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Privacy September 13, 2026

Surveillance-Aware Route Planning

What if your navigation app could show you the path with the fewest surveillance cameras?

The current state

A few projects have explored surveillance-aware routing:

FlockHopper (dontgetflocked.com) offers ALPR-avoidance routing on the web. It maps 90,000+ ALPR cameras and can plan routes that minimize ALPR exposure. Web-only, no mobile app, donation-funded.

Untracked is an iOS/Android app claiming 50,000+ cameras with turn-by-turn navigation that avoids ALPR cameras. It’s extremely early-stage with essentially zero traction (5 stars from 2 ratings on iOS).

OSRM-CCTV is an academic prototype from 2021 that routes around CCTV cameras. Never became a consumer product.

The gap

All existing approaches focus on ALPR cameras only. But ALPR is just one of the 10 types of surveillance you might want to avoid. A route that dodges ALPR readers but walks you past 15 facial recognition cameras isn’t really surveillance-aware.

What proper surveillance-aware routing needs

  1. Complete camera database: You can’t route around what you can’t see. Our database of 498,500+ cameras across 10 types is the starting point.

  2. Type-weighted avoidance: Not all cameras are equally concerning. Facial recognition should weigh more than a speed camera. ALPR should weigh more than CCTV.

  3. Realistic alternatives: A route that adds 45 minutes to avoid 3 cameras isn’t useful. The system needs to balance surveillance avoidance with practical routing.

  4. Mobile integration: This needs to work in your pocket while you’re actually navigating, not as a web tool you check before leaving.

Coming in Sentinel Mobile

Surveillance-aware route planning is on the roadmap for Sentinel Mobile Premium. The foundation is already in place:

  • Camera database with precise coordinates and type classification
  • On-device proximity calculations (no server needed for routing)
  • Background location monitoring (knows where you’re going)

The challenge is routing engine integration. OSRM (Open Source Routing Machine) can be modified to weight edges by surveillance camera proximity, but running a routing engine on-device requires significant engineering.

For now, check Sentinel before you go. Search your destination and see what surveillance is along the way. It’s manual, but it’s real.

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