Fiber deprived

 

THE CITY 

Dr. Ida Messana, a Queens internist specializing in geriatric medicine, started experiencing internet, fax and landline phone issues in her Forest Hills office last summer and noticed a concerning side effect.

Many of her elderly patients, who depend on phone calls and faxes, as opposed to emails and texts, stopped coming because they could not reach her.

“We lost dial tone on my fax line, so I couldn’t receive or send any faxes. Imagine my patients waiting for their CAT scans, X-rays, their reports of blood, all different kinds of things,“ she explained.

Turned out her fax machine was working, but the line was out. She also relied on the line for DSL internet service to her office.

While her connectivity problems were resolved five months later, Messana fears future service outages. A Verizon technician told Messana that her phone lines are copper, which the company phased out in favor of fiber optic wires.

Most telecommunications companies these days tout their high-speed fiber optic lines, which send light down thin filaments of glass, but copper wires are still in use for some households.

When those metal wires corrode without proper upkeep, New Yorkers who rely on them are left without service.

Feds come for militia minded internet troll in Middle Village for posting ideas on social media

Patch 

  A reputed Proud Boys member was arrested Tuesday night in Queens after federal authorities tied him to a series of online posts threatening to send an armed caravan to Washington D.C., according to news reports.

The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Middle Village resident Eduard Florea, 40, after searching his home on 76th Street near Elliot Avenue, the New York Daily News and NBC4 New York reported.

Florea was charged with being a convicted felon in possession of ammunition, a law enforcement source told Patch.

He is expected to appear in Brooklyn federal court Wednesday.

Florea is not believed to have joined the deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol last week by pro-Trump extremists, law enforcement sources told NBC4 New York.

 But he has purported ties to the Proud Boys, a far-right group that reportedly helped lead the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol, according to ABC7 New York.

Florea has previously been arrested on weapons and domestic abuse charges.

 When a Proud Boy got taken, I didn't say anything because I'm not a Proud Boy...

When a Progressive got taken....

Update: The suspect is quite the influencer

Vice

The Proud Boys typically move around public demonstrations like a small army, flooding entire blocks in their trademark black and yellow colors. But on this day, their strategy was to avoid detection. Their self-styled “chairman,” Enrique Tarrio, had ordered the Proud Boys to go “incognito” and dress in plain clothes, so while they were central to the planning, inciting, and execution of the insurrection that led to five deaths, their role was not immediately obvious from the video disseminated from the scene.

In a stream from before the rally, Joe Biggs, a former InfoWars staffer who led the Proud Boys in Tarrio’s absence, reiterated the plan for the group not to wear their traditional colors. 

“We will not be attending D.C. in colors. We will be blending in as one of you. You won't see us. You'll even think we are you,” Biggs said. “We are going to smell like you, move like you, and look like you. The only thing we'll do that's us is think like us! Jan 6th is gonna be epic.”

Partly because of this, the group has mostly evaded scrutiny for the violence at the Capitol—which came as lawmakers were scheduled to convene and certify the results of the 2020 election, affirming Joe Biden as the winner and Donald Trump the loser. 

Tarrio himself was not present: He was arrested on his way into D.C. earlier in the week and charged for a misdemeanor for his alleged role tearing down Black Live Matter signs from a Black church in December. During the arrest, police discovered two high-capacity magazines, emblazoned with Proud Boy insignia, and charged him with an additional felony. Upon his release, a judge ordered him to stay away from D.C.

 

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We just can't have nice things

From the Daily News:

The city announced Wednesday it’s pulling the plug on the kiosk’s web browsing capabilities after a slew of complaints about people using them to check out smut sites.

The kiosks, which replaced outdated pay phones, will continue to grant users free phone calls, and access to maps and 311 services. And people can still use the hundreds of kiosks — sprinkled throughout Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens — as a hot spot for Wi-Fi for their own devices.

