#LA fires great threat to the homeless there

[remembertheplunge]

Fire on the Streets

12/13/2025

This is a painting , back and front, done by my homeless friend Kevin A. It symbolizes, I think, the raging fire of homelessness. I think it’s his impression of the feel of life on the streets. The homeless of Los Angeles area are now in great danger due to the raging fires there. I thought I would dedicate this blog to them and to Kevin who is still, after many years, out on the streets.

[nerdygaymormon]

America’s Pre-Stonewall  Queer Rights Movement

We talk like the 1969 Stonewall Riots came out of nowhere, and in some important ways it did as it upended the gay rights movement that had existed. It rejected the respectability politics of prior efforts. We were no longer trying to say we’re just like you, please treat us nicely. Post-Stonewall we were radical and demanding rights, legal reforms and power. However, the steps prior to Stonewall were important as it showed LGBTQ people exist and helped people start getting organized, building networks and methods of communication that could be used after Stonewall

———————————————————————

A lot of queer people lived in small towns and farming communities and felt like they were the only one. Then they were drafted into the military and fought in World War II and found each other. 

Upon returning home from war, they were under a great deal of pressure to marry and conform to a conservative lifestyle. Most did but they still looked for opportunities to meet others and many upstanding men in their communities would go to certain bathrooms or parks to cruise (finding other men for sex) and then return home to their respectable life afterwards. They were out to satisfy a need and if the cops ran a sting, they slinked out shamefully, and feared their name being reported in the newspaper for that could destroy their life. 

The United States government was scared of the Communists and called that threat the Red Scare. Related to this is the Lavender Scare, which is the belief that queer people would be susceptible to being blackmailed and so it was important to remove them from positions in government, business, & society. Many cities passed laws that further marginalized queer people. But not everyone took this meekly, they started organizing to try to fight back. 

———————————————————————

1945 - World War II ends

1947 - Vice Versa, the first American lesbian publication, is written and self-published by Lisa Ben (real name Edith Eyde) in Los Angeles. Lisa Ben is an anagram of “lesbian.” It survived 8 months and published 9 issues. Vice Versa's mix of editorials, short stories, poetry, book and film reviews and a letters column, a pattern subsequently followed by many queer publications. 

1950 - The Mattachine Society is the first national gay rights organization formed after WWII. They coined the term homophile (to be used instead of homosexual which feels so clinical and often used as a diagnosis of a disorder), and when asked to speak about what is a homophile, they talked about love instead of sex. At the time, LGBT people were regularly described as deviants and having mental issues, frequently portrayed as villains in the movies, often were homeless & sex workers as a result of being kicked out of their homes. The Mattachine Society fought to change that perception by portraying LGBT people as respectable citizens. The society went into decline in the mid-1960′s and disappeared after Stonewall for seeming too stuffy and unwilling to be confrontational.

1952 - "Spring Fire," the first lesbian paperback novel, was published and sold 1.5 million copies. It was written by lesbian Marijane Meaker under the false name Vin Packer.

1952 - Christine Jorgensen becomes the first widely-publicized person to have sex reassignment surgery, in this case, male to female, creating a world-wide sensation. This was performed in Denmark, and upon arriving in the USA, her transition was the subject of a New York Daily News front-page story, making her a celebrity. She published an autobiography in 1967

1952 - Several members of the Mattachine Society formed a separate society called One, Inc. They published ONE magazine, a monthly magazine and the first U.S. pro-gay publication. The US Post Office declared it obscene and refused to deliver, but it was sold at newstands in LA. ONE existed until 1965.

1953 - The Diana Foundation was created in Houston and is still in existence, making it the oldest continuously active gay organization in the United States. The Diana Foundation is focused on assisting and supporting the needs of the gay community, by distributing funds to organizations that are dedicated to providing services that enhance the lives of individuals in the community.

1953 - President Eisenhower signs an Executive Order banning anyone identified as threats to national security--including those with criminal records, alcoholics, and “sex perverts”--to be excluded or terminated from federal employment. It's estimated 5000 employees were let go, and this number does not include the many who were not hired as questions about their sexual orientation were found during background checks. This ban extended to all subcontractors who want to do business with the federal government, like Boeing, IBM, and many other businesses.  1955 - Dissatisfied at the lack of women voices in the Mattachine Society, the first lesbian rights organization in the US, The Daughters of Bilitis, was founded. It was originally meant to be a social alternative to lesbian bars, which were subject to raids and police harassment. As the Daughters of Bilitis gained members, they shifted their focus to supporting women who were afraid to come out by educating them about their rights and about gay history. They held national conventions in Los Angeles every 2 years from 1960 to 1968. Their 1962 convention was covered by local TV channel WTTV, making it the first  American broadcast that specifically covered lesbians.

1956 – The Ladder, the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States, began publication. It was published monthly from 1956 to 1970, and every other month in 1971 and 1972. It was the primary publication and method of communication for the Daughters of Bilitis. A big part of it’s end was debate over whether to remain aligned with other homophile groups or to join the National Organization for Women and their fight for women’s rights. 

1956 - Dr. Evelyn Hooker presented her work that disproved the diagnosis that being gay is a mental illness. She conducted psychological tests of gay individuals who were not incarcerated and also were not psychological patients. Her work was met with incredulity, but she continued her work and published several additional studies over the coming years.  

1957 - The word “transsexual” is coined by U.S. physician Harry Benjamin to refer to people who have a gender identity inconsistent with their assigned sex and desire to permanently transition to the sex or gender with which they identify, usually through medical means (hormones & surgery) 

1958 - The US Supreme Court ruled against the US Post Office for refusing to allow ONE magazine to be delivered by mail simply for having stories and poems about lesbian and gay characters. This is the first US Supreme Court ruling to deal with homosexuality

1958 - The first gay leather bar in the United States, the Gold Coast, opened in Chicago

1961 - in San Francisco, José Sarria became the first openly gay candidate in the United States to run for public office, running for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Sarria almost won by default as there were fewer than 5 candidates for the 5 open seats, but city officials recognized this and on the final day had gotten more than 30 candidates registered. Sarria lost but won enough votes to create the idea that a gay voting bloc could wield real power in city politics

1961 - the Tay-Bush raid, the largest raid on a gay bar in San Francisco, resulted in the arrests of 103 people. It is considered a pivotal event in the history of LGBT rights in San Francisco.

1962 – Illinois becomes the first U.S. state to remove sodomy law from its criminal code, but it criminalized acts of "Open Lewdness,” such as open displays of affection between people of the same sex

1962 - The Janus Society was founded in Philadelphia. It is notable as the publisher of Drum magazine, one of the earliest gay publications in the United States and the one most widely circulated in the 1960s. The Janus Society focused on a strategy of seeking respect by showing the public gay individuals conforming to hetero-normative standards of dress at protests.

1962 - In San Francisco the Tavern Guild, the first gay business association in the United States, was created by gay bar owners as a response to the Tay-Bush raid and continued police harassment and closing of gay bars 

1962 - A panel of 8 gay men had 90 minutes on a New York radio station to talk about what it was like to be gay. They talked about their difficulties in maintaining careers, the problems of police harassment, and the social responsibility of gays and straights alike. 

1964 - the first organized protest against gay discrimination took place in New York City. 10 people picketed in New York City to protest the armed forces’ anti-gay discrimination and the army’s failure to keep gay men’s draft records confidential. These brave people stood up and spoke out at a time when very few were willing to do so because they did not want to be identified for fear of their family's reaction and the likely loss of their job and housing.

1964 - Life magazine published the article "Homosexuality In America" which was the first time a national publication reported on gay issues. The article described San Francisco as "The Gay Capital of America." This resulted in a big migration of gays to the city.

1964 - the Council on Religion and the Homosexual was the first group in the U.S. to use the word "homosexual" in its name. It was a San Francisco-based organization founded for the purpose of joining homosexual activists and religious leaders. It held an event where local politicians could be questioned about issues concerning gay and lesbian people, including police intimidation. The event marks the first known instance of "the gay vote" being sought.

1965 - Frank Kameny & Jack Nichols led the first “homosexual rights” protest at the White House. They wanted equal treatment of gay employees in the federal government, the repeal of sodomy laws, and the removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s manual of mental disorders. 10 men & 3 women bravely picketed, and were covered by ABC, UPI, AP, Reuters, and other news organizations. 

1965 - Inspired by the picket at the White House, on July 4th 39 conservatively-dressed people were part of a protest called “Reminder Day” held in Philadelphia at the Liberty Bell to point out that gay people are denied the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. This picket was done on July 4th for 5 years in a row. The last time just a week after the Stonewall Riots.

1965 - Vanguard was created, an organization of LGBT youth in a low-income San Francisco district. It is considered the first Gay Liberation organization in the U.S. which encouraged gays & lesbians to engage in radical direct action, and to counter societal shame with gay pride, such as by coming out to family & friends

1966 - The New York Mattachine Society stages a "Sip-In" at Julius Bar in New York City. New York liquor laws prohibited serving alcohol to gays. While unsuccessful that day in getting served, the publicity helped get the law changed.  1966 - Riot at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco - Compton’s became a regular hangout for drag queens, trans individuals, and young gay street hustlers, including many who belonged to Vanguard, much to the chagrin of it’s owners. The gay bars didn’t allow them in due to transphobic policies. One night management was fed-up by the noisy crowd at one table and called the police. When a cop attempted to arrest a transgender woman (cross-dressing was illegal), she resisted by throwing coffee at the police officer. It was followed by drag queens pouring into the streets, fighting back with their high heels and heavy bags. In the aftermath of this, the city of San Francisco began treating trans people as a community of citizens with legitimate needs instead of simply as a problem to get rid of.

1966 - In Los Angeles a coalition of Homosexual organizations organized demonstrations for Armed Forces Day to protest the exclusion of LGBT from the U.S. armed services. The 15-car motorcade is sometimes called the nation's first gay pride parade

1966 - National Transsexual Counseling Unit was formed in San Francisco, the first transgender organization ever, this is one action taken due to the Compton’s Cafeteria riot.

1966 - The Society for Individual Rights opened America’s first gay and lesbian community center in San Francisco

1967 - On New Years Day at the Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles, the balloons dropped at midnight, auld lang syne was sung and some bar patrons kissed, then at five minutes after midnight, 12 plainclothes policemen began swinging clubs and pool cues, dragging patrons out the door and into the street. Sixteen people were arrested that night—six of them charged with lewd conduct (otherwise known as kissing). The raid prompted a series of protests that began on 5 January 1967, organized by P.R.I.D.E. (Personal Rights in Defense and Education). It's the first use of the term "Pride" that came to be associated with LGBT rights.

1967 - The Advocate, an American LGBT-interest magazine, was first published as a local newsletter by the activist group Personal Rights in Defense and Education (PRIDE) in Los Angeles. It began as a way to alert gay men to police raids in Los Angeles gay bars.

1967 - Craig Rodwell opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in New York City, the first bookstore in the country focused on literature by gay and lesbian authors. Rodwell was also vice president of the Mattachine Society and the bookstore doubled as a community center. 

1967 - The Student Homophile League at Columbia University is the first institutionally recognized gay student group in the United States.

