by Ursula Curiousa “Do you think you’re being watched?” This question is as loaded as a gun, but commonly pops up in mental health screening protocols. So what if I do think multiple law enforcement agencies have access to the…
The Seattle Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a set of recommendation from the entinel Event Review (SER) of the first days of protests that took place in Seattle following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police.…
On July 13, the Vallejo City Council allocated time on the agenda for Oakland Privacy and the ACLU of Northern California to present on why the City, famous for an extremely high rate of police violence, would benefit from a…
On June 24, an en banc panel of the Fourth Circuit of Appeals issued a ruling in Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v City of Baltimore that the aerial high definition surveillance planes flown over Baltimore were an unconstitutional violation…
Update: On July 13, the Hayward City Council approved the drone purchase on a 5-2 vote, but required city adminstration to return with a fully operational policy prior to deployment. After initially backing off due to community concerns, the Hayward…
On Monday June 7, the board of the Community Benefits District in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood became the first SF CBD to reject a networked camera system being gifted to the city’s business districts by Ripple CEO Chris Larsen. Larsen’s…
The Aaron Swartz Day Police Surveillance Project teamed up with Priveasy to create a set of tools designed to assist in the ongoing fight for police and sheriff accountability. Bad Apple (https://BadApple.tools) contains a) a searchable database of verified oversight…
The City of Berkeley has moved ahead with an oversight and transparency ordinance for controlled military equipment like armored vehicles and assault rifles. To the best of our knowledge, they are the first city in the country to do so.…
Update: On April 27, the Vallejo City Council voted unanimously to move ahead with a citizen advisory board on surveillance and policing technology. The council plans to finalize adoption at the July 13 city council meeting after the adoption of…
A leak out of notorious facial recognition vendor Clearview AI to Buzzfeed News has led to a list of some 1800 police agencies where officers “tested” or “tried out” the service, running images through the facial recognition service which is…