Public records requests associated with the expose of Cleaview AI, a shady facial recognition startup that scraped billions of images from social media and then sold access to that database to at least 2,200 customers, reveal that the San Mateo…
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…
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…
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…
At the May 14 meeting of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the City of SF became the 10th jurisdiction in the country to adopt a comprehensive oversight protocol for the acquisition and use of surveillance tech. The 8-1 vote…
San Francisco’s surveillance transparency ordinance with a twist (a ban on municipal use of facial recognition software) took a giant step today towards…
This spring, the city of San Francisco will consider Oakland Privacy’s signature surveillance transparency regulation legislation, but with a twist. The Stop Secret Surveillance Act, introduced on January 29, 2019 by Supervisor Aaron Peskin and Board of Supes prez Norman…
On January 29th, San Francisco supervisor Aaron Peskin introduced the Stop Secret Surveillance Ordinance in the City and County of San Francisco. The surveillance transparency measure follows the November 2018 passage of Proposition B, a “Privacy First” initiative approved by…
A coalition of more than 80 racial justice, faith, and civil, human, and immigrants’ rights groups, including Oakland Privacy, today sent letters to Microsoft, Amazon, and Google demanding the companies commit not to sell face surveillance technology to the government.…
35 civil rights organizations (including Oakland Privacy) joined a sign-on letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to desist from marketing facial recognition technology to the government. Public records requests reveal that the company has developed and sold a prototype product…