A smartphone app which has been on our radar screen for the past year is now available in Spanish with new features and to a whole new audience: undocumented immigrants who may need help before, during and after a raid from ICE. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

The app, called Cell 411 is a smartphone app available for both Android and iOS platforms; it allows users to organize themselves in regional “cells” or groups which are decentralized and managed by the users themselves. The cells can have as little as 2 members and as many as 1,000 members or more, allowing users who are in distress to alerts the rest of the cell of the nature of their problem and the exact location of where they need help.  When sending out an alert, the users’s GPS coordinates are broadcast to their trusted friends and cell members with turn by turn direction to their location.  This allows in essence for the crowd-sourcing of emergencies without the involvement of police, which are often not trusted by communities of immigrants and minorities.

The startup, Cell 411 Inc. was founded by Virgil Vaduva, who is an immigrant himself, after being arrested during an anti-police brutality protest after which he had no means to alert his family and friends of what happened and his whereabouts. The app was built as a decentralized means of helping communities and neighborhoods organize themselves to offer each other mutual aid in case of emergencies without asking for assistance from government, police and other state agencies.

You can also create private cells which are only visible to you an not other users, and you can add your friends to your private cells.

The bluetooth button from Cell 411 Inc.

The app allows you to send emergency alerts about medical problems, police abuse, vehicle problems, crime, and other issues; the alerts are tagged with your exact GPS coordinates and your friends can get turn-by-turn directions to your location, should they decide to come and offer you help.  You can stream live video to your cells and friends, and the video cannot be erased by a malicious user who may gain access to your phone.  The video can also be streamed to YouTube and Facebook and is distributed instantly to all your friends, making it nearly impossible to be destroyed.

The app also has a ride-sharing feature available and real-time chat between cell members, allowing users to discuss how an event unfolds in real time in order to offer help as necessary. (Note: chat feature will be released on March 3)

Last year the company introduced a bluetooth panic button, which can be worn on a wrist, key-chain or a belt clip and allows users to send our an emergency alert much faster, without having to unlock or touch their smart phone.

Available in Spanish, English, German, Portuguese and Romanian, the app is free and does not carry any service cost associated with the use.

It can be downloaded from http://getcell411.com/download

The short video below describes how Cell 411 works and how it can help communities engage in mutual aid activities.

Another walkthrough video also goes into more details on how the app functions.

by Virgil Vaduva

Today Google proudly touted the release of Perspective, an AI-backed platform an API which will allow content publishers to in essence censor user input such as comments, notes and other similar data based on levels of “toxicity” as determined by their AI algorithm.  Marketed as an “anti-harassment tool” the API was released on Thursday by Jigsaw, a Google subsidiary and it was developed in cooperation with the New York Times, Wikipedia, The Economist and The Guardian.

Perspective was created by Jigsaw and Google’s Counter Abuse Technology team in a collaborative research project called Conversation-AI. Conversation AI product manager CJ Adams said, “We hope this is a moment where Conversation AI goes from being ‘this is interesting’ to a place where everyone can start engaging and leveraging these models to improve discussion.”

Adams said that until now, website managers only had a few options on how to manage content, such as up/down voting and black-listing key words but now, [Perspective] “gives them a new option: Take a bunch of collective intelligence—that will keep getting better over time—about what toxic comments people have said would make them leave, and use that information to help your community’s discussions.”

According to their documentation, Google and Jigsaw used content and comments from websites like New York Times and Wikipedia and then displayed the comments to groups of ten people, asking them to rate the “toxic level” of each comment.  This training process gave Google a large test sample they could use in training their machine-learning algorithm and start scoring and ranking real-life comments.

But is their methodology and process sound, and does it lead to a fair scoring, or is it in essence just another re-branded censorship platform that will end up being used to manipulate and censor online content found disagreeable by a majority of the population?

I ran a few tests myself on the Perspective website, which gives people the opportunity to type comments and determine their toxicity in real time.  The higher the score is, the more likely it is that your comment will be removed, blocked or censored by a website using Google’s platform.  I chose a few topics known to create controversial online exchanges and here are my results.

