Ever since the Section 702 addition to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 2008, privacy advocates have sought its abolition or significant reforms. Section 702 permits warrantless surveillance of the contents of the communications of Americans if one part…
Author: Tracy Rosenberg
What Advocates Look For in Privacy-Related Legislation
Privacy advocates throughout California got together last week to tell Sacramento politicians about what advocates look for in privacy-related legislation and regulation. Asian- Americans Advancing Justice, Tech Equity, EFF and UC Law Center for Constitutional Democracy tackled the biggest loopholes…
Privacy Fallacies: Legislative Briefing
Privacy advocates throughout California got together last week to tell Sacramento politicians about five things they think are true about privacy, but aren’t. Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Consumer Reports, COSPR, ACLU and Oakland Privacy tackled themes like consent is enough, enforcement…
Courts Weigh In On ALPR
In quick succession, two courts weighed in on the license plate reader problem – in very different ways. In Schmidt v Norfolk, the one you’ve probably heard of, a federal court declined to reconsider the “no right to privacy in…
Automated License Plate Reader Use Doesn’t Add Up
by Tracy Rosenberg In June of 2025, Oakland Privacy received a Flock audit log from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office detailing the activity in their cloud database of license plate reader scans from the department’s owned cameras. After keyword searches…
How CA Tried to Address Algorithmic and Surveillance Pricing (Part 2)
by Samuel Leitch In 2022, a time when rents continued to soar impossibly, the company RealPage boasted that it could help landlords increase profits even further.1 How was this possible? By pooling nonpublic pricing data from clients, RealPage’s software can…
How CA Tried to Address Algorithmic and Surveillance Pricing (Part 1)
by Samuel Leitch Do rideshare companies charge you more if your phone is about to die? The trending Internet rumor, based in part on a fabricated screenshot posted to Reddit, is ultimately unproven.1 However, it serves as an example of…
Facts and Fiction on the California Invasion of Privacy Act and the problematic SB 690
by Don Marti and Robert Tauler While other states debate private right of action in privacy laws, California already has one, and it’s working for us. Since it was enacted the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) has included an individual’s right to…
An SF Supervisor Wants To Make SF’s Surveillance Transparency Law Unenforceable
San Francisco supervisor Matt Dorsey, a former police department public affairs official, is taking aim at San Francisco’s 2019 surveillance transparency ordinance and facial recognition ban by trying to strip the provision that pays attorney fees for people who enforce the law…
Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission (PAC) Needs New Commissioners
by Lou Katz Established over 10 years ago as a response to an attempt to blanket Oakland with a surveillance apparatus called the “Domain Awareness Center” (DAC) which would cover Oakland with cameras and microphones. Oakland’s PAC is one of…