Category Archives: Press Room

Recent press releases issued by Media Alliance. Sometimes we’ll post newspaper, radio and broadcast interviews here as well.

DAC As Planned Was A Serious Case Of Mission Creep

 

Posted by Tracy Rosenberg on March 23rd, 2014
Oakland Tribune

The arguments for and against the Oakland Domain Awareness Center project are well-established. After hours of community testimony at the Oakland City Council meetings Feb. 18 and March 4, the council voted to rein in the planned surveillance center.

What isn’t so well-established is what the center was for in the first place, and what policies would prevent the Orwellian nightmare presented by DAC opponents. Continue reading DAC As Planned Was A Serious Case Of Mission Creep

PEG Community Sees Challenges Coming From Combined Comcast/TWC

 

Communications Daily  Feb 27 2014

The public, educational and government channel community plans to continue its push to protect the interests of PEG channels while monitoring Comcast’s efforts to buy Time Warner Cable for about $45 billion, PEG advocates said in interviews this week. If the companies combine, PEG channels could be negatively impacted, they said. Continue reading PEG Community Sees Challenges Coming From Combined Comcast/TWC

SMCCD Board Liquidates KCSM-TV

 

May 20, 2013

For Immediate Release

Contact: Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director, Media Alliance
(510) 684-6853 (Cell), tracy@media-alliance.org (E-mail)

SMCCD Board Liquidates KCSM-TV
Board Votes to Cement Blackstone Deal, Objectors Threatened With Armed Security Guards

San Mateo – On Wednesday May 15th, three San Mateo Community College board trustees approved an unseen contract with Locuspoint Networks, a 99%-owned subsidiary of hedge firm The Blackstone Group, to liquidate the 48-year-old noncommercial TV station KCSM in a spectrum auction.

Members of the public objecting to the District’s lack of transparency, including former KRON-TV reporter and commentator Henry Tenenbaum, award-winning journalist and KAXT-TV principal Ravi Kapur, CO- based Media Stewards Project counsel Patrick Reilly and Media Alliance executive director Tracy Rosenberg, were threatened with removal by armed security prior to the board vote.
Continue reading SMCCD Board Liquidates KCSM-TV

Grassroots activism brings reform to California

 

On Tuesday September 30th, California governor Jerry Brown signed SB 828 , otherwise known as the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, into law making California the first state in the union to push back against unconstitutional NSA mass surveillance. The bill makes state-level participation or cooperation with federal surveillance operations a crime if the state agency knows the spying is unlawful. SB 828 is the product of the BORDC/ Tenth Amendment Center -led OffNow coalition . OffNow represents a grassroots led transpartisan network of organizations that crosses political, racial and generational lines to work together to restore constitutional protections in the face of unprecedented levels of governmental surveillance.

 

Continue reading Grassroots activism brings reform to California

County Allows Outrageous Charges for Inmate Phone Calls

 

by Tracy RosenbergContra Costa Times/San Jose Mercury News

Having a mother, father, brother or a sister in jail is an upsetting and scary experience. What makes it worse are sky-high special phone rates for calls from prisons that bust the family budget. That’s the reason California passed a law in 2007 phasing in reductions in the cost of prison phone calls. In state-run facilities, that is. If your mom, dad, son or daughter happens to be in a county-run juvenile facility, immigration detention center or county jail, then state law doesn’t apply. Continue reading County Allows Outrageous Charges for Inmate Phone Calls

EFF Files 22 Firsthand Accounts of How NSA Surveillance Chilled the Right to Association

 

For Immediate Release: November 7th, 2013

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has provided a federal judge with testimony from 22 separate advocacy organizations detailing how the National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass telephone records collection program has impeded the groups’ work, discouraged their members and reduced the numbers of people seeking their help via hotlines. The declarations accompanied a motion for partial summary judgment filed late Wednesday, in which EFF asks the court to declare the surveillance illegal on two levels—the law does not authorize the program, and the Constitution forbids it.
Continue reading EFF Files 22 Firsthand Accounts of How NSA Surveillance Chilled the Right to Association