1969 - Stonewall Riots

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 8.18

684 – Battle of Marj Rahit: Umayyad partisans defeat the supporters of Ibn al-Zubayr and cement Umayyad control of Syria. 1304 – The Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle is fought to a draw between the French army and the Flemish militias. 1487 – The Siege of Málaga ends with the taking of the city by Castilian and Aragonese forces. 1492 – The first grammar of the Spanish language (Gramática de la lengua castellana) is presented to Queen Isabella I. 1572 – Marriage in Paris, France, of the Huguenot King Henry III of Navarre to Margaret of Valois, in a supposed attempt to reconcile Protestants and Catholics. 1590 – John White, the governor of the Roanoke Colony, returns from a supply trip to England and finds his settlement deserted. 1612 – The trial of the Pendle witches, one of England's most famous witch trials, begins at Lancaster Assizes. 1634 – Urbain Grandier, accused and convicted of sorcery, is burned alive in Loudun, France. 1721 – The city of Shamakhi in Safavid Shirvan is sacked. 1783 – A huge fireball meteor is seen across Great Britain as it passes over the east coast. 1826 – Major Gordon Laing becomes the first non-Muslim to enter Timbuktu. 1838 – The Wilkes Expedition, which would explore the Puget Sound and Antarctica, weighs anchor at Hampton Roads. 1848 – Camila O'Gorman and Ladislao Gutierrez are executed on the orders of Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas. 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Globe Tavern: Union forces try to cut a vital Confederate supply-line into Petersburg, Virginia, by attacking the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad. 1868 – French astronomer Pierre Janssen discovers helium. 1870 – Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Gravelotte is fought. 1891 – A major hurricane strikes Martinique, leaving 700 dead. 1903 – German engineer Karl Jatho allegedly flies his self-made, motored gliding airplane four months before the first flight of the Wright brothers. 1917 – A Great Fire in Thessaloniki, Greece destroys 32% of the city leaving 70,000 individuals homeless. 1920 – The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage. 1923 – First British Track and Field championships for women, London. 1938 – The Thousand Islands Bridge, connecting New York, United States with Ontario, Canada over the Saint Lawrence River, is dedicated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 1940 – World War II: The Hardest Day air battle, part of the Battle of Britain. At that point, the largest aerial engagement in history with heavy losses sustained on both sides. 1945 – Sukarno takes office as the first president of Indonesia, following the country's declaration of independence the previous day. 1950 – Julien Lahaut, the chairman of the Communist Party of Belgium, is assassinated. The Party newspaper blames royalists and Rexists. 1958 – Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita is published in the United States. 1958 – Brojen Das from Bangladesh swims across the English Channel in a competition, as the first Bengali and the first Asian to do so. He came first among 39 competitors. 1963 – Civil rights movement: James Meredith becomes the first African American to graduate from the University of Mississippi. 1965 – Vietnam War: Operation Starlite begins: United States Marines destroy a Viet Cong stronghold on the Van Tuong peninsula in the first major American ground battle of the war. 1966 – Vietnam War: The Battle of Long Tan ensues after a patrol from the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment clashes with a Viet Cong force in Phước Tuy Province. 1971 – Vietnam War: Australia and New Zealand decide to withdraw their troops from Vietnam. 1976 – The Korean axe murder incident in Panmunjom results in the deaths of two US Army officers. 1977 – Steve Biko is arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act No. 83 of 1967 in King William's Town, South Africa. He later dies from injuries sustained during this arrest bringing attention to South Africa's apartheid policies. 1983 – Hurricane Alicia hits the Texas coast, killing 21 people and causing over US$1 billion in damage (1983 dollars). 1989 – Leading presidential hopeful Luis Carlos Galán is assassinated near Bogotá in Colombia. 2003 – One-year-old Zachary Turner is murdered in Newfoundland by his mother, who was awarded custody despite facing trial for the murder of Zachary's father. The case was documented in the film Dear Zachary and led to reform of Canada's bail laws. 2005 – A massive power blackout hits the Indonesian island of Java, affecting almost 100 million people, one of the largest and most widespread power outages in history. 2008 – President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf resigns under threat of impeachment. 2008 – War of Afghanistan: Uzbin Valley ambush occurs. 2017 – The first terrorist attack ever sentenced as a crime in Finland kills two and injures eight. 2019 – One hundred activists, officials, and other concerned citizens in Iceland hold a funeral for Okjökull glacier, which has completely melted after once covering six square miles (15.5 km2).

[centrifuge-politics]

Brick Club 5.1.15, 5.1.16

Gavroche makes the same choice that everyone on the barricades has been coerced toward: buying scant minutes of time with unimaginable sacrifice. It’s being in a position where you’re forced to claw and scrape out any forward progress. And whether it’s you or someone standing in your way, something has to give. For every cartridge Gavroche manages to gather, “there is another who will do us no more harm.” That same thesis showing up again. I can’t directly compare this to Enjolras, but, at some point, the distinction between distributing bullets and firing them isn’t meaningful. Think of it as the difference between attack and defense, one bolsters your allies, the other eliminates your enemies, but both ultimately have the same result.

It’s also worth thinking about the difference in consequence. In one sense, Gavroche gets the worse outcome, death is much worse than a grim conscience. But, from a more spiritual perspective, dying without the mark of the sin of murder on your soul is imminently preferable, and we already know that Enjolras has judged himself for his actions.

This is…a much worse scene than even Jehan’s execution. Jehan was killed as an enemy combatant and an active threat and was not a child. His last words were a rallying cry to revolution, Gavroche’s are a playful song (not without its allusions of course). “It was the sparrow pecking at the hunters…The National Guards and the soldiers laughed as they aimed at him.” The Guard is playing a game and for all that Gavroche is teasing, he’s not playing with them. As soon as he’s hit, his song takes a deliberate shift in tone, “I have fallen to the earth…with my nose in the gutter.” C'est la faute à les gardes nationaux. There’s so much imagery of flight and falling, sinking only to rise again. Even when Gavroche falls for the last time, he isn’t grounded, “that great soul had taken flight.”

“To be wandering and to seem free is to be lost.” Oof. There’s something laughably ironic about the public gardens only being accessible to those who can afford private space. No poor homeless children allowed in this public space.

The gardens come back. “In the morning all is streaming, in the afternoon all is dusty. Nothing is so admirable as a verdure washed by the rain and wiped by the sunbeam.” I like the phrase “pitilessly content,” to describe this type of person who ignores “sublime toil” in favor of the infinite. It has less to do with being literally absorbed to distraction by the immensity of nature and the cosmos, and a lot more to do with being in such a position where one can ignore the context and subsequent impact of their thoughts and actions. You don’t get to believe that you have an entirely objective existence, it only means you’ve never looked down before. This feels like a critique of religion, philosophy, and science all in one go.

That contrast is then brilliantly played out in the following anecdote. In the garden, “He who was there breathed happiness; life was sweet; all this nature exhaled candor, help assistance, paternity, caress, dawn…you felt the prodigality of the inexhaustible…God was serving up the universal repast.” But for the two starving orphans who are technically not even allowed in this garden. A bourgeois father counsels his son to feed the swans, “Be humane. We must take pity on the animals,” before even considering the hungry children he has seen and dismissed. The fact that he’s described to be “always smiling” reminded me of “magnificent egotists of the infinite, tranquil spectators of grief…who are determined to be happy until the light of the stars and the song of the birds are exhausted.” Continuing the extended metaphor, the bourgeois and his son flee the gardens when clouds of smoke blot out the sky and the din of revolution drowns out the birdsong. “Stick that in your gun,” indeed.

[shirlleycoyle]

‘FIND THIS FUCK:’ Inside Citizen’s Dangerous Effort to Cash In On Vigilantism

Andrew Frame was excited. 

It was Saturday night two weeks ago, and Frame, the CEO of the crime and neighborhood watch app Citizen, was on Slack, whipping himself and his employees into what he'd later call at an all-hands meeting a "fury of passion" about a wildfire that had broken out earlier that afternoon in Los Angeles' Pacific Palisades neighborhood. 

Citizen had gotten a tip that the wildfire was started by an arsonist, and Frame had decided earlier in the night that the fire was a huge opportunity. Citizen, using a new livestreaming service it had just launched called OnAir, would catch the suspect live on air, with thousands of people watching. Frame decided the Citizen user who provided information that led to the suspect’s arrest would get $10,000. Frame wanted him. Before midnight. As the night wore on, Citizen got more information about the supposed suspect. They obtained a photo of the man, which they kept up on the livestream for large portions of the night. More information trickled in through a tips line Citizen had set up.

"first name? What is it?! publish ALL info," Frame told employees working in a Citizen Slack room who were working on the case. 

"FIND THIS FUCK," he told them. "LETS GET THIS GUY BEFORE MIDNIGHT HES GOING DOWN."

"BREAKING NEWS. this guy is the devil. get him," Frame said. "by midnight!@#! we hate this guy. GET HIM."

He was growing impatient. He increased the bounty to $20,000. Thousands of people were watching Citizen's livestream, but the man still hadn't been caught. Frame asked his staff to send out another notification, one that would hit all Citizen users in Los Angeles. The bounty had to go higher.

"Close in on him. 30k Let's get him. No escape. Let's increase. 30k," Frame said. "Notify all of la. Blast to all of la."

"Citizen is OnAir: Arsonist Pursuit Continues," the notification, which went out to 848,816 Citizen users in Los Angeles, said. "We are now offering a $30,000 reward for any information directly leading to his arrest tonight. Tap to join the live search."

Over the course of nearly seven hours, Citizen, under the increasingly frantic direction of Frame, conducted a citywide, app-fueled manhunt for a specific suspected arsonist. The employees went back and forth on how they should frame the manhunt they had started, who in Los Angeles they should notify via the app, and how often they should do it. 

Do you work at Citizen? Do you have access to internal Citizen documents? We’d love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

In the Slack room with Frame, one staffer brought up a "loophole," pointing out that Citizen was violating its own terms of service that prohibit "posting of specific information that could identify parties involved in an incident." The staffer who brought up the terms of service violation was ignored in that specific Slack room, and the broadcast continued to specifically name the person and share his photo for hours.

Earlier in the night, soon after news of a fire broke, Frame said he saw the fire as a chance to catch a suspected arsonist live on the internet, therefore proving Citizen's utility to users and helping the app grow. 

"The more courage we have, the more signups we will have. go after bad guys, signups will skyrocket. period … we should catch a new bad guy EVERY DAY," Frame said. 

At one point, Frame said "these metrics will be great." And they were. At one point 40,000 people were watching the live feed, according to the Slack messages. Citizen saw a sharp spike in signups as the livestream spread. Frame said at a later all-hands meeting that 1.4 million people engaged with the content, according to other Slack messages.

Well after midnight, Los Angeles police made an arrest. In a separate Slack room, employees cautiously began to celebrate: "cop said its an ongoing investigation, this looks like our guy!!!" one employee wrote.

It wasn't Citizen's guy. Frame and the entirety of the Citizen apparatus had spent a whole night putting a bounty on the head of an innocent man. 

