City of Boston
Suffolk County · Massachusetts
Technology presence
What these categories mean
- ALPR
- Automated license plate readers (ALPR): camera systems that automatically capture, read, and log vehicle license plates with location and time, producing a searchable record of vehicle movements.
- Fixed cameras & RTCC
- Agency-operated fixed video cameras and the real-time crime centers (RTCC) that aggregate live and recorded feeds for monitoring. Extends the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Atlas, which enumerates real-time crime centers and camera registries but not standalone fixed-camera estates.
- Face recognition
- Software that matches faces in images or video against a reference database to identify or verify individuals.
- Drones / UAS
- Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), commonly called drones, operated by an agency for overhead observation, imaging, or sensing.
- Gunshot detection
- Networks of acoustic sensors that detect and locate suspected gunfire and alert an agency.
- Body-worn & dashcam
- Officer body-worn and in-vehicle dashboard cameras that record encounters; public access to the footage is frequently restricted.
- Doorbell & camera registry
- Programs that give an agency access to privately owned camera footage: doorbell-camera partnerships, citizen camera registries, and private-camera integration platforms.
- Cell-site simulators
- Devices that mimic cell towers to locate or identify nearby mobile phones. They are often called Stingrays, or IMSI catchers after the international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) number that identifies each phone on a network. Adjacent: communications surveillance outside the visual/sensor core.
- Predictive policing
- Software that forecasts where crime may occur or who may be involved, to direct policing. Adjacent: analytics rather than a sensing deployment.
- Social-media monitoring
- Tools that collect and analyze public social-media activity for an agency. Adjacent: open-source/communications monitoring outside the visual/sensor core.
The record, by agency
Boston Police Department
The Boston Police Department used automated license plate readers as of 2024.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): City of BostonThe Boston GlobeELSAG
The Boston Police Department began using Axon body-worn cameras in 2019 and still used them as of 2024.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): City of BostonBoston Police Department
The Boston Police Department uses a cell-site simulator, as of 2024.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): City of BostonWBURVocativ
The Boston Police Department used ShotSpotter gunshot detection technology, as of 2024.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): City of Bostonwbur News
The Boston Police Department operates three drones as of 2017, according to data compiled by the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard Collegewww.officer.com
Massachusetts Department of Transportation
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation responds to face recognition requests from law enforcement on specific case by case queries related to criminal investigations.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Electronic Frontier Foundation
U.S. Customs and Border Protection - Boston Logan International Airport
The Boston Logan International Airport is one of 18 airports where Customs and Border Protection is using face recognition technology as of March 2019. An executive order signed by Pres. Trump in 2019 requires Customs and Border Protection to install face recognition technology at the United States' top 20 airports by 2021.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): BuzzfeedTechCrunch
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026