A Call to Action: Public Safety Requires Public Trust

 Uncategorized  2 Responses »
Sep 012016
 

     A broad coalition of local and state advocates are calling upon Governor Jerry Brown to issue an Executive Order directing Attorney General Kamala Harris to take jurisdiction and control over the investigations of all allegations arising out of the involvement of any member of a law enforcement agency with the rape victim identified as Celeste Guap.         Public safety requires public trust.  We find ourselves in the midst of a crisis in public safety. The very police officers that are charged to protect and serve the public have been exposed as engaging in a conspiracy of sex trafficking. […]

Larkspur Installs License Plate Cameras for Mass Surveillance

 License plate readers  2 Responses »
May 132016
 
Larkspur Installs License Plate Cameras for Mass Surveillance

Three stationary license plate cameras were recently installed on East Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in Larkpur as part of a Regional Automated License Plate Regional Network (also called strategy and strategic plan) supported by the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) and funding from the Bay Area Urban Areas Security Initiative. The cameras record images of vehicles and license plates traveling in each direction along East Sir Francisco Drake Boulevard near the intersection with Larkspur Landing Circle. The Central Marin Police Authority (CMPA) applied for the $132,553.96 Fiscal Year 2014 grant as part of a Regional Automated License Plate Reader […]

Northern California Fusion Center Has 3 Covert ALPR Trailers to Loan Out

 License plate readers  1 Response »
Apr 052016
 
Northern California Fusion Center Has 3 Covert ALPR Trailers to Loan Out

The Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NRCIC), the fusion center for Northern California, has three trailers with automated license plate readers that it loans out to other agencies. The trailers are intended to look like speed limit warning signs that prominently display the speed of passing cars but are equipped with cameras that capture images of vehicles passing in both directions. The NCRIC is managed by the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, which handles requests for the trailers. The trailer picture was deployed in front of Willard Middle School in Berkeley in October 2015 after a series of attempted kidnappings. […]

Alameda County Sheriffs Releases Documents on Pursuit and Beating of Stanislav Petrov

 Uncategorized  4 Responses »
Mar 232016
 

Documents show all 11 police officers at the scene “forgot” to activate their body cameras On November 12, 2015, two Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies were captured on surveillance video beating a suspect in San Francisco. The video was provided to the San Francisco Public Defender, which published the video on YouTube on November 13, 2015: The two deputies shown in the video, Paul Wieber, and Luis Santamaria, wrote up their descriptions of the incident four days after arresting the suspect, later identified as Stanislav Petrov. Other deputies, including Shawn Osborne, William Adams, John Malizia, Joshua Miller, Marc Petrini,  Thomas Sterling, […]

Berkeley Borrows License Plate Reader Trailer from Local Fusion Center

 License plate readers  No Responses »
Dec 062015
 
Berkeley Borrows License Plate Reader Trailer from Local Fusion Center

As part of an effort to identify a suspect in kidnapping attempts near Willard Middle School in Berkeley, the Berkeley Police Department borrowed an automated license plate reader (ALPR) from the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC), the local fusion center. The ALPR is part of a trailer that at first appears to be just a sign to get drivers to slow down. The ALPR consists of cameras facing cars driving towards and away from the trailer. The trailer uses Willard Middle School to power the license plate cameras and signs, using an electrical power cord that extends from the […]

Piedmont License Plate Reader Analysis Shows 99.97% of Data Collected is Useless

 License plate readers  2 Responses »
Sep 072015
 

In 2013, the City of Piedmont, California, spent almost $600,000 to purchase 39 license plate readers covering most of its border with Oakland. With a population of less than 11,000 people, these 39 license plate readers collect photographs and license plates from more than 1,000,000 vehicles every month. The City of Piedmont sends this data to a regional license plate data warehouse at the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC), where it is stored for one year, even if the data does not generate a “hit” as a stolen vehicle, being registered to a wanted individual, etc. The City of […]

California Highway Patrol Bought 216 Vigilant Video License Plate Readers

 License plate readers  No Responses »
Sep 012015
 
California Highway Patrol Bought 216 Vigilant Video License Plate Readers

According to documents from the California Highway Patrol (CHP), it has purchased 216 Vigilant Video license plate readers between June 2011 and April 2015. In addition, an undated document on automated license plate reader statistics indicates that there were 86,899 alerts for 27,545,659 license plate reads, a hit percentage of 0.3%. In other words, 99.7% of the data gathered by the CHP’s license plate readers was essentially mass surveillance on people not suspected of or charged with a crime. The license plate readers were purchased using homeland security funds in batches of 120 on June 30, 2011, 73 on February […]

RedFlex 2014 Reports on Red Light Cameras in California Cities

 Red light cameras  No Responses »
Aug 262015
 

California Vehicle Code 21455.5 (i) requires “A manufacturer or supplier that operates an automated traffic enforcement system” to submit an annual report to the Judicial Council. Below are reports from RedFlex, for the 43 California cities in which their red light cameras are deployed. Bakersfield Baldwin Park Beverly Hills Citrus Heights Commerce Culver City Daly City Del Mar Elk Grove Encinitas Fremont Garden Grove Hawthorne Highland Inglewood Laguna Woods Los Alamitos Lynwood Marysville Menlo Park Modesto Montebello Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) Napa Newark Oakland Oceanside Oxnard Rancho Cordova Redding Riverside Sacramento San Leandro San Mateo San Rafael Santa […]

FBI Won’t Say If it Has Contract J-FBI-09-211 (But it Does)

 Cell site simulator  1 Response »
Aug 012015
 

In a letter dated July 28, 2015, the FBI said it could neither confirm nor deny that it has contract J-FBI-09-211, which has to do with “Landshark” restricted software used with the Harris StingRay. This document is referenced in FBI letters to Harris Corporation in which the FBI notifies Harris of its approval of a law enforcement agency’s non-disclosure agreement. This non-disclosure agreement is required before the law enforcement agency can purchase a cell site simulator such as a StingRay, KingFish, or HailStorm from Harris Corporation. The letter from the FBI states, Please be advised that upon reviewing the substantive […]

Newark Memorial High School Gets ShotSpotter SecureCampus for Free

 Audio surveillance  No Responses »
Jul 202015
 
Newark Memorial High School Gets ShotSpotter SecureCampus for Free

On June 18, 2015, ShotSpotter issued a press release announcing the installation of its SecureCampus product at Newark Memorial High School in Newark, California. The contract was signed on December 16, 2014, by Bryan Richards, the Chief Business Official for the Newark Unified School District. Since the contract doesn’t cost anything in its first year (although the contract values it at $110,389), it did not go before the Newark School Board for approval, which means that the community and staff have not had an opportunity to discuss the privacy implications of the 35 microphones already installed throughout the campus. The […]

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