The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts has released an online toolkit designed to help criminal defense attorneys compel police and prosecutors to reveal the surveillance technologies used to build cases against their clients—ranging from facial recognition to AI-drafted police reports.
Surveillance Discovery Project · ACLU of Massachusetts
Arming Defense Lawyers to Expose Hidden Police Surveillance
A password-protected library of model legal motions helps criminal defense attorneys force police and prosecutors to reveal the technologies—from facial recognition to AI-drafted reports—used to build cases against their clients.
2
Types of filings: discovery motions to force disclosure & preservation motions to stop auto-deletion
9+
Surveillance technologies covered by the model motions
4,300+
Cell-site simulator uses by one police department, 2007–2015
Technologies the motions can surface
Facial recognition
License plate readers (Flock)
Gunshot detection (ShotSpotter)
Cell-site simulators (Stingrays)
Location data brokers
Phone & vehicle forensics
Social media monitoring
Geofence warrants
AI police reports (Draft One)
Why timing matters — evidence disappears by default
Retention windows shrink toward zero, making preservation motions urgent. Taller column = longer the data survives.
Flock plate data
retained ~30 days by default
ShotSpotter
data may be owned by vendor, not police
Draft One (AI)
AI drafts auto-discarded
The accuracy problem
Undisclosed tools can't be challenged — and some are demonstrably unreliable.
Federal (NIST) research finds facial recognition produces higher false-positive rates for Black faces .
A facial-recognition match led to a wrongful arrest — the warrant cited only a "credible source."
Police have been instructed not to reveal certain tools in court, citing vendor nondisclosure agreements.
Who gets access
Restricted to verified criminal defense attorneys , who must submit proof of credentials to enter. Built with Harvard Law School's Race & Law Clinic and grounded in Massachusetts law — but designed to be adapted for other states.
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