(Motherboard is not publishing the name of the person Citizen falsely accused, though Citizen repeatedly used it both internally and externally.)

Motherboard spoke to eight sources in reporting this story: five former Citizen employees, two sources with knowledge of the company's operations, and one person close to the company's founders. Motherboard also obtained multiple caches of internal policy documents, Slack messages, and company notes. Our reporting spells out not only what happened in Pacific Palisades, but also how workers and Andrew Frame view the incident and Citizen's role in society. The app pitches itself as a public-safety tool, but aims to grow its user base and revenue just as much as any other startup. The Palisades incident was characterized by Frame as a risk, a test, an experiment, even though it potentially put the person they named in danger.

Motherboard has learned that: 

Users are flooded with notifications in what multiple sources interpret as an attempt to make users feel anxious enough about their neighborhoods to buy "Protect," a $19.99 per month service that allows users to livestream their phone's camera and location to a Citizen "Protect agent" who monitors it and sends "Instant emergency response" in case of an emergency.

The return of a missing autistic teen to his family in the Bronx earlier this month was done by Citizen employees on a "Street Team" that films and interacts with people while pretending to be ordinary app users.

Employee performance is measured by how many seconds it takes workers to input an incident into the app and how many incidents they cover.

Citizen's grand vision has never been a secret: From its initial launch as an app called "Vigilante" in 2016, the company pictured a world in which people were alerted to crime as it happened, and then app users stepped in to stop it before the police needed to intervene. In the Vigilante launch advertisement, a criminal stalks and then attacks a woman in New York City. The app broadcasts the location of this active crime to Vigilante's users, and a horde of people descend on the criminal, stopping the crime in progress: "Can injustice survive transparency?" the ad asks.

Thus far, however, Citizen has essentially been a social network for reporting crime that operates in around 50 cities. Citizen workers listen to and summarize police scanner audio as "incidents," which are then pushed to the app. Users can also post their own incidents, upload photos and videos, and comment on or react to incidents with emojis. The app allows users to search "around you" for incidents, and also sends push alerts to users for nearby events. 

"The whole idea behind Protect is that you could convince people to pay for the product once you’ve gotten them to the highest point of anxiety you can possibly get them to," one former employee said, referring to Citizen's subscription service. "Citizen can’t make money unless it makes its users believe there are constant, urgent threats around them at all times," they added. A Citizen spokesperson denied this in a statement: "It’s actually the opposite. With user feedback in mind, we have designed the Citizen home screen so users only see relevant, real-time information within their immediate surroundings," the spokesperson said.

The disastrous Palisades fire bounty hunt and the discovery of a Citizen-branded "private patrol" vehicle driving around Los Angeles (part of a pilot program in which Citizen envisions offering a physical private security force to respond to the problems of its users) hint that Citizen's goals essentially remain the same as Vigilante's. 

Frame seems to imagine Citizen as an all-encompassing crime-fighting machine that he believes will make the world safer. In Slack messages viewed by Motherboard, Frame calls ProtectOS, the system Citizen uses to create incidents and push them out to users, "the most powerful operating system ever created." 

"Our vision is a global safety network of people protecting each other—a world in which a kidnapping is impossible, because everyone is looking out for each other, and neighbors are alerted as soon as a kidnapping attempt is made," a Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement.

Vigilante was instantly controversial for a variety of reasons. Unsurprisingly, police said the app encouraged vigilantism. Critics worried that the app's users would racially profile Black people as suspicious, as happened on other safety-focused apps. Apple took the app out of the App Store because it violated terms of service that ban apps that risk "physical harm to people." The app relaunched as "Citizen" in 2017, with Frame saying that the original name "distracted from our mission" and that people should not take the law into their own hands. They should use Citizen to avoid crime rather than fight it.

In practice, Citizen is an app that experts say fuels paranoia and a fear of one's neighbors and surroundings by reporting "suspicious" people. Many of the incidents reported on the app are about people experiencing homelessness, for example. 

"It plays into people’s anxieties and fears and magnifies people’s fears of the other and who and what they think should not exist in their neighborhood or their area," Chris Gilliard, a research fellow with the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, said. "As we’ve seen, that often means people who don’t look like them." 

One former Citizen employee told Motherboard that a portion of the app's user base is "insanely racist, which comes out in comment sections that are especially vile even by the standards of internet comment sections." Citizen does moderate comments, but "two people having an argument about whether or not someone’s comment is racist drives engagement," the source added. A hacker recently scraped a wealth of information from Citizen, including user comments that repeatedly use the N-word, according to a screenshot provided by the hacker. Some of these were deleted by Citizen, but racist comments are regularly posted on incidents.

Citizen incentivizes both its employees and the public to create incidents because they are the core currency of the app and what drives user engagement, user retention, and a sense of reliance on the app itself. The scrape of Citizen data published by the hacker earlier this week and shared with Motherboard shows at least 1.7 million incidents in the United States.

The weekly incidents on Citizen, using data scraped by the hacker. Image: Ishaan Jhaveri, Computational Research Fellow, Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University.

Workers have been measured by how many Citizen users see incidents they covered, how many reports they produce, and how quickly they do so, multiple former employees told Motherboard.

"It’s basically an anxiety sweatshop," a Citizen source said. "On days when things are 'slow,' they relax the standards around incidents because a dip in incident count is really bad," they added. The company sends congratulatory emails announcing which analysts reported the highest number of incidents, another source added.

This results in Citizen warning users about "everything," according to one former employee. This includes lost dogs, minor car crashes, unsubstantiated reports of gunshots, and domestic incidents, they said. This week in Los Angeles, incidents ranged in severity from "assault" to "gunfire" to "two men brawling" to "injured bird," "firefighter activity," and "crowd gathered."  

“In a healthy society we are typically not incentivized to sensationalize mundane events and code them as crime. I can’t help but think it plays into people’s anxieties and fears and magnifies people’s fears of the other,” Gilliard said. “What’s really dangerous is the ways they’re starting to serve as infrastructure, where people start to feel like they have to use them to maintain society and order.”

A former employee added, "They don’t much care about the accuracy or the usefulness of the information they put out, they just want to push as many notifications to create that feeling of vulnerability that leads people to the subscription services." 

Another former employee said that although fear is an aspect of the app, it isn't the only one: Notifications about fires get a lot of engagement, even if the danger to other people is not imminent, "because the videos get crazy." They added that Citizen sometimes acts as a source of entertainment for users. "People like to read about and watch videos of incidents around them," they said. 

Even Frame, the company's CEO, acknowledges Citizen's bombardment of notifications. "We send so many dumb notifs," Frame said in one of the Slack messages obtained by Motherboard. 

Andrew Frame. Image: Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch.

There is a formal process for creating incidents, one of the sources explained. Medical calls are not reported and domestic violence incidents are recorded at an intersection rather than an address, they said. But "the guidelines evolve, and there is definitely disagreement internally over the guidelines." In the Palisades incident, Frame said he "overrode the policy we have for Mission Control" in official notes from a company all-hands meeting.

A Citizen spokesperson said in a statement that "We continue to work to improve the relevance and frequency of notifications. In addition, we are focused on reducing the reach of notifications about violent incidents, and increasing the reach of notifications about incidents such as missing people or pets being reunited with their families—we could all use some more good news."

To help with the deluge of incidents that Citizen creates, it has outsourced work to CloudFactory, a data processing service, three sources told Motherboard. CloudFactory uses workers based in Kenya and Nepal, according to CloudFactory's website. Citizen's use of CloudFactory has not been previously reported. CloudFactory did not respond to a request for comment.

Citizen hires "central analysts" to listen to police scanners and then enter information into Citizen so users can receive a notification about an incident close to them. Now some of those jobs are being filled by CloudFactory. 

Citizen's outsourcing of labor overseas is making U.S. employees nervous they may lose their jobs, one added. They added that the U.S. workers train the CloudFactory workers. Because Citizen is focused on specific cities in the United States, remote workers at CloudFactory are inherently not on the ground, though Citizen says its own "analysts" review incident updates.

A Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard in an email that "As the company grows, we are working with CloudFactory to augment our team. All incident updates and alerts continue to be reviewed by our 24/7 team of Citizen analysts."

Citizen believes that the more people who click into the app, the more users sign up, a source with knowledge of the company's operations said. So, like many other apps and tech companies, Citizen experiments to see where the optimal engagement may be.

But Citizen presents itself as a public-safety service while also trying to increase engagement. This creates a fundamental friction that, at best, ends with a barrage of useless push notifications. At worst, it ends with the CEO putting a bounty on an innocent person's head.

"It’s basically an anxiety sweatshop."

Ultimately, monetizing its user base has also led Citizen to test a product where users could order on-demand help from a private security service. This month, Motherboard reported that a Citizen-branded vehicle was driving around Los Angeles. Leaked emails showed the vehicle was part of a pilot working with Los Angeles Professional Security, a local security company whose CEO wants the power to arrest people and take them to jail. Citizen told CBS on Wednesday that the trial with Los Angeles Professional Security is now over.

The emails also showed Citizen is testing the program with well-known security firm Securitas, and claimed that high-level members of the LAPD said the product could be a game changer. A Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard at the time that the vehicle was part of a trial to test a service for users that, for example, may want an escort to walk them home. But details from internal emails already published by Motherboard explain that Citizen believes it can help with property crime.

This move explicitly into the private security space is directly linked to Citizen's potential plans for monetization. A Citizen product roadmap document obtained by Motherboard lists "Paid Private Response" under a section titled "$$$." That section  also mentions "Insurance Perks," "Open Hardware Platform," and "Send First Responders.". One former employee mentioned that OnAir, the broadcasting service used during the manhunt, may be turned into a premium content service, and the roadmap also mentions "Live Video" under the "$$$" section.

A Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard in an email that the company's monetization plan fits with its vision of being a global safety network of people protecting each other, but did not specify what that would involve. "We will not serve ads or sell user data," the spokesperson said.

"I never thought Citizen would go this far," one of the sources said. "I didn’t anticipate the ways they would circumvent the police and go that much further," referring to the private security force Citizen piloted in Los Angeles.

While Frame was instructing his team to up the stakes of the search for the alleged arsonist, the public faces of the manhunt were two people presenting Citizen's live broadcast. As part of its OnAir product, Citizen essentially runs a pseudo-cable news TV show, with presenters reading out tips they've received from the public, speaking to people on the ground, and, in the case of the wildfire, reminding users that Citizen was offering a bounty for information leading to the arrest of the suspect.  

"We mobilized the community, people in the Palisades area and surrounding. People have sent in so many tips saying that this is the guy," a woman named Kris, the main host of the broadcast, said. (A Motherboard employee in Los Angeles repeatedly got push notifications during the stream and took notes at the time.) "We had a bunch of people send in the photo that this is a known arsonist in the area. They know this guy, this is where he hangs out. While it's not official, so many people have thrown out this guy's name. He goes by the name [redacted by Motherboard] and it seems like everybody in the community knows this is the guy. So we are offering a $30,000 reward."

