Shotspotter Accused Of Fabricating and Falsifying Evidence in Rochester Police Shooting

 

Shotspotter, or SSTI Inc, the Newark, CA-based manufacturer of gunshot detention sensors that are in wide use in police departments around the country and many in the Bay Area, is a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit. The case alleges that Shotspotter conspired with the Rochester Police Department in the attempted framing of a police shooting victim with 4 felonies by altering their forensic report twice and then misplacing the original audio file.

Silvon Simmons was shot three times in April of 2016, charged with attempted murder, assault, and two counts of criminal weapon possession, incarcerated from April of 2016 to October of 2017 and finally acquitted of all charges. He filed a lawsuit against the Rochester PD and Shotspotter in August of 2018 for illegal search and seizure, false arrest, false imprisonment, the use of excessive force, falsification of evidence, malicious prosecution, and denial of a fair trial.

The civil rights complaint against Shotspotter can be read here.

Oakland Privacy member Tracy Rosenberg wrote about the case. Find Us One More Shot. 

License Plates To Border Patrol

Recent public records requests have confirmed that as of February 2018 at least three Bay Area Sheriff Departments were sharing license plate reader scans they collected with the San Diego sector of the Border Patrol via the Vigilant Solutions platform LEARN. The three confirmed Departments are Contra Costa, Marin and San Mateo. See sharing reports below.

Body Camera Video Said To Expose Lies in October Taser Death

After watching police body camera videos of her brother’s death by taser at the hands of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department, Ebele Okobi posted on Facebook about the death of 36 year old Chinedu Okobi.

“They were shocking because they contradicted, in every single particular, the statement that the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office released and to which San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe referred in multiple news outlets after my brother’s murder.”

34 Organizations Unite To Release Principles For Privacy Legislation

 

Washington – Today, 34 civil rights, consumer, and privacy organizations join in releasing public interest principles for privacy legislation, because the public needs and deserves strong and comprehensive federal legislation to protect their privacy and afford meaningful redress.

Irresponsible data practices lead to a broad range of harms, including discrimination in employment, housing, healthcare, and advertising. They also lead to data breaches and loss of individuals’ control over personal information. Existing enforcement mechanisms fail to hold data processors accountable and provide little-to-no relief for privacy violations.

The following can be attributed to JP Massar, Organizer at Oakland Privacy:

“We must not only watch the watchers, and regulate the sellers of our information. We must begin to unravel the information panopticon that has already formed. This is a start.”

Who’s Behind ICE – Empower LLC Report from Con Mijente, NIP and IDP

 

New report pulls together all the extant pieces of the deportation machine and the information technology that fuels it, highlighting the roles of Amazon’s cloud storage and Palantir’s ICM and Falcon software, Forensic Logic’s Coplink data brokers Thomson Reuters and Vigilant Solutions, and biometrics company Gemalto, among others.