Hillary Clinton should have won the U.S. elections. (6%)

Donald Trump should have won the U.S. elections. (12%)

Hillary Clinton is going to help the United States recover and make America great again. (6%)

Donald Trump is going to help the United States recover and make America great again. (10%)

There is no racism in America. (39%)

White people often discriminate against blacks. (65%)

Black people often discriminate against whites. (63%)

Gun control is a great thing for America. (10%)

Gun control is a terrible thing for America. (42%)

America needs a tax cut. (13%)

America needs a tax increase. (4%)

There is no racism on America’s college campuses.(30%)

There is racism on America’s college campuses. (34%)

A gun is a great tool for single women to use in self defense. (20%)

A gun is not a great tool for single women to use in self defense. (18%)

Killing cops is morally wrong. (66%)

Killing cops is not morally wrong. (49%)

War is good for America. (11%)

War is not good for America. (18%)

After testing some controversial opinions and comparing various extremes, it’s easy to see that the Perspective platform can easily be used to censor controversial speech, whether that speech comes from the left or the right of the American political spectrum.  This evidence should be disturbing to anyone willing to experience slight discomfort reading “toxic” online comments while still maintaining some resemblance of balanced conversation.

Publishers willing to use Perspective can easily do so in an effort to manipulate the reader perception of weighted opinion on their websites; worse yet, advertisers will have even more limited knowledge about their audience and opinions held by users due to the fact that only opinions deemed appropriate by Perspective will be displayed to end users.

Content producers should remain extremely cautious about the Perspective platform. When users are no longer able to post comments like “Trump is an idiot” or “Hillary is a terrible human being,” they will create an environment empty of value, essentially a masturbatory pleasantry where everyone agrees with everyone, or so it may appear.

You too can test the Perspective platform and rank the toxicity of your own comments here: http://www.perspectiveapi.com/

Virgil Vaduva is a Libertarian security professional, journalist, photographer and overall liberty freak.  He spent most of his life in Communist Romania and participated in the 1989 street protests which led to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. He can be reached at vvaduva at truthvoice.com.

An easy but misleading comparison.

I don’t really like football. I can appreciate and admire the dedication and raw talent it takes to compete athletically on a national level, but being a spectator to the sport has fairly limited appeal for me. The same goes for pretty much all sports, actually. In this I am sometimes seen as a deviant by my friends, and certainly the rest of my family, the latter of whom I think it’s safe to say meet the bar for “football fanatic.” They watch, talk, and argue about teams, players, strategies. They go so far as to base their home decor around the priority of their team favor, dedicating wall real estate proportionally to each team.

I don’t really understand the emotional investment many seem to have in their preferred teams. Players themselves rarely seem to show a similar loyalty, and even at the college level, the role money and athletic scouts play seems to make the location and name of a given team more of a branding decision than any real representation of the people in that particular area. Yet it’s teams that are nearest to where a fan lives (or where they grew up) that seems to play the biggest role in whether a team is liked. I have to admit it: I just don’t get it.

Me irl on Thanksgiving, trying to blend in

Because spectator sports are something so well-liked, and at the same time so alien to me, its preference as a cultural pastime is something I’m really only capable of thinking about as an outsider. As an outsider to the fandom, I frequently encounter a meme that, in addition to being unfair, inaccurate, and pretentious, is rooted in a kind of unwarranted elitism that is, in my opinion, even more harmful to the cognitive potential of the person holding the opinion than the “divisiveness” caused by maintaining a rude or dismissive belief.

You’ve probably seen someone say something along these lines. “Football is the opiate of the masses.” It’s the contemporary bread and circuses of our modern-day Roman Empire, so says the supposed intellectual — even he who admittedly enjoys the gladiator bouts himself. I’ve seen the opinion spouted by everyone from well-thought activists and philosophers, to pseudo-intellectual posers, and even the arguably well-meaning but laughable walking meme factory Alex Jones.

Maybe the idea took off because it’s easy for an outsider to believe at a glance. To someone who’s not into spectator sports, strangers watching the game can become hordes of faceless sports fans, often encountered while drunk and loud at bars and restaurants, painting the caricature of a tribalist idiot more concerned with what men in tights are doing than the realities of what’s going on around them. What’s “really going on,” of course, is entirely subjective. “Imminent societal collapse,” especially in the wake of a recent presidential election, is a pretty popular one.

