This is the kind of stuff you can't make up.

Excerpts from March 17, 2020 Forbes article: To Fight Coronavirus, This City Is Asking 911 Callers To Agree To Self Surveillance

On a regular day in New Orleans’ 911 communications center, 45 people answer approximately 2,500 emergency calls. But days are anything but regular right now. Starting on March 16, 2020, emergency responders in the city of New Orleans are adapting to the new normal amidst the coronavirus pandemic by testing out Carbyne, an Israeli startup providing “next-generation 911” tech, founded by 35-year-old entrepreneur Amir Elichai.

These responders are now using a tool built in part by former members of Israel’s military intelligence—Elichai being one—that’s backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who is now the company’s chairman, and a small, passive investment from deceased multimillionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Its founder thinks Carbyne’s tech could make the lives of 911 dispatch and healthcare professionals much less chaotic in the Covid-19 crisis. Carbyne relies on callers submitting themselves to self-surveillance via their own mobile phone. Once a caller uses their Android or iPhone to call 911 (85% of emergency calls now come from mobile devices), they receive a text message that asks for permission to get their precise location and access video from their smartphone camera.

..hortly after, Elichai founded Reporty, which he later renamed Carbyne, a nod to the strongest material on earth. In 2015, he cold-called former prime minister Barak, now an investor with a penchant for surveillance companies. He was soon joined by Founders Fund partner Stephens and NJF Capital founder Nicole Junkermann, advisors like President George W. Bush’s secretary of homeland security Michael Chertoff, ex-commissioner of the Met Police Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe, and a roster of Israeli surveillance veterans bulking up the Carbyne team.

..The Epstein association may well prove to be a minor distraction. Since 2017, Carbyne has built up a customer base of 30 American 911 departments and some 20 emergency response units in Mexico as well as 9 in Israel. It also partnered with two major companies in 2019. Last April, the company started working with the network equipment giant Cisco for its hardware, and two months later, announced a collaboration with Google to use Android phones’ location services at emergency command centers across Mexico. In October, Elichai, who sees Carbyne’s main market as the U.S., moved the company headquarters from Israel to New York City.

Such is Carbyne’s growth. There is a big chance it could go public in the next three to five years, Elichai says, speaking to Forbes days before the stock market had its worst day since 1987. “Carbyne is going to be a unicorn and basically the new public safety monster. And this is what we’re trying to build here.”