Missing Georgia camper 'miraculously found alive' after disappearing for weeks in California wilderness
A missing Georgia camper was "miraculously found alive" in California's Sierra Nevada after disappearing weeks ago, police say.
Tiffany Slaton, a 27-year-old from Jefferson, was discovered Wednesday after the owner of the Vermilion Valley Resort near Lake Edison in Fresno County, California, was conducting a property check and "found one of his cabins was occupied by a woman," according to the Fresno County Sheriff's Office.
"She pops out, didn't say a word, just ran up and all she wanted was a hug," Christopher Gutierrez said. "It was a pretty surreal moment and that's when I realized who this was."
Investigators say Slaton was reported missing by her family on April 29 after she was not heard from for nine days. She was found "dehydrated, but was otherwise in good condition."
"He was aware of an ongoing search for a missing woman, and she matched the description. Deputies traveled up to Kaiser Pass Road and met with the owner who had driven Tiffany out to the staging point. Deputies confirmed it to be Tiffany and medics arrived with an ambulance to examine her," the Sheriff's Office added. "It is important to note that the road from Kaiser Pass back to Lake Edison was impassable due to the snowpack."
Police say snowplows cleared the road to the Vermilion Valley Resort on Wednesday, and Gutierrez was preparing to open up the property for the public for the summer.
"The owner said he had left a cabin unlocked as a precaution for this exact situation where someone who is lost could seek shelter and increase their chances of surviving the outdoor elements and harsh weather," the Fresno County Sheriff's Office said.
Slaton's father, Bobby, said on Wednesday that "This has to be the third or fourth best day of our lives after our children's births so we are extremely excited and happy to hear the news that my daughter is now safe."
"A ton of weight has been lifted, and we can't thank the sheriff's department of Fresno enough and the search and rescue team enough for – and most certainly, the community. The community has been outstanding in the search for Tiffany."
Her mother, Fredrina, said they were out shopping for clothes in preparation for a trip to the area when they first learned she had been found safe.
"I just grabbed somebody and said, 'can I hug you'? And I did, I was crying and hugging," according to Fredrina Slaton.
"She called me on her way down from the mountain. As soon as they were able to get a cell signal, she actually reached out to me and that was truly when the tears started flowing," added her father.
"She said 'Dad, I'm alive, and I'm sorry, but I'm alive, and I wanted to call you and let you know that I'm alive,' and I asked because I didn't want to get my hopes up. I asked 'who was this'? And she says 'This is Tiffany.' And that was it, I just thank God for that moment because prayers were answered," Bobby Slaton also said.
Investigators previously carried out a "full-scale" search in the mountains for Slaton between May 6 and May 10, spanning nearly 600 square miles, "but the crew never found any trace of Tiffany or her belongings," it added.
"Detectives are now arranging to meet with Tiffany to learn more about her timeline of events and overall experience," it also said.
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New York Times
25 minutes ago
- New York Times
Live Updates: California Asks Court to Block Use of Troops in ICE Raids
In downtown Los Angeles on Sunday, protesters faced off with law enforcement officers. Disinformation about the events has circulated online. Misleading photographs, videos and text have spread widely on social media as protests against immigrant raids have unfolded in Los Angeles, rehashing old conspiracy theories and expressing support for President Trump's actions. The flood of falsehoods online appeared intended to stoke outrage toward immigrants and political leaders, principally Democrats. They also added to the confusion over what exactly was happening on the streets, which was portrayed in digital and social media through starkly divergent ideological lenses. Many posts created the false impression that the entire city was engulfed in violence, when the clashes were limited to only a small part. There were numerous scenes of protesters throwing rocks or other objects at law enforcement officers and setting cars ablaze, including a number of self-driving Waymo taxis. At the same time, false images spread to revive old conspiracies that the protests were a planned provocation, not a spontaneous response to the immigration raids. The confrontation escalated on Monday as new protests occurred and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced — on X — that he was mobilizing 700 Marines from a base near Los Angeles to guard federal buildings. They are expected to join 2,000 members of the California National Guard whom Mr. Trump ordered deployed without the authorization of the state's governor, Gavin Newsom, who normally has command of the troops. The latest deployments prompted a new wave of misleading images to spread — some purporting to show Marines and the military service's weapons in action. One was a still from 'Blue Thunder,' a 1983 action-thriller about a conspiracy to deprive residents of Los Angeles of their civil rights. It features a climactic dogfight over the city's downtown. Darren L. Linvill, a researcher at Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub, said conservatives online were 'building up the riots in a performative way' to help bolster Mr. Trump's claims that Los Angeles had been taken over by 'violent, insurrectionist mobs.' Dr. Linvill said the posts were also 'a bit self-fulfilling.' 