FBI, Department of Justice investigating racist mass texts sent after election – Winnipeg Free Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Several federal and state agencies are investigating how racist mass messages were sent to Black people across the country in the wake of this week’s presidential election.

Text messages evoking slavery were sent to Black men, women and children, prompting investigations by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

The anonymously sent messages were reported in several states, including New York, Alabama, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Tennessee. The FBI said it contacted the Justice Department about the messages and the Federal Communications Commission is investigating along with federal and state law enforcement.

“These messages are unacceptable,” FCC Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. He said the agency “takes this type of targeting very seriously.”

Although the texts varied slightly, they all instructed recipients to “board a bus” that would take them to a “plantation” to work as slaves, authorities said. They said the messages were sent to school-age children and college students and caused serious distress.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said Thursday morning that the person sending the messages used a VPN to hide their origin.

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said his office is dealing with multiple reports of racist text messages being sent to black residents, including children. Authorities said the messages appeared to be part of a nationwide campaign targeting black people after the election.

“These messages are horrific, unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” Brown said in a statement.

Brown said in an interview that it’s troubling that children are sometimes targeted by name in bulk texts that often rely on data sets collected from adults, such as campaign donors or magazine subscribers.

“This is a frightening, threatening use of technology that likely violates multiple laws,” Brown said. He said investigators “will use every tool and resource at our disposal to hold accountable whoever is behind these text messages.”

Phone service provider TextNow said “one or more of our accounts” were being used to send racist text messages and quickly disabled those accounts for violating its terms of service.

“As part of our investigation into these messages, we learned that they were sent through multiple carriers across the United States, and we are working collaboratively with our partners and law enforcement to investigate this attack,” the Canada-based company said in a statement Friday.

Major providers AT&T and Verizon said it was an industry-wide problem and forwarded their comments to the wireless communications trade group CTIA on Friday.

CTIA spokesman Nick Ludlum said the U.S. wireless industry has been working to block thousands of messages and the numbers sending those messages in recent days. An industry group said its initiative is working with law enforcement and “identifying the platforms bad actors are using to send these messages.”

These racist text messages span the entire country and predominantly target Black Americans, particularly Black middle school-aged children.

Nicole, a mother in North Carolina who asked that her last name not be used because of her job, said she was disturbed and concerned by the messages her high school daughter showed her Thursday night. The messages instructed him to prepare to return to the farm. Nicole said this was her daughter’s first real experience with this type of racism, and as a parent, she didn’t want to have these types of conversations with her children.

“It’s like a slap in the face and it shows me that the problem still hasn’t changed at all,” he said.

Nicole said her daughter didn’t say much after the message, deleted it and went to bed. Nicole said she needed to sit down and process her feelings. She said the situation was so shocking it didn’t feel real and she felt bad for her daughter.

“She has a lot of friends of different races. She’s the one who doesn’t see color and doesn’t see a difference. So I feel like for her, it really showed her that not everyone is like her,” Nicole said. “Racism is still something that is very prominent in our country right now.”

Nicole said parents need to be careful, especially with older children, and have tough conversations even if you don’t want to or feel like you have to.

“No matter how your child feels, approach him/her with open arms, be very understanding of him/her, and accept him/her every day.”

Many historically black college students received a message with a similar tone but different wording. Dr. D., an assistant professor of history at Claflin University. Robert Greene II said he has heard stories about the issue from campus officials as well as his students. Greene said he thinks not only the timing of this mass messaging was intentional, but also the focus on young black students.

“It’s a way of telling black college students, especially, that this is the world they live in now, that this kind of direct racist intimidation has become the norm in American society and American politics,” Greene said. “There is no doubt that fear and intimidation are at the heart of what is happening in these text messages.”

This type of intimidation of the black community is not a new phenomenon. Greene argues that physical violence was prevalent in the early 1900s and World War II. He talked about how intimidation was done during World War II through oppressive methods such as poll taxes.

But he added that what makes this time different is the way of communication, and the introduction of technology has made this a worse tactic.

“The technology we take for granted, which brings us all together through the internet, social media and mobile phones, is now also used to scare people,” Greene said. “It increases the atmosphere of fear and paranoia. Of course, I have a feeling that if they can text me, how else can they contact me? What else do they know about me personally?”

Those responsible for sending the messages took advantage of the mass messaging industry designed to help legitimate marketers reach people on their phones.

“It’s now the primary way most Americans will communicate,” said Cori Faklaris, an assistant professor of software and information services at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “So people who need to advertise or market services go where the people are. Unfortunately, scammers and haters do the same thing.”

They also likely benefited from collections of personal data that can be purchased relatively cheaply in some corners of the internet, Faklaris said. When combined with other data, such as places of residence or past purchases, it could be easy to use machine learning algorithms to extract demographic information, Faklaris said.