Assuming football is such an effective distraction, let me ask you this. What do you really think would happen if people stopped watching football and “woke up?” What would you have them do, stand in crowds waving signs every moment they weren’t watching the game? Football does literally nothing to prevent people from engaging in the political process. People aren’t so distracted by sports that they cannot take the time to get informed and vote. They’re already doing that, and all of the other things you think are helping, and it’s accomplishing nothing.

Good thing these people didn’t waste time watching the playoffs.

The truth is that sports have nothing to do with it. Even the most zealous fan is not an opium addict, and the belief that escapism is the problem — especially “their” preferred type — is a stupid and detrimental belief. It rejects the reality that many humans are capable of complex, varied, and sometimes contradictory thought in favor of masturbatory pomp. It’s detrimental because it distracts from the very realization it masquerades as: that we really are alive in an era of bread and circuses, and it has little to do with television or smartphones.

The plebs of the classical era were regularly beaten into submission, starved, manipulated, and killed for small amounts of material gain. Concepts like economic and social progression were wildly out of scope for what they could ever hope to achieve. Practically all of them suffered living conditions that are almost unfathomable to us today.

If rebellion sounded like it might net some reward, and seemed even remotely within grasp, a violent insurrection was very probable — which is why dissent in the age before easy access to information was punished with incredible brutality. It was quelled not only with barbaric treachery, or even with simple social distraction, but by providing comforts that were otherwise out of reach.

Technology has enabled unprecedented access to information, including the ability to share experience. The restriction to information as a safeguard to the patrician has been removed, and to counter, the old bread and circuses have been done away with. The new opiate is the obfuscation of violence.

Violence, especially violence against otherwise peaceful people, permeates all modern societies. Because it is rarely acted upon, the average person has stopped detecting it. Like the smell of bread in a bakery, you forget it’s even there when you’re not tasting it for yourself. Even when your friends are taxed into oblivion, unable to afford adequate healthcare, or beaten by police, you’re directed to submit written petitions asking for relief. Maybe the state will get around to it, maybe it won’t — it all depends on if the right people get the vote, right?

“is this meme dank? y/n”

It isn’t working, and you don’t need them. You don’t voluntarily pay for the things the state provides or the rules it makes, even when you think it’s a wonderful idea. You can’t escape this, certainly not by voting or protesting, and if you try to, you risk having violence used against you. This arrangement is not only unnecessary, but it keeps you the subject of a system which does not have your interest at heart. The bread and circus of the modern era is the idea that you are a part of the social contract; the opiate of the masses is the belief that you are not a pleb.

Stop shitting on football and start stabbing tyrants.

— David Neely, written for TruthVoice

A small startup that has been around for less than a year has created a free mobile app aimed at helping Americans and people all over the world resist the police state.  The app, called Cell 411 (or Cell 112 in Europe), is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Romanian, and it helps activists and people from all political shades resist government abuse with decentralized GPS-based alerts and live video features. Whether you are a gun-rights activist, an anti-Trump protester, concerned with police brutality or simply a muslim woman concerned for her safety, this app can help you build decentralized groups, or “cells” of trusted connections which you can then use to dispatch when you need help.

Because this app has been so revolutionary in its approach to building a new way to handle emergencies and the police state, it has been selected by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to be featured in the “Future of Design” exhibit in 2018.

Think of this app as an “UBER for emergencies” or a “911 on steroids” except it doesn’t involve government, police or people  you don’t trust.  The app was created by a small group of passionate engineers, activists and people concerned with the growth of police state all over the world.  It can be used by anyone with an Android or iOS smartphone and it has tens of thousands of users all over the world.

Here is how it works: users can freely download the app and signup for an account using their e-mail address of Facebook account. Once signed up, a user can join existing public “cells” or groups in their areas, or can create their own cells.  Joining a cell allows you to send and receive emergency alerts from the members of that cell.  Let’s say you want to create a cell in your town called, “Denver Mutual Aid.”  Al users in the Denver area will be notified when this cell was created and can join the cell in order to offer each other help when the members request the help.  There are thousands of cells all over the world used by users for many reasons, such as immigration help, neighborhood watching, etc.