'As they direct attention to it,' he said, 'more protesters will show up.' James Woods, the actor who has become known for spreading conspiracy theories, used his account on X to rail against the state's elected officials, especially Mr. Newsom, a Democrat. He also reposted a fabricated quote, attributed to former President Barack Obama, discussing a secret plot to impose socialism on the country, as well as a video of burning police cars that was from 2020. An innocuous photograph of a pallet of bricks, actually posted on the website of a building materials wholesaler in Malaysia, was cited as proof that the protests were organized by nonprofit organizations supported by George Soros, the financier who, to the feverishly conspiratorial right, has become a mastermind of global disorder. Image These bricks are actually from an image on the website of a building materials wholesaler in Malaysia. Credit... The New York Times 'It's Civil War!!' an account on X wrote on Saturday, claiming that the bricks had been placed near the offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for 'Democrat militants.' X posted a Community Note pointing out that the photograph had nothing to do with the protests, but it still was seen more than 800,000 times. It was also widely reposted, including by several seemingly inauthentic accounts in Chinese. The online trope dates at least to the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. It reappeared in 2022 after a conspiratorial post by Representative Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican who suggested that bricks for a paving project near Capitol Hill were intended for violent protests after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. 'These days, it feels like every time there's a protest, the old clickbaity 'pallets of bricks' hoax shows up right on cue,' the Social Media Lab, a research center at the Toronto Metropolitan University, wrote on Bluesky. 'You know the one, photos or videos of bricks supposedly left out to encourage rioting. It's catnip for right-wing agitators and grifters.' It also fits into the narrative that protests against government policies are somehow inauthentic. On his own platform, Truth Social, Mr. Trump also suggested that the protesters were 'Paid Insurrectionists!' Numerous posts echoed unsubstantiated claims that the protests were the work of Mr. Soros as well as local nongovernment organizations or Democratic elected officials, including the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass. Some posts disparaging the protests were shared by accounts with deceptive handles that closely resembled those of official government sources or news organizations. Mike Benz, a conspiracy-minded influencer on X who last year claimed that the Pentagon used the pop star Taylor Swift as part of a psychological operation to undercut Mr. Trump, advanced an outlandish theory that the mayor had links to the Central Intelligence Agency and had helped start riots in the city where she lives. He based that simply on Ms. Bass's role as a board member for the National Endowment for Democracy, the congressionally mandated organization formed during the Reagan administration to promote democratic governance around the world. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the theme was echoed by accounts across social media linked to Russia, which often amplifies content that discredits the United States. The Kremlin and its supporters have long accused Mr. Soros or the United States government of covertly sponsoring 'color revolutions' to overthrow governments — from the Arab Spring countries swept up by mass street protests in 2011 to Ukraine. 'It is nationwide conspiracy of liberals against not only Trump but against American people in general,' Aleksandr Dugin, a prominent nationalist in Russia, wrote on X on Sunday. Disinformation in situations like these spreads so quickly and widely that efforts to verify facts cannot keep up, said Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at Free Press, an advocacy organization that studies the intersection of media, technology and the law. She described it as part of 'a much longer effort to delegitimize peaceful resistance movements.' 'Information warfare is always a symptom of conflict, stoked often by those in power to fuel their own illiberal goals,' she said. 'It confuses audiences, scares people who might otherwise have empathy for the cause and divides us when we need solidarity most.'
Washington Post
34 minutes ago
- Washington Post
‘Enough is enough.' Why Los Angeles is still protesting, despite fear.
