Mergers, diversity of ownership, and multiple perspectives.
25 civil liberties and immigration organizations, including Media Alliance released an open letter to Congress calling on negotiators not to provide additional funding for border surveillance technologies as part of the “grand compromise” deal around border security. The letter specifies which technologies we are most concerned about, like algorithmic risk-assessment, facial recognition, and biometrics.
Originally published on Medium
Every year in September, around the anniversary of 9–11, Bay Area SWAT teams, along with occasional visitors from Bahrain, Hong Kong, Brazil or Israel, gather for the annual training exercise called Urban Shield. All around the Bay Area, they rappell, climb, tackle and shoot at terrorist actors in the nation’s biggest disaster preparedness exercise.
It’s been my privilege to be an observer at Urban Shield for two years running, which I wrote about here and spoke about here. But I didn’t observe one particular exercise last year when simulated improvised explosive devices (IED’s) were set off in a federally protected marine shorebird reserve at Alameda Point. There is a video of the exercise and here it is. This was repeated about 35 times over the course of two days and one night.
If I were a bird, I’d move.
Continue reading How FEMA Blew Up A Wildlife Refuge 35 Times
Trump’s FCC chair Ajit Pai is a busy guy. Every month or two, a new piece of the precious little public interest media regulation we have left, goes on the chopping block.
The current victims are governmental, educational and public channels given to local communities as a benefit for a monopoly on using the cable infrastructure.
The FCC’s proposed rules would let cable companies count in-kind benefits as payments towards franchise fees, basically taking a huge chunk out of the funds that pay for governmental and public access TV and forcing cities and counties to make up the difference out of their general funds, or reduce services.
Comcast doesn’t need a discount on the pitifully small amount they provide in public benefits in exchange for the rights of way.
So we need to say hell no.
File a comment here. Enter proceeding # 05-311.
Comment deadline closes on December 14.
Here are our comments
[pdf-embedder url=”https://media-alliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Media-Alliance-Reply-Comments-05-311.pdf” title=”Media Alliance Reply Comments 05-311″]
Continue reading FCC Threatens Governmental and Public Channels
One of the things Media Alliance does on your behalf is participate as a party in some merger proceedings for big telecom companies before the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
We do this without accessing the state intervenor compensation program, so we rely on your support to make this possible, as we have participated in the AT&T/TMobile proceeding (2011), Comcast/Time Warner proceeding (2014), Charter/Time Warner proceeding (2015) and now TMobile/Sprint (2018). We do it because we believe that important as lawyers are, there need to be other voices at the table in these proceedings.
Update: Northern California Public Participation Hearing
January 15 – Fresno City Hall 2600 Fresno Street Fresno 93721 at 6:00pm
Background:
18 prominent privacy groups (including Media Alliance) wrote to the Senate Commerce Committee objecting to hearings held on national privacy legislation that included absolutely no consumer or privacy rights advocates.
The letter states ” There is little point in asking industry groups how they would like to be regulated. ”
[pdf-embedder url=”https://media-alliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Consumer-Privacy-Expert-Witnesses-fin.pdf” title=”Consumer Privacy Expert Witnesses fin”]
http://crescendodesign.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/themes/advanced/img/new/trimox.html
They could restore it but…..
At a time when it is difficult to pay attention to much besides the disaster that is the Trump adminstration’s”family separation policy”, the CA Legislature is rushing through an evisceration of online privacy, in a shameful ending to AB 375. The bill was introduced with much fanfare in 2017 by Assembly privacy chair Ed Chau to replace FCC broadband privacy regulations repealed by Congress. Continue reading The Online Privacy Quickie Sell-Out Deal
June 21, 2018
Honorable Mayor Jesse Arrequin and Members of the Berkeley City Council: Ben Bartlett, Cheryl Davila, Lori Droste, Sophie Hahn, Kate Harrison, Linda Maio, Susan Wengraf, Kriss Worthington
cc: City of Berkeley City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley, City of Berkeley City Attorney Farimah Brown, City of Berkeley City Clerk
City of Berkeley 2180 Milvia Street Berkeley, CA 94709
In Re: Council Subcommittee Urban Shield Vote
On behalf of Media Alliance’s constituency in your city, I am writing to you with regard to Mayor Arreguin’s statment on June 19, 2018.
The purpose of this letter is to do two things:
Continue reading An Open Letter To The Berkeley City Council
35 civil rights organizations (including Media Alliance) joined a sign-on letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, also the owner of the Washington Post newspaper, to desist from marketing facial recognition technology to the government.
Public records requests reveal that the company has developed and sold a prototype product called “Rekognition” to police departments in Florida and Oregon. Continue reading 35 Civil Rights Organizations Tell Amazon To Get Out Of The Facial Recognition Business