You can also create private cells which are only visible to you an not other users, and you can add your friends to your private cells.

The app allows you to send emergency alerts about medical problems, police abuse, vehicle problems, crime, and other issues; the alerts are tagged with your exact GPS coordinates and your friends can get turn-by-turn directions to your location, should they decide to come and offer you help.  You can stream live video to your cells and friends, and the video cannot be erased by a malicious user who may gain access to your phone.  The video can also be streamed to YouTube and Facebook and is distributed instantly to all your friends, making it nearly impossible to be destroyed.

The app was specifically designed to be resistant to censorship and government surveillance and has been used successfully all over the world to save lives and keep users safe from criminals, police abuse and many other malicious actors.

The company also created a “panic button” which is a bluetooth device that pairs with the mobile app and allows users to issue alerts instantly without having to unlock the phone or spend precious time navigating an app. Recently a “ride sharing” feature was also added to the app to allow users to offer rides to each other when they need help and accept payments for cash, Bitcoin, silver and even bartering.

You can download Cell 411 for Android and Apple devices from http://getcell411.com/download

You can also watch a quick walk-trough of the main features of this app below:

CARACAS, VENEZUELA –  Last month 20 Venezuelans were arrested as they were trying to sneak into Curaçao, the island country in the southern Caribbean Sea, using a small boat — just like Cubans rafters do to make their way to Florida.

Venezuela’s northernmost point is less than 20 miles away from the Dutch territory, so this has become the route of choice for dozens trying to flee the socialist, hunger-stricken country every week.

According to a Datin Corp poll released last week, 57 percent of Venezuelan registered voters want to leave the country. This means that approximately 12 million people want out, almost half of the 30 million who populate the country if we take out children and teens.

In a similar survey conducted in 2015, Datin Corp found out that 49 percent of Venezuelans wanted to move overseas.

Datin Corp’s head, political analyst Jesus Seguias, said that one of the most surprising facts this year is that as many as one of every four admirers of the late Hugo Chavez also said they would emigrate if they could.

“They are Chavistas and they declare themselves as such, but they are angry at President Nicolas Maduro because of the country’s situation,” he said to Fox News Latino.

The country’s situation is one of acute shortages of the most basic products, a 700 percent inflation projected for 2016 and record levels of street crime.

According to Seguias, the new rise is partly explained by the number of opposition members and independents who now want out — 71 percent and 59 percent, respectively.

“The desire of leaving is clearly related to the lack of hope and the disappointment at the current situation,” said Seguias, warning that the number could escalate if a vote to recall President Maduro is not held this year, as the majority of Venezuelans expect.

Yet the wish to relocate is for most people an almost impossible dream.

“Leaving your country is a real complex matter,” said sociologist Ivan De La Vega, professor at Simon Bolivar University. “It requires a plan and is risky, so normally those who emigrate are young people without children.”

He said that some countries in the region are setting an increasing number of restrictions to avoid undesired migration from Venezuela.

Curaçao, for example, now requires any Venezuelan entering the island to carry at least $300 in cash, hold hotel reservations and have a return ticket. In neighboring Aruba, some people are asking the government to start demanding a visa to all Venezuelans.

In May, the Curaçao Red Cross announced that they were working on a contingency plan to deal with Venezuelan expatriates, but expressed concern because they said the country simply doesn’t have the resources needed.

Since Chavismo took power in 1999, more than 1.8 million Venezuelans have fled the country, De La Vega said.

Up until 2012 most of them were highly educated professionals who were typically well received anywhere they went. A Pew Research Center conducted in early 2013 estimated that 51 percent of Venezuelans living in the U.S. at the time had at least a college degree.

But that began to change rapidly after Maduro took power in March of 2013.

“In 2013 and 2014 we had a new wave of migration that included a wider range of social strata,” De La Vega told FNL.

According to an investigation published last month by the Grupo de Diarios America, the top three countries receiving Venezuelan exiles are currently the U.S., Spain and Colombia.