LOS ANGELES — Some came because they have friends or family without papers. Others after they saw footage of the National Guard on their city's streets. And still more have packed into parks and plazas, protesting with hopes that their collective presence will send a loud message: We're not going to tolerate this. The demonstrations, largely organized by activist groups and labor unions, that have unfolded in Los Angeles and its suburbs since Friday have collectively drawn thousands of people outraged by a federal immigration crackdown sowing fear across the region. The protests have not been especially large by past standards of this metropolis, but they have played out under an intense national spotlight as President Donald Trump fixated on isolated episodes of violence between the crowds and police. Trump has called those in attendance 'insurrectionists,' 'looters,' 'troublemakers' and 'criminals.' And Trump has only escalated his confrontation with the city in the past 48 hours, ordering thousands of Guard troops and hundreds of active-duty Marines to deploy despite local officials' insistence that the situation was under control. Though Trump has portrayed a lawless Los Angeles — and nights have seen more direct clashes than days — the vast majority of protesters have been peaceful and determined. In interviews with The Washington Post, many demonstrators said they felt it was a crucial time to speak out. Here are some of their stories. Marquise Bailey lives downtown, just blocks from the federal courthouse where police clashed with protesters late Monday. After several days of being surrounded by sounds of those gathered and the officers responding — of hearing the chants, sirens and helicopters circling — he felt compelled to join for the first time. His husband pushed him in his wheelchair to the fringe of the crowd. Bailey held a Mexican flag in honor of his Afro-Latino roots. 'It's the same thing to me as Black Lives Matter,' the mural artist explained. 'We all are equals regardless of what color we are. And everybody needs support.' It was a chaotic scene. Young people were spray-painting the wall of a building behind him. One lobbed a water bottle at the sheriff's deputies guarding the building. 'I've been seeing police officers with tear gas. They've been out with rubber bullets, breaking up peaceful protesting,' Bailey said. But there was another side, too: 'I've seen a lot of graffiti, tagging while we're trying to get the video. Everyone is mad, people are upset and they want their voices heard. They're throwing things in the crowd, which is why we're moving around trying to keep it as safe as possible. It's like a back-and-forth provocation.' He condemned Trump's deploying Marines to the protests and the administration's efforts to deport immigrants with legal status. 'He's doing anything to get us in an uproar.' Loud bangs sounded as police fired nonlethal munitions nearby, and Bailey started to wheel back with his husband. Protesters threw a firework nearby, and he retreated a bit more. Once the bangs stopped, he moved closer again. 'Downtown is getting hit the hardest,' he said, 'but it's for a cause.' As he walked his Chihuahua near his downtown L.A. apartment after his third day of protesting, Mike Nakagawa considered the state of America. 'Military people brought in against civilians — I never would have believed it,' he said. And he's uncertain where it will lead: 'We're all kind of in uncharted territory.' Nakagawa had never joined a demonstration before on behalf of immigrants. But the divisions in the country reminded him of the schisms during the Vietnam War, and as a Japanese American — son of a naturalized citizen and U.S. Army veteran who volunteered for the front line during the Korean War — he felt compelled 'to show up to support the rights of people to assemble.' 'That's how change was made, whether it was Vietnam, civil rights or in my ancestry, the incarceration in World War II of Japanese America,' he said. The president's deployment of Marines, who are not trained to handle protests like these, particularly troubles him. 'The politicization of the military like this is something I just, I don't think anybody imagined,' he said. He's also worried that troops might be ordered to shoot at demonstrators and wonders if they would later defend that by saying they were just following orders. 'I can't imagine the legal issue involved,' Nakagawa said. 'I won't profess to know them all, but it seems pretty clear to me that this is kind of over the line. … I'm trying to absorb the idea that it's happening and candidly, how it can be allowed.' Then there's the cost of the military response, which a Pentagon official on Tuesday pegged at $134 million for 60 days of operations. 'You talk about waste, fraud, and abuse — I can't imagine this is saving any money.' What the president blasts as an insurrection, Nakagawa sees as an exercise in democracy. 'That's what people are out here for. That's what America itself was founded upon,' he said. 