These comments were submitted to the City of Oakland on March 2, 2014, prior to the March 4 vote to roll back the DAC to the Port of Oakland.
Category Archives: Surveillance
The many ways the government is watching us with an emphasis on digital spying
Reset The Net – San Francisco
On June 5, people all over the world reset the net to take online privacy and security into their own hands and Bay Area Shame on Feinstein activists delivered thousands of petitions to Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office asking her to stop undermining real surveillance reform. Activists held a press conference outside the Senator’s district office.
Continue reading Reset The Net – San Francisco
Smart About Surveillance
A model ordinance for community control over surveillance equipment acquisitions, uses and practices from ACLU-NC
Oakland Domain Awareness Center (DAC): Scaled Back
Update 3/7/2014 Oakland City Council as expected, voted on 3-5-2014 to scale back the DAC spying machine to Port of Oakland property only.
The nascent (and wildly undeveloped) privacy policy was reviewed by Media Alliance and the comments we submitted to the City of Oakland are attached. Continue reading Oakland Domain Awareness Center (DAC): Scaled Back
Information-Sharing In The Bay Area
by Tracy Rosenberg on January 28th, 2015
The January meeting of the Urban Area Strategic Initiative (UASI) featured this informative slide show about how the Bay Area’s fusion centers work together.
For more on fusion centers and how they work, check out this Media Alliance article “Fusing California” on the fusion center network.
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
Grassroots activism brings reform to California
October 15, 2014 by Matthew Kellegrew
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
Big Data and Privacy
Media Alliance joined sixteen other grassroots media group in a letter to the White House embracing a rights-model for the handling of big data.
The letter states “we believe that big data creates significant new risks of racial injustice. In order to ensure a fair and inclusive future for our nation’s communities of color, and to enable the potential benefits of these new technologies to be fully realized and broadly shared, it is vitally important that the emerging policy framework for big data explicitly acknowledges and address issues of racial discrimination”. Continue reading Big Data and Privacy