Toward the end of the night, Kris had been joined by Prince Mapp, Citizen's head of community. He pointed out the stakes: "When have you seen 860,495 people committed to finding one person? We have mobilized a city to bring one person to justice," he said. "Look for [the person's name]. Look for him. Family members of [the person's name]. He wasn't just brought on this world by himself, we need your help. We need you to help us contact him and identify where he is. We need the scent of his clothing. We need this man off the street so we can stop burning the city of Los Angeles […] This person is the devil and we need to get him off the street. We need to get our city back in order."

Throughout the night, these broadcasters were being coached behind the scenes in another Slack room that Andrew Frame seemingly didn't participate in much that night: "Kris, keep repeating the $10k reward. 'LET'S FIND THIS ARSONIST,'" one employee wrote. "REWARD. MONEY MONEY MONEY," they added later. "Don't stop mentioning reward for the next 7 minutes."

The model for the Palisades fire response, according to official notes posted in a Slack room from an all-hands meeting about the incident, was similar to something that happened in the Bronx earlier this month, when an autistic boy called Jeremiah went missing. "We had this really strong moment with Jeremiah," the notes quote Frame as saying. "This seemed like a perfect opportunity to use OnAir."

In that case, Citizen users went to Jeremiah's family's house and started filming, and Citizen itself started one of its OnAir broadcasts, where, similar to the bounty case, hosts read out incoming tips and interview users on the ground.

"There had been sightings of him running away from users trying to approach him," a source with knowledge of Citizen's operations said. 

Eventually, two users found Jeremiah at a Target and he agreed to go with them. Jeremiah got in their car and the people took him home. 

"They kept the broadcast going and had his grandma and mom on speakerphone," the source added. "People were also concerned that he got in a car with random strangers."

After the incident, Citizen uploaded a supercut of the event, with the Citizen users finding Jeremiah and him being reunited with his family. The company added hopeful background music to the footage. A Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement that "In the last 30 days, Citizen has shared critical safety information that has contributed to at least four missing people, including a 13-year-old autistic boy, reuniting with their families."

What the video didn't make clear is that the people on the ground filming Jeremiah and speaking to his family were not Citizen users. They were part of Citizen's "Street Team," who go out to events and contribute footage to the app while posing as ordinary users. Two sources confirmed the Street Team's existence; Citizen doesn't publicly acknowledge the existence of this team, one of the sources said. The sources added they believe the purpose of the Street Team is to make regular users think they could get involved too, so they will start broadcasting their own footage. "Essentially for engagement," one of the people said.

A screenshot of the OnAir broadcast featuring Jeremiah. Redaction by Motherboard. Image: Citizen.

"These Street Team members were not dressed in Citizen gear and looked like regular users," the source added. A document written by the company after the incident says "When Jeremiah went with Prince and Chris into the car, users did not know that they were members of the Citizen team. As a user, this scene could be alarming. Commenters had already shared how kids with autism might go easily with strangers, and then they watched the live broadcast as he did just that. Moving forward, how can we ensure our street team is presented as a safe community alternative to police?" 

Asked about the Street Team, a Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard in an email that "From time to time, we put temporary teams in place in some of the cities where Citizen is available to demonstrate how the platform works, and to show responsible broadcasting practices—similar to how social media platforms have paid creators." Slack chats obtained by Motherboard indicate Citizen may have used a Street Team during the bounty incident as well.

The Citizen document about the Jeremiah case also reflected on what could be improved, asked how the app could be changed to help setup search parties for users to join, or for people to report missing persons, and acknowledged that there were significant privacy, safety, and special needs issues with how Citizen handled the live streaming of a search for an autistic child.

Externally, this was presented as a success.

"If you're watching Citizen, keep watching so we can reunite more people, and use technology for good," the narrator of the recap video posted by Citizen said. 

"The Jeremiah incident was spun extremely positive despite all red flags—a missing child was found live. That was how it was presented. So it was essentially fuel for them to continue searching for these big incidents that would activate users," a source with knowledge of the company's operations added. 

Shortly after, another such incident appeared: the Palisades wildfire. In contrast to how the Jeremiah broadcaster said Citizen was about reuniting people and using technology for good, during the Palisades manhunt Frame said on Slack he wanted to create a situation where criminals felt like "'This is tech closing in on you. Good luck buddy.'"

Publicly, Citizen said it was very sorry for the Palisades fire incident and for putting a bounty on the head of an innocent man. The company called the entire incident "a mistake we are taking very seriously." 

Kris and Prince, two of the public faces of the manhunt, both posted lengthy messages on Slack about what they believe happened Saturday night. Kris said she didn't know what she was getting into: "It was not immediately clear that the pursuit/reward was the angle of the OnAir. we have successfully covered wildfires before without that aspect," she said. "I will say I agreed to help before I understood this but that I take full responsibility for not backing out once it was clear I’d have to say the reward."

Prince said "I went too far and I'm willing to accept the consequences. We should not be labeled as lynchers or encourage anyone to capture. I understand that we are not a news app. We are not the cops either."

While many employees at Citizen felt the Pacific Palisades incident was a huge mistake, Andrew Frame looked at it differently. While Frame showed some contrition, he sees the bounty experiment as a "massive net win," a step on the way for his app to become a private safety network that is "going into what the government is failing to do," which is, in the company's mind, failing to keep people safe, according to his Slack response to Prince.

Firefighters battle the Palisades fire in Los Angeles. Image: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

"There is no consequence for taking a risk, safe environment," he said, not acknowledging the potential danger the company put the man they falsely accused in. "This product work is the future of the world … the team came together on a Saturday and pulled off something incredibly awesome."

In a later all-hands the Wednesday after the incident, Frame admitted that the company "got a lot of things wrong Saturday," according to official notes posted on Slack and obtained by Motherboard. But "even though this feels really bad on the outside, it's not nearly as bad as it may feel. One of our investors wants to assuage everyone's concerns," Frame said. "The investors have never been more excited."

"For me, this is a cultural milestone," he said, adding that the team had devised a new strategy: "The next 50-100 OnAir stories will be heartwarming ones because we will do this responsibly." When asked questions about the meeting, a Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement that "We don’t comment on anecdotes from internal meetings that are taken out of context."

Frame said at the all-hands that he is still performing a manhunt for the person Citizen falsely accused, but this time in order to apologize. 

"We need to find this person and we are actively looking to find him. We are not done when it comes to this person," notes from the all-hands say. "Andrew [Frame] said they are working on that and this has the chance to turn into a very happy moment."

‘FIND THIS FUCK:’ Inside Citizen’s Dangerous Effort to Cash In On Vigilantism syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[savetopnow]

2018-04-05 12 NEWS now

NEWS

Associated Press

Congress' challenge: How to tame industry giant Facebook

Facebook scandal affected more users than thought: up to 87M

Trump scales back US goals in Syria, leaves future to others

As Oklahoma teachers strike drags on, frustration mounts

Trump signs proclamation directing troops to secure border

BBC News

How the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal unfolded

What would you do with free money?

Russians protest over 'toxic' landfill near Moscow

Using astronomy to save a species

Great white shark follows police off Australian coast

Chicago Tribune

Woman, 56, found dead with lacerations on body on West Side

West Side shooting wounds man, 37

Man suspected of killing his parents at Central Michigan dorm found unfit for trial, his attorney says

University of Chicago police officer shoots student near campus

Separate Lake County crashes injure two drivers, damage utilities

LA Times

Review faults L.A. homeless authority's fiscal management, raising questions over Measure H funds

MLB: Charlie Blackmon gets nine-figure deal

Alec Martinez will get asked to do even more for Kings' banged-up defense unit

L.A. school board member Ref Rodriguez is arrested on suspicion of public intoxication

White House makes hasty plan to send National Guard to border, leaving mission and duration unclear

NPR News

U.S. Farmers Likely Among Hardest Hit By Chinese Tarriffs

Russia's Attempt To Join Probe Into Ex-Spy's Poisoning Fails

USDA Defies Advisers, Allows Carrageenan To Keep Organic Label

After Stephon Clark Shooting, Questions Remain About Police Use Of Force

Facebook Says Cambridge Analytica May Have Obtained Data On As Many As 87M Users

New York Times

Police Fatally Shoot a Brooklyn Man After Falsely Believing He Had a Gun

Trade War, Facebook, YouTube: Your Wednesday Evening Briefing

How U.S.-China Trade Spat Could Threaten Manufacturing

Stranded French Commuters Could Test Macron’s Reform Agenda

Facebook Says Cambridge Analytica Harvested Data of Up to 87 Million Users

ProPublica

How Do You Identify Fake News?

Here’s How You Can Use Trump Town

Help Us Dive Into the Swamp — ‘Trump, Inc.’ Podcast

Addiction Drug’s Side Effect: More Overdoses?

ProPublica and NPR Win Investigative Reporters and Editors Award

Reddit News

Ex-fertility doctor facing suit for using his own sperm is a former Mormon mission and temple president

Asian-Americans Suing Harvard Say Admissions Files Show Discrimination

It's much worse: Facebook says almost every profile has had its data scraped by a third party

Stocks make a monster comeback, Dow rallies more than 700 points from lows of the day

Law enforcement warning to students: making school threats "will change your life forever"

Reuters

Asia shares bounce from two-month lows as U.S.-China trade war fears ease

New York police shoot black man holding pipe after reports he had firearm

U.S. expects talks with China as trade fight escalates

Video blogger who opened fire at YouTube was angry with company, police say

Oklahoma House approves education tax bill amid teacher walkout

Reveal News

Nation’s largest janitorial company faces new allegations of rape

A group of janitors started a movement to stop sexual abuse

The Hate Report: How white supremacists recruit online

New documents about Jehovah’s Witnesses’ sex abuse begin to leak out

California is preparing to defend its waters from Trump order

The Altantic

West Virginia's Teachers Are Not Satisfied

This Average Joe Is the Most Quoted Man in News

The Unsinkable Benjamin Netanyahu?

Eric Garcetti Isn't Expecting Much From Washington

The Particular Horror of Church Shootings

The Guardian

Cyclist who lost job after giving Trump the middle finger sues former employer

YouTube shooting suspect built online persona as she scorned real world

Facebook says Cambridge Analytica may have gained 37m more users' data

Liverpool’s stunning first-half salvo leaves Manchester City’s hopes on rocks

Barcelona’s Piqué and Suárez rub it in after Roma’s own-goal gifts

The Independent

Sinclair producer resigns over network's 'obvious bias'

United Nations to hold special meeting on poisoning of former Russian spy

BBC admits scenes in Human Planet which showed tribe living in rainforest treehouse were faked

Men jailed for killing goat at petting zoo 'because they were hungry'

How Silicon Valley, spooks and the super rich took control of the 21st century

The Intercept

Public Workers Worried That Tennessee’s Billionaire Governor Is Taking Another Run at Them

Right-Wing Media Look at Parkland Student Activists and See a Reason to Gut Public Education

Intercepted podcast: Injustice League

EPA Violated the Law by Failing to Investigate Civil Rights Complaints, Court Rules

Donald Trump’s New Policies Could Make It Harder for Torture Survivors to Get Asylum

The Quartz

This year, the H-1B visa will find fewer takers among India’s big IT companies

Facebook is changing the way it handles your data—here’s how

Mark Zuckerberg thinks he should still be in charge of Facebook

Trump picked an odd time to send troops to the US-Mexico border

Australia loses more money to gambling than any country in the world

Wall Street Journal

Tariff Showdown Shifts to Intense Negotiation Period

Caravan in Trump's Crosshairs Stalls Far From Border

AMC Set to Open First Movie Theater in Saudi Arabia

Iraq Struggles to Exhume and Identify Victims of ISIS

Trump Tells Commanders to Finish ISIS Fight in Syria Quickly

[investmart007]

LOS ANGELES | Los Angeles mayor: Trump sows division, does 'racist things'

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/TNVCN0

LOS ANGELES | Los Angeles mayor: Trump sows division, does 'racist things'

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, considering a 2020 presidential run, said Thursday that President Donald Trump has done “plenty of racist things” to divide the nation while failing to deliver on health care reform and other promises.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the two-term Democratic mayor who already has visited the important presidential election states of Iowa and New Hampshire said he intends to make a decision on his candidacy by March.

