Dispatches from the Underclass
For this week’s episode of Unauthorized Disclosure, my co-host Kevin Gosztola spoke with Nadia Kayyali, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, about the Domain Awareness Center (DAC), a surveillance hub being constructed in Oakland, California. (I was traveling last week, so I was unable to participate in the interview portion, but listen to it anyway!)
Funded by grants from the Department of Homeland Security, DAC seeks to merge public and private surveillance systems (i.e. traffic cameras) from across the city to create a massive spying network with all kinds of potential for rights violations, especially given the Oakland Police Department’s atrocious police abuse record.
Fortunately, activists have been hard at work preventing the Oakland City Council from expanding the system beyond the city port and on March 4, their work paid off in what Nadia called “a perfect example of grassroots organizing and also privacy advocates stepping up to the plate.”
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