Oakland moves forward with surveillance center
Oakland's City Council voted to move ahead with controversial city surveillance center during a raucous council meeting Tuesday morning that only ended when the police cleared out the chambers. 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.