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…
Author: Tracy Rosenberg
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…
Our Sponsored Bills in the State Legislature
Oakland Privacy is the sponsor of two privacy bills in the state legislature this year. AB 1337 (Ward) is a much-needed and overdue revamp of the 1977 Information Practices Act, the seminal government privacy law that followed the addition of…
An Award: Worst State Anti-Privacy Bill of the Year – Senate Bill 690
Update 7/1/25: Senate Bill 690 was parked for the year. While we like to focus on the positive, sometimes we gotta call out the shenanigans. Every year in the State Legislature, one proposal among the 3,000 that get offered stands…
OP Travels to Chicago To Oppose Clearview AI Settlement in Federal Court
Oakland Privacy’s 2022 Privacy Rights Fellow and current legislative advocate Yadi Younse traveled halfway across the country to object to a proposed class action settlement against Clearview AI, the notorious facial recognition company that scraped the Internet to produce what…
Oakland Privacy Hiring 2025-2026 Privacy Rights Fellow
Application Deadline extended to Friday February 21st at midnight Pacific time. Oakland Privacy has once again been generously funded by the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment for a part-time fellow to aid us in our work and help…
What’s The Deal With Shotspotter?
Oakland is among many cities across the country grappling with whether to keep or dump the controversial gunshot detection system, Shotspotter in the wake of ongoing concerns about false alarms, and over-policing. Chicago recently ended their contract, the largest in…
Prominent Human Rights Groups Call on CA Governor to Protect Data from Trump
Human rights organizations called for Governor Newsom and other California leaders to take immediate action to protect Californians’ data privacy from anticipated attempts by federal and out-of-state law enforcement agencies to violate residents’ fundamental rights under the incoming Trump-Vance administration.…
Elon Musk, Disinformation and Us
On November 14, X, formerly known as Twitter until its acquisition by billionaire Elon Musk, filed suit in federal court to overturn a recently passed California law, AB 2655 (Berman). AB 2655, which is scheduled to go into effect on…
23AndMe Meltdown
One of the world’s largest DNA collections in private hands, ancestry testing company 23AndMe with over 14 million genotypes, seems headed for a chaotic ownership change after CEO Anne Wojcicki warned of incoming bankruptcy and the entire board quit. While…