Big Brother Comes to Emery Unified

Is Your Child's Biometric Data Safe?

Opinion

The Tattler has learned that dozens of Anna Yates Elementary students were rounded up today by school officials and fingerprinted in order to have their biometric data stored in a government database. What crimes were these nine year olds convicted of? accused of? suspected of?  None.  Instead, this is the price our children must pay for access to Emery Unified's School Lunch Pogrom Program.

Emery knows what
its doing, right?
What could possibly
go wrong?

The new system was "announced" to some parents via a letter sent home during the last week of school last school year, in June of 2014.  Parents that are new to the District this year may not have heard anything about this program or been given any advance notice of the District's intentions (one Anna Yates parent told us he did not receive the letter at the end of last year either and only learned of the letter from other parents).

Parents have the ability to "opt out" of the biometric scanning of their children, but must request the opt out form from the District.

Parents nationwide have objected to similar programs, some bringing lawsuits to prevent the practice, and the ACLU has often gotten involved. The concerns expressed include:

• Given the prevalence these days of data breaches, what guarantees do we have that our children's biometric data will not fall into the hands of malicious third parties?
• What sort of message does it send to our children when we tell them that they have to submit to a government-initiated data collection procedure about their own unique biological markers?
• Doesn't the entire procedure of fingerprinting, especially in a largely minority school District, evoke images of assumed criminality that our District has pledged to oppose and prevent?
• How much money is the District spending on this technology parents don't want when the District is not spending money on other technologies that would actually assist in student learning?
• Were less intrusive alternatives considered? Student ID cards? Anonymous value cards?
• What happens when a student leaves the District? What guarantees do we have that the stored biometric data will be destroyed?
• Why weren't parents given much more explicit notification about this?
• Districts and companies that produce the biometric technologies often argue that "fingerprints" per se are not stored by their systems, merely unique points within the fingerprint represented digitally.  These responses seem to ignore that a unique identifier is a unique identifier.  If the system works at all, then it contains personal, private, biological data about our children.  Data that should not be collected or stored without much more explicit notification.  Data that the District should never have proposed to gather to begin with.

Developer Seeks to Privatize Emeryville's Sidewalks at the Public Market

Private Grab of Public Commons

Opinion
Who owns Emeryville's streets?  In an earlier, more progressive era the answer would have been easy; it's us, the people of Emeryville.  Now, with the help of the Emeryville City Council the answer is increasingly; it's private business concerns that owns the streets.
Take Shellmound Street at the Public Market.  As of right now, if you want to walk along the sidewalks there, you're free unconditionally to do it.  It's a real public space.  But that's all going to change if the developer for the proposed Public Market expansion, City Center Realty Partners LLC gets its way.
The developer wants to seize control over our sidewalks on Shellmound, making them their own private property.
City Center Realty Partners is busy shopping this proposal around town to Emeryville decision makers right now.  The Council will decide about this in coming months.  If the Council is in a giving mood, like they were when developer Madison Marquette asked for and received control over the sidewalks on Bay Street, then chalk up another victory for the forces of privatization in Emeryville.

Welcome to Emeryville's great new manifestation of civic alienation: the faux sidewalk.  It looks like a real sidewalk but try using it like a real sidewalk and it's off to jail with you.

"Public" Sidewalk at Apple Store on Bay Street
Customers are free to line up to buy the latest gizmo
but if one of them pulls out a sign protesting Apple's
abuse of it's manufacturing workers in China,
it's private property... and it's off to jail.

City Center Reality Partners wishes to be able to control 'undesirable' traffic on Shellmound Street's sidewalks in order to increase the value for future corporate tenants in their planned expansion.  From their perspective it's all very understandable.  If they rented to a commercial tenant that engaged in unethical corporate behavior let's say, they would have financial interest in stopping a ready remedy the public has to show their displeasure at times like that; the protest.  Now it's going to be, 'Sorry, no protesting on our property in front of any businesses'.  Corporate tenants would really appreciate such an arrangement.  Probably willing to pay a premium to City Center Reality for it.

Got a lingering homeless person on the sidewalk?  No problem.  He has no right to be there!  How about some protesters?  Off they go!  It'll only be shoppers on Emeryville's formerly public sidewalks if City Center Reality Partners gets their way.
It's a wonderful way to ratchet up the corporatist notion that we're not really citizens, rather consumers to be sold to.  And so far the City Council is on board.

Funny thing is this Emeryville privatization juggernaut is happening at the same time City Hall is proudly proclaiming it's affinity for so called "complete streets", the city planning concept glommed onto by staff and the Council that claims that streets are public spaces at their core and that all forms of transportation are given equal treatment and even non transportation, as in lingering or what some might call transience.
Emeryville has received planning awards for it's promulgating of the complete street idea, just as we have for our Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan at the same time that the City Council has moved to eliminate bike and pedestrian paths.   Let's hope this Shellmound public land grab give-a-way isn't going to be another example of this kind of duplicitous nexus.

The sad part about this privatization of the public commons is it's all so unnecessary.  As at the Bay Street give-a-way, City Hall isn't getting a thing in return from City Center Reality Partners.  It's just another gift to the developers by this Council...if they give in to their usual pro-developer proclivities.

The Late Great Sidewalk
Formerly a dynamic and interactive public arena, 
a democratic space available for real civic engagement.
Now, a corridor for shoppers.