(Reclaim The Net)—Lexipol, a private consultancy geared towards providing services to law enforcement in the US, has come up with a recommendation to law enforcement to set up a “Misinformation/Disinformation Unit.”

A piece published on the company’s platform, Police1.com, asks its client police departments whether they are “prepared (for) the battle against mis/disinformation.”

Coming from Lexipol, this is no ordinary question, as the firm is said to have contracts with more than 8,000 law enforcement agencies, and is consequently considered to be a key player in what is known as “privatized police policymaking.”

According to Lexipol’s own statements, its reach in March 2020 extended to 8,100 agencies that used the company’s services and manuals (a year earlier, reports said that these agencies were located across 35 US states).

From that position, Lexipol is now making recommendations to its “subscribers” in the law enforcement community to establish a unit that would not only tackle supposed misinformation and disinformation, but also “collaborate with tech companies and civil society organizations to develop early-warning systems and identify harmful content in real time.”

This can be read as brazen defiance of the ongoing efforts, including in the US Congress, to put an end to just such “collaboration” between private and government (here, law enforcement) entities – investigated in one instance as government-Big Tech collusion.

But Lexipol’s write-up plays on fears that it is “disinformation” that might increase public hostility toward police officers and put them at greater risk.

The kind of disinformation breeding hostility Lexipol has in mind may not be exactly the same as that of many police officers, however. The company mentions what are at this point “soft targets,” at least to a certain brand of political and media thinking in the US – Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea – as somehow an example of that domestic law enforcement, too, might be harmed by disinformation, and what to do about it.

With the scaremongering in place, Police1 promotes the well-established narratives: online speech needs to be “protected” from the dangers of AI, and this should be done by the police employing “proactive strategies.”

What is recommended to these state entities is not really different from what the current US authorities ask of social media, and media in general: in this case, it would be a unit, one “charged with identifying false information, fact-checking claims, and creating counter-narratives.”

(Reclaim The Net)—At the recent Matrix Conference, developers behind Element launched the latest iteration of their effort – Element X, a private, decentralized, open-source, and end-to-end encrypted app.

Element X is a Matrix-based (and the first Matrix 2.0) cross-platform messenger based on the classic Element mobile apps, and according to a blog post, “almost all” its users can now use Element X for messaging.

This applies both to personal and corporate scenarios. The plan is to turn Element X – a full rewrite – into Element once again – as soon as the migration has been completed for all users.

COO and co-founder Amandine Le Pape presented a demo of the new features during the conference, including that known as Element (video) Calls.

The key developers went into the technical side of things as well, explaining that the software now uses Rust SDK and SwiftUI, as well as Jetpack Compose (these are APIs and UI frameworks for various platforms.)

Users are urged to now try, and provide feedback on the new product for Android and iOS.

Some notes touching on privacy and security issues are made, such as the app being available on Google Play Store’s free and open source alternative F-Droid as well – and that some metrics testing is done via Simplified Sliding Sync.

It’s an opt-in, available to those who wish to help the developers understand how their app is behaving, performance-wise.

Other than providing users with “beautiful usability, performance, and productivity,” some other noteworthy Element X features include instant sync, instant login, and instant launch, end-to-end-encrypted voice and video conferencing that is powered by Matrix – an open standard real-time communications protocol.

Currently not generally available, but the plan is to have that in place by the end of the year is what is known as next-generation authentication, which includes login via QR code.

Encryption is one of those features that are always desirable, but often difficult to set up or use by “the average user”; here, the team behind Element X promises “radically improved encryption UX (user experience)” which relies on matrix-rust-crypto and the Invisible Encryption Initiative.

The blog post also provides technical details on how to register an account and use Element X.