Surveillance software used by BPD without City Council approval

Yawu Miller

Yawu Miller is the former senior editor of the Bay State Banner. He has written for the Banner since 1988.... VIEW BIO

Under the terms of a 2022 ordinance passed by the City Council, the Boston Police Department is required to seek approval from the body before acquiring and deploying new surveillance technology.

City officials are required under the ordinance to file reports to the council detailing what technology they plan to use and for what purpose it will be deployed. Yet in this year’s disclosure, filed with the council last week, police brass disclosed three social media analysis tools deployed in 2023 and 2024 under what the department says were “exigent circumstances,” invoking a clause in the council ordinance under which police can acquire and deploy surveillance technology in an emergency.

In October 2024 BPD officials acquired Chorus Intelligence Suite, a software that appears to create profiles of individuals by scrubbing information from the social media profiles and other publicly available means.

In a letter to the council, Police Superintendent Michael Cox said the software was used over a 30-day period to bolster public safety around the presidential election.

“In the weeks leading up to the November 2024 National Elections, the threat environment nationally and in Boston necessitated the exigent use of this tool,” Cox’s letter reads.

The software was made available to a select group of officers in the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), an agency created with federal funding to share information between local police departments and federal law enforcement officers. While agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement don’t always have access to the same software tools BPD and other local departments use, they often have access to reports the local police produce and distribute through BRIC.

In addition to the 30-day period before the election, officers assigned to BRIC also began using the Chorus Intelligence Suite in February, according to Cox’s letter.

“Beginning in February 2025, the Department has access to the Chorus Intelligence Suite,” the letter reads, further stating, “Use of this tool thus far has aided investigations into violent groups, sexual assault and human trafficking related criminal activity, including the identification of leads related to suspects engaged in this activity.”

The department’s deployment of Chorus, along with SourceFeed and Site Feed — software programs that purport to track “Global Jihadist” threats and “domestic violence extremists” — without informing or obtaining consent from the Council raises concerns, says Muslim Justice League Executive Director Fatema Ahmad.

“The fact that they didn’t tell the council and that they’re already using it is blatantly disregarding the ordinance,” she said. “It’s particularly frustrating that they can add all these new things without a vote.”

Neither the mayor’s press office nor the Boston Police Department’s media relations office responded to requests for comment by the Banner’s press deadline.

Cox’s letter references a third social media surveillance tool deployed in October 2024 called Tangles, which the department is not currently using.

“Tangles provided analysts the ability to locate an individual’s open source social media profiles by searching based on name, phone number or a social media handle,” the letter reads.

The ordinance

While the City Council ordinance is explicit in barring police from acquiring surveillance technology without the body’s consent, it does make an exception for exigent circumstances.

“Exigent Circumstances means the police commissioner or the police commissioner’s designee’s good faith and reasonable belief that an emergency involving danger of death, physical injury, or significant property damage or loss, similar to those that would render it impracticable to obtain a warrant, requires the use of the Surveillance Technology or the Surveillance Data it provides,” the ordinance reads.

While the clause might be interpreted in such a way to cover the department’s use of software before the election, it’s unclear why, after 30-day periods in October, the surveillance technologies were deployed in February of this year.

Cox’s letter makes no mention of the purpose for which the software is being used.

Ahmad has her suspicions.

“We know that a lot of information sharing is being taken in that is not about criminal investigations,” Ahmad said, noting that BPD and BRIC have collected information on protests going as far back as the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in 2011.

Boston police officers assigned to the BRIC have also conducted surveillance on nonviolent protestors in the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted after the 2014 murder of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer. Among those under surveillance was then-City Councilor Tito Jackson, who apparently triggered suspicion because of a Facebook post he made about inequality in Boston. More recently, BRIC has tracked people involved in the nonviolent protests of the Israeli siege of Gaza.

Beginning in October 2023, Boston police officers assigned to BRIC began surveilling people involved in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. Last year, the Muslim Justice League received 400 pages of intelligence reports compiled by BRIC and distributed to federal agents covering the months between October and December 2023, which included twice-daily reports on protests organized by Jewish, Muslim and student-led organizations.

“They’ve been surveilling protests for years and we don’t know who’s getting the reports,” Ahmad said.

Who’s under surveillance, who isn’t?

The BRIC is one of scores of so-called fusion centers partially funded by the federal government in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. While fusion centers were established to share information between federal and local officials, a 2012 Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations investigation found no instances in which a fusion center uncovered a terrorist threat.

In the case of the BRIC, which includes police officers from Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Quincy, Revere, Somerville, and Winthrop, gaps in communication over the years have been glaring. While Russian intelligence informed FBI officials in 2011 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a violent radical Islamist, FBI officials did not pass along any information to local law enforcement prior to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, in which Tsarnaev and his brother detonated two bombs, killing three and injuring hundreds.

While officers assigned to BRIC have surveilled nonviolent protestors, Boston Police were apparently caught unaware in July 2022 when several dozen members of the Patriot Front, a violent white supremacist group, marched through downtown Boston armed with shields and assaulted a Black man. No police were on the scene and no arrests were made.