by J.P. Massar Passing legislation is only half the battle. Without oversight by watchdogs, be they legislators or public-interest organizations or both, executives can easily ignore inconvenient laws that increase their workload or their budget. Without pushback, the interpretation of…
by Mike Katz-Lacabe According to a $60,000 grant the Novato Police Department recently received from the Bay Area Urban Areas Security Initiative, new automated license plate readers (ALPRs) will be installed on Highway 37 to track terrorists. However, no suspected…
Santa Clara County passed the first surveillance transparency ordinance in the United States on June 7, 2016. They remain the only county in the nation to have a surveillance oversight law in effect. (The others are in cities or regional…
30 civil rights groups are asking the Seattle Port Commission to rescind its sanction of face recognition technology at Seattle-Tacoma Airport. The Port Commission, which oversees the Northwest’s largest international airport, had voted unanimously to collaborate with Customs and Border…
Community groups are continuing to advocate against the spread of Shotspotter gun detection technology. In Columbus, Ohio, a viral video of police abuse following a Shotspotter alert enraged the community and incited advocates who “noted the consistency of the technology…
by Mike Katz-Lacabe The Vallejo Police Department cited ferry terrorism as part of its $30,000 grant application for license plate readers, calling the ferry “a viable threat for a terrorist act.” According to the grant application, the “Grant Funds will…
Privacy advocates, including Oakland Privacy, commented on the second iteration of operational rules for the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, which the AG hopes to begin enforcing on July 1, 2020. The statewide coalition of privacy groups asked the…
Public records requests associated with the expose of Cleaview AI, a shady facial recognition startup that scraped billions of images from social media and then sold access to that database to at least 2,200 customers, reveal that the San Mateo…
On March 10, the Berkeley City Council completed their mandatory review of body worn camera policy under the surveillance transparency (CCOPS) ordinance passed in the City in March of 2018. Surveillance transparency laws require the legislative body to formally approve…
On March 11, the Public Safety committee of the Santa Cruz City Council unanimously recommended passage of a surveillance transparency ordinance for the City of Santa Cruz. The proposed ordinance includes a complete ban on the use of predictive policing…