Data Privacy

Big Brother Has A Little Sister

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By Admin

As November ended, Americans took pause and celebrated Thanksgiving, a time intended for friends and family, for showing gratitude and coexisting in peace. A time which, as a growing number of dissenting voices have pointed out, provides many of us cover from the well-blurred legacy of genocide that European colonists wrought on indigenous peoples, which would evolve into a centuries-long onslaught of murder and slavery conducted in the name of conquest, God and cost-efficiency.

I’ve always found it perversely fitting that the day after such prescriptive harmony we should pivot into Black Friday, a violent orgy that kicks off the beginning of a month-long celebration of the West’s most prominent modern religion: Commodity. Now more than ever, consumers seemed primed for distraction.

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Immigration and ICE

Sanctuary Journalism: ICE’s Data Broker Thomson Reuters

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By Tracy Rosenberg

(Originally published at Huffington Post)

U.S. media outlets have done a fairly good job outlining the injustices and cruelties of the broken immigration system and the rogue federal agency that enforces it: ICE. Abuses ranging from the blatantly illegal to the simply inhumane have been highlighted including the detention and attempted deportation of US citizens, removing brain tumor patients from the hospital, paying Motel 6 hotel desk clerks to turn in hotel guests, arresting parents while their infant children are undergoing emergency surgery, chasing domestic violence victims into court houses and trying to destroy records of in-custody deaths and rapes at detention centers.

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Transparency Ordinance

Community Support for Berkeley’s Surveillance Regulation Ordinance.

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 Background: The Berkeley City Council will consider a Surveillance Regulation ordinance that Oakland Privacy and its partners have been working on for a year and a half on December 5th.

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        McGee – Spaulding Neighbors in Action: The Power of One Neighborhood Rising:

University Avenue l Sacramento Street l MLK Boulevard l Dwight Way

November 29, 2017

To: Honorable Members of the Berkeley City Council
Kate Harrison, Ben Bartlett, Lori Droste,
Kriss Worthington, Mayor Jesse Arreguin, Linda Maio,
Susan Wengraf, Sophie Hahn, Cheryl Davila.
To: Council@cityofberkeley.info

From: McGee-Spaulding Neighbors in Action.

We write to you in strong support of the Surveillance Technology Use and Community Safety Ordinance introduced last year by Councilperson Worthington, and recommended unanimously to you by both the Peace and Justice and Police Review Commissions. This item is currently scheduled to appear before you during your December 5th meeting, as Item 23a.

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License Plate Readers

Alameda Health Systems Removes Hidden License Plate Reader From Highland Hospital Emergency Entrance

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From the East Bay Express: 11/30/2017 by Darwin Bond Graham

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A controversial automated license plate reader camera that was installed at the driveway entrance of Oakland’s Highland Hospital in 2014 has been removed by the hospital.

Director of Government and Community Relations for the Alameda Health System Terry Lightfoot said today that the process by which the surveillance tool was installed “warranted more vetting.”

As the Express reported last week, the camera was quietly set up three years ago as part of a larger construction project. Privacy advocate and researcher (and Oakland Privacy member) Mike Katz-Lacabe discovered the camera’s existence through a California Public Records Act request. 

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Immigration and ICE

Oakland Turns Out For Long-Delayed ICE Raid Hearing

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On November 28, after waiting for hours as the last item on the agenda, Oaklanders spoke up loudly about sanctuary city and ending all collusion, assistance or cooperation with Trump’s ICE.

A sampling of videos from the public comment session can be watched here. 

The public hearing followed a letter of inquiry from Oakland Privacy about the raid, Indybay’s comprehensive reporting, an independent investigation by Privacy Advisory Commission chair Brian Hofer determining that OPD’s assistance in the August 16 raid constituted a violation of the City’s sanctuary city legislation, an internal affairs complaint directed at OPD Chief Anne Kirkpatrick’s false public statements about the ICE raid, and an abrupt cancellation of the previously scheduled public hearing on November 14.

The city’s residents spoke powerfully about wanting city actions to comport with the values of the city’s residents and not federal xenophobia, racism and demonization of people of color and about OPD’s long and troubled relationship with Oakland residents. On the conclusion of the public comment session, the City Council indicated that a resolution by Desley Brooks and Rebecca Kaplan to end all cooperation, assistance, traffic control or interaction of any kind on future ICE raids would meet with council and mayoral approval. That resolution will be heard on December 5 at the Public Safety Committee.

 

Initial Press Coverage:

East Bay Times

San Francisco Chronicle

KTVU/Fox

Oakland North