Boston City Councilors Coletta Zapata, Weber and Santana introduce amendments to the surveillance oversight ordinance

During Wednesday’s Boston City Council Meeting, Councilors Benjamin J. Weber (District 6), Gabriela Coletta Zapata (District 1) and Henry Santana (At-Large) will introduce Docket #1796: “Ordinance Amending City of Boston, Chapter XVI, Section 63, Ordinance on Surveillance Oversight and Information Sharing.” This docket seeks to update the City’s surveillance oversight law, passed by the Council in 2022.

The 2022 ordinance was put in place to ensure accountability and transparency around how the City and its agencies acquire and use surveillance technology. Pursuant to the ordinance, in 2022, the Council was notified of the surveillance technologies in use by the City and voted on their approval. The City was required to obtain Council approval before adopting any new technologies, except in exigent circumstances when it could act immediately to address an imminent threat and then notify.

On August 27, 2025, the City Council voted to deny approval of the use of social media monitoring tools that were used under exigent circumstances during the prior year, as reported in the 2024 City of Boston Annual Surveillance Report. The arguments to deny approval included concerns that the tools risked curtailing speech without a tangible increase in public safety; lack of clarity about whether exigent circumstances actually existed; and the BPD’s failure to follow the notice provisions of the Surveillance Ordinance governing the use of a technology due to exigent circumstances.

The 2025 City of Boston Annual Surveillance Report, released on September 14, 2026 reveals, however, that the social media surveillance tools continued to be used despite the City Council’s denial, and that the BPD added another social media surveillance technology.

The report also contained a section on the City’s use of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs). While the Council approved the use of ALPRs in 2022, this was before the national debate around Flock cameras, the growth of AI, and the civil rights abuses of the Trump Administration. The report shows that while the City engaged in a pilot with Flock from April 1, 2025, to September 4, 2025, it started a new program using ALPRs with two other contractors, Motorola Solutions and Axon Enterprise. The report also stated that even though the City’s contract with Flock “clearly noted that data sharing was to be disabled . . . [w]ithin three days of initiating the Pilot, BPD became aware that other law enforcement agencies were able to access” the data collected in Boston “using a nationwide lookup feature that was enabled by the vendor in error.” Even though the report states that the data-sharing feature was disabled, it demonstrates potential issues arising from the use of ALPRs in Boston.

The amendments introduced today seek to strengthen the Council’s oversight of future technologies by clarifying the use of technology under exigent circumstances, requiring notification of new vendor agreements for surveillance technologies with prior Council approval, and strengthening reporting on Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs).

“The Boston Surveillance Ordinance is an important tool in how we keep our residents safe, not just from dangerous threats, but also from threats to their civil liberties. And as surveillance technology evolves, we need to ensure that the Ordinance is working as intended, which means clearer rules for how these tools are acquired, used, and overseen,” said Councilor Weber, member of the Surveillance Oversight Advisory Board.

“As surveillance technology evolves, our safeguards and oversight must evolve with it. These tools can play an important role in public safety, but residents deserve transparency about what technology is being used, who has access to their data, and how that information is protected. The recent use of new vendors and technologies without clear Council notification has exposed gaps in the existing ordinance that we have an obligation to address,” said Councilor Coletta Zapata. “I’m proud to join Councilor Weber as the second co-sponsor of this amendment to strengthen accountability, close those gaps, and ensure that public safety and civil liberties remain at the center of how Boston uses surveillance technology.”

“The current loophole violates the original purpose of the 2022 ordinance, and its use has led to rising public concern about the Boston Police Department’s usage of both automated license plate readers (ALPRs) and social media monitoring tools,” said Councilor Santana, Chair of the Committee on Public Safety & Criminal Justice. “In closing this loophole and requiring stricter reporting requirements, we are meeting the Council’s original intent and ensuring that the public remains accurately informed about these tools and technologies used by the Boston Police Department. At a time when people are very rightfully concerned about data collection, surveillance, and the possible misuse of government tools, it is vitally important that we maintain and grow public trust. This ordinance does just that.”