To oust the president in a 2020 campaign, Garcetti said his party needs to show Trump doesn’t back up his words. He pointed to Trump’s promise to deliver a better health care plan than President Barack Obama’s model. “How’s that going?” he asked.

“We need to show this is not a strong man, this is a thin-skinned and ineffective person who isn’t saying everything wrong, he’s bringing up some good points, but he’s not producing anything,” Garcetti said. “And then the rest of the time he’s dividing us and trying to take things away from us.”

The mayor said that while “racism is something that lives in everybody,” Trump “seems to be much more comfortable with his racism, letting it out.”

“We do have a president, a commander in chief, who is using race to divide us. And not just race — immigration status, geography. He wants to divide us by these kind of essential categories, to point fingers,” Garcetti said.

He stopped short of calling Trump a racist but said “he certainly has done plenty of racist things.” Garcetti said it’s important for the public to know if Trump used the N-word as alleged by fired White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman.

In the wide-ranging interview, the mayor touched on issues from the city’s homelessness crisis to immigration. He did not join some other Democrats in calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement but said its mission must be changed.

“We have political leadership that has given ICE this mission that is destructive to families, to economies and to even the safety on our streets,” he said.

No candidate has ever ascended directly from a mayor’s office to the presidency, but Garcetti has argued that the work of mayors is essentially the type of chief executive work a president does. And in his case, he’s overseen a city in a metropolitan area that has a roughly trillion-dollar economy, behind only Tokyo and New York. When asked about the characteristics a candidate would need to topple Trump in 2020, he appeared to describe himself in saying America needs someone not prone to theatrics and who listens more than speaks.

“President Trump is a great insulter. He’s a pretty practiced bully. But I think American people don’t want just somebody fighting with President Trump. They want somebody listening to them,” he said. “Average American people are just looking to connect with someone they trust. I don’t think they trust Trump at the level that they did, even those who like him,” he said.

Garcetti added he “can fire it up too,” though he’s known for a polished, mannerly disposition.

Strongly Democratic California has been a mainstay in the so-called Trump resistance, but Garcetti said Trump’s tenure has amounted to more threats than any broad change in the way the city conducts business. Should he run for president, the expected crowded Democratic field could include fellow Californian Kamala Harris, a first-term U.S. senator and former state attorney general. Garcetti called her a dear friend and said what she does won’t influence his decision.

One of Garcetti’s signature accomplishments as mayor was helping craft a successful plan to bring the 2028 Summer Olympics to Los Angeles, after ceding the 2024 Games to rival Paris. He predicts the transportation improvements and construction in advance of the Games will change the face of the city.

He said development around the 1932 and 1984 Games in LA were “the times when we really rebuilt” Los Angeles.

Even as he heralds the Olympics, an expanded commuter rail system and a revitalized downtown, Garcetti faces a homeless crisis that is vast, costly and heart-wrenching. Thousands of transients, most addicted to drugs or mentally ill, regularly camp on sidewalks in an area of town known as Skid Row. Homeless people often sprawl on the lawn outside City Hall.

Garcetti said he was awakened Thursday by an apparently homeless person screaming on his block. He blames the state and federal governments for not doing more to help cities like Los Angeles develop innovative ways to get homeless the help they need.

In one case, he said an alcoholic homeless woman was picked up by LA authorities 155 times and simply recycled back onto the streets until she was moved into a city program in March that aims to get people like her funneled into treatment programs tailored to their needs.

Los Angeles voters have approved spending over $1 billion to construct housing for the homeless, but when will residents begin to see a change?

“Not soon enough for me,” the mayor said, without providing any date.

By MICHAEL R. BLOOD , Associated Press

[newstfionline]

Ordinary Acts of Heroism in 2017

By Millie Tran and Daniel Victor, NY Times, Dec. 18, 2017

When there’s a terrorist attack, there are courageous emergency workers. Where there’s a mass shooting, there are selfless bystanders who shield strangers and tend to the wounded. When there’s a natural disaster, there’s someone checking in on a neighbor.

The media often declare them “heroes,” though in many cases they refuse the label. They insist that they were just doing their jobs, or doing what anyone would do in their situation.

Whatever you call them, they provided some of the year’s most uplifting stories. Violence and destruction have a way of draining hope, but acts of altruism and selflessness under duress offered a sliver of light when people most needed it.

They provided moments of uplift, often little noticed, in a year when stories of collective heroism were in the headlines.

Here are some of the less prominent acts of courage by ordinary individuals who lurked behind the news--women and men who risked their lives, ran toward danger, or otherwise inspired us in 2017.

Muslims raised money to help Jewish institutions that were attacked. After Jewish cemeteries in Philadelphia and near St. Louis were vandalized, and bomb threats were made at community centers and day schools, thousands of Muslims and others donated more than $136,000 for repairs.

A man threw himself at a gunman who had killed an Indian immigrant. The man, Ian Grillot, 24, was shot while intervening in a hate crime in Olathe, Kan. India House Houston, a nonprofit organization, later raised money for a reward, which Mr. Grillot used to buy a home.

A homeless man aided children wounded in a terrorist attack in England. “Just because I am homeless doesn’t mean I haven’t got a heart, or I’m not human still,” the man, Stephen Jones, 35, told ITV News. The attack in Manchester, Britain’s deadliest terrorist attack in more than a decade, killed 22 people and injured dozens of others.

Teenage girls in Nigeria, kidnapped by Boko Haram and strapped to suicide vests, managed to escape and tell their stories. “I didn’t want a situation where I’m the reason anyone dies,” one of them told us. The deployment of children has become so common that citizens are warned to be on the lookout for girl bombers.

An illustrator from Colombia jumped onto subway tracks in Manhattan to help a homeless man who had fallen. “If nobody does anything, he’s going to die,” David Capuzzo, 26, recalled thinking. A Times reporter witnessed the rescue at the Second Avenue station on the Lower East Side.

Female inmates in California signed up to fight wildfires, at times risking their lives. Around 250 women take part in the program. They are paid less than $2 an hour for hazardous and backbreaking work.

A French philosopher who praised risk-taking died while saving drowning children. “When there really is a danger that must be faced in order to survive,” Anne Dufourmantelle said in a 2015 interview, “there is a strong incentive for action, dedication and surpassing oneself.”

When the time came, she acted, plunging into the Mediterranean to save two children from drowning. She died, but they lived.

Three men intervened to stop a xenophobic attack; two of them died. Micah David-Cole Fletcher, a student and poet, was stabbed while intervening in a deadly xenophobic attack in Portland, Ore. He survived, but two other men who intervened--Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche, a recent college graduate, and Rick Best, an Army veteran--died.

A woman who overcame a tough childhood adopted and raised three foster children on her own. “To be a parent is to step into a great unknown, a magical universe where we choose to love over and over,” the mother, Rene Denfield, who grew up amid poverty, neglect and abuse, wrote in a Modern Love essay. “It is an act of courage no matter what.”

A ballet dancer jumped onto subway tracks to lift a man to safety. “People were screaming to get help,” the dancer, Gray Davis, said afterward. “But nobody jumped down. So I jumped down.”

Philippine Muslims sheltered Christians in basements to protect them from militants. In the besieged southern city of Marawi, Islamist militants went house to house searching for non-Muslims to kill. Brave residents sheltered Christian neighbors and colleagues, giving them canned goods and rice to subsist on.

Doctors and nurses calmly did their jobs after a gunman stormed the hospital where they work. The gunman entered Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center, killing a doctor and shooting six other people. Despite their anguish, medical staff worked around the clock to treat the injured.

Moments of hope and inspiration rose above the chaos of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Emergency workers, journalists and neighbors waded through floodwaters to reach people in danger during Hurricane Harvey in Houston.

Less than two weeks after Harvey, Florida residents staged their own rescues during Hurricane Irma and offered much-needed moments of humanity.

A teacher subdued a gunman at her high school in Illinois. “Lives were saved by the quick response of a teacher here, and I think that’s what needs to be noted,” Jeff Branson, chief of the Mattoon Police Department, said in a news conference, hailing the efforts of the teacher, Angela McQueen.

An usher confronted a gunman who opened fire at a church in Tennessee. Robert Engle, 22, subdued a gunman who opened fire at the Burnette Chapel Church of Christ, near Nashville. Chief Steve Anderson of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department said Mr. Engle’s actions helped end the shooting.

Las Vegas shooting, for all its horror, revealed humanity too. “We all became one that night,” said Dean McAuley, an off-duty firefighter from Seattle who helped victims. “I got to see one person at their worst, but I got to see and witness humanity at its best.”

Many concertgoers and bystanders went into rescue mode, combing the grounds for survivors and helping the injured get to safety. Strangers used belts as makeshift tourniquets to stanch bleeding, and others sped the wounded to hospitals in the back seats of cars and the beds of pickup trucks.

A policeman’s bear hug stopped a suicide bomber from killing even more people. Sayed Basam Pacha, an Afghan police lieutenant, died after putting a suicide bomber in a tight hold, limiting the toll from the blast.

And two reader favorites: Mali, a Belgian Malinois badly injured by shrapnel, was awarded the Dickin Medal, Britain’s highest award for animal bravery, for helping to sniff out Taliban militants and their booby traps.

Storm, a golden retriever, pulled a drowning deer to safety.

[takespaceblog]

Hello again.

It’s been awhile since I wrote. When they said a one year MBA would be a lot of work, they weren’t lying. This term is  particularly math heavy (or maths as they say here) which is a particular challenge for a theater major like me. Currently, we’re taking economics, accounting, corporate finance, and management science which is a combination of statistics and business modeling. On top of that we have a few non-math classes and a group project where we are working with an actual client. My client is a gaming company that wants to use their tech skills in another industry so my group is tasked with finding a viable market. Last week we were given time off to work on careers which meant taking workshops on interviewing skills, defining our personal brand, and creating the perfect resume.

