Oakland leaders approved a $140,000 contract last week between OPD and an Israeli surveillance company, Cellebrite, which provides tools that can unlock cellphones and extract and analyze their data.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oakland police have used Cellebrite since 2014 for criminal investigations and to monitor how officers are using department-issued devices. Two years ago, the council approved a newer version of Cellebrite that \u201cdramatically expanded\u201d OPD\u2019s digital evidence capabilities, according to a staff report recently shared with the council. City officials agreed to approve<\/a> a one-year extension of this version of Cellebrite. The existing contract is supposed to expire in June.\u00a0<\/p>\n The council waived some of Oakland\u2019s contracting rules to approve the contract, including competitive bidding.\u00a0<\/p>\n But city officials did not seek a waiver for Oakland\u2019s \u201cSanctuary City Contracting and Investment Ordinance<\/a>.\u201d Since 2019, this law has barred Oakland from doing business with companies that work with federal immigration agencies by providing \u201cservices or goods for data collection or immigration detention facilities.\u201d This applies to new contracts as well as amendments or extensions to existing contracts. The ordinance also requires contractors to certify that they do not provide prohibited services to immigration agencies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear if Oakland has waived the law to work with a company. Last year, city officials pulled a proposed security services contract<\/a> with Allied Universal after The Oaklandside reported that one of the company\u2019s subsidiary firms has contracts with ICE<\/a> to provide armed detention officers transportation services.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In response to questions from The Oaklandside, OPD officials said the city attorney had reviewed the contract and determined that Oakland\u2019s sanctuary city law does not apply. The ordinance restricts the city from contracting with companies that provide services related to extreme vetting, data brokering, and detention facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOPD is not aware that Cellebrite provides any of these services to ICE,\u201d an OPD spokesperson said in an email. \u201cOPD is committed to following all of the City\u2019s contracting protocols, and will of course revisit its determinations if any new, relevant information comes to our attention.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have at least one active contract with Cellebrite worth $11 million<\/a> to \u201csupport investigations and operations requiring advanced digital forensic capabilities,\u201d according to the federal publicly searchable government\u2019s contracting database. And ICE has purchased Cellebrite equipment and software for years, spending $9.6 million last year<\/a>, and $6.2 million<\/a> from 2023 to 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n Media reports<\/a> have documented how ICE agents have used Cellebrite to unlock phones and collect data<\/a>, including apps, location history, call records, text messages, and even communications from encrypted apps. In 2017, ICE inked a $2 million contract with Cellebrite for its \u201cuniversal forensic extraction devices,\u201d which can pull massive amounts of data from cellphones. The purchase was part of a federal spending spree to meet Trump\u2019s demand for \u201cextreme vetting\u201d of people traveling to the U.S. from Muslim-majority countries, according to a report by Forbes<\/a>. In 2019, the advocacy group Privacy International reported that Cellebrite was marketing itself to border control agencies by touting how its technology can be used to vet asylum seekers<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Department of Homeland Security also recently announced its intent to purchase up to $100 million<\/a> worth of Cellebrite products and services<\/a> for its cybercrime center. Customs and Border Protection, which has also used Cellebrite for many years<\/a>, announced its intention last year to award a roughly $2 million contract<\/a> to the company to support extracting data from phones.\u00a0<\/p>\n China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and other governments accused of human rights abuses have used Cellebrite\u2019s technology<\/p>\n Some Oakland residents who protested the deal at last week\u2019s council meeting expressed concerns about the role Cellebrite has played in helping repressive governments target journalists<\/a> and political dissidents<\/a>. Many were also opposed to a deal with a company headquartered in Israel, citing Israel\u2019s invasion and destruction of wide swaths of Gaza, which many authorities and civil society groups, including the United Nations<\/a>, Amnesty International<\/a>, and B\u2019Tselem<\/a>, have classified as a genocide. Like other Israeli military and police technologies, Cellebrite has been used extensively to conduct surveillance<\/a> on Palestinians and their allies in other countries.<\/p>\n