Boston city councilors spent hours on Tuesday, Nov. 10, questioning Police Commissioner Michael Cox and other officials about Boston police surveillance tools, including social media monitoring that the council voted against and license-plate-reader pilots that changed vendors without a new council vote, the Boston Globe reported. The joint hearing of the committees on Public Safety and Criminal Justice and on Government Operations reviewed the city’s 2025 annual surveillance report, a revised social media policy, and a proposed amendment to the 2022 oversight ordinance. No vote was taken.
Councilor Ben Weber, who serves on the city’s Surveillance Oversight Advisory Board and is a sponsor of the amendment, pointed to what he described as a “loophole” that has allowed the department to use new tools when it switches vendors or cites an urgent threat, the Globe reported. Cox rejected that characterization. He “insisted ‘there is no loophole’” and said that, in the department’s view, technology already approved in the past, such as license plate readers, does not require additional approval for every vendor, even when artificial intelligence is added, according to the Globe.
What the council was asked to review
The City Council hearing was posted as a public session on dockets 1708, 1709 and 1796, according to a city public notice. Docket 1708 is the 2025 Annual Surveillance Report, submitted under the Ordinance on Surveillance Oversight and Information Sharing, Boston City Code Section 16-63. Docket 1709 is a revised Boston Police Department policy for “Social Media Analysis Tools.” Docket 1796, an ordinance amendment sponsored by Councilors Weber, Coletta Zapata and Henry Santana, the Globe and the hearing record show, would tighten the emergency-use exception, require notice when vendors change, and strengthen reporting on automatic license plate readers.
City officials told the council the annual report covers 22 technologies used in calendar year 2025 by departments that include the Police Department, Boston Public Schools, Boston Municipal Protective Services, Parks and Recreation, and the Office of Emergency Management, according to the hearing presentation. The report is required to describe how approved tools were used, data sharing, complaints and public-records requests, and costs.
The 2022 ordinance requires police to seek the council’s approval when the city adopts new surveillance technologies, the Globe reported. Councilors said that did not happen when police piloted automatic license plate readers with Flock Safety and later with competitors, or when the department continued to use social media monitoring after the council rejected it last summer.
Social media tools the council voted against
Weber and other councilors pressed Cox and police officials on why social media analysis tools remained in use after “an overwhelming rejection from the council last summer,” the Globe reported. The department cited uses in 2023 and 2024 that it said were related to emerging online threats around the 2024 elections. This summer, the department disclosed a new AI-powered social media analysis tool, LifeRaft, in its annual surveillance report, the Globe said.
Councilor Miniard Culpepper asked, “What was the actual threat? Was there an actual threat?” according to the Globe. Ryan Walsh, director of the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, said the department had consulted the city’s law department, which said it was “legitimate” to continue using the social media tools. Walsh added that LifeRaft was added in response to large events Boston hosted this summer, including the FIFA World Cup and Sail Boston, the Globe reported.
Moving forward, Cox said, “We need to do a better job to be transparent,” the Globe reported. He also urged 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.”
Chris Conley, a Boston University law professor and a member of the Surveillance Oversight Advisory Board, argued that a single policy should not be treated as covering every social media tool. “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,” he said at the hearing, according to the Globe.
License plate readers, vendor changes and Flock
The Globe has previously reported that Boston police ended a Flock Safety pilot after discovering the vendor had enabled nationwide data sharing despite a contract term that required that sharing to be turned off, and that the department later piloted license-plate-reader systems from Axon Enterprise and Motorola Solutions. At Tuesday’s hearing, Cox said license plate readers have been in use for many years and were already approved, and that buying additional equipment of a type already authorized is what the ordinance allows, according to the Globe’s account and his testimony.
Weber said a change in vendors may have followed the letter of the ordinance but not its purpose if the council was not told. He and his co-sponsors want notice of new vendor agreements written into the law. 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 strengthen reporting, the Globe reported.
Cox and other police officials described the tools as important to investigations. In remarks at the hearing, Cox said the department uses the technologies legally and that they have helped investigators in cases that include fatal hit-and-runs, fugitive hunts, shootings and missing-person work. He also cited department crime figures for 2025, including a 2% decline in Part I crime compared with 2024, a 6% decline in violent crime, and 31 homicides, which he said tied the second-lowest total since 1999, with a clearance rate of 71%. Those figures were presented by the commissioner at the hearing and were not independently audited for this article.
The hearing also touched on drones and on an upcoming discussion of a federal Urban Area Security Initiative grant. Council President Liz Breadon said she had questions about drone use after a drone crashed and damaged a car on a residential street in Brighton, asking what the aircraft was doing there. Walsh told councilors the department would be back later in the week to discuss the grant in more detail. Cox said the department does not participate in civil immigration enforcement and follows the city’s Trust Act and state law.
A similar debate in Quincy, and what comes next
The Globe framed Tuesday’s session as part of a wider clash over police surveillance in the region. In Quincy, the City Council voted 8-1 on Monday to require a public hearing and council approval before police can adopt surveillance technologies, The Boston Report reported on that vote. The next day, Mayor Thomas Koch’s administration raised legal questions about the council’s authority over Quincy’s police chief, the Globe reported. Chris Walker, Koch’s chief of staff, said “under no circumstances will the mayor support any effort that fundamentally weakens the vital role held by the chief,” and that the solicitor’s office was reviewing the ordinance.
In Boston, the hours-long hearing ended without a vote on the report, the revised social media policy, or the ordinance amendment, the Globe reported. Written answers to councilors’ questions and a later council vote on Docket 1796 remain ahead. The session itself was listed among the city’s posted public hearings.
Sources
- Boston Globe: Boston, Quincy scrutinize police use of surveillance technology
- City of Boston: Public notice for the Nov. 10, 2026, joint council hearing on dockets 1708, 1709 and 1796
- Boston Globe: Flock Safety allowed sharing of Boston license plate data, despite contract, report says
- Boston Globe: Boston police quietly using two license plate-reading camera companies
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