Enlarge (credit: Raymundo Jacquez III)

In May 2018, Oakland joined a growing number of California cities and counties that are currently passing meaningful surveillance oversight laws.

The new law requires that the Privacy Advisory Commission be notified if the city is spending money or seeking outside grant money to be spent on any hardware or software that could potentially impact privacy. Notably, Oakland’s law specifically includes provisions that forbid non-disclosure agreements and protect whistleblowers.

Oakland has been at the forefront of local efforts to pass pro-privacy measures for many years now. Back in 2013, after a controversial measure to approve federal grant money to construct a “Domain Awareness Center,” the city created the PAC. This body, composed of volunteer commissioners from each city council district, acts as a privacy check on the city when any municipal entity (typically the police department) wants to acquire a technology that may impinge on individual privacy.