On top of the regular school things I jetted off to Italy to be a bridesmaid in my dear friend’s wedding and to Florida to be maid-of-honor in my aunt’s wedding. On a serious note my grandparents lost their house in the terrible Santa Rosa fire that destroyed 1500 homes and killed 21 people. We’re incredibly lucky their neighbor called them in the middle of the night and told them to evacuate. Most people who died were older couples trying to escape. While their loss is tremendous, they’re very lucky to have great insurance, family in the area, and nothing tying them to the region. Their devastated and struggling but as a retired couple with savings they can start over anywhere. Many of the residents who lost their homes were in the poorest section of town and can’t afford to leave their jobs. To make it worse, Santa Rosa is now facing an extreme housing shortage and many are still homeless.  With Giving Tuesday approaching, consider donating.

Needless to say, a lot has been on my mind but it’s time to write because as everyone knows Hollywood has also imploded over the last few weeks.

I listened to Louis CK walking to open mics. He gave me confidence to go on stage. I donated to the Kevin Spacey Foundation because I dreamed of working with artists of his caliber when I was younger. I wanted to run a theatre like his one day. I paid hundreds of dollars to see both of them perform live. They encouraged me to write, to act, to produce my own work. I am the artist I am today because of these men.

While I’m only a minor player in an overcrowded industry, I’m compelled to write because my voice—that of the non-famous working artist—has been largely ignored. Yes, I’m upset my role models are douche bags,  but I’m writing because they made my own work environment unsafe.

Don’t assume this a famous people problem. Just as there have been decades of abuse coming out of Hollywood, the same is true for every obscure artistic enclave around the US. For every Harvey Weinstein there are dozens more nameless wannabe producers and directors who saw or heard how he acted and thought it was part of the job. For every Louis CK and Kevin Spacey, there are all those minor comics and leading men of tiny theatre companies that behave just as their role models do because it’s part of “the business.” And for every Lupita Nyang’o and Anthony Rapp their are thousands of actors and assistants who do this work for no money, for no fame, for the simple love of the craft but are still subject to the same harassment and abuse.

I know because I am one of these people. My friends and colleagues are these people. A  producer once told that I would never work again if I complained about his behavior. Our interaction ended with a restraining order, but I won’t share any more details because I’m still afraid he’ll read this. Google sexual harassment in theatre and stories of widespread, systemic harassment pop up every year and in many countries. Here’s one from 2016, a small company in Chicago reporting years of abuse. Another from Rochester, MN also in 2016. And a comedy club in Chapel Hill, NC from July. Check out Ireland, Australia, and Bangladesh. We’re all nobodies but the men in “power” still think they’re allowed to act like those around them are toys. They learned from the best and they too have been doing it for a long time.  

So why don’t we speak up? Why don’t we say no? It’s not like we’d lose a major movie deal, you may think. Unlike movie stars, we have nothing to lose.  

But who is there to complain to?

There’s no studio. Most projects are non-union so we have no protection; never mind the usual reasons victims stay silent—men are often bigger and stronger, agreeing is often the safest solution. And just as in Hollywood,  bystanders turned a blind-eye because it’s easier to replace an actor or an assistant than an artistic director or producer. When I tried to warn other actresses not to work with my assailant, it quickly got back to him and the harassment got worse.  If anything this behavior is even more widespread amongst no-name projects and companies because there is no threat from the media and legal action is extremely expense (I know, first hand). For every young woman or man that complains, there are dozens more to replace them.

I am glad the industry is finally taking notice but I don’t feel solace. Change will take a long time and it’s going to take more than a few celebrities speaking up or siding with the assistants they once ignored. Society is complicit. We still elected our current president despite more than twenty sexual harassment allegations. No one is asking him to resign. Roy Moore will probably still win. I never moved to LA or New York in attempts to avoid the seedy parts of the entertainment industry; little did I know at twenty-one that it’s not just Hollywood or even entertainment, it’s society that lets men in power take advantage of the rest of us. Hollywood is an easy target because the perpetrators are in the spotlight, but we’re all to blame.

I’m mad I lost my heroes. I’m mad they created amazing art I can no longer enjoy. I’m pissed I don’t love my craft as much as I did. I’m devastated because they created an environment that makes me look over my shoulder every time I see a tall white man with curly brown hair. But mostly I’m disappointed I live in world that let it get this far in the first place.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 8.18

684 – Battle of Marj Rahit: Umayyad partisans defeat the supporters of Ibn al-Zubayr and cement Umayyad control of Syria. 1304 – The Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle is fought to a draw between the French army and the Flemish militias. 1487 – The Siege of Málaga ends with the taking of the city by Castilian and Aragonese forces. 1572 – Marriage in Paris, France, of the Huguenot King Henry III of Navarre to Margaret of Valois, in a supposed attempt to reconcile Protestants and Catholics. 1590 – John White, the governor of the Roanoke Colony, returns from a supply trip to England and finds his settlement deserted. 1612 – The trial of the Pendle witches, one of England's most famous witch trials, begins at Lancaster Assizes. 1634 – Urbain Grandier, accused and convicted of sorcery, is burned alive in Loudun, France. 1721 – The city of Shamakhi in Safavid Shirvan is sacked. 1783 – A huge fireball meteor is seen across Great Britain as it passes over the east coast. 1826 – Major Gordon Laing becomes the first non-Muslim to enter Timbuktu. 1838 – The Wilkes Expedition, which would explore the Puget Sound and Antarctica, weighs anchor at Hampton Roads. 1848 – Camila O'Gorman and Ladislao Gutierrez are executed on the orders of Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas. 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Globe Tavern: Union forces try to cut a vital Confederate supply-line into Petersburg, Virginia, by attacking the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad. 1868 – French astronomer Pierre Janssen discovers helium. 1870 – Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Gravelotte is fought. 1891 – A major hurricane strikes Martinique, leaving 700 dead. 1903 – German engineer Karl Jatho allegedly flies his self-made, motored gliding airplane four months before the first flight of the Wright brothers. 1917 – A Great Fire in Thessaloniki, Greece destroys 32% of the city leaving 70,000 individuals homeless. 1920 – The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage. 1923 – First British Track and Field championships for women, London. 1938 – The Thousand Islands Bridge, connecting New York, United States with Ontario, Canada over the Saint Lawrence River, is dedicated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 1940 – World War II: The Hardest Day air battle, part of the Battle of Britain. At that point, the largest aerial engagement in history with heavy losses sustained on both sides. 1945 – Sukarno takes office as the first president of Indonesia, following the country's declaration of independence the previous day. 1950 – Julien Lahaut, the chairman of the Communist Party of Belgium, is assassinated. The Party newspaper blames royalists and Rexists. 1958 – Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita is published in the United States. 1958 – Brojen Das from Bangladesh swims across the English Channel in a competition, as the first Bengali and the first Asian to do so. He came first among 39 competitors. 1963 – Civil rights movement: James Meredith becomes the first African American to graduate from the University of Mississippi. 1965 – Vietnam War: Operation Starlite begins: United States Marines destroy a Viet Cong stronghold on the Van Tuong peninsula in the first major American ground battle of the war. 1966 – Vietnam War: The Battle of Long Tan ensues after a patrol from the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment clashes with a Viet Cong force in Phước Tuy Province. 1971 – Vietnam War: Australia and New Zealand decide to withdraw their troops from Vietnam. 1976 – The Korean axe murder incident in Panmunjom results in the deaths of two US Army officers. 1977 – Steve Biko is arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act No. 83 of 1967 in King William's Town, South Africa. He later dies from injuries sustained during this arrest bringing attention to South Africa's apartheid policies. 1983 – Hurricane Alicia hits the Texas coast, killing 21 people and causing over US$1 billion in damage (1983 dollars). 1989 – Leading presidential hopeful Luis Carlos Galán is assassinated near Bogotá in Colombia. 2003 – One-year-old Zachary Turner is murdered in Newfoundland by his mother, who was awarded custody despite facing trial for the murder of Zachary's father. The case was documented in the film Dear Zachary and led to reform of Canada's bail laws. 2005 – A massive power blackout hits the Indonesian island of Java, affecting almost 100 million people, one of the largest and most widespread power outages in history. 2008 – President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf resigns under threat of impeachment. 2008 – War of Afghanistan: Uzbin Valley ambush occurs. 2017 – The first terrorist attack ever sentenced as a crime in Finland kills two and injures eight. 2019 – One hundred activists, officials, and other concerned citizens in Iceland hold a funeral for Okjökull glacier, which has completely melted after once covering six square miles (15.5 km2).

[shirlleycoyle]

‘FIND THIS FUCK:’ Inside Citizen’s Dangerous Effort to Cash In On Vigilantism

Andrew Frame was excited. 

It was Saturday night two weeks ago, and Frame, the CEO of the crime and neighborhood watch app Citizen, was on Slack, whipping himself and his employees into what he'd later call at an all-hands meeting a "fury of passion" about a wildfire that had broken out earlier that afternoon in Los Angeles' Pacific Palisades neighborhood. 

Citizen had gotten a tip that the wildfire was started by an arsonist, and Frame had decided earlier in the night that the fire was a huge opportunity. Citizen, using a new livestreaming service it had just launched called OnAir, would catch the suspect live on air, with thousands of people watching. Frame decided the Citizen user who provided information that led to the suspect’s arrest would get $10,000. Frame wanted him. Before midnight. As the night wore on, Citizen got more information about the supposed suspect. They obtained a photo of the man, which they kept up on the livestream for large portions of the night. More information trickled in through a tips line Citizen had set up.

"first name? What is it?! publish ALL info," Frame told employees working in a Citizen Slack room who were working on the case. 

"FIND THIS FUCK," he told them. "LETS GET THIS GUY BEFORE MIDNIGHT HES GOING DOWN."

"BREAKING NEWS. this guy is the devil. get him," Frame said. "by midnight!@#! we hate this guy. GET HIM."

He was growing impatient. He increased the bounty to $20,000. Thousands of people were watching Citizen's livestream, but the man still hadn't been caught. Frame asked his staff to send out another notification, one that would hit all Citizen users in Los Angeles. The bounty had to go higher.

"Close in on him. 30k Let's get him. No escape. Let's increase. 30k," Frame said. "Notify all of la. Blast to all of la."

"Citizen is OnAir: Arsonist Pursuit Continues," the notification, which went out to 848,816 Citizen users in Los Angeles, said. "We are now offering a $30,000 reward for any information directly leading to his arrest tonight. Tap to join the live search."

Over the course of nearly seven hours, Citizen, under the increasingly frantic direction of Frame, conducted a citywide, app-fueled manhunt for a specific suspected arsonist. The employees went back and forth on how they should frame the manhunt they had started, who in Los Angeles they should notify via the app, and how often they should do it. 

Do you work at Citizen? Do you have access to internal Citizen documents? We’d love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

In the Slack room with Frame, one staffer brought up a "loophole," pointing out that Citizen was violating its own terms of service that prohibit "posting of specific information that could identify parties involved in an incident." The staffer who brought up the terms of service violation was ignored in that specific Slack room, and the broadcast continued to specifically name the person and share his photo for hours.

Earlier in the night, soon after news of a fire broke, Frame said he saw the fire as a chance to catch a suspected arsonist live on the internet, therefore proving Citizen's utility to users and helping the app grow. 

"The more courage we have, the more signups we will have. go after bad guys, signups will skyrocket. period … we should catch a new bad guy EVERY DAY," Frame said. 

