Update – August 28, 2019

California’s Department of Justice did investigate our claim of CLETS misuse against the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department. Unfortunately they did find the use of the CLETS database to run background check information on community observers and journalists at the former regional law enforcement SWAT drill and weapons expo to be an authorized use of CLETS. Their reasoning was that the many locations the former competition occupied during the first weekend in September were all “law-enforcement secured” locations and that the background checks were analagous to those run when a citizen or a reporter does a ride along with a beat cop out on patrol.

We’re not sure that we agree, for a couple of reasons. The Urban Shield exercises used spaces all over the Bay Area, as many as 50-75 different indoor and outdoor locations including parks, open space, hospitals and schools. The protected activities are not law enforcement actions, they are pretend scenarios with simunition and actors.

However, we are glad that CA DOJ did investigate and respond to our concern and the event that led to the concerns, Urban Shield, is no more. We encourage whichever agency eventually reinstates the regional training exercise not to repeat the automatic use of CLETS searches on event volunteers and journalists observing the exercises.

For the last two years (2017 and 2018) of the Urban Shield weapons expo and SWAT drill in Alameda County, I was a community observer. I went as a citizen to see how my tax dollars were being spent, and as an activist/journalist so I could describe the event to others and to the media. What I didn’t know is that in exchange the Alameda County Sheriff would access my driving record, parking tickets and legal history through CLETS, the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System.

Continue reading Using Criminal Databases On Observers: Urban Shield and CLETS →

By Tracy Rosenberg. Originally published at Medium.

In a much-heralded backroom deal to end all backroom deals, the State of California launched the California Consumer Privacy Act or CCPA, the “American GDPR” in June of 2018. Days before a statewide ballot initiative was to qualify for the ballot, with high poll numbers and a growing industry slush fund to fight it, California legislators Ed Chau, Bob Hertzberg, Bill Dodd and a few others huddled with real estate millionaire Alistair McTaggart, the initiative author, and decided what online privacy should look like.

The compromise they came up with has been equally lauded and criticized, depending where you sit on the privacy continuum. What everyone has agreed on is that the closed door and very rushed process has left lots of room for a 2019 bout of fixit-itis, with more than two dozen bills this year offering to repair, change, or modify part of the CCPA. The vast majority of these bills are from industry special interest groups, with only one or possibly two addressing the public interest at lage.

But let’s step outside the curtain for a moment and put the political shenanigans away and look at what is really at stake. The heart of CCPA is pretty simple. You should be able to ask a company how they are using your data and who they are selling it to. And you should be able to revoke your consent to the sale of your data. Not that hard to understand, but potentially a stake in the heart of companies that rely on monetizing collected data for targeting super-specific ads. It has been described as a service to receive personalized ads shaped to your specific interests, but many consumers have decided that say, seeing diabetic services ads everywhere you go on the Internet when you are diabetic, is more creepy than it is convenient.

Evidence is growing that when given an opportunity to opt out, many will make that choice. If they can. And that is a big if. Because here is one of the things that happened in that back room that you weren’t in.

Your opportunity to opt out came with another opportunity. The opportunity to pay a less advantageous price than someone who doesn’t choose to opt out. Basically, a privacy tax.It’s true that the privacy tax has to be “reasonably related to the value of your data”, a figure that has been argued about all over the tech press. But the privacy tax could apply every single time you opt out, over and over again across the full spectrum of companies that collect your data. Time to add a privacy section to the family budget.

It’s probably not surprising that a panopoly of little fees didn’t much bother a multi-millionaire. If you’re not struggling to make ends meet, who cares about a bunch of $5 or $10 nuisance fees to address a significant problem? But that is not reality for many California residents who are struggling with sky-high rents and wages that are not rising quickly, or fixed incomes, or periods of unemployment and/or gig labor. In Sweden, borrowers have options with firms like Sambla – but in California, not so much. Pitting privacy against food or rent or transportation is not a struggle privacy can win, despite polling showing that 90% plus of Californians are gravely concerned about what companies do with their data and want to be able to opt out.

But wanting to opt out and being able to afford to opt out when it comes at a cost, are two very different things. Moving from privacy as a civil rightenshrined in the California constitution to privacy as a commodity for sale is a move from privacy for all to privacy for some. There is a bill to fix the pay-for-privacy problem in the CCPA. Fittingly, it is called the Privacy For All Act (AB 1760). But there is a lot of resistance to it because after all, a deal is a deal.

