The #NoPVEinCalifornia coalition was successful in persuading the CA State Legislature to remove funding to staff the Preventing Violent Extremism program (renamed as Creating Safer Communities). The state program, modeled after the federal Countering Violent Extremism, doles out grants to…
Author: Tracy Rosenberg
1st Municipal Ban on Predictive Policing in Santa Cruz
The Central California city of Santa Cruz became the first city in the nation to ban the use of predictive policing software by their police department. The City Council voted 7-0 to end the use of the software by ordinance…
Fighting Local Surveillance: A Toolkit
Getting a surveillance transparency ordinance or a facial recognition ban passed in your town can seem like an overwhelming task. It’s not. You can do it! Oakland Privacy and ACLU of Northern California sat down to write a step by…
Oakland Privacy Sues Vallejo Over Stingray Purchase
by Mike Katz-Lacabe Update 6/1/2020 Oakland Privacy and resident-plaintiffs Solange Echeverria and Daniel Rubins sued the City of Vallejo over their recent stingray purchase. In the complaint, Oakland Privacy states that the purchase violated state law by voting to acquire…
Eternal Vigilance is the Price
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…
Novato to Track Terrorists with License Plate Readers on Highway 37
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…
Surveillance Transparency in Santa Clara County
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…
Seattle Port Commission Shouldn’t Collaborate with Border Patrol on Facial Recognition at SEATAC.
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…
Civil Rights and Racial Bias Issues Boil for Surveillance Vendor Shotspotter.
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…
License Plate Readers at Vallejo Ferry Terminal
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…