Domain Awareness Center: Oakland moves forward with surveillance center...

◼ The council voted 6-1 to approve an incremental resolution allowing the city to hire a new contractor to assemble the Domain Awareness Center, a surveillance hub that would allow police and city officials to continuously monitor video cameras, gunshot detectors and license-plate readers across the city.

Dozens of Oakland residents, deeply worried the center would allow the city to spy on people's everyday lives, tried to turn the resolution into a referendum on surveillance and persuade council members to stall, or scrap, the process.

"Nobody in Oakland wants to be monitored 24/7," said Oakland permaculture designer Ryan Rising, 25. "I see it as a pilot program for other cities to build their own surveillance centers."

..."I don't want to live in a city that is testing this giant surveillance system, because I believe it is going to be used to criminalize normal existence," said Magdalena Kazmierczak, 24, who lives in West Oakland.