License Plate Readers, Video Surveillance

Kaiser Conducting Mass Surveillance of its Members

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Kaiser Permanente has been conducting mass surveillance of its members for years and is sharing that information with law enforcement.

Public records requests and publicly-available information have revealed that numerous Kaiser Permanente facilities in California have installed surveillance cameras that capture information about every vehicle that enters a facility. The cameras function as automated license plate readers (ALPRs) but also capture an image of anything that triggers a motion sensor.

KPIX-TV Coverage – https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/kaiser-permanente-license-plate-readers-privacy-advocates-allege-not-following-sb34/

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Cell Site Simulators

There They Go Again

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City of Pasadena agendizes purchase of a cell site simulator (stingray) with no usage policy

Pasadena, the Socal city that among other things houses Cal-Tech, is following in the City of Vallejo’s inglorious foosteps by putting the purchase of a (completely unnecessary) cell site simulator or stingray on an upcoming agenda for a vote – without the usage policy required by state law (AB 741-2015).

Oakland Privacy’s 2021 lawsuit against the City of Vallejo re-affirmed state law and instructed cities and counties throughout the State to follow it.

Our letter to the Pasadena City Council telling them not to break the law is below.

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Transparency Ordinance

The Threats of London Breed

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Four years after the passage of San Francisco’s surveillance ordinance by a vote of 10-1, SF mayor London Breed is threatening to ask city voters to gut it via ballot inititative. Breed’s proposed ordinance would, among other things, allow surveillance tech like drones which are not currently used by the SF Police, to be adopted for a year before the city’s Board of Supervisors could approve, disapprove or adopt a use policy. The new year-long free zone could also apply to the killer robots, whose deployment last year was halted by the Board of Supervisors.

The Board of Supervisors seems unlikely to collaborate in putting the initiative on the ballot, so Breed’s path to San Francisco voters would likely be through paid ballot signature collection firms.

Press coverage of the proposed Breed ballot measure is below.

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Drones, Police Militarization

Alameda County Militarized Equipment

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In the coming weeks, Alameda County will be putting forward for a public vote their inventory and usage policys for the county sheriff’s large arsenal of military equipment. ALCO, partially as a result of their operation of the large correctional facility at Santa Rita, is one of the most militarized police departments in California. This is not news to participants in Bay Area protests.

There are two particular areas for focus.

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Data Privacy, Facial Recognition, Fusion Centers, Immigration and ICE, License Plate Readers, Public Records, Risk Assessment, Social Media, Use of Force and Tasers, Video Surveillance

The Saga of AB 1463 and Other Sacto Tales

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The 2023 legislative season in CA’s state capital has come to a close. Oakland Privacy intervened on your behalf on over 65 bills (a world record), piping up in support, opposition or demanding changes. Our final batting average in sign/veto requests to Governor Newsom was 20-4 (i.e. 20 times the governor did what we asked, 4 times he did not). Our own sponsored bill, AB 1463 (license plate readers) stalled in Senate Judiciary, but will come back for a second try in 2024. It is 3 stops from the governor’s desk!

Some highlights and lowlights to follow:

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Data Privacy

Time to Ditch Chrome

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The Chrome Privacy campaign sought to intervene in Google’s reworking of advertising cookies to increase user privacy. Um….. that didn’t work. Google’s long-running “Privacy Sandbox” is more like a privacy tar pit. It does inhibit the activities of third party cookies in the browser, but only in the interests of the company itself acquiring and stockpiling more data from its web browser.

The good news? You don’t have to use Chrome. There are better options across the technology spectrum including Firefox, Safari, Brave, Opera and Vivaldi – and it is time to make the switch. We wish Google had listened because Chrome is a fast browser. But they choose to throw privacy overboard and it is time for users who care about privacy to throw Chrome overboard.

We tried. A petition with 40,000 signatures did not deter Google. Here is our short video and webinar presentation from June of 2023 before the “Sandbox” (ugh) landed.

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