Oakland Privacy

City of Davis Unanimously Adopts Surveillance Transparency

by Tracy Rosenberg • March 20, 2018 • 8 Comments

The City of Davis gave a unanimous thumbs up to surveillance transparency on March 20 at the first reading of the ordinance that requires approval prior to equipment acquisition, use policies defining acceptable and unacceptable uses and annual audits on all surveillance and spying technology.

CCOPS (Community Control of Police Surveillance) ordinances have now been unanimously adopted in Santa Clara County, Berkeley and Davis. Oakland will take up a CCOPS ordinance in April as will the Bay Area Regional Transit District.

Capital Public Radio coverage.

Immigration and ICE, License Plate Readers

San Pablo Postpones $2.9 Million Dollar ALPR Contract With Vigilant

by Tracy Rosenberg • March 19, 2018 • 7 Comments

On March 19, a $2.9 million dollar expansion of San Pablo’s license plate reader system (already extensive) and a switch of vendors to troubled Vigilant Solutions was removed from the meeting consent calender, and then indefinitely postponed after local youth, Oakland Privacy and ACLU-Northern California voiced concerns.

The Council agreed to more community input prior to approving the expansion, including community meetings, and suggested the contract and policies be tightened to prevent 3rd party data sharing, particularly with ICE who signed a contract with Vigilant in January of 2018. One council member went so far as to suggest a million dollar financial penalty be written in to the contract with Vigilant in the event of a proven data leak that resulted in geolocation data being shared with ICE.

The indefinite postponment was voted in unanimously with all five Council members voting yes. San Pablo joins a series of California cities, including Alameda and Culver City, pushing the pause button on ALPR contracts with Vigilant Solutions.

East Bay Express coverage

Vigilant LPR Database Sharing Example

FOIA Documentation on ICE Access to Vigilant LPR Databases

The Verge coverage of the backlash against Vigilant

Immigration and ICE

New Thomson Reuters Contract With ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations

by Tracy Rosenberg • March 17, 2018 • 0 Comments

Information services and journalism mega-corporation Thomson Reuters has signed another contract to provide data to ICE. This latest contract, which runs through 2023, is with ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and tracks 500,000 alien residents in the United States every month. Thomson Reuters products include the Reuters News Wire, Westlaw Legal Solutions, eDiscovery Point, Lipper Fund Research, Eikon Financial Analysis, World-Check, Datastream, Elektron Data Enterprise Management, FlexTrade Spark, REDI, Checkpoint, OneSource, Onvio, and CLEAR,

New Orleans Mayor Cancels Secret Palantir Contract

by Tracy Rosenberg • March 15, 2018 • 0 Comments

Two weeks after criminal justice reporter Ali Winston revealed the City of New Orleans Police Department had a secret predictive policing program with Palantir Software that neither the public nor the City Council knew about, outgoing mayor Mitch Landrieu cancelled the contract.

Berkeley’s City Council Unanimously Approves Groundbreaking Surveillance Ordinance

by Lou Katz • March 14, 2018 • 6 Comments

After twenty months of review by multiple citizen commissions, privacy advocates, city staff, and elected officials, on March 13, 2018, the Berkeley City Council unanimously approved a powerful new law aimed at protecting privacy rights.

Based on a model created by the ACLU, the ordinance requires that all surveillance technology proposals first undergo a public discussion to determine the potential benefits, costs, and concerns of such an acquisition and its use in the community, and that the benefits outweigh the costs and concerns. Accountability and ongoing oversight are maintained with annual reporting requirements that will provide the community with information about how the equipment is being used.

With the historic vote, Berkeley became the first city in the nation to enact this type of ordinance. The County of Santa Clara unanimously passed a similar ordinance in 2016, becoming the first entity in the nation to take such an approach. The city of Davis is expected to enact a similar version on March 20.

SF ICE Spokesperson James Schwab Quits Citing False Statements

by Tracy Rosenberg • March 13, 2018 • 0 Comments

James Schwab, spokesperson for the ICE Northern California headquarters located at 630 Sansome Street in San Francisco has resigned from his position. Scwab said the Trump Adminstration including Acting ICE Director James Homan and AG Jeff Sessions made false and misleading statements about the Northern California “revenge on sanctuary cities” raids by ICE at the end of February 2018.

Schwab said to the San Francisco Chronicle: ““I quit because I didn’t want to perpetuate misleading facts. I asked them to change the information. I told them that the information was wrong, they asked me to deflect, and I didn’t agree with that. Then I took some time and I quit.”

He continued, ““I didn’t feel like fabricating the truth to defend ourselves against (Schaaf’s) actions was the way to go about it,” he said. “We were never going to pick up that many people. To say that 100 percent are dangerous criminals on the street, or that those people weren’t picked up because of the misguided actions of the mayor, is just wrong.”

Read the complete story here.