According to the police department\u2019s 2024 annual report, \u201cOPD has not shared any Cellebrite extraction data with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security or U.S. Customs and Border Protection.\u201d<\/p>\n
During Wednesday\u2019s meeting, more than 20 people spoke in opposition to the contract, many echoing Fife\u2019s and CAIR\u2019s concerns about human rights violations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tools provide access to phones, messages, location data, photos, deleted files and obviously that\u2019s immensely intrusive,\u201d said Musa Tariq, CAIR-SFBA\u2019s policy coordinator. \u201cThis company is kind of part of a broader ecosystem of surveillance where these tools that are developed in militarized or occupation contexts are being exported globally. That\u2019s raising concerns about the normalization of these practices, both abroad and then over here at home.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/250814-OAKLANDPUSHBACK-17-KQED.jpg\")
Councilmember Carroll Fife speaks during a press conference at Oakland City Hall in Oakland on Aug. 14, 2025, condemning President Trump\u2019s recent remarks about Oakland. (Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n
Zhou said the department \u201cdoes understand the optics of this company,\u201d but hasn\u2019t been able to identify a comparable alternative for extracting data from Android devices.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are tied to it because of necessity,\u201d he told the councilmembers. \u201cIf there is a viable replacement, just because of cost alone, I think most of us would switch over.\u201d He said the department has tested alternative technologies, including one in the midst of a 30-day trial.<\/p>\n
So far, Zhou told the council, the alternative tool has been used to try to unlock eight phones, and failed each test. By contrast, he said, Cellebrite has worked to access seven of the eight.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Charlene Wang, who chairs the public safety committee, said it was \u201cundeniable\u201d that Cellebrite had been used by authoritarian regimes to surveil people without consent, but that it\u2019s also used in democratic nations to investigate violent organized crime and human trafficking.<\/p>\n
She said not approving the contract would hurt OPD\u2019s ability to solve violent crimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have trade-offs to make,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have an obligation to protect our citizens, and to use this technology wisely here in the city of Oakland.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wang said next year, she would like to see a competitive bidding process for the phone-extraction contract \u2014 a usual process for city contracts that was waived in this case.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-2215577954.jpg\")
Charlene Wang speaks after being sworn in as city council member for District 2 at City Hall in Oakland, California on May 20, 2025. (Bront\u00eb Wittpenn\/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Fife asked the department to conduct a review of other vendors that might be available to offer similar technology, as well as an independent legal analysis assessing Cellebrite\u2019s access to the city\u2019s data.<\/p>\n
She also asked that the department publicly report concrete statistics of how the data extraction technology is leading to a decrease in crimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe keep having to approve contracts that have been shown around the world to have proven violations of people\u2019s human rights,\u201d Fife said. \u201cI don\u2019t support the use of this vendor. Israel is a genocide state. They are utilizing their power and their control and their monopolies in the public safety sector to monopolize law enforcement agencies around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed a contract to obtain Cellebrite\u2019s tools. \u201cI just don\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-304939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}