(Photo courtesy of Illinois Public Media)

When Pop Up Archive was born, our goal seemed simple: to help audio producers organize their archives and create searchable sound. As we launch Pop Up Archive publicly, our goal has grown much bigger.

Read the press release here.

We want to make it easy for all storytellers to find and reuse recorded sound. Now, anyone can visit popuparchive.org to make audio findable through auto-transcription, auto-tagging, and easy-to-use sound management tools. As we onboard audio collections large and small, we’re gathering thousands of hours of sounds from around the world — and they’re all waiting to be discovered.

Among the voices:  Buster Keaton explains silent film captioning to Studs Terkel in an age of entertainment far removed from today’s digital marketplaces. And a simple search across the public archive for a term such as “future” turns up results that span a Y2K apocalypse-centric radio broadcast from WBUR in 1999, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel telling a local reporter about his plans for the city, and a recent California Report episode on the future of the online currency Bitcoin.

But we can’t do it alone. We started out as aspiring journalists — but we found our calling making tools to help journalists. Since winning the Knight News Challenge in 2012, we’ve built lasting partnerships with some of the most exciting, forward-thinking media organizations in the country. With the Public Radio Exchange, our co-conspirators and the best source of technical expertise we could hope for, we’ve made thousands of hours of sound searchable from an inspiring variety of media producers and oral history collections.

REWIND: AUDIO, A DYING MEDIUM?

But let’s pause (pun intended, please forgive us) for a moment. Who cares about sound, anyway? Isn’t radio in its death throes?

AMAZING: Occupy Wall Street Leading Massive, Volunteer-Powered Recovery Efforts in New York

They are thousands-strong and growing: entering devastated neighborhoods yet to see outside help from established aid organizations.

They are staffing donation drop off sites, running mobile food kitchens and delivering hot meals. They are distributing food and supplies to the stranded, locating trapped seniors, and aiding clean-up efforts.

In short, they are helping some of New York's most vulnerable right now, and the work being done is simply breathtaking. And that work is growing by the hour.

Loosely organized under Occupy Sandy, Occupy activists have, in conjunction with 350.org and Recovers.org, created in very short order a massive, malleable volunteer network that is reaching untold numbers of New Yorkers still in the dark and cold.

They have established donation drop off sites in Rockaway, Coney Island, Staten Island, Chinatown, the Upper East Side, the Lower East Side, Harlem and all across Brooklyn.

And the volunteer opportunities, which you can find here and here, are just as intense as they are varied.

Lisa Sikorski, one of many activists coordinating supply distribution efforts, described their efforts:

"We've been getting tons of donations. This is all donations in here," Sikorski said, pointing at tables. "We also gave away a ton yesterday. Stuff has gone out to the Rockaways, Sunset Park, Coney Island. There are people coming in with rolling carts, school communities have come up with truckloads of stuff and unloaded it. This is all community-driven donation right now, all of it."

People beyond those being directly helped are beginning to notice Occupy's incredible work. While snarky and backhanded, Bob Hardt of NY1 had this to say:

It's a bad sign for the world that Occupy Wall Street and a Sikh group from Queens are doing a better job at distributing hot food than the largest international relief group in the world.

Now, make no mistake. The Red Cross and FEMA are operating shelters, food kitchens and distributing supplies as well. My point here is not to malign them.

My point? To shine a light on the incredible work Occupy activists are doing in locations where aid organizations have yet to lay roots. And to shine a light on the work they will continue to be doing, perhaps with your help.

Seattle police plan to deploy spy drones October 27, 2012

The rainy skies of Seattle are likely to soon be a whole lot drearier. The FAA has approved the local police department to start using surveillance drones for law enforcement, but protesters are making it clear that they’re willing to put up a fight.

The Seattle Police Department displayed a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on Thursday that they intend on using soon to monitor criminal activity across the city, but opponents of drone use came out in droves to protest the proposed plans.

The SPD is one of only law enforcement agencies given the go-ahead by the Federal Administration Agency to show officers the ins-and-outs of UAVs, and the department hopes that soon they will be able to save lives and make the city more secure by actually deploying drones across town.

So far the department has already outlined an operations manual that they hope they’ll have a chance to adhere to soon, describing in detail how they hope to install an unmanned aerial system across the city to help photograph crime scenes, conduct search and rescue missions, monitor traffic accidents and even aid with natural disaster responses. Putting an extra set of police eyes — remote-controlled ones, at that — has put a fair share of Seattle residents ill at ease, though.

“We are not going to tolerate this in our city. This is unacceptable,” anti-drone advocate Emma Kaplan told Assistant Chief Paul McDonagh at Thursday’s unveiling.

The Seattle Times says another protester in attendance, identified as General Malaise, said, “We don’t trust you with the weapons you do have,” let alone new ones that are still being developed.

According to the paper, Thursday’s community meeting held to identify the public opinion of the program “was taken over by protesters,” leaving McDonagh with only a small chunk of time to talk about his plans.

The city says they have no intent on using UAVs for any unlawful surveillance purposes, but the bad wrap drones have received as of late — made only worse with military versions of the drones overseas executing as many as hundreds of civilians in recent years — has left Seattle residents saying they have good reason to oppose domestic use.

Even if unarmed, drones are a cause of big concern for some. The Seattle Police Department says they have every intent “to make reasonable effort to not invade a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy,” and that never will any police drones “supersede the issuance of a warrant when needed.”

“UAS operators and observers will ensure and will be held accountable for ensuring that operations of the UAS intrude to a minimal extent upon the citizens of Seattle,” the drafted operations manual reads.

As the technology is still being tested, though, opponents say it’s not clear what the department could be able to get away with.

“The ways that they say they can use the drones is too broad,” ACLU of Washington Deputy Director Jennifer Shaw tells the Seattle Times. “They have a list of different emergencies and then a catchall phrase saying the drones can also be used in other situations if they get permission.”

Even what isn’t outline, she says, could eventually be added.

“So long as it is a policy, it can be changed. An ordinance cannot be changed at will and is the only way we can be sure there is meaningful input,” she said.

Earlier this month, the Sherriff of Alameda County, California asked the US Department of Homeland Security for as much as $100,000 in funding so he could add a drone to his own department’s arsenal. Sherriff Greg Ahern told NBC News that UAVs are “Very valuable to any tactical officer,” because they could aid in identifying everything from how a suspect is dressed to what avenues of escape are possible.

Source

A senior Greek police officer has claimed that the far-right Golden Dawn party has infiltrated the police at various levels. He has laid the blame on consecutive governments and the leadership of the police force for turning a blind eye to what he describes as “pockets of fascism”.

Speaking to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, the officer said the Greek state had been fully aware of the activities of Golden Dawn for several years, with the National Intelligence Service and other security agencies monitoring it closely. The officer claimed police chiefs had had the opportunity to isolate and remove these small “pockets of fascism” in the force but decided not to. The state, he said, wanted to keep the fascist elements “in reserve” and use them for its own purposes.

The officer said he believed that Golden Dawn members could be used against the Greek left, which has led popular street protests against the government and austerity measures imposed by the EU. He expressed his belief that neo-fascist groups may already have acted as agents provocateurs during demonstrations across the country, to provoke clashes between demonstrators and the police or even between demonstrators themselves.