Portland’s City Data and Privacy Office Legislation

Thank you for taking the time to learn about this important, ground-breaking initiative…

NEW DATE: Council hearing will be THURSDAY, JANUARY 29th, 2026 at 4:00PM.

Scroll down to learn how to testify or attend! Every voice matters in this conversation.

— BASIC OVERVIEW —

Right now, the city of Portland manages data and privacy in a haphazard way.

Each bureau must manage privacy and data independently, and is responsible for ensuring their own programs are in compliance with the City’s priorities. This means that the Portland Police Bureau and the Office of Technology Services, for example, are essentially expected to manage their own compliance, without much external oversight.

Not only is this problematic, but managing these concerns is completely outside of the scope-of-work that the bureaus are organized to perform.

The City Data and Privacy Office legislation will address this issue by creating a new, City Data and Privacy Office, as a co-equal city office within the government, charged with managing compliance, mapping risks and enhancing data protection and privacy safe-guards.

This is essential because, as things stand now, it is impossible to know exactly where city data is flowing, potentially putting our communities at-risk. This is especially true for immigrant communities and black, brown and poor communities, which often bear the brunt of over-policing and rampant surveillance.

(BUDGET IMPACTS: There has been some confusion around the budget impact of this initiative. As written, however, the legislation is expected to cost very little, because it draws on existing staff and positions within the city, simply reorganizing them into a co-equal bureau of their own. The only additional position needed within the city will be a Chief Data Officer.)

— How to Testify in Writing, in Person or Online —

You can sign-up to testify at this link: https://www.portland.gov/council/agenda

— Scroll down the page to agenda items 11 and 12:
— Click on “Testify on this item” for either one.
(Both are going to be heard at the same time, so it doesn’t matter which you sign up for.)
— Submit written testimony right away! You can type directly into the city’s webpage, and even just a sentence or two has a big impact!
— If you prefer, you can sign up to testify in person or online at the same time.

Use the links below to read the legislation and you can use the talking points at the bottom of the page to help you get started.

— Tips for Testifying in Person or Online —

  1. Address the council and introduce yourself, including your district. For example, you could start by saying something like: “Good afternoon President Dumphy, Vice President Clark and Councillors. My name is _______, and I am a resident of district ______.”
    (If you are representing an organization, you would also state that here.
    You can look up your district number here: https://www.portland.gov/transition/districtcommission/map )
  2. Clearly state your position. For example, you could say, “I am here today in support of City Data and Privacy Ordinance 3.39, and the Data and Privacy Protection Resolution.”
  3. Be brief. You will only have 2 or 3 minutes. Try to stay focused, and only plan to make 2 or 3 clear points. If you can back those points up with specific examples or personal stories, that can be helpful, as well.
  4. Be sure to close with a call-to-action. For example, you might close with something like, “That’s why I am asking that the council vote yes on both the Privacy and Data Protection Resolution, and City Data and Privacy Ordinance 3.39. Thank you.”
  5. If you start to run out of time, you can skip to the end. It’s OK to skip to your call to action if you run behind in your speech. Having written notes can be very helpful.

— CURRENT DRAFTS of LEGISLATION —

The current drafts of the legislation are linked below. Please click on the links to read each portion. The full initiative requires both a Resolution and and Ordinance…

(PLEASE NOTE: some minor changes are being made to the text. Blue strike-through text is being removed, and blue text is being inserted. To our reading, the changes do substantially affect the legislation.)

—- CITY DATA and PRIVACY ORDINANCE 3.39

—- PRIVACY and DATA PROTECTION RESOLUTION

The Ordinance creates the office. The Resolution tells it what to do.

— IDEAS and Points to Consider (TALKING POINTS) —

We need to tell the city that Portlanders want and need this legislation!

The following ideas are ways to jump-start your own thinking as you consider writing in support, or testifying online or in-person. Please remember, you do not need to make every point made here – just a single aspect or two is plenty.