“We have been able to find Venezuelans living in all five continents and in at least 96 countries.

The list keeps growing. Many leave to one place and then move to another,” the sociologist said.

Many of those who choose Spain and Colombia are descendants of Spanish and Colombian immigrants who settled in Venezuela years ago, so they don’t count as foreigners.

“The total number of emigrants could rise to up to 3 million,” De La Vega said. “We would be able to calculate the number better if [the government of] Venezuela kept a better record of entries and departures,” he added.

Franz von Bergen is a freelancer reporter living in Caracas.

Source: Reed v. Beckett (West Virginia Supreme Court, 10/26/2016)

Zimbabwe’s army commander said on Friday that his soldiers will deal with threats from activists using social media to mobilise anti-government protests, the first time the military has commented on the demonstrations.

Lieutenant-General Valerio Sibanda, the Zimbabwe National Army Commander, said in an interview with state-owned The Herald newspaper that social media activism was cyber warfare that the army would deal with.

Neither the army, which has anchored President Robert Mugabe’s 36-year rule, nor the police force have been paid on time since June.

Zimbabwe has seen several protests in recent months with unemployment above 80 percent, dollar shortages worsening as commodity prices slumped and as the region suffers its worst drought for 25 years.

The largest anti-government protest in Zimbabwe in the last decade was organised on social media last month, when a strike by #ThisFlag movement shut down businesses.

“As an army, at our institutions of training, we are already training our officers to be able to deal with this new threat we call cyber warfare where weapons – not necessarily guns but basically information and communication technology – are being used to mobilise people to do the wrong things,” Sibanda said.

“The major task we are undertaking now is that of training and preparing the army for whatever eventuality.”

Generals in Zimbabwe’s military are veterans of the 1970s independence war, and while they publicly support Mugabe and his ZANU-PF, they have divided loyalties over who should succeed Mugabe, who is also under pressure from war veteran allies.

Zimbabwe’s army commander said on Friday that his soldiers will deal with threats from activists using social media to mobilise anti-government protests, the first time the military has commented on the demonstrations.

Lieutenant-General Valerio Sibanda, the Zimbabwe National Army Commander, said in an interview with state-owned The Herald newspaper that social media activism was cyber warfare that the army would deal with.

Neither the army, which has anchored President Robert Mugabe’s 36-year rule, nor the police force have been paid on time since June.

Zimbabwe has seen several protests in recent months with unemployment above 80 percent, dollar shortages worsening as commodity prices slumped and as the region suffers its worst drought for 25 years.

The largest anti-government protest in Zimbabwe in the last decade was organised on social media last month, when a strike by #ThisFlag movement shut down businesses.

“As an army, at our institutions of training, we are already training our officers to be able to deal with this new threat we call cyber warfare where weapons – not necessarily guns but basically information and communication technology – are being used to mobilise people to do the wrong things,” Sibanda said.

“The major task we are undertaking now is that of training and preparing the army for whatever eventuality.”

Generals in Zimbabwe’s military are veterans of the 1970s independence war, and while they publicly support Mugabe and his ZANU-PF, they have divided loyalties over who should succeed Mugabe, who is also under pressure from war veteran allies.

A New York Police Department (NYPD) officer keeps guard during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square December 31, 2014. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith (UNITED STATES – Tags: SOCIETY CRIME LAW) – RTR4JS50

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is sending out letters telling gun owners to turn over their rifles and shotguns — or else face the consequences.

New York City’s ban on rifles and shotguns that hold more than five rounds is now being enforced, according to a letter the NYPD is sending out to targeted city gun owners.

“It appears you are in possession of a rifle and/or Shotgun (listed below) that has an ammunition feeding device capable of holding more than five (5) rounds of ammunition. Rifles and shotguns capable of holding more than five (5) rounds of ammunition are unlawful to possess in New York City, as per NYC Administrative Code 10-306 (b).”

“You have the following options,” the letter explains.

“1. Immediately surrender your Rifle and/or Shotgun to your local police precinct, and notify this office of the invoice number. The firearm may be sold or permanently removed from the City of New York thereafter.

