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…
Every March, the Department of Homeland Security gifts Bay Area law enforcement with funds for new equipment through the Bay Area UASI. 55 out of 146 requests will be fulfilled and the winners are …. The City of Vallejo and…
25 civil society groups, led by the Open Technology Institute at New America and including Oakland Privacy, sent a letter objecting to the EARNIT Act, which seeks to weaken encryption standards. The letter states: “By setting the stage for adoption…
An open letter from an assortment of civil rights groups, including Oakland Privacy, asked university administrators to keep their campuses free of facial recognition. On March 2, students and faculty at schools across the country will organize to reject facial…
A state audit of license plate reader use by CA law enforcement agencies requested by State Senator Scott Weiner concluded that existing policies were largely not compliant with existing state law and that laws needed to be strengthened. The CA…
In celebration of Data Privacy Day (earlier this week), and the operational start of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), privacy advocates invited CA legislators to take the law out for a spin. Our practice companies: Tik-ToK, a youth-oriented social…
California’s statewide privacy coalition weighed in on the regulatory plans for the California Attorney General to administer and enforce the California Consumer Privacy Act. The verdict? Pretty good job by Becerra’s office, but a few things can always be better.…
California’s new counter-terrorism via social services program, Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE), which is a state version of the federal Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program, has run into a big problem. A hate speech problem. A group called the Clarion Project,…
On October 12th, KGO-FM consumer affairs reporter Michael Finney sat down with Oakland Privacy’s Mike Katz-Lacabe to answer the question of whether it matters if your doorbell is a spybot. Here is their conversation.
A surveillance watchdog’s job is never done. As we try to convince cities, counties, transit districts and whoever else is watching us, to implement comprehensive oversight, the one-on-one method prevails El Cerrito may be considering a full transparency ordinance, but…