Forty More Voices Won’t Make Cambridge Safer

Cambridge is surveilling its surveillance.

Earlier this week, 40 Cambridge residents were selected via lottery to advise the city on its surveillance technology, including the widely used gunshot detection software ShotSpotter. The software has previously drawn controversy for its potential resident privacy risks as well as concerns that it contributes to over-policing of minority neighborhoods.

Surveillance technology certainly deserves scrutiny, but the limited privacy risks of ShotSpotter hardly justify convening a citizens’ assembly to do the work of elected officials.

First, we acknowledge that when it comes to surveillance technology, it’s important to remain vigilant. “Safety concerns” can very quickly be used to justify infringements on privacy — for example, the 2001 USA Patriot Act, passed 45 days after 9/11, massively expanded the government’s authority to survey Americans’ electronic communications.

Under the act, between 2003 and 2006, over 190,000 “national security letters” were issued by FBI agents to obtain Americans’ personal information, according to the ACLU; they only ever led to one terror-related conviction.

The point is, we know what excessive surveillance looks like — and this is not that.

The audio sensors used by ShotSpotter record only the few seconds in which they detect a loud noise, which, albeit, can mistakenly include things like fireworks or cars backfiring. Still, nearly two-thirds of the software’s 2025 alerts were gunshot-related.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of dealing with the impacts of gun violence. The U.S. ranks at the 93rd percentile globally for overall firearm mortality, with many U.S. states having death rates from physical violence related to firearms closer to rates seen in countries experiencing active conflict.

Many of the purported criminological benefits of ShotSpotter have been contested, but there is evidence that it helps emergency services respond more quickly to shootings.

As long as ShotSpotter can help EMS without meaningfully intruding on privacy, Cambridge has good reason to retain it. It’s also good that gun violence policy is being actively discussed and implemented. We hope that the future holds more of the same.

As for the assembly, we worry it’s mostly redundant.

We choose our policymakers to be well-informed, talk to the right experts, and make informed value judgments. They should be more than capable of reviewing whether this technology reflects the will of their constituents. Assessing and weighing citizens’ preferences is part of the job.

However well-intentioned it is to have residents advise Cambridge on its surveillance technology, random selection for a formal council goes beyond public accountability and closer to the reason we have elections in the first place.

It’s also unnecessary. Democracy is already slow — that’s one of its unfortunate, but intentional, aspects. There’s no need for the City Council to waste more time and resources on something that can be figured out through a direct conversation with the relevant experts.

Otherwise, Cambridge is just watching the watchers watch the watching.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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