'We're not Russia. We are not Tiananmen Square.' Stephanie Urias is the daughter of a father from Guatemala and mother from Mexico. Both are legal U.S. residents. And yet Urias, who works as a health-care supervisor, has never felt so much fear. 'It's like the Hunger Games: Our people are being hunted down,' she said. 'This is no way of living at this point, being scared to go out your own house.' Her heritage, their history, was what brought her to downtown Los Angeles on Monday, where she joined a protest outside of the federal courthouse. 'It's important to speak up for them because they can't vote,' she said, carrying a sign that declared: 'I'm coming for everything my family crossed for.' Urias heard about Trump deploying Marines to the protests, a decision she opposes. She questions why Trump didn't send troops in to quell the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. 'They attacked police officers,' she said of the people who stormed the building. 'Here we are, we're [protesting] peacefully, but yet they're sending the Marines, the National Guard, the cops, everybody. Why didn't they do that for January 6?' She and friend Susana Rivera had backed a block away from the crowd after police issued a dispersal order. Plumes of white smoke rose toward the sky. Some people were lobbing water bottles and shooting off fireworks. The women stood on a street corner, wary but reluctant to leave. 'It's part of our constitutional rights,' Rivera said. 'This is what America should be like,' DeMille Halliburton thought, standing in Grand Park with friends and surveying the crowd of strangers around him, brought together by their opposition to the immigration raids taking place across Los Angeles. 'It was powerful to see people young and old, of all different races and ethnicities,' he said. 'It was a powerful statement, and I hope that comes across. The false narrative is that these are people who are only out there to loot and cause destruction.' The rally, organized by the Service Employees International Union, reflected the city itself — a place home to astonishing diversity, where many are furious with what they view as the federal government's incursion into L.A.'s immigrant communities. Halliburton felt compelled to show up Monday morning, when he'd normally be starting his workweek at an entertainment insurance firm, because of what he'd heard and seen over the weekend, including images of National Guard forces deploying to downtown. 'Enough is enough,' said Halliburton, who moved to Los Angeles from New York nearly 30 years ago. 'What else can we do other than go out and let people see that we're not standing for it?' He has grown increasingly dismayed by the rhetoric from Trump administration officials; to him, they seem more interested in fanning the flames than dousing them. 'It's a powder keg, and he's lighting the match,' Halliburton said of the president. The presence of federal forces made him nervous, but he purposefully chose to attend an event organized by SEIU, one of the state's most prominent labor unions, because he knew it wouldn't be co-opted by radical groups seeking violent confrontation with authorities. And the show of solidarity that greeted him was heartening. 'It's Black and Brown people who are being targeted,' he said. 'But I'm happy to see it's not just Black and Brown people protesting. It's everyone.' L.A. police in riot gear were lined up in front of their downtown headquarters. Graffiti denouncing them, the president and Immigration and Customs Enforcement covered nearby buildings. Protesters walked by carrying Mexican flags. Jennifer Roecklein stood silently across the street with a friend, taking in the scene. She had come to join Monday's demonstration because of how the ICE raids have impacted her community, she said, hitting close to home with her partner, who is Mexican and comes from an immigrant family. 'I want to make sure that everyone feels safe and secure, and they don't need to worry every day about if they're going to be detained or they're going to lose a family member or someone they love,' she said. Roecklein works in operations, lives in Los Angeles County and has protested before on immigration issues, but Monday was her first day since the raids began late last week. 'It's really startling to see the presence, the force that is here, and the gear that the LAPD and others are in,' she admitted. The message she took from their stance? 'You want to be safe? Okay, well we're going to make you feel less safe,' she said. 'This is like the city has been taken ahold of by police.' She called Trump's deployment of Marines 'a gross overstatement' and 'a violation.' 'I know that there is a fierce force that's fighting every action he takes, but it is scary the lengths that he is willing to go,' she said. Yet the military's arrival won't keep her away. As a White person, she feels a duty to show up: 'I'm a privileged person. I need to be here. I need to take up the space for those that can't and don't feel safe doing so.'
