Drones, Predictive Policing

Oakland City Council Approves Drone Use and Bans Predictive Policing and Biometric Surveillance

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In a busy surveillance day at the Oakland City Council, the council approved a use policy for drone use in Oakland. The city currently does not own any drones, but has borrowed from the stable of drones owned by the Alameda County Sheriff. The approval of the use policy means that use would no longer trigger an individual exigent use report each time it happens, but would just be reported on annually. The City Council also mandated that the city’s general fund not be used to purchase drones, so it is expected that the city will pursue drone purchases with an upcoming COPS or UASI grant funding cycle.

The Council also also approved revisions to the surveillance transparency ordinance approved in 2018 that would expand the existing facial recognition ban to include allied forms of biometric surveillance and make official that the use of predictive policing software like Predpol would not be used in Oakland. The city had already declared that it would not use Predpol and similar predictive programs in 2015.

Transparency Ordinance

AB 1185 Letter to the Journal

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After a 2 year long process, AB 1185, which allows either a county board of supervisors (by vote) or county residents (by referendum) to set up a sheriff oversight board with subpoena power, is a law.

On the last day of the 2020 legislative session, AB 1185 author Kevin McCarty filed a letter to the journal specifying that the intent of the legislation was to grant supervisory authority to the County Board of Supervisors over all county officers, including the Sheriff.

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Ring, Video Surveillance

Ringing Alarm Bells

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A study of implicit bias in consumer surveillance device use in San Francisco

Noting the rapid spread of Ring/Law Enforcement collaborative agreements in Northern California, Oakland Privacy embarked on a study of the content that device owners in San Francisco post to the Ring smartphone application “Neighbors”.

Working with a sample set of 131 videos drawn from the city of San Francisco and scraped by researchers at MIT, our volunteers reviewed the videos (several times) and accompanying post content.

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Video Surveillance

SF Police Sued Over Public/Private Camera Use To Surveil BLM Protests

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Update 1/27/2020: On January 26, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution to a) disclose annually to the City any donations received in excess of $100 and not accept donations that are anonymous b) b) shall not use any surveillance technology without receiving pre-approval from the Board of Supervisors for the intended use and purpose.

Three San Francisco residents who participated in protests that followed the death of George Floyd, have sued the San Francisco Police Department for use of the camera network of the Union Square Business Improvement District to monitor those protests.

Hope Williams, Nathan Sheard and Nestor Reyes, represented by attorneys at the ACLU of Northern California and Electronic Frontier Foundation filed Williams vs San Francisco under San Francisco’s May 2019 surveillance oversight ordinance.

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Uncategorized

Oakland Public Safety Committee Debates JTTF Withdrawal

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Update: Oakland terminated its MOU with the JTTF task force on 10-20-20.

On October 13 at 2:3opm, Oakland’s Public Safety committee will debate a measure from City Council chair Rebecca Kaplan to withdraw the Oakland Police Department from the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). The City of San Francisco withdrew in 2017, and Portland, Oregon withdrew in 2019.

If the committee (members are Kaplan, Nikki Fortunato Bas, Noel Gallo and Loren Taylor), advances it, the measure will move on to the full City Council.