Welcome to the Bay Area’s fifth local surveillance transparency ordinance in the City of Palo Alto, which approved their ordinance on an 8-1 City Council vote on the evening of September 20.
The heart of Silicon Valley began this movement in June of 2016 by passing the nation’s first municipal surveillance transparency ordinance and now Palo Alto has followed in Santa Clara County’s footsteps.
Congratulations and let the transparency begin!
UC Berkeley’s Center for Technology, Society & Policy made this video about their collaboration project with Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission where they modeled a research project in tracking the footprint of police-collected data using the CRIMs database.
CA Governor Jerry Brown will soon be in possession of two law enforcement transparency bills that faced huge odds getting to his desk, AB 748 and SB 1421
A recent panel at the DEFCON conference covered the expansive use of software in criminal justice and how adverserial testing can unlock the flaws, failures, gaps and biases that can mean the difference between life and death and freedom and capitivity. Presentation slides and panel video provided below. Very worth your time.
Reported by Jennifer Wadsworth at San Jose Inside
“Given my work and knowing the company’s role in law enforcement and surveillance, I can say they’re a bit of a creepy choice,” says Mike Katz-Lacabe, who founded the Center for Human Rights and Privacy.
Dozens of protesters who gathered outside Palantir’s Palo Alto headquarters last month voiced a similar sentiment, singling out the company’s $53 million “mission critical” contract with ICE, which dates back to the Obama administration but gained widespread attention under President Trump. They presented a letter to CEO Alex Karp demanding that he stop aiding federal efforts to deport millions of immigrants. The July 31 demonstration was part of a nationwide day of action—amplified on social media under the #WeWontBeComplicit hashtag—against businesses, schools and government entities linked to Trump’s deportation machine.
Read the full article here
With Oakland Privacy catalyzing the turnout, members of the ACLU, the EFF, DSA, Oakland Privacy, APTP, East Bay For Everyone, AROC, and the public spoke at the Board meeting with essentially one voice against BART staff proposals for increased surveillance, Thursday, August 9th… and it worked, at least temporarily.
On a 7-2 vote, with directors Joel Keller and Robert Raburn opposed, the board delayed action on an advanced surveillance system that uses computer analytics to track passengers’ movements, video monitors at stations showing real-time feeds, a ban on panhandling in paid areas of stations, accelerating efforts to erect taller fences and other barriers to make it more difficult to ride BART without a ticket and adding evening shifts for fare inspectors.
Oakland privacy members Brian Hofer, Tracy Rosenberg, Lou Katz and Don Fogg spoke during public comment, reminding the board that a surveillance equipment regulation ordinance, approved in theory over a year and a half ago, had still not had its language finalized nor come before the board – and needed to before any new surveillance equipment was approved.
Selected videos from the 2+ hours of public comment in opposition can be seen here.
The devil, however, is in the suburbs, where, it seems, advocates of Orwellian state surveillance lurk, according to one Board member:
Those items will be taken up at a board meeting next month, that, upon Keller’s insistence, will be held at night in one of the district’s suburban cities. After more than two hours of testimony from dozens of people who were almost universally opposed to the more stringent safety measures, he suggested their opinions represented “only half the story.”
Let’s just remember, as this quote from the 24th century suggests
“The road from legitimate suspicion to rampant paranoia is very much shorter than we think.”
that those of us who watch the watchers can never sleep.