Houston & hARRIS county

Surveillance Primer

The following is a primer of the surveillance apparatus used by City of Houston and Harris County agencies. What is detailed here is not inclusive of other police agencies who may share technologies and data with City of Houston and Harris County agencies.

This is mostly collected via open source research and will be updated over time. Please contact us at sassisouth@proton.me if you would like to contribute to this.

Current Surveillance Apparatus

  • The Houston Police Foundation (HPF) supports the Houston Police Department through grant programs, purchasing equipment, and funding the construction of new facilities for the Houston Police Department, such as the Tilman Fertitta Family Tactical Training Center and a firearms training center.

  • The Houston Police Department contracts with Flock Safety for automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras. ALPRs are a dragnet surveillance technology as cameras are placed along roadways with the specific intention of scanning every license plate that passes. In 2025, researchers found that Flock Safety’s products were being used for immigration enforcement and abortion monitoring.

  • The Houston METRO contracts with Clearview AI for facial recognition services. Clearview AI is a company which sells a facial recognition technology to police. The company is notorious for scraping 30 billion images from social media platforms without permission to train its algorithm. According to a public records request, APD contracted with Clearview AI in 2019.

  • The Houston Police Department and the Harris County Sheriff both operate real time crime centers. A real time crime center is where the extensive network of surveillance cameras, automated license plate readers, and other surveillance technologies are integrated, alerts are mapped, and monitored by police officers and other staff. Real time crime centers act as a central hub for police data collection and analysis.

  • ShotSpotter is a gunshot detection technology sold by a company named SoundThinking (the company rebranded from ShotSpotter in 2023 but it's primary product is still known as ShotSpotter). ShotSpotter is a highly inaccurate audio detection tool that Mayor John Whitmore promised to cancel and remove from Houston in 2024.

Previously Used Technologies and Systems

  • The Houston Police Department purchased a “stingray” or cell-site simulator in 2012 after the Houston City Council approved using civil asset forfeiture funds for the purchase. It’s likely that the agency is no longer using a stingray but could be using another cell-site simulator. Cell-site simulators mimic a cellphone tower in order to connect to phones in the area and collect key information from the phone. This information can help police to identify which phones, and their owners, were in a certain area at a certain time.