“There were concerns about loitering and extended use of LinkNYC kiosks, so the mayor is addressing these quality-of-life complaints head on,” said Natalie Grybauskas, a spokeswoman for Mayor de Blasio.

Some predicted that they would be a problem even before the first kiosk went up earlier this year.

Raymond Sanchez, the general counsel for Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. who was involved in the franchise deal, said worries about “misconduct” were brought up in the contract talks.

At the time, he said City Bridge, the private company that partnered with the city to turn old pay phones into high-tech kiosks, said they could add firewalls to block inappropriate sites, and would have timers so people couldn’t sit all day and watch videos.

The company did install safeguards to try to block porn, but it appeared that many users found ways to get around them.

Big sports gambling bust

From the NY Times:

An illegal gambling ring with more than 2,000 bettors in the United States moved millions of dollars through banks and credit card companies and used an overseas website to place the wagers and keep the accounts, the office of the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, said on Wednesday.

A Queens County grand jury indicted 17 people in the case, and all but three are in custody. The arrests were made by law enforcement officials in New York, Nevada and California, where most of the bookmakers and accountants for the ring were based, the office said. The head of the operation was identified as Cyrus Irani, 37, of Santa Clarita, Calif.

Mr. Brown said the ring had collected $32 million in illegal bets on football, basketball, baseball, hockey and other sports. He said Internet gambling was “a multibillion-dollar, worldwide industry.”

“Internet gambling has been compared by some to the crack cocaine epidemic of the late ’80s and early ’90s,” Mr. Brown said in a statement. “It is highly addictive.”

Most parking tickets now fought online

From CBS New York:

Technology is a two-way street when it comes to parking violations in New York City.

As CBS2’s Tony Aiello reported, high-tech tools allow the city to write more and more tickets. But they also make fighting a ticket you think is unfair a little easier.

At New York City Parking Court, the waiting room is often mostly empty these days, and the hearing rooms are hardly ever crowded. Like so much of life, the process of fighting a parking ticket has moved online.

“On the Web is probably one of the easiest and most efficient ways to have it,” said Kevin Timoney of the New York City Department of Finance.

Timoney said about 50 percent of ticket adjudications now take place online, with a system that makes it easy to upload evidence to argue your case. For instance, a scan of a Muni-Meter receipt or a picture of a parking sign may easily be uploaded.

Everything will be reviewed by an administrative law judge sworn to be impartial.

“Take as many pictures – overkill is better than underkill,” said Administrative Law Judge Frank Reyes. “Submit as many items as you think is necessary.”

Goldfeder wants online food stamp purchases authorized

From The Forum:

Grocery shopping is very different for shoppers using food stamps in the Bronx.

There, a select number of zip codes have the option of ordering groceries online, which has served as a lifeline especially for senior citizens. State Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder (D-Rockaway Park) called out the United States Department of Agriculture this week, asking why the same did not apply to southern Queens.

“Buying groceries should not be a nightmare for seniors with limited mobility,” Goldfeder said. “No senior should have to rely on friends and family when technology allows for an easier option.”

The assemblyman fired off a letter to USDA head and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, calling on the agency to use its power administering food stamp benefits at the national level to provide online grocery delivery services to zip codes in southern Queens and Rockaway. The service has been part of a pilot program the USDA launched this year to allow for online purchases of groceries using Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, which shoppers use to make purchases with their SNAP benefits – or food stamps. Goldfeder’s letter said southern Queens and Rockaway were home to a large senior population, and allowing residents to use their EBT cards to order groceries online would be a great relief to seniors unable to make it to the supermarket.

Is online voting the way to go?

From Metro:

Legislation introduced by Councilman Fernando Cabrera on Wednesday would require an online voting system where absentee and military ballots could be cast in certain municipal elections.

The proposed system would allow primary, runoff and general election ballots to be cast for mayor, public advocate, city comptroller, borough presidents and council members. A spokeswoman for Cabrera said the system, which would not initially be available for all voters, represents a “baby step.”