2. Permanently remove your Rifle and/or Shotgun from New York City and provide the following…Disposition Report/Registration Certificate…Notarized statement of permanent removal…Utility bill or other proof of residency regarding the address where the firearm will be stored outside the City of New York.

3. You may call to discuss the matter if you believe your firearm is in compliance…”

Departing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a major gun-control activist, with his coalition recently sponsoring an ad that depicts an Adam Lanza-type character entering a school full of children.

New York state, meanwhile, passed the NY SAFE Act in 2013 in response to the Sandy Hook shooting. The law, which bans “high-capacity magazines” and puts in place other stringent controls, was signed by governor and 2016 presidential hopeful Andrew Cuomo.

Patrick Howley, Political Reporter

The European Commission is proposing the creation of a database that will hold information on those using virtual currencies and that will record data on the users’ real-world identity, along with all associated wallet addresses. This is under the guise of “fighting terrorism.”

This is the first proposal part of an action plan that the EU got rolling after the Paris November 2015 terror attacks and that it officially put forward in February 2016 and later approved at the start of July 2016.

As we wrote in our article from a few weeks back, the action plan, a reform of the Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD) so it would also include the terms “virtual currency,” was only approved by the (EU President) Juncker Commission.

New AMLD will end anonymous Bitcoin transactions in the EU

This action plan is now making its way through the rest of the EU regulatory body, with the European Commission now in charge of putting the reformed AMLD to paper. As expected, the first draft of the AMLD now includes mentions to virtual currencies.

Besides recognizing crypto-currencies as another form of money, the draft also includes a set of regulations that would provide FIUs (financial intelligence units) with the tools needed to keep track of digital currencies, in the same way they do with fiat currencies.

To combat money laundering via digital currencies, EU officials plan to create a database that links Bitcoin and other crypto-currency addresses with real-world individuals, essentially putting an end to the anonymity that accompanies such payments.

FIUs across member states will have the power to create and then manage such databases, but users will also be allowed to register on their own, as a sign of good faith. The current AMLD draft reads:

The report shall be accompanied, if necessary, by appropriate proposals, including, where appropriate, with respect to virtual currencies, empowerments to set-up and maintain a central database registering users’ identities and wallet addresses accessible to FIUs, as well as self-declaration forms for the use of virtual currency users.

As mentioned when ministers from various countries met in Brussels last year, the EU is interested in regulating Bitcoin and similar currencies so that it would be harder for terrorists and cyber-criminal groups to use the currency to hide their operations and move large sums of money across borders.

Digital currency exchanges and wallet providers operating in Europe will most likely have to abide by the reformed AMLD and force EU users to register with their real information so that FIUs could track down individuals behind suspicious operations.

Bitcoin is regularly used for ransomware payments, in human trafficking (slavery, prostitution rings), kidnappings, extortions, hacking tools, and all sorts of illegal services and products.

Initial estimations have the reformed AMLD reaching the European Parliament for a final vote later in the year.

The head of Cleveland’s largest police union is calling on Ohio Gov. John Kasich to temporarily restrict the state’s open carry gun laws during this week’s Republican National Convention following Sunday’s shooting in Louisiana that killed three officers and wounded at least three others.

“We are sending a letter to Gov. Kasich requesting assistance from him. He could very easily do some kind of executive order or something — I don’t care if it’s constitutional or not at this point,” Stephen Loomis, president of Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, told CNN. “They can fight about it after the RNC or they can lift it after the RNC, but I want him to absolutely outlaw open-carry in Cuyahoga County until this RNC is over.”

State law in Ohio allows for licensed firearm owners to wear their weapons in public. With the exception of a small “secure zone” inside and around the Quicken Loans Arena, residents, delegates and protesters are legally permitted to walk around the city — including within its 1.7 square mile regulated “event zone” — with any firearm not explicitly banned by the state.

Kasich, responding to the request, said: “Ohio governors do not have the power to arbitrarily suspend federal and state constitutional rights or state laws as suggested.”

“The bonds between our communities and police must be reset and rebuilt — as we’re doing in Ohio — so our communities and officers can both be safe. Everyone has an important role to play in that renewal,” he said.

Earlier, he released a video offering his condolences in the wake of the Baton Rouge attack.