São Paulo contracted the Consórcio Smart City SP in August 2023, at R$9.8 million a month, to install 20,000 municipal cameras and wire in privately owned ones; the city reported passing 50,000 connected cameras in 2026, about 20,000 of them matching faces against fugitive and missing-person databases. A first-instance judge suspended the tender in May 2023 over the LGPD data protection law and the risk of reproducing structural racism, but the São Paulo appeal court reinstated it on 23 May, finding no technical evidence in the case file that the system discriminates. The city reports 3,000 fugitives arrested since operations began in September 2024. Its own transparency report also counts 82 people stopped, taken to a police station and released.
Operator figures: 3,000 fugitives arrested and 202 missing people located with facial recognition between September 2024 and April 2026. The first transparency report, covering 21 November 2024 to 21 May 2025, counts 1,153 fugitive arrests, 39 missing people found and 82 people stopped and taken to a police station before release: 53 because the warrant had not been cleared in the national BNMP database, 6 over registry inconsistencies in Smart Sampa's own records and 23 released after producing documents.
🎓 Lesson
Publishing the misses is the rare part. São Paulo reports both its arrests and the 82 people it stopped and let go, yet 58.9% of those records carry no information on race, so the bias claim the appeal court dismissed for lack of evidence still cannot be tested against the city's own data.
Evidence🏛️ Official
Scale🏙️ City-wide
CostR$9.8M per month (service contract, August 2023)
FundingCity of São Paulo budget, operated under contract by Consórcio Smart City SP
Sources
↗ Prefeitura de São Paulo — Programa Smart Sampa (Secretaria Municipal de Segurança Urbana)Operator page. States 50,000 cameras, 20,000 municipal and 30,000 integrated from private owners, split '12 mil aparelhos conectados na região central, outros 14 mil na Zona Oeste, 9 mil na Zona Leste, 10 mil na Zona Sul e 5 mil na Zona Norte'; monitoring centre on Rua Quinze de Novembro opened 4 July 2024 with about 250 GCM and Civil Defence staff, running 24 hours; facial matching against the municipal missing-persons database and the state fugitives database; cites Federal Law 13.709/2018 (LGPD).
↗ Prefeitura de São Paulo — mayor signs the Smart Sampa contract (7 August 2023)Source of the contract terms: 'contrato assinado com o Consórcio Smart City SP... com um custo mensal para o serviço de R$ 9,8 milhões' (monthly service cost of R$9.8 million), consortium 'formado pelas empresas CLD — Construtora, Laços Detentores e Eletrônica LTDA, Flama Serviços LTDA, Camerite Sistemas S.A. e PK9 Tecnologia e Serviços LTDA', and 'A conclusão da instalação das 20 mil câmeras está prevista para ocorrer em 18 meses'. No total contract value is stated here; press figures for the total are inconsistent and are not used.
↗ Prefeitura de São Paulo — Smart Sampa transparency report, first edition (18 June 2025)City release on the report covering '21 de novembro de 2024 a 21 de maio de 2025': the system 'auxiliou na prisão de 1.153 foragidos da Justiça'; '82 pessoas foram abordadas, conduzidas ao Distrito Policial'; of those, '23 pessoas foram conduzidas para averiguação e liberadas após a apresentação de documentos', '53 foram liberadas por inconsistências no banco de dados da Justiça' and '6 foram liberadas por inconsistências cadastrais'; '39 pessoas foram localizadas' (missing people); 'o Smart Sampa conta com 31.323 câmeras integradas', '10 mil instaladas somente entre novembro de 2024 e maio de 2025'.
↗ Prefeitura de São Paulo — Smart Sampa transparency reports and data protection impact assessmentLanding page for the two published editions (21 Nov 2024 to 21 May 2025; 22 May to 22 Nov 2025). States 'O Programa Smart Sampa não estrutura banco de dados próprio e não armazena dados pessoais' (the programme keeps no database of its own and stores no personal data) apart from images tied to wanted-person identifiers, requires above 90% match confidence before warrant data is opened, and includes a Relatório de Impacto à Proteção de Dados (RIPD) under LGPD Law 13.709/2018. The report PDFs are scanned images and could not be text-extracted; figures here are taken from the city's own release text.
↗ Brasil de Fato — 'Smart Sampa: mais de 80 pessoas foram levadas para delegacias por inconsistência do reconhecimento facial' (4 February 2026)Independent reading of the same city report plus freedom-of-information (LAI) data: '82 foram conduzidas a um distrito policial e posteriormente liberadas devido a alguma inconsistência' in the period '21 de novembro de 2024 a 21 de maio de 2025'; the breakdown '53 pessoas... por ausência de baixa no mandado de Banco Nacional de Medidas Penais e Prisão (BNMP), seis por inconsistência cadastral no próprio banco de dados do Smart Sampa e 23 em virtude de inconsistências no reconhecimento facial'; and the gap that carries the lesson, 'Em 58,9% dos registros... não há informação racial'.
↗ Procuradoria Geral do Município de São Paulo — appeal court revokes the injunction (25 May 2023)Official confirmation of the reversal: the Tribunal de Justiça de São Paulo, in Agravo de Instrumento 2122169-52.2023.8.26.0000, overturned the injunction on Tuesday 23 May 2023, noting the first decision was taken 'sem a prévia oitiva do Município de São Paulo' and that 'não consta do processo nenhum elemento técnico ou científico que comprove a alegação dos autores' about the system reproducing structural racism. This is a reinstatement of the tender, not a ruling that the system is lawful in operation.
↗ Coding Rights — 'Tribunal de Justiça de São Paulo suspende edital de pregão do programa Smart Sampa'Civil-society documentation of the 18 May 2023 injunction by judge Luis Manuel Fonseca Pires of the 3ª Vara de Fazenda Pública, granted in an action by PSOL's Bancada Feminista, holding that the technology inverts the presumption of innocence, breaches the LGPD and contributes to structural racism. Advocacy source, used only for the content and date of a court decision that the city's own law office confirms existed.
↗ Rádio Bandeirantes — 'Smart Sampa atinge 3 mil foragidos presos' (14 April 2026)Most recent operating figures, all city-reported: '3 mil foragidos da Justiça presos com o auxílio de câmeras inteligentes' 'desde o início da operação, em setembro de 2024'; '50 mil câmeras espalhadas pela cidade', '20 mil com tecnologia de reconhecimento facial'; '202 pessoas foram encontradas com o auxílio do reconhecimento facial'.
↗ Metrópoles — PSOL asks the São Paulo public prosecutor to investigate Smart Sampa (18 April 2025)Live oversight, not a court order: PSOL's feminist caucuses in the city council and state assembly filed a representation with the Ministério Público de São Paulo arguing the algorithms were trained on databases lacking racially diverse people, women and trans people; the city replies that both contested cases were 'corretamente reconhecidos' with valid warrants and that every alert undergoes mandatory human validation. No suspension is in force.
↗ Prefeitura de São Paulo — 'Taxa de reconhecimento facial do Smart Sampa é de 99,5%, sem registro de prisão de inocentes' (18 June 2025)The city's own counter-claim, recorded here rather than in the entry body: 'O nível de similaridade facial do sistema Smart Sampa subiu de 90% para 92%, o que levou a uma taxa de assertividade de 99,5%' and 'Não houve nenhuma prisão de inocentes nesse período'. The 99.5% is a self-reported rate with no published method, and it is compatible with the 82 station conductions only if a person released without charge is not counted as arrested.
📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Smart Sampa Camera Network & Facial Recognition” — São Paulo, Brazil. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/sao-paulo-smart-sampa/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.
