At the September 9 meeting of the AC Transit Board of Directors, the board unanimously adopted a privacy policy for the cameras that will line the bus stops of the new rapid transit line from DT Oakland to San Leandro.…
A collective of journalists and researchers, including Oakland Privacy and our research director Mike Katz-Lacabe have sued the Oakland Police Department for delaying public records requests – for years and years. A pair of lawsuits, one initiated by journalists Scott…
Prominent consumer and privacy protection groups have joined together to support federal legislation ensuring the ability to buy goods and services with cash. The letter states: Noncash transactions generate vast amounts of data, recording the time, date, location, amount, and…
BART has filed their annual surveillance report on the 7 surveillance technologies in use on the Bay Area Rapid Transit System.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…