Oakland Privacy

CA’s New Digital License Plates Won’t Have GPS Trackers

by Tracy Rosenberg • August 24, 2022 • 0 Comments

The license plates on your car already pass through a blanket of automated license plate readers on CA roadways. For even more surveillance, new digital license plates becoming available from the CA DMV were planned to have embedded GPS tracking.

The embedded license plate trackers, which would have been available for an upcharge, had serious impacts for household cars in domestic violence and coercive control scenarios. Over a period of two years and two different bill authors, Assembly Bill 984, sponsored by manufacturer Reviver, continued to insist that CA personal vehicles could be outfitted with the surreptitous trackers.

A coalition of privacy advocates and domestic violence advocates kept pushing and finally the digital license plate product with GPS tracking was removed from the program for personal vehicles. Victory!

Transparency Ordinance, Video Surveillance

Lawsuit Filed To Stop Public Camera Exemption in Berkeley

by Tracy Rosenberg • August 23, 2022 • 0 Comments

On August 22, 2022, Oakland Privacy, along with Berkeley residents Adolfo Cabral, J.P. Massar and Cindy Shamban filed a lawsuit against the City of Berkeley seeking to end the City’s decision to exempt public cameras they are deploying on major intersections from the city’s surveillance transparency lawsuit.

The suit asks for the camera usage policy to come up for noticed public comment and receive a vote from the City Council, for the usage policy to be legally enforceable and for annual reporting on camera usage and metrics.

Wine Country ALPRS

by Tracy Rosenberg • August 22, 2022 • 0 Comments

Yet another city is contemplating a dive into mass surveillance via automated license plate readers. St. Helena, CA, mostly known for wineries and upscale restaurants, is considering adding the devices to the town’s streets.

As usual, the item has been placed on the City Council consent calendar in order to minimize conversation and community input. Here’s our letter asking them to take it off the consent calendar (and other things).

Local press coverage: Napa Valley Register: St Helena City Council Wants Public Input Before License Plate Readers

A Drone in the Backyard

by Tracy Rosenberg • July 19, 2022 • 0 Comments

Neighbors of Highland Hospital, Alameda County’s primary public hospital, were disturbed by a drone hovering about their homes at low altitude (so low that one neighbor said she could feel the vibrations from the drone underneath her feet) gathering footage from their yards and the curtilage of their home. Including themselves if they happened to be gardening or hanging out in their yards.

The drone originally showed up in April and then returned on July 1st. The drone operator told homeowner Mara Velez after she complained, that the images were being collected for a marketing video commissioned by the hospital. Velez emailed the hospital and during the drone’s second appearance, a hospital employee accompanied the drone operator and, anticipating Velez’ unhappiness with the low-flying and invasive drone, told her the health system’s attorneys had informed them they weren’t “doing anything wrong”.

But they were.

San Diego Passes Regulatory Ordinance … With A Hole

by Tracy Rosenberg • July 19, 2022 • 0 Comments

To conclude a 2+ year process initiated by the SD Trust Coalition, the City of San Diego adopted (first reading) a surveillance transparency ordinance, but not before amending it to exclude from oversight the activities of the 19 different law enforcement task forces that the San Diego Police Department participates in.

San Diego’s police chief pressed for the amendment and claimed the SDPD would have “no choice” but to withdraw from multiple task forces due to non-disclosure agreements that he said prohibit providing any information about what the task forces are doing to an oversight body.

The amendment passed the Council narrowly, on a 5-4 vote, but attempts to get the amendment withdrawn before adoption failed. So amended, the transparency ordinance passed in a unanimous vote.

The San Diego Police Department is a heavy participant in multi-agency task forces, including some that likely focus on border security issues, so their exclusion from oversight is a big deal. The ordinance will govern unilateral use of equipment by the San Diego Police Department when it goes into effect.

Transparency Ordinance

Statement from Oakland Privacy on The Proposed L.A. Police Commission Surveillance Board/Advisory Body

by Tracy Rosenberg • June 29, 2022 • 0 Comments

Statement from Oakland Privacy (https://oaklandprivacy.org) on Proposed Los Angeles Police Commission Surveillance Board/Advisory Body

We release this statement as the citizens advocacy group that promoted and helped to implement what has become known as the “Oakland model” of surveillance activism and regulation. The body in Oakland that eventually became the Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission was generated in and endorsed by the community and local activists. It came into being with local activist support and its existence stems directly from their work.

Whatever the proposal from Secure Justice and others is, or is not, it is absolutely not the “Oakland model” if it is overriding the local activist community. We believe it is up to the Los Angeles community how they want to engage with their police department and regulatory bodies about surveillance tools in their city and how, and if, they are used. It can not and will not work in any other way.

The proposal should be taken off the table due to significant community opposition.