Reported by Jennifer Wadsworth at San Jose Inside “Given my work and knowing the company’s role in law enforcement and surveillance, I can say they’re a bit of a creepy choice,” says Mike Katz-Lacabe, who founded the Center for Human Rights…
This week on CounterSpin: “As a company, Microsoft is dismayed by the forcible separation of children from their families at the border,” the global tech company declared in a statement. “Family unification has been a fundamental tenet of American policy and law since the end of World War II.” The same Microsoft bragged a few months ago about ICE’s use of its Azure cloud computing services to “accelerate facial recognition and identification” of immigrants, though the post has since been altered to omit the phrase “we’re proud to support this work with our mission-critical cloud.”
The spotlight on the White House’s inhumane agenda on immigration and immigrants is exposing more than the devastatingly cruel practices in force at the border, but also the numerous big corporate and institutional players that are—often invisibly—enabling that agenda. And just like the agenda, the impact of these collaborations extends well beyond immigrant communities. We’ll talk about all that with organizer/advocate Tracy Rosenberg, executive director of Media Alliance and co-coordinator of Oakland Privacy.
By Admin By now, many of us have read the gut-wrenching reports of ICE agents separating immigrant families at the border, including children from their mothers. While this story won’t be my focus, it provides us with yet more confirmation…
As the primary election polls were starting to close, at a bit after 9pm Pacific on June 5, the Richmond City Council completed their second and ratifying vote on the Bay Area’s first Sanctuary City contracting ordinance, by a 5-1…
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…
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,…
These photos were produced by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in response to a public records request for photos of the 2017 war games exercise. These are culled from over 300 photos showing officers from the Homeland Security Investigations division…
On March 19, a $2.9 million dollar expansion of San Pablo’s license plate reader system (already extensive) and a switch of vendors to troubled Vigilant Solutions was removed from the meeting consent calender, and then indefinitely postponed after local youth,…