Feinstein Says “Opt-In, Not Opt-Out”.

At Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Hearing on consumer privacy regulation, California’s senior Senator Dianne Feinstein called for affirmative opt-in requirements for sales of consumer data, rather then the more conventional ability to opt-out.

The change to an affirmative opt-in requirement is one of the features of AB1760, the Privacy For All Act, which would strengthen California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

A Short History of Urban Shield.

On March 14th, 2019, the Bay Area Urban Areas Security Initiative Approval Authority voted unanimously to take the monies for Urban Shield and other emergency preparedness programs usually distributed to Alameda County and redistribute them around the Bay Area, to San Francisco, the North, East and South Bays.

Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Ray Kelly said the vote by the UASI board effectively ends Urban Shield.

Urban Shield SWAT Drill and Weapons Expo Suspended for 2019

At the March 14 meeting of the DHS Approval Authority in Dublin, the Urban Shield SWAT drill and weapons show was suspended for 2019, after the Alameda County Board of Supervisors endorsed a 60-recommendation package to demilitarize the disaster preparedness exercise.

The Homeland Security funding body indicated a new RFP for a regional emergency exercise would be issued in 2019. The suspension, and practical end, of Urban Shield, follows five years of escalating community complaints about racism, xenophobia, sanctuary violations and the event’s violent scenarios.

Alameda County Board Chair Richard Valle, who attended the DHS meeting, asked Homeland Security to “forgive him for his compassion” and read aloud several of the recommendations for change, saying he had been “driven to vote for them.”

Oakland Privacy press release 3-15-2019

Operation Stonegarden – Police On The Border Post SB 54

The Aaron Swartz Day Police Surveillance Project is a public records project that seeks to find out and transparently report on surveillance equipment in use in the State of California.

The project has filed over 200 public records requests with several California cities and counties including Sacramento, San Diego, Monterey, Ventura, Fresno, Long Beach, Oxnard, Calexico and Bakersfield.

One of the items being researched is MOU’s with other law enforcement agencies. Calexico participates in Operation Stonegarden, a DHS program that deputizes police officers in border-adjacent counties to assist Customs and Border Patrol. California passed the California Values Act -SB 54 (“sanctuary state”) legislation in the fall of 2017 limiting the state’s role in immigration enforcement. Imperial County’s MOU was signed after SB54 was enacted by former Governor Jerry Brown in October of 2017.

SF’s Stop Secret Surveillance Act

This spring, the city of San Francisco will consider Oakland Privacy’s signature surveillance transparency regulation legislation, but with a twist.

The Stop Secret Surveillance Act, introduced on January 29, 2019 by Supervisor Aaron Peskin and Board of Supes prez Norman Yee, adds a total ban on the use of facial recognition software by city government.

This is the first time a SERO ordinance has pre-emptively declared that the use of a particular kind of surveillance tech is, ipso facto, unacceptable for use by the government.