August 27, 2019 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Mike Katz-Lacabe, Research Director, Oakland Privacy (Tel) 510-207-8165 Email: mkatz@mikesbytes.com Oakland Privacy Honored With 2019 Pioneer Award Award Ceremony on September 12th in San Francisco Oakland – Oakland Privacy, a citizen’s coalition that works regionally to defend the right to privacy and enhance public transparency and oversight is honored to be a recipient of this year’s Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Other recipients include tech scholar danah boyd and groundbreaking cyberpunk author William Gibson. The awards ceremony will be held September 12th in San Francisco.
Oakland Privacy is the group behind many influential anti-surveillance fights in Oakland, California and beyond. Oakland Privacy was born in 2013 when activists discovered a Homeland Security project called the Domain Awareness Center (DAC). The DAC was meant to be an Oakland-wide surveillance gauntlet—with cameras, microphones, license plate readers—and a local data center to put it all together. But after Oakland Privacy led a ten-month campaign of opposition, the DAC was finally cancelled. Later, Oakland Privacy was one of the primary organizations behind the Oakland City Council’s creation of the first municipal privacy commission in the country, and then continued to be instrumental in bolstering opposition to surveillance around the San Francisco Bay Area and across the United States. For example, Oakland Privacy helped develop a comprehensive surveillance transparency regulatory law mandating use policies, civil rights impact reports, and annual audits, and pushed for its passage in multiple jurisdictions. The model is now in use in Santa Clara County, five Bay Area cities and other jurisdictions like Seattle, Nashville, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Most recently, Oakland Privacy successfully worked to ban facial recognition in San Francisco and Oakland—two of the three cities in the country to enact such a ban.
The Pioneer Award winners will be awarded a “Barlow,” a statuette named after EFF’s late co-founder John Perry Barlow and the indelible mark he left on digital rights.
“I am excited for Oakland Privacy to receive this recognition from the country’s leading defender of civil liberties in the digital world,” said Oakland Privacy Advocacy Director Tracy Rosenberg. “I hope this will help Oakland Privacy to pass additional surveillance transparency ordinances in cities, counties, and states throughout the country,” stated Oakland Privacy Research Director Mike Katz-Lacabe.
“John Perry Barlow knew that you had to visualize the future of technology—both the promise and the perils—in order to create the world we want. All of our winners this year have done just that,” said EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn. “I’m so proud to be honoring these bold thinkers and brave activists.”
Awarded every year since 1992, EFF’s Pioneer Awards recognize the leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier. Previous honorees have included Vint Cerf, Mitchell Baker and the Mozilla Foundation, Aaron Swartz, and Chelsea Manning. ### Oakland Privacy is a citizen’s coalition that works regionally to defend the right to privacy and enhance public transparency and oversight regarding the use of surveillance techniques and equipment. We were instrumental in the creation of the first standing municipal citizens’ privacy advisory commission in the City of Oakland, and we have engaged in privacy enhancing legislative efforts with the Counties of Alameda and Santa Clara and several Northern California cities and regional entities.As experts on municipal privacy reform, we have written use policies and impact reports for a variety of surveillance technologies, conducted research and investigations, and developed frameworks for the implementation of equipment with respect for civil rights, privacy protections and community control. https://oaklandprivacy.org |