At one point, Frame said "these metrics will be great." And they were. At one point 40,000 people were watching the live feed, according to the Slack messages. Citizen saw a sharp spike in signups as the livestream spread. Frame said at a later all-hands meeting that 1.4 million people engaged with the content, according to other Slack messages.

Well after midnight, Los Angeles police made an arrest. In a separate Slack room, employees cautiously began to celebrate: "cop said its an ongoing investigation, this looks like our guy!!!" one employee wrote.

It wasn't Citizen's guy. Frame and the entirety of the Citizen apparatus had spent a whole night putting a bounty on the head of an innocent man. 

(Motherboard is not publishing the name of the person Citizen falsely accused, though Citizen repeatedly used it both internally and externally)

Motherboard spoke to eight sources in reporting this story: five former Citizen employees, two sources with knowledge of the company's operations, and one person close to the company's founders. Motherboard also obtained multiple caches of internal policy documents, Slack messages, and company notes. Our reporting spells out not only what happened in Pacific Palisades, but also how workers and Andrew Frame view the incident and Citizen's role in society. The app pitches itself as a public-safety tool, but aims to grow its user base and revenue just as much as any other startup. The Palisades incident was characterized by Frame as a risk, a test, an experiment, even though it potentially put the person they named in danger.

Motherboard has learned that: 

Users are flooded with notifications in what multiple sources interpret as an attempt to make users feel anxious enough about their neighborhoods to buy "Protect," a $19.99 per month service that allows users to livestream their phone's camera and location to a Citizen "Protect agent" who monitors it and sends "Instant emergency response" in case of an emergency.

The return of a missing autistic teen and return him to his family in the Bronx earlier this month was done by Citizen employees on a "Street Team" that films and interacts with people while pretending to be ordinary app users.

Employee performance is measured by how many seconds it takes workers to input an incident into the app and how many incidents they cover.

Citizen's grand vision has never been a secret: From its initial launch as an app called "Vigilante" in 2016, the company pictured a world in which people were alerted to crime as it happened, and then app users stepped in to stop it before the police needed to intervene. In the Vigilante launch advertisement, a criminal stalks and then attacks a woman in New York City. The app broadcasts the location of this active crime to Vigilante's users, and a horde of people descend on the criminal, stopping the crime in progress: "Can injustice survive transparency?" the ad asks.

Thus far, however, Citizen has essentially been a social network for reporting crime that operates in around 50 cities. Citizen workers listen to and summarize police scanner audio as "incidents," which are then pushed to the app. Users can also post their own incidents, upload photos and videos, and comment on or react to incidents with emojis. The app allows users to search "around you" for incidents, and also sends push alerts to users for nearby events. 

"The whole idea behind Protect is that you could convince people to pay for the product once you’ve gotten them to the highest point of anxiety you can possibly get them to," one former employee said, referring to Citizen's subscription service. "Citizen can’t make money unless it makes its users believe there are constant, urgent threats around them at all times," they added. A Citizen spokesperson denied this in a statement: "It’s actually the opposite. With user feedback in mind, we have designed the Citizen home screen so users only see relevant, real-time information within their immediate surroundings," the spokesperson said.

The disastrous Palisades fire bounty hunt and the discovery of a Citizen-branded "private patrol" vehicle driving around Los Angeles (part of a pilot program in which Citizen envisions offering a physical private security force to respond to the problems of its users) hint that Citizen's goals essentially remain the same as Vigilante's. 

Frame seems to imagine Citizen as an all-encompassing crime-fighting machine that he believes will make the world safer. In Slack messages viewed by Motherboard, Frame calls ProtectOS, the system Citizen uses to create incidents and push them out to users, "the most powerful operating system ever created." 

"Our vision is a global safety network of people protecting each other—a world in which a kidnapping is impossible, because everyone is looking out for each other, and neighbors are alerted as soon as a kidnapping attempt is made," a Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement.

Vigilante was instantly controversial for a variety of reasons. Unsurprisingly, police said the app encouraged vigilantism. Critics worried that the app's users would racially profile Black people as suspicious, as happened on other safety-focused apps. Apple took the app out of the App Store because it violated terms of service that ban apps that risk "physical harm to people." The app relaunched as "Citizen" in 2017, with Frame saying that the original name "distracted from our mission" and that people should not take the law into their own hands. They should use Citizen to avoid crime rather than fight it.

In practice, Citizen is an app that experts say fuels paranoia and a fear of one's neighbors and surroundings by reporting "suspicious" people. Many of the incidents reported on the app are about people experiencing homelessness, for example. 

"It plays into people’s anxieties and fears and magnifies people’s fears of the other and who and what they think should not exist in their neighborhood or their area," Chris Gilliard, a research fellow with the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, said. "As we’ve seen, that often means people who don’t look like them." 

One former Citizen employee told Motherboard that a portion of the app's user base is "insanely racist, which comes out in comment sections that are especially vile even by the standards of internet comment sections." Citizen does moderate comments, but "two people having an argument about whether or not someone’s comment is racist drives engagement," the source added. A hacker recently scraped a wealth of information from Citizen, including user comments that repeatedly use the N-word, according to a screenshot provided by the hacker. Some of these were deleted by Citizen, but racist comments are regularly posted on incidents.

Citizen incentivizes both its employees and the public to create incidents because they are the core currency of the app and what drives user engagement, user retention, and a sense of reliance on the app itself. The scrape of Citizen data published by the hacker earlier this week and shared with Motherboard shows at least 1.7 million incidents in the United States.

The weekly incidents on Citizen, using data scraped by the hacker. Image: Ishaan Jhaveri, Computational Research Fellow, Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University.

Workers have been measured by how many Citizen users see incidents they covered, how many reports they produce, and how quickly they do so, multiple former employees told Motherboard.

"It’s basically an anxiety sweatshop," a Citizen source said. "On days when things are 'slow,' they relax the standards around incidents because a dip in incident count is really bad," they added. The company sends congratulatory emails announcing which analysts reported the highest number of incidents, another source added.

This results in Citizen warning users about "everything," according to one former employee. This includes lost dogs, minor car crashes, unsubstantiated reports of gunshots, and domestic incidents, they said. This week in Los Angeles, incidents ranged in severity from "assault" to "gunfire" to "two men brawling" to "injured bird," "firefighter activity," and "crowd gathered."  

“In a healthy society we are typically not incentivized to sensationalize mundane events and code them as crime. I can’t help but think it plays into people’s anxieties and fears and magnifies people’s fears of the other,” Gilliard said. “What’s really dangerous is the ways they’re starting to serve as infrastructure, where people start to feel like they have to use them to maintain society and order.”

A former employee added, "They don’t much care about the accuracy or the usefulness of the information they put out, they just want to push as many notifications to create that feeling of vulnerability that leads people to the subscription services." 

Another former employee said that although fear is an aspect of the app, it isn't the only one: Notifications about fires get a lot of engagement, even if the danger to other people is not imminent, "because the videos get crazy." They added that Citizen sometimes acts as a source of entertainment for users. "People like to read about and watch videos of incidents around them," they said. 

Even Frame, the company's CEO, acknowledges Citizen's bombardment of notifications. "We send so many dumb notifs," Frame said in one of the Slack messages obtained by Motherboard. 

Andrew Frame. Image: Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch.

There is a formal process for creating incidents, one of the sources explained. Medical calls are not reported and domestic violence incidents are recorded at an intersection rather than an address, they said. But "the guidelines evolve, and there is definitely disagreement internally over the guidelines." In the Palisades incident, Frame said he "overrode the policy we have for Mission Control" in official notes from a company all-hands meeting.

A Citizen spokesperson said in a statement that "We continue to work to improve the relevance and frequency of notifications. In addition, we are focused on reducing the reach of notifications about violent incidents, and increasing the reach of notifications about incidents such as missing people or pets being reunited with their families—we could all use some more good news."

To help with the deluge of incidents that Citizen creates, it has outsourced work to CloudFactory, a data processing service, three sources told Motherboard. CloudFactory uses workers based in Kenya and Nepal, according to CloudFactory's website. Citizen's use of CloudFactory has not been previously reported. CloudFactory did not respond to a request for comment.

Citizen hires "central analysts" to listen to police scanners and then enter information into Citizen so users can receive a notification about an incident close to them. Now some of those jobs are being filled by CloudFactory. 

Citizen's outsourcing of labor overseas is making U.S. employees nervous they may lose their jobs, one added. They added that the U.S. workers train the CloudFactory workers. Because Citizen is focused on specific cities in the United States, remote workers at CloudFactory are inherently not on the ground, though Citizen says its own "analysts" review incident updates.

A Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard in an email that "As the company grows, we are working with CloudFactory to augment our team. All incident updates and alerts continue to be reviewed by our 24/7 team of Citizen analysts."

Citizen believes that the more people who click into the app, the more users sign up, a source with knowledge of the company's operations said. So, like many other apps and tech companies, Citizen experiments to see where the optimal engagement may be.

But Citizen presents itself as a public-safety service while also trying to increase engagement. This creates a fundamental friction that, at best, ends with a barrage of useless push notifications. At worst, it ends with the CEO putting a bounty on an innocent person's head.

"It’s basically an anxiety sweatshop."

Ultimately, monetizing its user base has also led Citizen to test a product where users could order on-demand help from a private security service. This month, Motherboard reported that a Citizen-branded vehicle was driving around Los Angeles. Leaked emails showed the vehicle was part of a pilot working with Los Angeles Professional Security, a local security company whose CEO wants the power to arrest people and take them to jail. Citizen told CBS on Wednesday that the trial with Los Angeles Professional Security is now over.

The emails also showed Citizen is testing the program with well-known security firm Securitas, and claimed that high-level members of the LAPD said the product could be a game changer. A Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard at the time that the vehicle was part of a trial to test a service for users that, for example, may want an escort to walk them home. But details from internal emails already published by Motherboard explain that Citizen believes it can help with property crime.

This move explicitly into the private security space is directly linked to Citizen's potential plans for monetization. A Citizen product roadmap document obtained by Motherboard lists "Paid Private Response" under a section titled "$$$." That section  also mentions "Insurance Perks," "Open Hardware Platform," and "Send First Responders.". One former employee mentioned that OnAir, the broadcasting service used during the manhunt, may be turned into a premium content service, and the roadmap also mentions "Live Video" under the "$$$" section.

A Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard in an email that the company's monetization plan fits with its vision of being a global safety network of people protecting each other, but did not specify what that would involve. "We will not serve ads or sell user data," the spokesperson said.

"I never thought Citizen would go this far," one of the sources said. "I didn’t anticipate the ways they would circumvent the police and go that much further," referring to the private security force Citizen piloted in Los Angeles.

While Frame was instructing his team to up the stakes of the search for the alleged arsonist, the public faces of the manhunt were two people presenting Citizen's live broadcast. As part of its OnAir product, Citizen essentially runs a pseudo-cable news TV show, with presenters reading out tips they've received from the public, speaking to people on the ground, and, in the case of the wildfire, reminding users that Citizen was offering a bounty for information leading to the arrest of the suspect.  

