Surveillance State

The real machines

What the game is making fun of

Surveillance State is satire, but the machines in it are real kinds of technology, in use on real streets. This page says in plain words what each one does, what it keeps and what is known about how well it works. It names no company. The studies behind the numbers are listed at the end.

Plate readers

Cameras on poles, trailers and patrol cars photograph every number plate that passes. Software turns the picture into text and stores the plate with the time and the place. Each plate is also checked against lists of wanted vehicles, and a match sends an alert.

What is known Almost every plate that is read belongs to someone who is on no list. An analysis of records from 63 police agencies in California found that about one plate in every 2,000 matched a list when it was read. How long the records are kept differs from place to place. A state audit in California found that the four agencies it examined had set their limits without working out how long the pictures stay useful.

Face scanners

Face recognition software measures a face in a photo or a video and compares it with a collection of other faces, such as licence or arrest photos. It returns the closest matches for a person to look through.

What is known How well it works depends on the software and on the picture. In 2019 the United States government’s standards laboratory tested 189 programs and found that many of them gave false matches far more often for Asian and Black faces than for white faces, in some cases 10 to 100 times more often. A false match can put the wrong person under suspicion.

Gunshot mics

Microphones on rooftops and poles listen for loud bangs. Software, and then a person, decides whether a sound was gunfire and works out where it came from, and police are sent there.

What is known In 2021 the inspector general of Chicago reviewed about 50,000 alerts from seventeen months. About 9 in every 100 police responses recorded evidence of a gun-related offence. The company that makes the system disputes how that figure should be read, and the review itself noted gaps in the police records.

Bluetooth sniffers

Phones, earbuds, watches and cars send out short radio signals all the time so that they can find each other. A sensor can note the identifying number in those signals and the time it heard it. A row of sensors can follow one device from place to place.

What is known Modern phones change that number regularly to make this harder. Researchers have shown that many devices can still be followed past the change. Turning Bluetooth and Wi-Fi off when you are not using them stops the signals.

Gait trackers

Gait recognition tries to tell who a person is from the way they walk: the rhythm, the length of the stride, how the body moves. It can work from far away and from behind, when no face can be seen.

What is known It is less proven than face recognition. Researchers test it with people carrying bags or wearing coats, because those change how a person walks and make a match less reliable.

Drones

Small aircraft that carry cameras, some with zoom lenses and heat sensors. Some police departments now send a drone ahead of officers to emergency calls.

What is known What matters is the rules: when a drone may fly, what it may record, how long the video is kept and who may see it. Those rules differ from one place to the next, and some places have none written down.

Fusion centers

Offices where local, state and federal agencies pool what they hold: police reports, tips from the public, camera and plate-reader records, and more. The United States has about 80 of them.

What is known A two-year investigation by a United States Senate subcommittee, with both parties taking part, reported in 2012 that the centers had produced little useful counter-terrorism intelligence and had at times reported on lawful activity by ordinary Americans. The Department of Homeland Security rejected the report as out of date and misleading.

What you can do

  • Ask your city or county which of these it uses, and ask to read the written policy for each one.
  • Ask how long the records are kept and who they are shared with.
  • Public bodies have to answer public records requests, and council meetings are open to the people who live there.
  • On your own phone, turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when you are not using them.

What is next: the patent watch

A plan, not in the game yet Nothing described here has been built. It is what we mean to do next.

Patents are public. To own an idea for a machine that watches people, someone has to file a description of how it works, and most filings are published about a year and a half later for anyone to read. That can be before the machine is ever on a pole.

So we plan to read them. When a filing shows where surveillance equipment is heading, we will:

  • model it in the game as a new machine, marked as coming from a patent and not from the street;
  • explain on this page what the filing says it does and how it might work;
  • say what it could mean for your liberty if it were switched on where you live;
  • link the public filing, so you can read it yourself.

The rules stay the same. No real company or person is named in the game. We will say which parts come from the filing and which are our guess. And a patent is a plan, not a product: many are never built.

It is the same idea as the rest of the game: education through entertainment.

Sources

General information, not legal advice. Last checked in November 2026.