Tag Archives: mobile phones

Jitterbug

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I found this in the back of a kitchen drawer. I don’t recall owning this so it must have been Barb’s. “The Jitterbug Flip2 is designed to be easy to use, with big buttons and a large screen. It’s the only flip phone with Amazon Alexa, so you can make calls and send texts using just your voice. And for help in emergencies, the Urgent Response button is right on the keypad.” I especially like the YES and NO buttons. Early version of the “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” icons.

The phone was (and still is?) aimed at the older market, but who doesn’t need an Urgent Response button from time to time? The red button on the new version of the phone?

Some might recall that I dabbled with the idea of a simpler phone a few years ago.

SWAT app

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Screen Shot 2014-10-14 at Tue, Oct 14, 11.21.02 AM“With a single press of a button, stream live video of your interactions with police to our secure servers. Know what to do if you’re approached by police on the sidewalk, in the car, in your home, or at a protest. Know what to pay attention to if you experience or witness police misconduct. Fill in the information you need to file an official complaint, and send it automatically to the police department. Use your phone’s location services, camera, and time and date stamps to collect evidence.”

How smuggled mobile phones are rewiring Brazil’s prisons

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It’s easy (for me) to become discouraged about the surveillance state the US (and lots of other countries) has become. How can you resist an entity like the NSA? Perhaps, in the long run, we cannot. But in a twisted way, stories like the one below give me hope.

In Cell to Cell: How Smuggled Mobile Phones Are Rewiring Brazil’s Prisons, Jonathan Franklin describes how Brazil’s prison gangs are using technology.

Wired prisoners change the entire concept of incarceration. Instead of being isolated and punished, the inmate with access to a cell can organize murders, threaten witnesses, plan crimes, and browse online porn to figure out which escort to order up for the next intimate visit. […] Brazilian organized crime leaders continued to have widespread ability to make calls, receive calls, organize conference calls, and even hold virtual trials where gang leaders from different prisons are patched in to a central line to debate the fate of gang members accused of betraying the group’s ironclad rules.

Yes, I get that the gangs are committing awful crimes. But then, so are oppressive governments. We can talk about Right and Wrong at Sunday School, this is about technology.