Elected officials in Boston and Quincy are putting pressure on their police departments’ use of surveillance technologies amid growing public uproar.
Boston city councilors fired questions at police officials at a hearing Tuesday over the department’s deployment of social media surveillance tools and what some councilors described as a “loophole” in the city’s surveillance ordinance.
The ordinance requires police to seek the council’s approval whenever it adopts new technologies, but that didn’t happen when police piloted automatic license plate readers with Flock Safety and its competitors, nor when it continued to use social media monitoring after the council rejected it last summer.
City Councilor Ben Weber, who serves on Boston’s Surveillance Oversight Advisory Board, pointed to a “loophole” used by police to use new surveillance technologies, such as when it switches vendors or under circumstances like an immediate violent threat, to waive that requirement.
In Quincy, city officials overwhelmingly passed an ordinance Monday that would, similar to Boston, require public hearing and council approval before the police can adopt surveillance technologies.
But the next day, Mayor Tom Koch’s administration raised legal questions over the council’s authority over Quincy’s police chief.
In Boston, police launched pilots this summer for artificial intelligence-enabled license plate cameras with Axon Enterprise and Motorola Solutions, as previously reported by the Globe. Those pilots followed a different, undisclosed pilot with Flock Safety, a company that’s drawn nationwide controversy in recent months over cases of police misconduct and privacy concerns.
But Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox, who took the hot seat at the Tuesday council hearing, insisted “there is no loophole” and that in the department’s view, technology that has been approved in the past, such as license plate readers, does not require additional approval for every vendor, even with the introduction of artificial intelligence.
Cox implored the city to “be careful not to establish additional bureaucracy” that would “delay access to critical technologies or hinder our ability to prevent and investigate crime.”
Weber and other councilors also pressed Cox and police officials over why the department had continued to use social media analysis tools, despite an overwhelming rejection from the council last summer. The department cited circumstances when it used social media monitoring tools in 2023 and 2024, which it said were related to emerging threats online around the 2024 elections.
Then, this summer, the department disclosed its use of a new AI-powered social media analysis tool, LifeRaft, in its annual surveillance report.
“What was the actual threat?” City Councilor Miniard Culpepper said at the hearing. “Was there an actual threat?”
Ryan Walsh, director of the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, said at the hearing that the department had consulted with the city’s law department, which said it was “legitimate” to continue using the social media tools. Walsh added that the addition of LifeRaft came in response to the large events Boston hosted this summer, such as the FIFA World Cup and Sail Boston.
Moving forward, Cox said, “We need to do a better job to be transparent.”
Advocates from the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, the Muslim Justice League, and other groups asked the council to reject additional surveillance tools, pause use of license plate readers, and amend the ordinance to bolster reporting requirements.
“To say that one policy covers any tool that would be described as a social media analysis tool misses the point that the council will not be informed about exactly what this new technology is doing,” said Chris Conley, a Boston University law professor and member of Boston’s Surveillance Oversight Advisory Board, at the hearing.
The five-hour hearing concluded with no immediate action. Meanwhile, similar discussions echo in cities across the state.
In Quincy, the 8-to-1 vote Monday on surveillance technology passed as Koch moves forward with a plan to replace the city’s 49 Flock license plate cameras with those of a different vendor.
Koch would need to sign the ordinance for it to take effect.
Chris Walker, Koch’s chief of staff, said in a statement that “under no circumstances will the mayor support any effort that fundamentally weakens the vital role held by the chief.”
Walker added that the solicitor’s office is conducting a review, which they expect will be completed in the coming days.
The Quincy council vote came after months of advocacy from residents who raised concerns over privacy and oversight. Last week, Koch and Police Chief Mark Kennedy announced the city will switch to cameras outfitted with OdinEye, a data-aggregation software that promises similar capabilities to Flock. That company, however, generated new concerns about the reliability of the software, as it is run solely by a Connecticut-based police detective.
Yogev Toby can be reached at yogev.toby@globe.com.