The Party of Open: Open Government, Open Culture, Open Innovation & People First
March 29, 2020
We updated our COVID-19 resource page with:
COVID-19: How to be Safe and Resilient: a series of brief audio talks on protecting yourself, family and neighbors from COVID-19. It was produced by Northeastern University's Global Resilience Institute;if you are facing eviction, download and follow these instructions from the Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending (MAAPL) for how to submit such an emergency stay of eviction filing. (DOC and PDF). You can also share our post on it;Contac...
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March 28, 2020
From our friends at the Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending (MAAPL). tl;dr:
If you are facing eviction, download and follow these instructions for how to submit such an emergency stay of eviction filing. (DOC and PDF);Spread the word by sharing this post or MAAPL's post;Contact your legislators and ask them to support HD.4935 to halt foreclosures and evictions during the COVID-19 Emergency. Mass. Jobs with Justice has a how-to page on calling your legislators to support this bil...
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March 24, 2020
We updated our page with resources to fight COVID-19. If you have any suggestions for additions, please add them in the page comments. Stay safe!
February 13, 2020
Thanks to everyone who filled out MuckRock's FOIA request system to find out whether police are using facial recognition technology and how.
Eleven requests are up for Massachusetts, but that still leaves 340 cities and towns we can file FOIA requests in.
The process to send a request to your municipality or any other you are interested in is easy:
Go to their project pageFill out the form at the bottom of the pageComplete any steps they have to create an account
That's it. It will ...
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January 31, 2020
Jeff Bezos, using his media empire, created the "porch pirate" narrative in order to push demand for Ring cameras. Having deployed them in communities across the state, he is now poised to sell access to this spy network to the police.
If the state proposed building surveilance cameras outside the front door of every house in every city, there would be justified outrage. But by making the Ring camera a consumer object, it becomes a status symbol, something enviable.
The purported AI techn...
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January 30, 2020
Our next tech meeting is this Sunday, February 2nd, 2pm-4pm at Diesel Cafe, 257 Elm St., Somerville. Please note the new time.
We are working on a variety of projects including adding a way for members to better make decisions collectively, peer-to-peer streaming of events and updating our CCTV surveillance camera map. Anyone curious about helping or with a desire to help is welcome.
You can also sign up to our tech mailing list at https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/democrac...
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January 20, 2020
This Tuesday, January 21st, we will join with Restore the 4th Massachusetts to lobby for S.899 (An Act relative to forfeiture reform). We want you to join us and encourage others to support this important bill.
Civil asset forfeiture laws harm our 4th Amendment right to be free of unreasonable seizures of our property. It is most often directed at poor people and people of color. While it is justified as a measure to fight crime, it really helps pad police budgets in a manner that is una...
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November 25, 2019
We are advocating for a moratorium on the use of facial recognition technology in Massachusetts and the recent hearing at the state house demonstrated that there is a lot of support for it. However, efforts to adopt this technology by police often goes unnoticed or is hidden from public view. Thankfully, MuckRock and Open the Government have setup a system to use FOIA requests to find out whether police are using facial recognition technology and how.
Only four requests have been filed in M...
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