Oakland Privacy is pleased to announce that Jessica Ramos will be joining us as the 2023 Privacy Rights Fellow. Jessica is Oakland born-and-raised and is currently pursuing a Ph.D at the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California. She wrote her senior dissertation at UC Berkeley as an undergraduate on Oakland Privacy’s work. Welcome Jessica!
Thank you to the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment for the generous support to make these fellowships possible.
Outgoing 2022 fellow Yadi Younse sat down with us to talk about her fellowship experience. Read more about Yadi’s 2022 fellowship experience.
The Privacy Rights Fellowship: Year One in Review
The last year has brought both the proliferation of the use of government and commercial surveillance as well as public awareness about it. As the country adapted to a global pandemic and transitioned to remote work, it brought with it the accelerated adoption of technology, including surveillance technology. Protests across the nation exposed further law enforcement surveillance. The Dobbs decision makes anyone seeking abortions a target of further surveillance.
These issues have brought even more urgency to the work to stop the expansion of surveillance. To help with pushing back on surveillance and protecting privacy, Oakland Privacy received a grant from the Rose Foundation. We used the funds to create two one-year privacy fellowships.
We caught up with the first recipient of the Rose Foundation Privacy Fellowship, Yadi Younse, to discuss her experience as the first Fellow, her passion for the two projects she worked on – launching a campaign calling on Google to implement Global Privacy Control and developing a Government Surveillance Public Records Toolkit – and her future in privacy.
What has been the highlight of your time as the Rose Foundation Privacy Fellow?
The whole experience was phenomenal! The privacy world is very small, and the opportunity to do hands-on privacy work with mentorship under Oakland Privacy was definitely a unique one.
It was great to do a variety of projects, including doing public records research for AB 481, a transparency and accountability initiative which requires law enforcement agencies in California to establish use policies for the use of military weapons. I helped compile the research into a report “Equipped for War” published by AFSC.
Continuing with public records, I created a toolkit focused on surveillance, “Exposing Government Surveillance in California with Public Records” to help the public in conducting their own public records research. This is particularly important given that governments are increasingly looking to acquire surveillance tech unbeknown to the general public. I would definitely have appreciated a guide like this when I started doing my own public records requests on surveillance tech just a few years ago!
On the commercial surveillance front, we launched a campaign “Chrome Privacy Now!” demanding that Google implement Global Privacy Control on the Chrome browser. Not only is GPC supported by the CA Attorney General as a valid request from consumers to opt-out of the sale of their data, but it’s just really annoying to have to do opt-outs at every website. I’m really excited for the second year fellow to continue on with this campaign in the coming year.
How did it feel to have the time and resources to do hands-on privacy work? How did you feel to be selected for this fellowship?
Being super excited to be selected is an understatement. I hold Oakland Privacy to high esteem and think they are doing very valuable work. I felt very honored to be a part of OP and work on securing more privacy protections for Californians. I was unsure about my chances of being selected, seeing myself both as a non-traditional candidate and being relatively new to the privacy space. However, in that short time, I feel I have more than demonstrated my passion and commitment to privacy.
What’s next and how will you use the experience you had during your Fellowship?
Definitely do more privacy advocacy. Aside from the fellowship, I worked on a variety of other projects with OP, including abortion data rights research and policy work. On the legislative side, one of the bills I was particularly proud to work on was Wick’s AB 2273, California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, including helping draft the policy support letter, giving public comment supporting the bill as it made its way through various committees and having it signed into law by Governor Newsom. I will continue on supporting OP’s broader initiatives and be a resource for the second-year fellow. I also want to thank the Rose Foundation for their support for this very important work.
Do you have any advice for people interested in applying to be the next Fellow?
If you are interested in privacy and want to do more hands-on work, definitely apply! The projects OP put together gives you the opportunity to do a variety of work to help advance privacy rights. The OP folks are very welcoming and provided great mentorship. If you are not in Oakland, don’t let that be a deterrent either. I am in Southern California and location is not a barrier – after all, privacy affects all of us, no matter where we are.
Any other thoughts you want to share?
I look forward to tackling privacy in the coming year and continuing on with OP. Join us on that journey or reach out if you want to talk about privacy!
-Yadi Younse