City of Worcester
Worcester 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
Worcester Police Department
The Worcester Police Department uses SoundThinking's ResourceRouter.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): SoundThinking
On December 30, 2021 the Massachusetts Governor announced an award of $250,000 to the Worcester Police Department for its body-worn camera program. WPD planned to have as many as 300 BWCs by September 2022.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and SecurityMass LiveSpectrum News 1
The Worcester Police Department operates a real-time crime center, which provides access to technologies such as camera networks, gunshot detection, and social media monitoring.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Worcester MagazineWorcester Police Department
The Worcester Police Department began using ShotSpotter gunshot detection technology in 2014.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): Worcester Magazine
The Worcester Police Department maintains a voluntary registry of private and personal surveillance cameras through Motorola Solutions' CityProtect platform.
Sources (via the EFF Atlas): CityProtect
Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (Electronic Frontier Foundation & University of Nevada, Reno — Reynolds School of Journalism) · CC BY 4.0 · retrieved July 2026