Oakland Privacy

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Oakland Privacy’s Year in Bullet Points – 2021

by JP Massar • February 17, 2022 • 1 Comment

Some of the things Oakland Privacy had a hand in in 2021:

Received the James Madison Freedom of Information Award.
Passage of Oakland’s and Berkeley’s Militarized Equipment Regulation Ordinances.
Creation of the BadApple toolkit for police accountability.
Castro neighborhood in San Francisco rejecting a gift of surveillance cameras.
Settlement of Long Beach PD and Fresno Sheriff public records lawsuits
Creation of a Vallejo Surveillance Oversight Board.
Rose Foundation grant to fund an Oakland Privacy Fellow for two years.
Settlement of a public records lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department, with their agreement to satisfy all public records requests outstanding (literally 1000’s) over a period of 12-18 months.

Check out our doings for 2019.

Check out our doings for 2020.

Transparency Ordinance

SF Mayor Breed Attacks San Francisco Surveillance Transparency Ordinance

by Tracy Rosenberg • January 18, 2022 • 0 Comments

In a woefully inaccurate news release issued at 5pm on January 18, 2022, the mayor of San Francisco London Breed, describes San Francisco’s surveillance ordinance as an “obstacle” to law enforcement and declares an intention to modify it, by ballot initiative if necessary, to allow unfettered use of private camera networks for real-time monitoring by SFPD if a “public safety crisis” or “open-air drug market” is declared. Breed’s full press release can be read here.

Oakland Privacy responds to Mayor Breed’s false characterization of what SF’s surveillance ordinance allows here.

Tracy Rosenberg from Oakland Privacy comments: The use of any surveillance technology with impunity is a recipe for disaster. We’ve seen the building of a surveillance state with just these kinds of demands for unfettered and unregulated use. “Trust us” is not the answer for technology. It’s having clear rules of the road. San Francisco’s mayor and police department saying “we don’t want no stinking rules” is really disappointing. Rules are not “an obstacle,” they are a safety measure.”

SF Chronicle coverage

Cell Site Simulators, Public Records

FBI Will Neither Confirm or Deny the Existence of the Documents I Just Printed

by Tracy Rosenberg • December 18, 2021 • 0 Comments

This headline, from reporter Dell Cameron in a Gizmodo article about a federal lawsuit filed by the ACLU against the FBI, highlights the public records work of Oakland Privacy’s Mike Katz-Lacabe.

Here are 26 of them, compiled by Mike Katz-Lacabe at the Center for Human Rights and Privacy. I’m not a lawyer, but feel free to judge for yourself.
Gizmodo 12-17-2021

The FBI issued a Glomar response to public records requests for the documents, which had already been acquired and publicly displayed by Katz-Lacabe.

We now know what’s real, even if the FBI is free, for now, to pretend otherwise.
Gizmodo 12-17-2021

Immigration and ICE

San Mateo County Ends ICE Transfers

by Tracy Rosenberg • November 11, 2021 • 0 Comments

After a lengthy Truth Act Forum on November 3, San Mateo County Sheriff Carlos Bolanos announced that San Mateo County will no longer respond to notification requests from ICE.

In a statement, Bolanos said “It simply is not worth losing the trust of many members of the public by continuing to process these requests from ICE,” Bolanos said. “Our policy is now consistent with other Bay Area counties.

The change in policy came as a majority of the Board of Supervisors said they supported a change in policy, including supervisors Pine, Canepa and Slocum.

San Mateo, according to the Mercury News, accounted for 74% of the released inmates transferred to ICE in 2020 from the 9 Bay Area counties.

Public Records Class Action Lawsuit Against Oakland Police Department Settled

by Tracy Rosenberg • November 7, 2021 • 0 Comments

A class action lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department for outstanding public records, filed by 3 free-lance journalists (Scott Morris, Sarah Belle Lin, Brian Krans) and Oakland Privacy has settled. The City of Oakland agreed to release all outstanding public records requests to the Oakland Police Department filed from August of 2017 onwards within the next 15 months, with non-personnel records due in 6 months and records released under SB 1421 using the longer 15 month maximum.

Help Us Welcome 2022 Privacy Rights Fellow Yadi Younse.

by Tracy Rosenberg • November 3, 2021 • 0 Comments

Oakland Privacy is thrilled to announce that Yadi Younse will be our 2022 Privacy Rights Fellow, a new part-time special projects position that has generously been funded by the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment. We had a dozen excellent candidates and it was incredibly difficult to choose just one.

Yadi comes to Oakland Privacy after dipping into grassroots privacy activism with Pasadena Privacy for All, where she has set up privacy advocacy infrastructure and worked on Shotspotter and Facial Recognition issues with her local City Council.