Chicago

I helped break who Chicago police were spying on

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leader

Kristiana Rae Colón, center with the red scarf, leads a “Brown Friday” protest in a Chicago shopping district. This reporter broke the news that Colón, daughter of an Alderman, likely had her phone surveilled by Chicago police trying to learn where the protest was headed. Photo credit: Bryant Cross.

This story of mine, published on the website Reader Supported News, first divulged the identity of protest organizer Kristiana Rae Colón, the likely target of police cellphone surveillance.

(Colón was the organizer of that day’s protests, told police as much, and police were later recorded asking one another whether they were receiving any information from the “girl” organizer’s phone.)

It served as my very quick education into the world of police surveillance technology. More stories on the subject will follow.

Business cards

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business card front

I’m excited about my new business cards, created with design help by my friend Matt Albacete. Here’s the back:

business card back

My name is set in different versions of the typeface ZXX, all designed by a former NSA staffer to thwart optical character recognition. And yes, it’s purely for show.

But the security suggestions aren’t.

With some 91 percent of American adults keeping cell phones mostly on their persons, effectively everyone’s full-time location data is gathered and stored by your carriers and the government. To boot, sophisticated software analyzes who crosses paths with whom. Unless we adopt practices formerly considered crazy-paranoid, whistleblowing will become a thing of the past.

And the cash-for-transit reference? That’s because it’s hard to be anonymous in a car when automatic license plate scanning is so ubiquitous. Even public transit anonymity is going down the tubes—in Chicago, anyway—with new payment systems that penalize you (75 cents tacked onto each $2.25 ride) if you don’t use the card that’s tied to your identity.

With my journalism work, I’ll have to pay the premium. You should, too.

 

Serious work a-brewing

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You heard it here first: a new journalism outlet in Chicago, in collaboration with…

Logo_CivicLab-TIF1-300x153

CivicLab is a new-ish space in the West Loop for folks who want to innovate in the public sphere–their tagline was recently changed to “Making Democracy.” As I understand it—and this is a gross over-simplification—they’re piggy-backing on the makerspace/hackerspace movement to do some good in the body politic.

At any rate, as their first resident reporter, I’ll be host and editor of a new audio show we’re calling “Some Assembly Required.” A show about civics. Broad enough to generate awesome content for years to come. Focused enough to not be a cop-out.

Just don’t call it a “podcast.” We’re having fun, but we’re doing serious work.

More to come.

Scandinavian music, riding in the rain, and restaurants

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Image

While not much has happened here recently, the same can’t be said for my non-digital life. To wit, a list.

  • Been listening to more and more tunes from northwestern Europe. Soaring digitals and orchestration coupled with a hint of nihilism? Count me in.
  • Visited a couple times at FreeGeek Chicago. Getting to know some of the regulars. Good people; good organization. Oddly, its basement headquarters, with bare bulbs and chainlink fence for “walls,” feels like home. Maybe I should have been a hacker.
  • Riding often. Always, rather. Unofficial goal: 360 days this year. Above, my pants hang dry after a wet ride last night.
  • Learning more about restaurant work every day. So far I’ve kept mum about my part-time employer, a pretty big player in the local-sustainable food scene here. I’m either gonna remain silent or introduce it with a bang. Haven’t decided which yet.
  • Following Matter Magazine, a Kickstarter-funded online place for good long-form science journalism. Or, as they like to call it, “journalism about the future.”
  • Trying to please those editors who like my deep/long work while trying not to scare away those editors who only need me to churn out short ephemera.
  • Eating some really great food. In the past few months I’ve been to Yusho, Mana Food Bar, Au Cheval, San Soo Gab San, Trencherman, Sixteen, Avec, Tavernita. And Lula Cafe, my perennial favorite, more times than I can count. There’s a reason I live down the block from them.

Two nights ago, at 56 glorious degrees fahrenheit, I explored the Loop, Grant Park, and Streeterville by bicycle between midnight and 2 a.m. My new header image shows Streeterville in all its money-soaked sparkle.

Chicago: the greenest city *snicker*

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Based on the frequency of news coverage about polluted soil or buildings in Chicago, you might think there really isn’t much of that here. After all, only a single EPA National Priorities List site exists in Chicago. But it was tough to get listed because the city would rather not have those blemishes on its record.

And cleanups of pollution happen all the time, all over the city, as the map below shows when you zoom into Chicago. Have there have been any near your house or workplace in recent years? The key below explains the different colored pins.

BLUE: Federal CERCLA (“Superfund”) sites in Illinois that are on the National Priorities List. There is only one NPL site in Chicago, at Lake Calumet on the far south side. (Note: Except for the location of the Lake Calumet site, these pins are approximations based on the city associated with the listing.)

YELLOW: CERCLA cleanups that are NOT on the NPL, whose city is listed as “Chicago.” Exact addresses were used in this case. These cases, as you’ll read below, are interesting.

TURQUOISE: “Non-voluntary” (usually court-mandated) cleanups performed or supervised by Illinois EPA. Again, exact addresses used.

A few disclosures after the break…

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