In September, the next door cities of Berkeley and Albany hold a street fair called the Solano Stroll, along the avenue that crosses both cities. The event attracts thousands of people. Areport filed with the Berkeley City Council due to the requirements of Berkeley’s surveillance ordinance framework revealed the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office flew drones “unobtrusively” over the event, focusing on the perimeter of the rooftops. The use of the sheriff’s department drones would not have been known to the public without the 2018 surveillance ordinance, which requires reports to the City Council after the temporary use of unpermitted technologies for exigent circumstances.
Oakland Privacy, founded in 2013, is an activist group devoted to fighting against both government and corporate surveillance and in defense of privacy rights and government transparency. We concentrate on state, regional and local matters, while advocating with other like-minded organizations at the national level.
We applied for and obtained a grant from the Rose Foundation to hire a part-time fellow to aid us in our work and help us expand its scope. The fellowship begins on October 31st, 2022 or as soon as possible thereafter for a duration of one year. Compensation is $1000/month for 40-45 hours per month.
This is a unique opportunity to do hands-on implementation of enhanced privacy rights and enact social change beyond research and white papers.
The Freeway Security Network was established to reduce freeway shootings after a number of high profile freeway shootings on Interstate 80 and Highway 4 in 2016, with $3.5 million from the California State Transportation Agency. However the number of freeway shootings actually increased after the system was in place.
By October 2019, the Freeway Security Network was operating with 24 surveillance cameras, 165 Shotspotter microphones, and 32 automated license plate readers (ALPRs) installed along State Highway 4 and Interstate 80.
Four Vigilant Solutions automated license plate readers on eastbound Interstate 80
As part of the Memorandum of Understanding establishing the Freeway Security Network, the CHP is required to submit an annual fiscal report documenting “the productivity of the Freeway Security Network in the investigation of freeway shootings, the recovery of felony vehicles, in Amber Alerts, in outside assists in criminal investigations and all other relevant data.”
To date, only one report has been submitted by the CHP to the California State Transportation Agency. The report shows that freeway shootings have actually increased since the Freeway Security Network became operational. According to the report, there were eight freeway shootings each in 2018 and 2019, but in just the first half of 2020, the number of freeway shootings increased to 14.
3 privacy activists, including OP member Mike Katz-Lacabe, have filed a class action lawsuit against Oracle Corporation for ongoing privacy violations. The plaintiffs are represented by the Lief Cabrasar law firm, which has worked on major privacy litigation.
The lawsuit, in federal court, alleges violations by data broker Oracle of the UCL (Unfair Competition Law), the California Invasion of Privacy Act and the Federal Wiretap Act.
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!
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.
