After 5 years, Urban Shield may end on February 26 …. with your help.
Since 2013, the Bay Area has been trying to transform Urban Shield from a highly militarized SWAT competition and weapons expo into a community-focused safety and resilence exercise
And now we are almost there.
Take action right now.
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Following community pressure after the October 3 death of Chinedu Okobi a 36 year old Black man who was tasered by San Mateo County Sheriffs after being stopped for “walking erratically”, San Mateo’s Board of Supervisors is convening a community forum on tasers.
The event will be held on the evening of Feb 11th at 400 County Center in Redwood City and will be preceded by a 5pm rally outside the County headquarters. Oakland Privacy (and one of our members as an individual) submitted comments to the Board, which can be read here.
In the first substantive ruling on whether Senate Bill 1421 applies to investigatory and disciplinary records on use of force and misconduct incidents that occurred prior to January 1, 2019, Contra Costa Superior Court judge Charles Treat ruled that it did, and resoundingly so.
The Oscar Grant Committee and Oakland Privacy joined families impacted by police violence in picketing in front of the courthouse prior to the Feb 8th hearing.
25 civil liberties and immigration organizations, including Oakland Privacy released an open letter to Congress calling on negotiators not to provide additional funding for border surveillance technologies as part of the “grand compromise” deal around border security. The letter specifies which technologies we are most concerned about, like algorithmic risk-assessment, facial recognition, and biometrics.
On January 29th, San Francisco supervisor Aaron Peskin introduced the Stop Secret Surveillance Ordinance in the City and County of San Francisco. The surveillance transparency measure follows the November 2018 passage of Proposition B, a “Privacy First” initiative approved by SF voters.
SF’s ordinance, which must sit for 30 days before a board policy committee can take it up, includes a total ban on the municipal use of facial recognition technology. If passed, it is believed it would be the first such ban in the nation.
Press coverage from The Verge, Metro UK, NBC, SF Examiner, Gizmodo, Mercury News, Ars Technica, SF Weekly, Wired, Slate, Atlantic
Type Investigations, formerly the Investigative Fund, looked into what happens when a city goes ahead and builds a Domain Awareness Center without a transparency ordinance in place.
St Louis did that with their “Real Time Crime Center”. Here is what happened.