Category Archives: Press Room

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

Press Room, Surveillance

Mondo 2000: The Aaron Swartz Day Police Surveillance Project #ASDPSP – Reports Back: Here’s #WhatWeFound In Sacramento

 

By Lisa Rein. Originally published in Mondo 2000

These simple letter templates can compel the Police and Sheriff Departments of a given city to provide you with documentation regarding every type of surveillance equipment in existence for a given City (Police) and saCounty (Sheriff).

It’s a roundabout way of determining what surveillance equipment is being used on the public in a given city, but since it’s all we have, at least the #ASDPSP project will make it so much easier for journalists and the public to get their hands on this information.

In this third installment of our series, Tracy will help us understand more about what we found in Sacramento, and how do approach local politicians to put pressure on them to do something about it, by implementing a “surveillance policy framework.”

Here’s are the first two interviews of this series:

Interview with Oakland Privacy’s Tracy Rosenberg On The Aaron Swartz Day Police Surveillance Project

How a little “working group” stopped Oakland from becoming a mini-fusion center for the Department of Homeland Security.

 

Tracy Rosenberg, co-founder of the Aaron Swartz Day Police Surveillance Project, explains #whatwefound in #Sacramento using our project’s letter templates and Muckrock, an online platform for filing public records requests. Continue reading Mondo 2000: The Aaron Swartz Day Police Surveillance Project #ASDPSP – Reports Back: Here’s #WhatWeFound In Sacramento →

Accountability and Representation, Press Room

Assembly Resolution 268 Prioritizes Educational Technology in Schools

 

Media Alliance was happy to support local Assemblyperson Tony Thurmond (AD-15) in his effort to draw attention to educational technology needs in CA public schools with ACR 268.

We joined Computer Using Educators, the Napa Office of Education and the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) in support.

[pdf-embedder url=”https://media-alliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/ACR-268-Ed-Tech-Presentation-Press-Release4.pdf” title=”ACR 268 Ed Tech Presentation Press Release4″]

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Press Room

Podcast: Redeye Radio: Thomson Reuters – One of ICE’s Corporate Collaborators

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In addition to running the one of the world’s largest news and journalism wire services, the Canadian media giant Thomson Reuters is an information clearing house. It creates databases with information gathered from cell phones, credit cards, and health records to name but a few. The data is then sold to law enforcement agencies such as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Tracy Rosenberg thinks Canadians should be aware of this. She is with Media Alliance, a San Francisco-based advocacy group.

Podcast

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Press Room, Surveillance

Taming High Tech Law and Order in the Wild Wild West

 

By Tracy Rosenberg. Originally published on Medium. 

I didn’t grow up in California. Instead I grew up in the relatively staid brick-lined streets of the Northeast, where history looks like pilgrim hats.

I understood Blazing Saddles better than Stagecoach.

But life can take you in some unexpected directions. I grew up to become a privacy advocate on the West Coast. And when I started to lobby my local government about the ways law enforcement surveillance and high-tech gadgetry were colluding to erode civil rights, I ran into the legacy of the autonomous sheriff in the “frontier” states.

Continue reading Taming High Tech Law and Order in the Wild Wild West →

Press Room

BART Board Tables Vote On Several Proposed Safety Measures

 

By Melanie Woodrow, originally posted at ABC7 News 

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) — People at the BART Board of Directors Meeting urged the Board not to use the stabbing death of Nia Wilson as an excuse to increase state surveillance.

“It’s biased, it’s inaccurate and it’s dangerous,” said Tracy Rosenberg of Oakland Privacy.

Earlier this week, BART Board member Nick Josefowitz told ABC7 News he wants to consider facial recognition software, but the Board’s General Manaer said that is not a part of the safety plan introduced.

“Even if you do not currently apply facial recognition yourselves to this data other people will apply it,” said one person.

“I respect people’s right to privacy so we have to define that balance that’s going to be tough because there are directors who feel very strongly one way and directors who feel very strongly another way,” said Joel Keller, BART Director District 2.

What we know about deadly stabbing at Oakland’s MacArthur BART station

The board ultimately decided to table discussions on a physical security information management system, video surveillance screens, a no panhandling ordinance, making it harder to fare evade or bypass fare gates and an additional proof of payment team for evenings. Those discussions will be held until a suburban evening public meeting within a month.

“How about helping the people who need BART and have no other option,” said one person referring to fare evaders.

The board voted to continue researching now the expansion and conversion to a digital camera network and platform emergency call boxes.

Eva Chao says she wants more BART police: “I believe we need them to protect our riders,” said Chao.

“We’re currently under emergency staffing so our officers are working six days a week with one day off,” said BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas.

The board also voted to better engage city governments on issues of homelessness and mental health.

Continue reading BART Board Tables Vote On Several Proposed Safety Measures →

Press Room, Surveillance

BART Directors Face Pushback On New Security Measures

 

by Maria Sestito.  Published at Oakland North.

Two months after Nia Wilson’s murder, faded signs and withering flowers still greet commuters entering Oakland’s MacArthur BART station. The 18-year-old was fatally stabbed, and her older sister, Letifah, was also injured in the July 22 attack. Now transit officials are calling for upgraded security measures that they argue will improve safety, although members of some community organizations, including Oakland Privacy and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California, are concerned about the privacy of riders and what transit authorities will do with the information that will be collected. Continue reading BART Directors Face Pushback On New Security Measures →

Accountability and Representation, Press Room

Counterspin: Tracy Rosenberg on ICE’s Corporate Collaborators

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This week on CounterSpin: “As a company, Microsoft is dismayed by the forcible separation of children from their families at the border,” the global tech company declared in a statement. “Family unification has been a fundamental tenet of American policy and law since the end of World War II.”  The same Microsoft bragged a few months ago about ICE’s use of its Azure cloud computing services to “accelerate facial recognition and identification” of immigrants, though the post has since been altered to omit the phrase “we’re proud to support this work with our mission-critical cloud.”

The spotlight on the White House’s inhumane agenda on immigration and immigrants is exposing more than the devastatingly cruel practices in force at the border, but also the numerous big corporate and institutional players that are—often invisibly—enabling that agenda. And just like the agenda, the impact of these collaborations extends well beyond immigrant communities. We’ll talk about all that with organizer/advocate Tracy Rosenberg, executive director of Media Alliance and co-coordinator of Oakland Privacy.

Accountability and Representation, Internet Freedom, Press Room

Profiles in Corruption: How Telecoms Control the State Legislature

 

by Chris Witteman and Tracy Rosenberg. Originally published in 48 Hills. 

The last couple of weeks have not been good ones for those who see communications as a social justice issue.

The 2015 Open Internet Order, which ensured Internet neutrality and fairness, was finally stripped out of the law books per order of the Trump FCC, now run by a former lawyer for Verizon. San Francisco’s plan for a publicly-owned fiber broadband network was put on hold, and all indications are that Mayor Breed will likely bow to AT&T and Comcast by keeping it from resurfacing. And California’s own net neutrality bill, designed to reverse what Trump’s FCC had done, got ambushed by an upstart young Assemblymember. Continue reading Profiles in Corruption: How Telecoms Control the State Legislature →