by Lindsey Krantz
Why did I join Oakland Privacy?
I joined OP because surveillance scares me.
OP fights back and its camaraderie emboldens me.
I joined OP because mass outdoor surveillance leads to the criminalization of the status of homelessness.
Disproportionate levels of time spent under surveillance contribute to the cruel and unusual punishment inherent in the experience of homelessness.
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.
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.
A letter of support was filed showing broadbased support for the City of Berkeley to adopt a Surveillance and Community Safety Ordinance.
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.
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.