Transparency Ordinance, Uncategorized

Vallejo Will Have a Surveillance Advisory Board: We’re Just Not Sure When

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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 surveillance advisory board.

The ten minute presentation (you can view the slides below), was followed by a 30 minute conversation when each and every one of the 7 council members weighed in to support the proposal, confirming the conceptual approval that also had unanimous support on May 26th.

A municipal ordinance to create and seat the 10-member advisory body had been provided on June 10th and reviewed by the mayor’s staff. However, when pressed for a date for the ordinance vote, the City Council hedged a bit and pointed, no doubt correctly, to the overwhelming workload for the City Attorney. The ordinance is three and a half pages long.

The City Attorney later punted and said it could be prioritized if the Council wanted it prioritized. Vallejo City Council? The next step is yours. We’re waiting.

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Video Surveillance

Fourth Circuit En Banc Order on Aerial Spy Planes

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On June 24, an en banc panel of the Fourth Circuit of Appeals issued a ruling in Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v City of Baltimore that the aerial high definition surveillance planes flown over Baltimore were an unconstitutional violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against warrantless searches, citing Carpenter v United States. You can read the decision below.

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Drones

City of Hayward Seeks to Deploy Drones

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Update: On July 13, the Hayward City Council approved the drone purchase on a 5-2 vote, but required city adminstration to return with a fully operational policy prior to deployment.

After initially backing off due to community concerns, the Hayward Police Department has renewed its request for an unspecified number of drones for use by the Police and Fire Departments. The preliminary request was tabled until a usage policy was prepared and a report done by the City’s IT department on information security.

The two reports will be presented with the request for purchase at the Hayward City Council meeting on July 13 at 7:00pm. The drones are item 3 on the agenda.

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Uncategorized

Castro CBD Rejects Gift of Networked Camera System from Tech Billionaire

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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 camera systems which are assembled and installed by a vendor called AVS, have been promoted by the cop nonprofit SF SAFE as a quasi private/public solution for property and nuisance crimes including auto theft, shoplifiting and graffitti.

AVS camera systems have already been installed in the city’s Downtown, Tenderloin and Japantown districts. The Downtown camera system was accessed for real time monitoring of the June 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, which is currently being litigated in the state courts.

Castro community groups including both LGBTQ democratic clubs, the Harvey Milk Club and the Alice B. Toklas Club, the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District, and the neighboring United to Save The Mission came out strongly against the proposal, as did the Castro Merchants Association.

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Uncategorized

Bad Apple Open Source Suite: Tools for Police Accountability

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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 commissions b) a searchable collection of public records act templates c) a growing database of officers and investigative reports and d) a private tip submission line.

All of the technology powering Bad Apple is completely open source (https://GitHub.com/P5vc) and released under a CC-BY-SA-4.0 license, allowing for maximum transparency. The Bad Apple website is available in both English and Spanish, and is designed to be completely accessible.

Read more here.

Uncategorized

Berkeley Adopts First Military Controlled Equipment Regulation in the U.S.

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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. The effort was spearheaded by council woman Kate Harrison, supported by mayor Jesse Arreguin and council members Ben Bartlett and Terry Taplin and passed unanimously. Similar legislation is on tap in Oakland and on a statewide level, in David Chiu’s Assembly Bill 481.

Controlled equipment regulation requires council-approved use policies for a list of military and military-style equipment, approval prior to acquisition, and annual reporting on use metrics. The law follows a startling increase in proto-military equipment owned by municipal police departments over the past two decades, and several academic studies showing the use of such equipment neither prevents crime nor increases officer safety, but instead can escalate violence and excessive use of force incidents.