Thank you for caring about this important issue!

— DISCUSSION and TESTIMONY TALKING POINTS —

  • Immigrant communities face unprecedented attacks under this federal administration. ICE agents have been caught operating without identifying themselves, and have circumvented due-process protections. Data about where and who immigrants are, how they move about, and where they are likely to be, have already been used to apprehend and abduct residents in violation of our Sanctuary City and Sanctuary State commitments. We need to take control back from data-brokers that collect and sell information about Portlanders to the highest bidder, including to federal agencies like ICE. We can’t do that without knowing where the risks are, and without a staff organized effectively to protect our data and prioritize these concerns. This legislation makes these solutions possible.
  • Communities of color have been over-policed and over-surveilled for generations, bearing the brunt of civil liberties violations and restrictions on free-assembly. As tools for surveillance continue to grow in sophistication and power, these communities run the risk of becoming even more targeted and unfairly profiled. We need to commit to powerful community oversight and to transparency in surveillance and data collection, so that black and brown communities can thrive and control their own destinies. This legislation lays the groundwork for accountable progress toward those goals.
  • Managing data privacy at the city right now requires each bureau to manage data independently. This makes data privacy a secondary concern. Our world is changing rapidly, and we can no longer afford this approach. We need to prioritize data privacy by establishing a single office that addresses data management and privacy issues as primary concerns.
  • Now more than ever, our personal data can reveal a huge amount about us. Thanks to the growing field of AI Analysis, data about us can be compiled into a detailed picture of who we are and how we live. This puts our future at risk, because this administration, or future administrations, could use it to target people that don’t agree with them, or identify protestors and dissidents. It could be used to predict which groups are most likely to resist authoritarian orders, or support causes that are considered distasteful. We must create a City Data and Privacy Office to track how our data is being compiled, and with whom it is being shared, to ensure we remain free to exercise our constitutionally-protected rights to free speech and assembly.
  • Only a decade ago, the thought of state law enforcement tracking a woman who needed an abortion across state lines was unthinkable. And yet, we now live in a post-Roe world where this danger exists. According recent reporting by 404 Media, a sheriff in Texas used automated license plate reader information to attempt to track a woman accused of self-managing an abortion. While this case resolved without incident, it reminds us that the world can change and what seems to be protected today, could become at-risk in the future. Because our data can create a revealing profile of our lives, it leaves an imprint of the causes we support and the people we affiliate with. It telegraphs our life-patterns, our religious affiliations, our sexualities and our political tendencies. In a future administration, we don’t know what kinds of behaviors or participation might become demonized. This legislation helps create a way for Portland to keep up with the possible dangers that leaks in our data might pose, far into the future.
  • Data-brokers are large companies that collect massive amounts of information about regular people, then sell that data to anyone that will buy it. This includes sales to the government. Right now, data brokers are collecting information from thousands of places, and we have no map of how or where this is happening, or what risks that might pose. In a world where data can now be compiled into intimate and revealing portraits of how our families work, what we believe, how we worship and how we are likely to vote, we need to know where and how our data is being collected, and what it is being used for. This legislation will create a Data Inventory and Risk Map so that we can finally begin to understand this landscape and protect ourselves from the misuse of our data.
  • Artificial Intelligence technology is growing in capability at an astonishing rate, and is becoming embedded in many of the tools that we use every day. While this may confer some benefits to society, there are risks in the ways that AI tools share data and in the potential for AI to create “patterns of life” in the data of Portland’s residents. This legislation mandates privacy reviews for AI systems and requires public reporting on any tool that exports data outside of Portland. This is a much-needed step toward ensuring that Artificial Intelligence tools remain beneficial and do not threaten the data sovereignty and privacy of Portland’s residents.

REMEMBER! You can make this conversation your own! Use these ideas as starting points and feel free to modify as you would like.

THANK YOU for making your opinion heard!

We hope to see you on Thursday January 29th!