City indicated it planned to continue evaluating ALPR technology — which is not the forward-looking rejection of persistent mass tracking the standard requires.
Why not The City publicly indicated it planned to continue evaluating ALPR technology after terminating its Flock contract. The standard requires a forward-looking rejection of persistent mass tracking, and an open evaluation is not that.
Think a designation is wrong or outdated?
Show us the evidence. Challenges create a review record. We would rather be corrected than trusted blindly — and evidence that a community does not qualify is exactly as welcome as evidence that it does.
Standard version 1.0