President Reid, Honorable Councilmembers
My name is Brian Hofer, chair of the Privacy Commission and a member of Oakland Privacy. In
anticipation of this moment, I skipped my thank yous at Public Safety last week, so please bear
with me here.
On March 4, 2014, this body voted by a 5-4 tie breaker to create an ad hoc citizen’s committee to
draft a use policy for the remaining pieces of the DAC. On June 2, 2015, those ad hoc members
convinced this council by unanimous vote to establish both a standing privacy committee and to
create a citywide surveillance equipment ordinance, which is before you now. If they hadn’t set
the table for us, we wouldn’t be here tonight, so I want to thank the members of that committee:
Jesper Jurcenoks, Derrick Bulls, Jon Wactor, Robert Harris, Robert Gray, Phil Wolff, Matt Cagle,
Linda Lye, Dia Kayyali, Allan Brill, Aestetix. I want to recognize and thank the DAC Staff as
well, Renee Domingo, Ahsan Baig, Amadis Sotelo, Mike O’Brien, Cathey Eide, Chief Downing.
In November 2014, the ACLU model ordinance was published, and we quickly latched onto it as
the elegant framework for vetting and informed decision making that we had been missing.
CCOPS, Community Control Over Policing Surveillance, put into an intelligent framework what
we had been trying to do from scratch. Some of us started doing the road show, telling other
cities and counties to do the opposite of what Oakland had done – build in a framework first,
instead of addressing civil liberties concerns after the fact like with the DAC. As a result,
tonight’s adoption of this ordinance would make Oakland #7 in the nation to enact this law,
although we are clearly the recognized leader in this space, and the ACLU model would not have
exploded into 25 different jurisdictions where it’s either been enacted, or is in serious review
without us. We started this movement.
On July 14, 2016, the newly formed Privacy Advisory Commission met for the first time, and we
began working on the surveillance ordinance the next month. I want to thank fellow
commissioners Reem Suleiman, Chloe Brown, Lou Katz, Raymundo Jacquez, Clint Johnson,
Robert Oliver, Saied Karamooz, Heather Patterson, and our two departed super stars Yaman
Salahi, who got a federal clerkship, and Prof. Deidre Mulligan, who took a federal advisory
appointment, for all their policy feedback and work on these complicated matters.
At our first real working meeting, the PAC had to consider a Stingray, probably the most
controversial piece of surveillance equipment around. Personally, I panicked. We didn’t have our
ordinance in place, we barely had our name tags and seating charts, and I was worried that our
policy would go off the rails. Instead, we set another gold standard, and I want to recognize DC
Darren Allison for his tremendous efforts on that project.
I want to especially recognize Tim Birch, who has become one of, if not the, primary policy
writer for law enforcement items that come before the PAC. Tim, without your good-faith efforts
and understanding of the PAC’s concerns and intent, we would not have had these policy
successes. I value your help greatly, and I look forward to our policy writing over this next year.
CM Brooks, I don’t know how far down the road you were looking with your ad hoc committee
idea in March 2014. In real-time, it seemed politically savvy. Today, it’s lead to a national

 conversation about community input into law enforcement actions, and when combined with you
chairing Public Safety and shepherding our items to the Council, we have continually pushed the
envelope on nationally recognized legislative efforts together. You created the platform for this to
occur, and I thank you greatly for it.
Joe DeVries, I hope you understand how much I value your counsel. I’m sure I’ve frustrated you
more than necessary, and I’m certain everyone in this room is glad you’re more diplomatic than I
am. I have never seen someone so accurately frame the issues and concerns around these
complicated topics, and I am quite certain we would not be here today with your tremendous
efforts. It only took you four years to beat it into my thick head that if our policies are not clear
or impractical, then compliance won’t occur. It’s a tremendous benefit to the PAC to have a
senior administrator working with us that can speak to city employees and department heads to
help us get the compliance we are looking for, and I am excited that you are excited about your
CPO role. I look forward to this next year working with you.
Lynette, you have quite literally changed my life. For one, I don’t sleep anymore, but I’ll take the
winning votes and drink more coffee. I don’t think you knew much about me in the spring of
2014, other than I wore a suit and tie and made reasonably coherent arguments during the DAC.
You took a flier on me by appointing me to the ad hoc and standing committees, giving me a
platform I never anticipated. I get to speak at conferences all over the country doing something I
love – bragging about Oakland, and our cutting-edge reform efforts. I have been very privileged
by the doors you’ve opened for me, and I hope you understand how personally appreciative I am.
June 2, 2015, 3am. All 8 of you were there and voted in support of a standing privacy committee
and this surveillance ordinance in concept. I know you don’t live and breathe this stuff like I do,
so you don’t understand how large it’s become. As I stated earlier, 25 jurisdictions have since
followed your lead, including Santa Clara County as the first to enact the ordinance, and more
recently, Berkeley and Davis.
So that everyone is aware that this framework is the victory – every single item we’ve touched
has taken 1 trip to the Council, and received a unanimous Yes vote. We’ve informally been
operating in this manner for 2+ years, and the results speak for themselves. I thank this Council
for always supporting us.
Thank you for listening.