But expecting working class Californians to honor a deal drafted by millionaires in a back room about their personal data, is unfair. They weren’t consulted and they didn’t agree. Holding the right to opt out hostage for a ransom is simply a bad deal. Attaching financial punishment to exercising privacy rights makes control over one’s own data a rich man’s game with no room at the inn for poor people, the exact people who suffer the most from identity theft, predatory scams and undue tracking and monitoring.

California legislature, don’t throw the poor overboard to protect a back room deal. We need Privacy For All.

By Tracy Rosenberg. Originally published on Medium.

Nowadays, do 94% of Americans agree on anything?

It sure doesn’t seem like it, but in fact there are a few things that we aren’t polarized about. One of these things is wanting tech companies to get our permission before they share our personal information.

Bowing to overwhelming consensus, California’s legislature enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in 2018, with an effective date of January 1, 2020.

But there’s something else that 94% of the population would also like. They would like to be able to take a tech company to court if that company violates their privacy rights.

Makes sense. It doesn’t do much good if you can ask a company to disclose who they are sharing your personal information with but they can refuse to tell you. It doesn’t do much good if you can ask a company not to sell your data and they can ignore you.

But you don’t have to take it from me. California’s Attorney General says the same thing.

In a letter to the Legislature, California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra said “The CCPA does not include a private right of action that would allow consumers to seek legal remedies for themselves to protect their privacy … I urge you to provide consumers with a private right of action under the CCPA. … If we fail to address these issues, it is the people of California who stand to lose.”

The AG walked his talk and sponsored a bill, Senate Bill 561, to let you sue a company that violates your privacy rights under the new law. But rumor has it that a small group of state senators on the CA Senate Appropriations committee haven’t pledged to support SB 561 and may let it die on the vine in two weeks.

The California Senate Appropriations committee is just six people, 4 Democrats and 2 Republicans. Since Democrats have the overwhelming majority, as they do throughout California’s legislature, what it comes down to is that these four CA Democrats might steal your right to sue tech companies when they sell your personal information without your consent.

This can’t and shouldn’t happen. But the person who cares most about your rights is …. you.

Call committee chair Anthony Portantino today. (916) 651–4025.

Oakland Privacy, the Bay Area surveillance activism coalition that Media Alliance has been co-coordinating for the past five years, will be honored with a 2019 Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation on September 12th.

Press Release

by John Ferrannini Bay Area Reporter

California activists are planning twin protests against Facebook, even as the Menlo Park-based tech giant is facing criticism from a San Mateo County supervisor over profiting off user data after years of controversies involving the LGBT community.

“Save Our Democracy, Protest Facebook” is a two-hour protest scheduled for January 9 at 4 p.m. at Facebook’s headquarters at 1600 Willow Road (Building 10, closest to the Facebook sign) in Menlo Park on the Peninsula.

The protest is being sponsored by more than a dozen organizations, according to Andrea Buffa, a straight ally and “frustrated Facebook user” who initiated the protest and is a lead organizer.

“I was sitting around at Thanksgiving talking with family and friends expressing incredible frustration at Facebook for its most recent policy to allow politicians to blatantly lie in their ads,” Buffa said in a phone interview with the Bay Area Reporter. “I decided to reach out to a couple of organizations, to Media Alliance, to see what we can do.”

Tracy Rosenberg, a straight ally who is the executive director of Media Alliance, said that she is “hoping some Facebook employees will come out and join us.”

“We know these are issues they care about,” Rosenberg wrote in an email to the B.A.R. “And this isn’t going to be a one-time thing — it’s going to be just the beginning of a pressure campaign to get Facebook to stop allowing lies and hatred to be spread using its platform.”

Rosenberg said that she expects to have a better idea of how many people are going to join the in-person protest after New Year’s Day.

“We know the exasperation with Facebook is widespread,” Rosenberg said. “It remains to be seen how many people think going to Facebook’s door and saying something directly will make a difference.”

The other January 9 protest is a Facebook “blackout,” which was started by Andrew Arentowicz of Los Angeles.

Arentowicz is asking people to turn their Facebook profile pictures black for 48 hours “to demonstrate the overwhelming opposition to your reckless political ad policy,” according to an open letter to Facebook on the blackout’s website.

“Usually you can’t tell when people are ‘blacking out’ a company by staying off of a platform in protest, but we’re hoping that this idea of blacking out your cover photo and profile photo will really appeal to people because it’s something visible,” Rosenberg said. “We don’t expect it to be the last and it is growing over time. We expect a series of these online actions to continue to grow as we move closer to the 2020 election.”