There would be a password attached to the proposed voting process, according to the Cabrera spokeswoman. His office is also working with SOE Software, a company that specializes in election modernization.

Still, the idea of online voting worries Neal Rosenstein, government reform coordinator of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

“There’s a ton of folks who say that the system wouldn’t be secure,” he said. “Public confidence in the election process is the most important thing.”

Still waiting for new LPC website

From Crains:

The Landmarks Preservation Commission has come under fire from one of its staunchest defenders, Brooklyn City Councilman Brad Lander, who chairs the Council's landmarks subcommittee. He accuses the commission of repeatedly breaking its promise to launching a $5 million website designed to bring transparency to a process by which the commission selects landmarks.

The site would not only provide a comprehensive and easily accessible list of the city's 1,323 individual landmarks and 109 historic districts but also a clear catalog of what would-be landmarks have been submitted for consideration and where they stand in the review process.

"If you're a neighborhood group filing a request or a business owner who wants to know the fate of your building, there is no easy way to track that now from the LPC's website," Mr. Lander said. "Transparency is at the heart of good government, it's at the heart of a thriving democracy."

Mr. Lander said that when he first took over the landmarks subcommittee, he had a meeting with LPC chairman Robert Tierney. It was at that point that Mr. Lander suggested the agency come up with a better website and was told by Mr. Tierney that one was in the works and it was only months away from completion. When Mr. Tierney repeated that statement last week at a Council hearing on the agency's budget, Mr. Lander was ready for him.

"You've been telling us the same thing, that it was months away, going on three years now," Mr. Lander shot back.

Delays may well continue.

"Until we get a system that meets our standards, we're not going to implement it," Mr. Tierney responded. When asked if that might be before the Bloomberg administration leaves office at the end of the year, Mr. Tierney responded that he did not know.

"Because we're working through these complex issues, it's not as simple, perhaps, as we once thought it was, for whatever reason, and the complexities have produced these issues that we have," Mr. Tierney said.

Some people can't take a joke...or the truth

From DNA Info:

A mysterious mock website that took jabs at the members of Queens Community Board 1 took most of its content offline recently, posting only a brief message stating the site had been threatened with legal action.

"Cb1queens.org is a parody and protected free political speech. Needless to say, it does not have any relation with any actual community board or governmental agency," a message on the site currently reads.

"But based on the threat of legal action from the City of New York, the site is temporarily being taken down," the site states.

It's unclear if legal threats were indeed made against the site. An email sent to the site's designers was not immediately returned, and CB1 district manager Lucille Hartmann was not available for comment Thursday.

The city's Law Department did not immediately respond to questions.

Short-term rentals lead to long-term problems

From WNYC:

The internet is causing big changes in New York’s hospitality business. Many visitors now spend the night in private homes, which they find through websites such as Airbnb. While these rentals tend to be cheaper, they are also very often illegal, and a growing number of hosts – people who rent out their homes or additional rooms – are being slapped with violations by city authorities. Now Airbnb says it is working to change local laws to make it easier to rent out an apartment.

Get-out-of-jail-free cards sold online

From the NY Post:

Buying a “get out of jail free” card is just a mouse click away — and city officials are horrified.

Police union cards that cops hand out to friends and family free of charge are selling on eBay for as much as $100 a pop, even though the resale of the coveted plastic is strictly prohibited by the unions.

The cards are often used to get out of minor jams like speeding tickets or parking violations — flashing one with your driver’s license is a way of suggesting you’re a member of law enforcement or at least related to someone who is.

“It’s a way for a police officer to vouch for another person,” said City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. “That type of recommendation shouldn’t be available to the highest bidder.”

But as a Post reporter discovered, purchasing police union cards — Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Detectives’ Endowment Association, the Lieutenants Benevolent Association and the Sergeants Benevolent Association are all listed — is as easy as logging on to eBay, charging it to a credit card or PayPal and receiving it in the mail.