"We mobilized the community, people in the Palisades area and surrounding. People have sent in so many tips saying that this is the guy," a woman named Kris, the main host of the broadcast, said. (A Motherboard employee in Los Angeles repeatedly got push notifications during the stream and took notes at the time.) "We had a bunch of people send in the photo that this is a known arsonist in the area. They know this guy, this is where he hangs out. While it's not official, so many people have thrown out this guy's name. He goes by the name [redacted by Motherboard] and it seems like everybody in the community knows this is the guy. So we are offering a $30,000 reward."

Toward the end of the night, Kris had been joined by Prince Mapp, Citizen's head of community. He pointed out the stakes: "When have you seen 860,495 people committed to finding one person? We have mobilized a city to bring one person to justice," he said. "Look for [the person's name]. Look for him. Family members of [the person's name]. He wasn't just brought on this world by himself, we need your help. We need you to help us contact him and identify where he is. We need the scent of his clothing. We need this man off the street so we can stop burning the city of Los Angeles […] This person is the devil and we need to get him off the street. We need to get our city back in order."

Throughout the night, these broadcasters were being coached behind the scenes in another Slack room that Andrew Frame seemingly didn't participate in much that night: "Kris, keep repeating the $10k reward. 'LET'S FIND THIS ARSONIST,'" one employee wrote. "REWARD. MONEY MONEY MONEY," they added later. "Don't stop mentioning reward for the next 7 minutes."

The model for the Palisades fire response, according to official notes posted in a Slack room from an all-hands meeting about the incident, was similar to something that happened in the Bronx earlier this month, when an autistic boy called Jeremiah went missing. "We had this really strong moment with Jeremiah," the notes quote Frame as saying. "This seemed like a perfect opportunity to use OnAir."

In that case, Citizen users went to Jeremiah's family's house and started filming, and Citizen itself started one of its OnAir broadcasts, where, similar to the bounty case, hosts read out incoming tips and interview users on the ground.

"There had been sightings of him running away from users trying to approach him," a source with knowledge of Citizen's operations said. 

Eventually, two users found Jeremiah at a Target and he agreed to go with them. Jeremiah got in their car and the people took him home. 

"They kept the broadcast going and had his grandma and mom on speakerphone," the source added. "People were also concerned that he got in a car with random strangers."

After the incident, Citizen uploaded a supercut of the event, with the Citizen users finding Jeremiah and him being reunited with his family. The company added hopeful background music to the footage. A Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement that "In the last 30 days, Citizen has shared critical safety information that has contributed to at least four missing people, including a 13-year-old autistic boy, reuniting with their families."

What the video didn't make clear is that the people on the ground filming Jeremiah and speaking to his family were not Citizen users. They were part of Citizen's "Street Team," who go out to events and contribute footage to the app while posing as ordinary users. Two sources confirmed the Street Team's existence; Citizen doesn't publicly acknowledge the existence of this team, one of the sources said. The sources added they believe the purpose of the Street Team is to make regular users think they could get involved too, so they will start broadcasting their own footage. "Essentially for engagement," one of the people said.

A screenshot of the OnAir broadcast featuring Jeremiah. Redaction by Motherboard. Image: Citizen.

"These Street Team members were not dressed in Citizen gear and looked like regular users," the source added. A document written by the company after the incident says "When Jeremiah went with Prince and Chris into the car, users did not know that they were members of the Citizen team. As a user, this scene could be alarming. Commenters had already shared how kids with autism might go easily with strangers, and then they watched the live broadcast as he did just that. Moving forward, how can we ensure our street team is presented as a safe community alternative to police?" 

Asked about the Street Team, a Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard in an email that "From time to time, we put temporary teams in place in some of the cities where Citizen is available to demonstrate how the platform works, and to show responsible broadcasting practices—similar to how social media platforms have paid creators." Slack chats obtained by Motherboard indicate Citizen may have used a Street Team during the bounty incident as well.

The Citizen document about the Jeremiah case also reflected on what could be improved, asked how the app could be changed to help setup search parties for users to join, or for people to report missing persons, and acknowledged that there were significant privacy, safety, and special needs issues with how Citizen handled the live streaming of a search for an autistic child.

Externally, this was presented as a success.

"If you're watching Citizen, keep watching so we can reunite more people, and use technology for good," the narrator of the recap video posted by Citizen said. 

"The Jeremiah incident was spun extremely positive despite all red flags—a missing child was found live. That was how it was presented. So it was essentially fuel for them to continue searching for these big incidents that would activate users," a source with knowledge of the company's operations added. 

Shortly after, another such incident appeared: the Palisades wildfire. In contrast to how the Jeremiah broadcaster said Citizen was about reuniting people and using technology for good, during the Palisades manhunt Frame said on Slack he wanted to create a situation where criminals felt like "'This is tech closing in on you. Good luck buddy.'"

Publicly, Citizen said it was very sorry for the Palisades fire incident and for putting a bounty on the head of an innocent man. The company called the entire incident "a mistake we are taking very seriously." 

Kris and Prince, two of the public faces of the manhunt, both posted lengthy messages on Slack about what they believe happened Saturday night. Kris said she didn't know what she was getting into: "It was not immediately clear that the pursuit/reward was the angle of the OnAir. we have successfully covered wildfires before without that aspect," she said. "I will say I agreed to help before I understood this but that I take full responsibility for not backing out once it was clear I’d have to say the reward."

Prince said "I went too far and I'm willing to accept the consequences. We should not be labeled as lynchers or encourage anyone to capture. I understand that we are not a news app. We are not the cops either."

While many employees at Citizen felt the Pacific Palisades incident was a huge mistake, Andrew Frame looked at it differently. While Frame showed some contrition, he sees the bounty experiment as a "massive net win," a step on the way for his app to become a private safety network that is "going into what the government is failing to do," which is, in the company's mind, failing to keep people safe, according to his Slack response to Prince.

Firefighters battle the Palisades fire in Los Angeles. Image: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

"There is no consequence for taking a risk, safe environment," he said, not acknowledging the potential danger the company put the man they falsely accused in. "This product work is the future of the world … the team came together on a Saturday and pulled off something incredibly awesome."

In a later all-hands the Wednesday after the incident, Frame admitted that the company "got a lot of things wrong Saturday," according to official notes posted on Slack and obtained by Motherboard. But "even though this feels really bad on the outside, it's not nearly as bad as it may feel. One of our investors wants to assuage everyone's concerns," Frame said. "The investors have never been more excited."

"For me, this is a cultural milestone," he said, adding that the team had devised a new strategy: "The next 50-100 OnAir stories will be heartwarming ones because we will do this responsibly." When asked questions about the meeting, a Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement that "We don’t comment on anecdotes from internal meetings that are taken out of context."

Frame said at the all-hands that he is still performing a manhunt for the person Citizen falsely accused, but this time in order to apologize. 

"We need to find this person and we are actively looking to find him. We are not done when it comes to this person," notes from the all-hands say. "Andrew [Frame] said they are working on that and this has the chance to turn into a very happy moment."

‘FIND THIS FUCK:’ Inside Citizen’s Dangerous Effort to Cash In On Vigilantism syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 8.18

684 – Battle of Marj Rahit: Umayyad partisans defeat the supporters of Ibn al-Zubayr and cement Umayyad control of Syria. 1304 – The Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle is fought to a draw between the French army and the Flemish militias. 1487 – The Siege of Málaga ends with the taking of the city by Castilian and Aragonese forces. 1572 – Marriage in Paris, France, of the Huguenot King Henry III of Navarre to Margaret of Valois, in a supposed attempt to reconcile Protestants and Catholics. 1587 – Virginia Dare, granddaughter of Governor John White of the Colony of Roanoke, becomes the first English child born in the Americas. 1590 – John White, the governor of the Roanoke Colony, returns from a supply trip to England and finds his settlement deserted. 1612 – The trial of the Pendle witches, one of England's most famous witch trials, begins at Lancaster Assizes. 1634 – Urbain Grandier, accused and convicted of sorcery, is burned alive in Loudun, France. 1783 – A huge fireball meteor is seen across Great Britain as it passes over the east coast. 1826 – Major Gordon Laing becomes the first non-Muslim to enter Timbuktu.[1] 1838 – The Wilkes Expedition, which would explore the Puget Sound and Antarctica, weighs anchor at Hampton Roads. 1848 – Camila O'Gorman and Ladislao Gutierrez are executed on the orders of Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas. 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Globe Tavern: Union forces try to cut a vital Confederate supply-line into Petersburg, Virginia, by attacking the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad. 1868 – French astronomer Pierre Janssen discovers helium. 1870 – Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Gravelotte is fought. 1891 – Major hurricane strikes Martinique, leaving 700 dead. 1903 – German engineer Karl Jatho allegedly flies his self-made, motored gliding airplane four months before the first flight of the Wright brothers. 1917 – A Great Fire in Thessaloniki, Greece destroys 32% of the city leaving 70,000 individuals homeless. 1920 – The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage. 1923 – First British Track and Field championships for women, London. 1938 – The Thousand Islands Bridge, connecting New York, United States with Ontario, Canada over the Saint Lawrence River, is dedicated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 1940 – World War II: The Hardest Day air battle, part of the Battle of Britain. At that point, the largest aerial engagement in history with heavy losses sustained on both sides. 1945 – Sukarno takes office as the first president of Indonesia, following the country's declaration of independence the previous day. 1950 – Julien Lahaut, the chairman of the Communist Party of Belgium is assassinated by far-right elements. 1958 – Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita is published in the United States. 1958 – Brojen Das from Bangladesh swims across the English Channel in a competition, as the first Bengali and the first Asian to do so. He came first among 39 competitors. 1963 – Civil rights movement: James Meredith becomes the first African American to graduate from the University of Mississippi. 1965 – Vietnam War: Operation Starlite begins: United States Marines destroy a Viet Cong stronghold on the Van Tuong peninsula in the first major American ground battle of the war. 1966 – Vietnam War: The Battle of Long Tan ensues after a patrol from the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment clashes with a Viet Cong force in Phước Tuy Province. 1971 – Vietnam War: Australia and New Zealand decide to withdraw their troops from Vietnam. 1976 – In the Korean Demilitarized Zone at Panmunjom, the Axe murder incident results in the death of two US soldiers. 1977 – Steve Biko is arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act No. 83 of 1967 in King William's Town, South Africa. He later dies from injuries sustained during this arrest bringing attention to South Africa's apartheid policies. 1983 – Hurricane Alicia hits the Texas coast, killing 21 people and causing over US$1 billion in damage (1983 dollars). 1989 – Leading presidential hopeful Luis Carlos Galán is assassinated near Bogotá in Colombia. 2003 – One year old Zachary Turner is murdered in Newfoundland by his mother who was awarded custody despite facing trial for the murder of Zachary's father. The case led to reform of Canada's bail laws. 2005 – A massive power blackout hits the Indonesian island of Java, affecting almost 100 million people, one of the largest and most widespread power outages in history. 2008 – President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf resigns under threat of impeachment. 2008 – War of Afghanistan: Uzbin Valley ambush occurs. 2017 – The first terrorist attack ever sentenced as a crime in Finland kills two and injures eight.