Rosenberg said that the Facebook blackout has a Facebook event page, but that Facebook won’t let the organizers run ads to promote it, claiming a violation of its ad policy.

No stranger to controversy
Facebook, of course, is no stranger to controversy. It has been criticized for allegedly inconsistent policies regarding ads and political messages and blocking drag queens, trans people, and others from using their preferred names.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before congressional committees in 2018 and 2019 over concerns about user privacy and his intention to create a cryptocurrency, Libra.

While on Capitol Hill, he also faced questions about how Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm assisting in the 2016 Republican presidential campaign of Donald Trump, harvested the personal information of tens of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge and used it for political purposes.

In the 2019 hearing, Zuckerberg had a heated exchange with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) that clarified that false political advertising is allowed on Facebook. It is this policy that has led directly to the upcoming protests.

Relations with LGBTs strained
As the B.A.R. previously reported, in 2018 Facebook banned the GLBT Historical Society, which runs the GLBT History Museum at 4127 18th Street in the Castro, from boosting a post about “Fighting Back: Transgender Rights Activism,” a community forum on the history of trans activism, because the society’s page had “not been authorized to run ads with political content.”

A year earlier, Facebook rejected an ad from the society seeking volunteers for the Folsom Street Fair.

Terry Beswick, a gay man who is the executive director of the society, said he would not comment for this story; but Rosenberg said that what happened was an example of Facebook doing “too little, too late for so many groups of people whose policies it has harmed.”

“Zuckerberg has wrapped himself in the mantle of free speech when he wants to let politicians lie in their ads and let extremism and hate speech run wild, but at the same time the company regularly won’t allow nonprofit organizations to boost posts on ‘political’ issues like a transgender rights seminar,” Rosenberg said.

Sister Roma of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence echoed that sentiment.

“It sounds to me like Facebook is refusing to add the manpower to fact check the advertising and therefore denying any accountability for the content of those ads,” Sister Roma wrote in an email to the B.A.R. Monday, December 23. “It’s lazy and shameful.”

Sister Roma was part of a dust-up with Facebook several years ago. Facebook required individuals to use legal names while setting up accounts, a policy that many transgender people and drag performers found inappropriate.

After a September 17, 2014 meeting that included Sister Roma, Facebook decided not to change the policy but it did apologize to the LGBT community for the harm that was done and promised to change how the policy is enforced.

“We didn’t get everything we wanted, but the #MyNameIs team did have a great impact on Facebook’s understanding of queer and trans identity,” Sister Roma wrote. “As a direct result of our activism, Facebook implemented changes to the way a profile can be reported for having a ‘fake’ name. We also got them to add an appeals process that includes a provision for being LGBTQ — which was a huge accomplishment. People are still getting flagged and suspended but it’s much better.”

Sister Roma stopped short of endorsing the January 9 protests, but encouraged LGBT activism and involvement.

“I absolutely think that LGBT people should support and participate in this protest — and any and all protests — that interest them,” Sister Roma wrote. “Our civil rights, our freedom, our very LIVES are at stake with every election, especially the one approaching in 2020.”

Data dividend
In a letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom Friday, December 20, District 5 San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa, a straight ally, said that companies that make money off the personal information of their users, like Facebook, should either “pay out” or users should “log out.”

“The data dividend could either be distributed to the consumer directly or put into a fund that would then be redistributed to the working poor and middle class,” Canepa wrote in an email to the B.A.R. Thursday, December 26.

The idea of companies paying Americans a dividend on the money their data produces picked up steam in 2019, with Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang discussing it at length in the primary debates and Newsom himself endorsing the idea.

“It’s a lofty idea but when you look at Facebook being a 500 billion dollar company because it peddles in our data, then I think some of that revenue should be given back to us,” Canepa said. “It’s like the oil dividend in Alaska.”

Canepa was also critical of Facebook’s policies as they relate to LGBTs.

“I think Facebook needs to take a deep look at itself when it arbitrarily decides to deem LGBTQ-themed ads as political,” he said. “Transgender people are the most discriminated against group in America. They should be able to communicate on social media and have a sense of safety.”

Facebook and Newsom’s office did not respond to requests for comment as of press time.

955 California not for profit organizations wrote to Governor Newsom and the California Legislature asking the state to support California’s nonprofits through the emergency public health situation brought about by COVID-19.

The letter asks for public contracts with nonprofits to be honored even if non-performance is inevitable due to the disruptions caused by the virus, to make emergency funds available for nonprofits to maintain their operations and to extend protections from utility shutoffs and evictions to nonprofit organizations.

You can read the letter here.