Councilman Dan Garodnick (D-Manhattan), another committee member, suggested that the cards be done away with altogether to avoid ethical breaches like the Bronx ticket-fixing scandal, which resulted in charges against 16 city cops.

“Our traffic laws should not be enforced with winks and nods,” Garodnick said. “I don’t know which is worse, the existence of a get-out-of-jail-free card or the fact that the cards are being hawked on the Internet.”

Note the difference in reaction by Mr. Public Safety and Mr. Garodnick. Vallone thinks that it's ok that the friends and family members of cops are allowed to slide when they break the law, while Garodnick doesn't think anyone should.

“It’s a way for a police officer to vouch for another person.”

I'm sure the cannibal cop, the rapist cops and the cop who stole and sold other cops' guns had courtesy cards, too...

Flushing BID's website promotes "shame of Flushing"

I don't know if it's a mistake or if their website has been hacked, but the homepage of the Flushing BID is currently promoting (or calling itself) the "shame of Flushing."

Backpage operation busted

From Forest Hills Patch:

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced a big bust on Tuesday, saying an in-depth investigation had resulted in the breakup of a prostitution ring that stretched as far as the Philippines.

Christopher Fairbarn, a 24-year-old Forest Hills man, was one of 19 people arrested in the operation, which also caught residents from Flushing, Bayside, Pennsylvania and Southeast Asia.

According to Schneiderman, the Attorney General's office worked with the NYPD during a 16-month investigation to monitor the advertising agency Somad Enterprises, which created both online and print advertisements in publications like Backpage.com and the Village Voice to prostitute women.

All told, the agency took in more than $3 million for its role in facilitating meet-ups between often unwilling female victims and the men paying for their services, Schneiderman said.

Those arrested include employees of the advertising agency who accepted money to place the ads, pimps, drivers and more. During the course of making arrests, NYPD officers also took two human-trafficking victims into custody, both of whom are now in a safehouse.

Halloran against internet censorship bill

From Bayside Patch:

Councilman Dan Halloran, R-Whitestone, is breaking rank with GOP members in the State Legislature, to blast a Republican sponsored bill banning anonymous online comments.

The bill, known as the Internet Protection Act, would require New York-based web administrators to remove comments made by anonymous posters, unless the poster agreed to attach their real names, according to the Huffington Post.

“This is an unconstitutional attempt by New York State to play Big Brother on the Internet,” Halloran told Fox News. “Will it soon be illegal to publish an anonymous novel or distribute an anonymous work of art?”

Unconstitutional internet bill proposed

From the Huffington Post:

Republicans in the state government in Albany, N.Y., are attempting to pass a law that would ban anonymous comments on the Internet (to articles such as this one, or even to websites such as the one you're reading this on now). That clever login name you came up with? Sorry, you'll have to use your real name instead.

Luckily for all of us, this is never going to happen. Even if New York Republicans had their way, and actually passed their so-called Internet Protection Act, once it arrived in a federal court it would be tossed out in a "New York minute" (as they say).

This isn't just overconfidence in the judicial branch or civil libertarian smugness, either (although the "New York minute" bit is admittedly rather snarky). Legal precedent from only a few years ago already exists, which not only puts the First Amendment stamp of approval on online anonymity, it actually says that any attempt to uncover the identity of the commenter would be unconstitutional. And the case hinged not on political comments on a website but actual email spam. Political spam is protected free speech -- so how can website comments not be?

Speaking out on politics in whatever technological medium exists -- and remaining anonymous while doing so -- is not just one of the foundational rights our government was built on, it was actually largely responsible for our nation and our government even existing.

That is not going to be taken away by any misguided modern group of politicians in Albany, New York. Whether they've read and understood the Constitution or not will not matter, even if this pathetic excuse of a law is actually passed. Because it won't last that "New York minute" in federal court, before it is tossed on the historical ash-heap of past attempts at such censorship -- and, indeed, laughed right out of the courtroom.

This actually sounds like part of Gov. Cuomo's "war on cyberbullying."

