Background: The Berkeley City Council will consider a Surveillance Regulation ordinance that Oakland Privacy and its partners have been working on for a year and a half on December 5th. ———————– McGee – Spaulding Neighbors in Action: The Power of One…
Category: Transparency Ordinance
Oakland and Berkeley Get More Oversight Of Policing
In a busy night for the Bay Area, both Oakland and Berkeley, cities which will be considering surveillance equipment transparency ordinances in the next month, made important strides towards increasing community oversight of policing and law enforcement. In Oakland, an…
NYU Law Forum on “Privacy Localism” Features Oakland DAC Victory
On November 4, privacy experts from around the country convened at the NYU School of Law to talk about “Privacy Localism” or how local communities can fight back against the encroaching surveillance state. Oakland’s fight against the Domain Awareness Center…
The Undue Influence of Surveillance Technology Companies on Policing
This September 2017 article in the NYU Law Review by Elizabeth Joh gives a few shoutouts to the work of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission and OP member Mike Katz-Lacabe. Download the full article below. The Undue Influence – Joh
SB 21 Dies In Sacramento
California’s Assembly Appropriations Committee, following the lead of law enforcement agencies invested in the secret and unaccountable use of ever more complex surveillance technologies, killed California’s statewide transparency ordinance today, ensuring that communities will not get a say in…
It Took A Village To Stop A DAC
by JP Massar No one had a clue the thing even existed. Buried deep within the consent agenda of the Oakland City Council for years, appropriations for the Domain Awareness Center and the implications thereof had gone unnoticed. Until,…
An Open Letter To Those Who Have Nothing to Hide
by Admin I love a good argument. Most that I have these days tend to focus on civil liberties, and the issue of government surveillance comes up frequently. It’s usually during these debates, running on some soliloquy-within-a-soliloquy about the ever-increasing…
Statewide Surveillance Transparency Ordinance (SB21) Passes 6-3
In its last policy committee hearing in Sacramento, SB21, a statewide surveillance transparency ordinance, passed the Assembly Privacy Committee on a 6-3 vote. It now travels to Assembly Appropriations, the Assembly floor and then to the Governor’s desk.
In the hearing, law enforcement (DA and Sheriff’s Associations) and the League of CA Cities continued to state their opposition to public disclosure and community control of the use of surveillance technologies. They said a few amazing things along the way.
The Day of Many Votes
On July 11, a whole bunch of good things happened: Alameda’s Board of Supervisors formally convened a working group to draft a surveillance transparency ordinance for Alameda County; SB-21 (the statewide surveillance transparency ordinance) passed the Assembly Privacy committee –…
Oakland Privacy Commission – License Plate Readers
In this brief clip from the July 6 Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission meeting, Oakland Police Department Assistant Chief John Lois stated under questioning that he was aware of no legal authority that allows the collection of data on people…