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Having spent the past five years homebrewing in their garage, San Jose residents and domestic partners Wendy Neff and Felipe Bravo have approached every beer as a learning opportunity. Adding unorthodox ingredients and changing the brewing process slightly to see how it came out, their passion project quickly outgrew the space. Now, in an exciting...
EGD: What is predictive policing and why is it dangerous?
Predictive policing is an increasingly popular tool among law enforcement. According to the RAND Corporation, it was initially envisioned in 2008 by William J. Bratton, police chief of the Los Angeles Police Department at the time. Bratton began to speak publicly about how data analytics had helped his department anticipate gang violence throughout L.A. Soon,...
Downtown San Jose pizza shop under new ownership after abuse allegations
A popular vegan pizza shop in downtown San Jose is under new ownership following accusations of sexual assault against the previous owner. San Jose couple Ruth Baker and Wesley Tonascia dipped into their “hard earned savings” to acquire Pizza Flora last month, replacing Ryan Summers, who put the restaurant up for sale after allegations of...
EGD: Explaining San Jose’s partnership with Helium
A peculiar news release landed in my inbox the morning of Sept. 29 about San Jose using some cryptocurrency program to raise money for internet services for those who can’t afford it. I almost immediately rolled my eyes upon even seeing the word “cryptocurrency” in a government news release. What’s more, I had never heard of...
EGD: Modern community surveillance threatens our human rights
When I was a teenager in the early 2000s, I remember how strange the house with a security camera openly visible on its porch was. Boy Scout activities would often lead us to knock door-to-door and the camera staring right back at us got no less awkward with each visit. Once, a friend waved while...
EGD: San Jose police doesn’t know what it’s doing with its own tech
During a cool Thanksgiving weekend in 2019, Brian Hofer and his younger brother were driving home to Oakland along I-80 in Contra Costa County. The rental vehicle they were driving, a Kia from the rental company Getaround, was reported stolen from San Jose just the month before. Yet the report was not updated after the...
EGD: Gunshot detection tech will lead to more police killings in San Jose
It was near freezing temperatures in the early hours of the morning when Chicago police received an alert from their gunshot detection technology (GDT) solution, ShotSpotter. Apparently shots had been fired in the city’s Little Village neighborhood, an area predominantly populated by Latinx individuals. Officers rush to the scene to find 21-year-old Ruben Roman and 13-year-old...
Downtown San Jose bar owner resigns amid #MeToo accusations of sexual abuse
A prominent downtown San Jose restaurateur has resigned amid accusations of sexual assault, the latest in a sweeping #MeToo movement in breweries and bars. “My actions and gross misconduct in the past have hurt too many and my absolute apologies to ALL,” wrote Ryan Summers, owner of the beer bar and vegan eatery Good Karma...
EGD: Silicon Valley residents must help ban surveillance advertising
According to social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff, in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, in 2001 tech executives looking to save their companies from the ensuing dot com bust, met in the heart of Santa Clara County and designed the groundwork for the ubiquitous advertising model of our time: Surveillance advertising. It is the practice that...
EGD: Privacy is a human right. San Jose should treat it as such.
In my career as a cyber security professional, I have found that the interests of security and privacy can often collide. But I have also learned that that doesn’t have to be the case. For example, protecting customer data from hackers often includes monitoring employee behavior and activity for potential data theft, a precaution that...
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