Neighbors of Highland Hospital, Alameda County’s primary public hospital, were disturbed by a drone hovering about their homes at low altitude (so low that one neighbor said she could feel the vibrations from the drone underneath her feet) gathering footage…
Category: Uncategorized
San Diego Passes Regulatory Ordinance … With A Hole
To conclude a 2+ year process initiated by the SD Trust Coalition, the City of San Diego adopted (first reading) a surveillance transparency ordinance, but not before amending it to exclude from oversight the activities of the 19 different law…
Oakland Privacy’s Year in Bullet Points – 2021
Some of the things Oakland Privacy had a hand in in 2021: Received the James Madison Freedom of Information Award. Passage of Oakland’s and Berkeley’s Militarized Equipment Regulation Ordinances. Creation of the BadApple toolkit for police accountability. Castro neighborhood in…
Help Us Welcome 2022 Privacy Rights Fellow Yadi Younse.
Oakland Privacy is thrilled to announce that Yadi Younse will be our 2022 Privacy Rights Fellow, a new part-time special projects position that has generously been funded by the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment. We had a dozen…
Announcing: OP Privacy Rights Fellowships
We are thrilled to announce that thanks to the generosity of the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment and the fiscal sponsorship of the Omni Commons, OP will be hosting paid part-time fellowships in 2021-2022 and again in 2022-2023.…
Surveillance and Mental Health
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…
Vallejo Will Have a Surveillance Advisory Board: We’re Just Not Sure When
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…
Castro CBD Rejects Gift of Networked Camera System from Tech Billionaire
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…
Bad Apple Open Source Suite: Tools for Police Accountability
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…
Berkeley Adopts First Military Controlled Equipment Regulation in the U.S.
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.…