An op-ed appeared in the December 12th edition of the East Bay Times, authored by former Oakland City Councilperson Wilson Riles, regarding the surveillance equipment regulation ordinance now being created by the BART Board and its staff in consultation with the ACLU and Oakland Privacy. It begins:
In the aftermath of the election, many have come to understand a powerful surveillance state in the hands of the federal government, especially one that will have a CIA director who believes: “Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed” is a serious danger to the freedoms of all Americans.
Surveillance in the Bay Area must be carefully weighed against our civil liberties, and having data fed into federal databases, to be used to target our Muslim and undocumented neighbors, is something we cannot continue to allow…