On July 23, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors announced coming changes to their Use of Force (UOF) policies, partially in response to three taser fatalities at the hands of San Mateo County sheriffs in a year, most notably…
Author: Tracy Rosenberg
Oakland Passes Facial Recognition Ban
Following in San Francisco’s footsteps, the City of Oakland passed on first reading a modification of their Surveillance Transparency Ordinance that totally bans the use of facial recognition technology by the municipality. The municipal ban becomes the third in the…
Privacy Groups Preserve CA Consumer Privacy Act
The CA Legislature passed the California Consumer Privacy Act in a heated rush a year ago and just beat the clock for a planned statewide ballot initiative by a matter of hours. Consumer privacy advocates grumbled that the bill could…
So You Never Wanted To Be A Porn Star?
by J.P. Massar Well, now you may be, like it or not. Algorithms and processing have advanced to the point where your face may be substituted, digitally, seamlessly, and essentially undetectably (aka “deepfakes”), for that of a porn star, keeping…
Concerns About Facebook Currency
A coalition of privacy, civil rights and public interest groups sent a letter of concern about Facebook’s plan to introduce a digital currency. The groups say Facebook’s new cryptocurrency raises “profound questions about national sovereignty, corporate power, consumer protection, competition…
Richmond Cancels Vigilant Solutions ALPR Contract
Update: On June 25, the Richmond City Council voted 5-2 not to renew their contract with Vigilant Solutions. Richmond Standard The decision by the Council represents the first Bay Area municipal contract cancelled as a result of the passage of…
San Pablo Cops Sending License Plates to Border Patrol
In March of 2018, the small East Bay city of San Pablo delayed a $2.4 million dollar expansion of their Vigilant Solutions license plate reader surveillance system after community distress about Vigilant’s contract with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). A…
79 Million Bay Area License Plates to Homeland Security
Mike Katz-Lacabe reports that Homeland Security fusion center NCRIC, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, collected 79.2 million license plates from a variety of Northern California cities from June of 2018 to May of 2019. The City of Piedmont sent…
100+ Groups Demand A Senate Vote on Net Neutrality
More than 100 civil and human rights organizations, including Oakland Privacy, wrote to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to demand a vote on the Save The Internet Act, a bill which would restore Open Internet protections and passed the House…
Alameda County Facial Recognition
You never know what you’re going to find at a convention. At the 2019 IACP technology convention (International Association of Chiefs of Police), Electronic Frontier Foundation researcher Dave Maass found a facial recognition brochure from San Jose-based Vintra.io, which tagged…