Tag: 911

A 15-year-old boy in Minnesota recently rescued his mother from her abusive boyfriend, not with a call to 911, but with a timely Facebook post. According to a criminal complaint filed in Ramsey County District Court, 33-year-old Kelly Heinl went out with some of her friends on Thursday night, but was soon tracked down by her boyfriend, 31-year-old Reggie LeAndrew Hart. Hart allegedly forced her ...

Chicago has broken new ground by becoming the first city in the U.S. to accept photo and video messages at its 911 center. Cell-wielding citizens can now send images and video captured with their mobile devices to the dispatch, which feeds that information to the crime prevention center. If the images are deemed relevant and sufficiently useful, they are then forwarded to first responders and ...

The National September 11th Memorial & Museum and Brooklyn-based startup Broadcastr have teamed up to curate an oral history of the infamous day's events. As part of Broadcastr's debut next month, it will host over 2,000 interviews with eye witnesses and first responders about their experiences on September 11th, 2001. About a week after the site goes public, Broadcastr will offer both iPhone ...

For the first time in nearly a decade, the 911 emergency service is getting an overhaul, as the FCC looks to expand and update its crime reporting capabilities. As Wired reports, users in need of urgent assistance may soon be able to immediately contact 911 via text message or video streamed directly from their mobiles. The proposed system upgrade would be the first since 2001, when the FCC ...

The official website of the Dove World Outreach Center unexpectedly shut down today, just two days before the Florida church's highly publicized Koran-burning event. Dan Goodgame, a spokesman for Web-hosting firm Rackspace, tells the AFP that the church's page was pulled because it "violated the Offensive Content section of [Rackspace's] Acceptable Use policy." Rackspace's policy expressly bans ...

Aside from Quentin Tarantino and Ludacris, most people take toes for granted. Unless we stub one or see one sticking out of our socks, our phalanges tend to spend their entire lives mired in obscurity at the bottom of our anatomical basements. Every now and then, though, our little piggies rise to the occasion, and prove that they're good for a lot more than performing daily duties like going to ...

What's more embarrassing than a burglar accidentally dialing 9-1-1 on herself? Accidentally calling the police while she's in the middle of giving a lecture on how to escape the police. As 19-year-old Stefanie Vargas and her 13-year-old male accomplice were in the middle of robbing cars in Daytona Beach, Fla., the cell phone in Vargas' pocket "accidentally" called 9-1-1, allowing dispatchers ...

We've seen the cops called over video game-related incidents before. It's just that the fuzz usually gets involved only when someone's committed an actual crime -- too often murder. But no killing was required (at least not in real life) for Boston mom, Angela Mejia, to call 911 on her 14-year-old son. It seems that Mejia just couldn't deal with her boy's constant gaming. According to the ...

Wikileaks normally deals in sensitive information from whistle-blowers inside governments and companies. But its latest project, a collection of pager and text messages sent on the morning of September 11, 2001, crosses from simple news dissemination and political activism to a work of art. Starting the morning of November 25, at 3 a.m., Wikileaks began "broadcasting" over 500,000 messages ...

When we were kids, it was the worst punishment imaginable. How could our parents, the heartless tyrants that they were, take away our video game consoles? There was nothing we could do about it, except huddle up in our rooms and stare at those lonely, desolate, blank screens. At least, that's what we thought. But a 15-year-old from Buffalo Grove, Illinois, decided he wouldn't take his ...

If you were trapped or lost in a storm drain, but still had cell phone reception, how would you reach out for help? Perhaps call 911, or its equivalent? We're sure you wouldn't rely on updating your Facebook status. But that's exactly what a pair of girls in Adelaide, Australia did when they wandered into just such a drain Sunday. The 10- and 12-year-old girls used their cell phones to update ...

People are constantly incriminating themselves with poorly timed or damaging text messages, but one Iowa county is finally allowing people to get themselves out of trouble with their texting thumbs. According to the AP, the emergency call center located in the county jail in Waterloo, Iowa is the first in the nation to accept texts directed to 911. The responders can even reply to the emergency ...

Former Nova Scotian police officer James Symington (pictured) had quite the attachment to his German shepherd, Trakr. Not only was Trakr man's best friend, but he was also instrumental in the search and rescue effort following 9/11. The dog, according to CBS, found the last survivor in the rubble of the World Trade Center. So, when Symington heard of California company BioArts's contest to clone ...

Prank phone calls are usually made by bored 12-year-olds looking for a laugh. But there are enough older folks out there who are no more mature than those 12-year-olds. What's worse, they've added new tools to their arsenals -- VoIP Internet calling services. Due to bugs in the way 911 services around the country handle calls from Internet-based sources, it is easy for these pranksters to spoof ...

In the online world, there are various levels of hackers. Lowest are the script kiddies, would-be miscreants who lack the skills to be a proper threat. Then there are the white hatters who infiltrate corporate and government networks largely just to see if they can -- often alerting the necessary authorities about the flaws. Worst are the skilled black hat hackers -- Dshocker was one of those, ...