On May 15th, the City Council of Richmond, CA voted 6-1 to enact a Sanctuary City Contracting ordinance, sponsored by Councilmembers Jovanka Beckles and Ada Recinos. The Sanctuary City ordinance (model legislation can be found here) was developed by the…
Immigration rights activists from Pasos, supported by the San Jose/Sacred Heart chapter of Showing Up For Racial Justice, visited the Livermore, CA headquarters of license plate reader manufacturer Vigilant Solutions on the afternoon of Friday, March 11. After a…
Oakland Privacy’s goal of blanketing Northern California with community control of surveillance laws is coming true. But California has 57 counties and 482 cities. What if they all implemented surveillance transparency at once? That is what Senate Bill 1186 will…
Closing the circle begun many years ago, the City of Oakland ended the Domain Awareness Center saga, quietly and on consent, by passing the strongest community control of surveillance ordinance in the nation. Beaten on the calender by Santa Clara…
KQED Forum devoted a lengthy segment to Palantir, the software engineer of the surveillance state, following a lengthy Bloomberg report on the company. Oakland (and Oakland Privacy’s) work gets a little mention partway through along with some themes we’ve encouraged…
On April 17, the City Council of Alameda voted 4-1 to have staff prepare a Sanctuary City ordinance to prevent city business and monies from going to ICE data brokers or participants in “extreme vetting”. Sponsored by Vice-Mayor Malia Vella,…
Oakland Privacy joined 40 other national and CA-based organizations in support of SB 822, the second CA state Net Neutrality bill. SB 822 is a comprehensive net neutrality reform that not only reinstates (in California) the protections in the FCC’s…
At today’s Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting, 5+ hours of discussion ended with a decision that Urban Shield as currently constituted would end after the 2018 war games and exposition. The 4-1 vote, with Supervisor Scott Haggerty more or…
by Admin I’d like to tell you that my heart broke when I heard about the Parkland shooting in February. But how many times can the heart break? Considering how frequently mass shootings occur in the US, it’s hard to…
by J.P. Massar The future is here. An unholy mix of 1984, Minority Report and cyberpunk. In westernmost China, and increasingly everywhere in a country composing one seventh of humanity, the omnipresent surveillance state is a reality. Nithin Coca, in…