Forbes
44 minutes ago
- Forbes
The Wiretap: Facial Recognition, Amazon Ring, And Surveillance Of The LA Protests
The Wiretap is your weekly digest of cybersecurity, internet privacy and surveillance news. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here. The protests in LA are being captured by all manner of surveillance devices. But federal and local police have different restrictions on what they can do with the footage (Photo by) 'I have all of you on camera. I'm going to come to your house.' Those were the words coming from an LAPD officer in a helicopter over LA protestors, according to the LA Times. The implicit threat, according to some privacy advocates, was that the cops would use facial recognition software to identify and locate those protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. It's not quite so easy to do that, though. A source close to the agency, who was not authorized to talk on record, told Forbes that LAPD will be going through camera footage - whether shot from a helicopter, surveillance cams or bodycams - and try to identify people. However, the LAPD can only search for matches from police-owned arrest records, namely, mugshots. Its own rules don't allow it to search for matches across other sources, such as social media. Federal agents, however, don't have the same restrictions. Any federal agent using Clearview or an alternative can take the same footage and run facial images to find matches across photos scraped from social sites. One of Clearview's best-known federal customers is ICE, which typically uses it in child exploitation cases. It's unclear how often the agency uses it for immigration enforcement. Neither ICE nor the LAPD had responded to requests for comment at the time of publication. Law enforcement has another potential source for protest footage: video from Amazon Ring cameras or its competitors. Though Amazon has stopped cops requesting information directly over the Ring Neighbours social platform, federal and local cops can demand data recorded by those devices with a court order. The video could then be used to identify protestors. While the source close to LAPD said they weren't aware of any specific uses of Ring around this week's events, they said it's certainly a capability that exists. Meanwhile, concerned citizens have also been using Neighbors to share footage of ICE raids and agents in the L.A. area, either to warn about them or to celebrate the actions. In footage from Monday, identified by a Forbes' reporter, a Ring user shared footage they claimed showed ICE targeting laborers at a local Home Depot. Another warned about ICE agents at a mall and a Costco. Amazon Ring didn't comment on record, though a spokesperson pointed Forbes to guidelines that prohibit users posting on 'topics that cause inevitable frictions like politics and election information,' as well as 'highly debated social issues.' Its moderators might be busier than normal this week. Got a tip on surveillance or cybercrime? Get me on Signal at +1 929-512-7964. DOGE pre-Elon Musk's departure and break up with President Trump. (Photo by) The Supreme Court has given a green light to the Department of Government Efficiency to access Social Security Administration data. The decision came after the Trump administration had filed an emergency application to lift an injunction from a federal judge in Maryland. In its decision, the Supreme Court said DOGE staff needed the access to do their job. While the White House cheered the decision as a victory for fighting fraud and waste in federal agencies, opponents said the ruling 'will enable President Trump and DOGE's affiliates to steal Americans' private and personal data.' A cyber researcher found a way to identify phone numbers linked to any Google account. Google has since fixed the issue, which may have exposed users to SIM swapping scams. The DOJ has launched an offensive on the dark web marketplace BidenCash, where users buy and sell stolen credit card and personal information. The agency has taken down 145 domains across both the standard web and the darknet associated with the bazaar. The service has so far generated over $17 million in revenue, according to Justice officials. A man who controls much of the infrastructure that underpins Telegram also controls other companies with links to Russian intelligence agency FSB, according to an investigation by the Organized Crimes and Corruption Reporting Project's Russian partner, Important Stories. Telegram has not responded to the allegations. The Guardian has launched a new way to tip its reporters securely with an app simply called 'Secure Messaging.' It sounds pretty neat: 'The technology behind Secure Messaging conceals the fact that messaging is taking place at all by making the communication indistinguishable from other data sent to and from the app by our millions of regular users. By using the Guardian app, other users are effectively providing 'cover' and helping us to protect sources.' President Trump has been unsurprisingly careless with his personal iPhone, taking calls from numbers he doesn't recognize. That's despite repeatedly being warned about the heightened risks of foreign surveillance and interception that come with using a device with a 'broadly circulated number,' according to a report in The Atlantic.