Green Book info going online

From the NY Times:

Sometime this spring, the city plans to update the Green Book, and transfer its contents to a searchable, and easily updated, Web site. A limited number of copies of the printed version would once again be available for sale, but the city clearly intends for the digital version to be the primary one.

“The city is in the process of producing a truly ‘green’ Green Book, and has worked to update the resource after a series of turnovers, election cycles and other changes,” said Lauren Passalacqua, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bloomberg.

The digital Green Book would be only another example of the migration of vast amounts of data to the Internet — in many ways, it is startling that the online version was not developed sooner, given the mayor’s emphasis on technology. The state government’s directory, called the Red Book, is already sold in digital, as well as printed, form. But for longtime creatures of City Hall, many of whom have chafed at the Bloomberg administration’s failure to update the directory in recent years, the book was a mark of the insider.

Now here's something you don't want to see every day

"The yelp photo for Crown Fried Chicken in Jamaica is a horrible accident photo..." - Nick Normal

And the review:

"Delicious!
dine on succulent southern fried chicken, mashed potatoes, buttermilk biscuits, all while watching the amazing carnage outside. Seated safely behind bullet proof glass and steel reinforced brick walls, you'll eat your wonderful (and wonderfully priced!) chicken dinner and watch other people destroy their automobiles. It's kinda like dinner theater, but WAY better, and cheaper too!
my personal favorite.

PS don't park on the street!! ;-)"

Too funny.

Illegal hotel problem gets worse

From Fox 5:

You don't need to be a tourist to know how expensive it is to rent a hotel room in New York City. Those sky-high hotel prices have refueled a cottage industry. Apartment owners are looking to cash in, too, by renting out their places for short-term stays. But there's one big problem: it is illegal and potentially dangerous.

On any given day, illegal hotel operators accept visitors from around the world into their rooms at the fraction of the price of what it costs to stay in better known hotels. We don't know exactly how many short-term room rental businesses are operating in the city, but we do know they are illegal. And there a lot of them.

"It feels unsafe you never know who is in the building," said a concerned West Side tenant.

"They leave front door open... they don't care," added another worried tenant.

A quick search of websites dedicated to renting out rooms -- like Airbnb, HomeAway and Craigslist -- show thousands and thousands of residential rooms available. It was all supposed to stop in May 2011 when New York State made short-term rentals against the law. But a Fox 5 investigation revealed the problem has not stopped. In fact, some say it has become even worse.

A building employee on Driggs Avenue in Brooklyn openly admitted he hands out keys for short stays, usually just for a few days at a time. He told Fox 5 his boss owns 20 other buildings that all operate the same way.

Website to track bar complaints coming soon

From AM-NY:

Amid complaints from New Yorkers about bars not keeping crowds under control, New York's State Liquor Authority is creating an online map that will let the public see an establishment's history of violations and liquor licenses.

The website -- set to launch next month -- will let New Yorkers search for an establishment by name or location, and scroll through its license and violation history, similar to the city's online restaurant inspection database.

Though license information has been available online, the authority currently requires people to submit Freedom of Information requests to find out about violations cited for places that sell booze.

Central Library gets upgraded

From the Daily News:

When it opened more than 45 years ago, the Queens Central Library in Jamaica was touted as a state-of-the art facility, offering the latest in customer convenience and library research.

But the traditional stacks of books and rows of tables and chairs are now being replaced with plush seating and computers as the library embarks on its largest and most ambitious renovation to date.

“Libraries are no longer just places to sit and do research, they are places to go,” said Queens Library CEO Thomas Galante.

Galante and City Councilman Leroy Comrie celebrated the latest phase of the library’s transformation on Thursday when they officially opened its expanded and revamped Cyber Center.

The center has 72 computer workstations, printers and a scanner.

A long line of customers waiting to use the computers grew during the short ceremony - an example of the vital role they now serve in libraries.

Use of the computers is free for anyone with a Queens Library Card.