Secure Justice

Background

Secure Justice is a nonprofit group that opposes supposed “state abuse of power” and corporate overreach. ¹ Secure Justice encourages changes to government contracting which would expand government authority over corporate activity. The organization has encouraged changes to government contracting policies which would make contracting corporations comply with all internal government regulations.

At the same time, Secure Justice promotes a left-of-center agenda that encourages businesses to resist government policies that it considers inconsistent with  “democratic values and principles of human rights.” ¹ Secure Justice provides no clarification on what these “values” entail, nor does it detail any of its favored policies on the organization’s website. ¹

Secure Justice joined 18 other left-of-center organizations that demanded that Amazon Web Services (AWS) provide public details regarding three cloud security breaches that may have affected stored voter data. Fellow signatories on the open letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos included left-of-center and left-wing activism organizations, including Demand Progress, the Partnership for Working Families, RootsAction, and Color of Change. ²

Leadership

Brian Hoffer has been the chairman and executive director of Secure Justice since 2016. He was previously the chairman of the Oakland, California Domain Awareness Center Ad Hoc Privacy Committee from 2014 to 2015. ³

In January of 2014, Oakland, California planned for the installation of an $11 million city-wide surveillance system called the Domain Awareness Center. The system included facial recognition software, 700 cameras, and automated license plate readers. Hoffer was part of the Oakland Privacy Working Group, which formed to oppose the plan. Eventually, the Oakland City Council voted to scale back the project, removing the surveillance equipment. The Council also created an ad hoc committee of citizens to draft privacy policies on behalf of the city, which  named Hoffer as its chairman. At Hoffer’s urging, the Oakland City Council established a permanent oversight committee for issues of privacy. ³

The Secure Justice board includes a number of other individuals affiliated with left-of-center advocacy organizations. Sameena Usman works as the government relations coordinator for the San Francisco Bay Area office of the left-of-center Council on American Islamic Relations. ⁴ John Jones III, another board member, works as director of communications for Just Cities, also known as the Dellums Institute for Social Justice. ⁵ Board member Tessa D’Arcangelew is also the leadership development manager for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California. ⁶