Helping Out by Reporting Cameras

The members of the Minneapolis Surveillance Camera project are planning on spending a lot of time logging cameras, but there's tons of downtown space to cover and some cameras can be really artfully hidden. If you have the time and inclination, we'd love your help.

All the data reported has its copyright assigned to the project (which mostly affects the photos, as courts have ruled that listings of fact such as phone books aren't copyright-able), and is then available under the terms of the very liberal Creative Commons attribution license, which allows anyone to do anything with it so long as they mention this project when they do.

How to Get Started

Recording camera locations doesn't take much by way of raw materials. One could do it with nothing more than a keen eye and great memory, but we've found a little preparation helps.

We've put together a camera log sheet that combined with a clipboard and the skyway map makes for easy recording. The first six blocks we recorded (where we found more than 50 cameras) took about 4 hours.

If you have a digital camera we have the ability to support uploaded photos of cameras. They have a maximum resolution of 640x480, which means switch to low quality mode in any modern camera. If you're less into searching for cameras and more into the photography, we would certainly welcome photos of the cameras we've already logged. One could probably take a print out of our map and go on a photo scavenger hunt at a pretty good clip.

Submitting Camera Locations

Once you've found some cameras you'd like to add to this site, and have checked out the map to make sure they're not duplicates, just fill out the:

Camera Report Form

After a short delay your reported finds and photos will become part of the collection. Thanks!