Watching the watch.
Overview
Government watches the public in more ways every year — fixed cameras, automated license-plate readers, face recognition, drones, real-time crime centers, and acoustic sensors. The rules that govern those systems, and the public's ability to see them, vary enormously from one jurisdiction to the next.
watchwatch is a public record of what government operates and how it is overseen. It documents the technology a jurisdiction uses and, alongside it, the oversight structures that apply: whether a use policy is published, whether the public can access the footage, whether data-sharing is disclosed, and what law governs it. It reports these facts; it does not argue a position. The project is United States–first.
What It Documents
- Fixed cameras & real-time crime centers — municipal CCTV networks and the fusion platforms that aggregate them.
- Automated license-plate readers (ALPR) — the cameras, the networks they join, and who can query them.
- Face recognition — where it is deployed and against which databases.
- Drones & aerial surveillance — agency UAS programs and their authorized uses.
- Acoustic & other sensors — gunshot detection and related monitoring.
- Government-held footage — body-worn camera, dashcam, and facility video, and the rules for releasing it.
The Five Tracks
The same dataset, viewed five ways:
The Oversight Score
Each jurisdiction is scored on which oversight structures exist — not on the technology itself. The score records four factual questions. Where a jurisdiction does not respond, the item is recorded as “not disclosed,” never left blank.
→ published_policy yes
→ public_access partial
→ disclosed_sharing yes
→ legislative_limits yes
→ score 82 / 100
Built on Public Sources and Public Records
Deployment data is compiled from publicly available sources, and every entry keeps the citations it came from. The oversight around each system (published use policy, public-access path, disclosed data-sharing, legislative limits) is recorded separately, from public-records requests. Coverage, recipients, and deadlines are driven by UnGovr's per-jurisdiction records-law analysis, so each request is scoped to what the statute allows and stays within the law in every case. The underlying analysis is published at law.ungovr.org/records/us
Part of UnGovr Oversight
watchwatch is one member of UnGovr Oversight, a family of observatories that turn opaque corners of government into public datasets with a consistent oversight score. It lives at watchwatch.org, under the tagline “Watching the watch.”
- Civil Grand Jury — California's civil grand jury reports
- CA Oversight — California local-government oversight
- Sheriff Oversight — sheriff civilian oversight bodies
- watchwatch — government surveillance technology (this project)
- ComputeCompute — data center and compute infrastructure tracker
- AI Oversight — government use of AI (concept)
Get Involved
We're looking for journalists, oversight bodies, and researchers to help shape what the observatory tracks first. Your experience with surveillance records — in any jurisdiction — will inform what we build.