Bay Area activists continue to picket and protest at the headquarters of Palantir Technologies, the Palo Alto software company powering the Trump Administration’s deportation regime.
On one of the hottest days of the year, protestors rallied at the company’s Palo Alto building, covered the ubiquitous security cameras with umbrellas, and marched to (one of) Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s houses in Palo Alto to deliver a petition with 140,000 signatures asking Palantir to stop working for ICE.
The Associated Students at UC Berkeley have passed a resolution demanding that UC Berkeley terminate their contract with SSTI, Inc, the Newark-based manufacturer of Shotspotter gunshot detection microphones.
Logs received from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department show that a Cellebrite tool was used 30 times between October of 2018 and July of 2019 to access the contents of encrypted Apple devices.
On September 12, 2019, Oakland Privacy will be honored at the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Awards Ceremony for our surveillance activism.
Press Release – EFF
Press Release – Oakland Privacy
Update: November 12th is the day Berkeley’s automated license plate reader policy hits the council.
Berkeleyside: Berkeley Is Being Bamboozled
Update: On September 4, 2019, Berkeley’s Police Review Commission, which is empowered by the surveillance ordinance to provide recommendations regarding surveillance equipment usage polices, passed on the proposed license plate reader policy with two caveats – a) that the policy represented an expansion of scope beyond parking enforcement purposes and b) that the usage clause to “canvasss any crime scene” was unacceptably broad. The caveats allowed two commissioners to vote yes who were otherwise unwilling to do so, thus allowing the policy to move through the commission. The final vote with the caveats was 6-2-1. The license plate reader policy will be brought to the Council by BPD chief Greenwood later this fall.
In March of 2018, Berkeley passed a surveillance transparency ordinance. Nine months earlier, in July of 2017, the City Council (with 3 dissenting votes) expanded the City’s license plate reader “pilot program” by adding 15 additional readers and making the program permanent. At that meeting, the purpose of the ALPR equipment was clearly defined as parking enforcement and the issuing of parking citations.
Fast forward to 2019, and at a Police Review Commission subcommittee meeting on August 7th, things were a bit different.
A newly-released comprehensive list of ICE contracts from 2010-2018 released by Sludge has revealed a 2018 contract between the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications Agency (NLETS) and ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations. The contract document (dated September 21 2018 PR# 192118EROLESA 0053 is below.
The 2018 sole source contract is for $3.8 million over a five year period from 2018 to 2023. It’s purpose is to create a standardized list of crime codes. The contract states: “The work done under this contract will help ICE (and other state and national law enforcement agencies) conduct criminal history searches faster and with greater accuracy. This requirement directly supports the overall missions of ICE and ERO to identify, remove and arrest aliens who present a danger to national security, or are a risk to public safety, as well as those who enter the United States illegally or otherwise undermine the integrity of our immigration laws and our border control efforts.”