I've Been Mugged Blog

What We Discovered During a Year of Documenting Hate

[Editor's note: today's guest blog post, by the reporters at ProPublica, is second in a series about law enforcement and hate crimes in the United States. Today's post is reprinted with permission.]

By Rachel Glickhouse, ProPublica

The days after Election Day last year seemed to bring with them a rise in hate crimes and bias incidents. Reports filled social media and appeared in local news. There were the letters calling for the genocide of Muslims that were sent to Islamic centers from California to Ohio. And the swastikas that were scrawled on buildings around the country. In Florida, “colored” and “whites only” signs were posted over water fountains at a high school. A man assaulted a Hispanic woman in San Francisco, telling her “No Latinos here.”

But were these horrible events indicative of an increase in crimes and incidents themselves, or did the reports simply reflect an increased awareness and willingness to come forward on the part of victims and witnesses? As data journalists, we went looking for answers and were not prepared for what we found: Nobody knows for sure. Hate crimes are so poorly tracked in America, there’s no way to undertake the kind of national analysis that we do in other areas, from bank robberies to virus outbreaks.

There is a vast discrepancy between the hate crimes numbers gathered by the FBI from police jurisdictions around the country and the estimate of hate crime victims in annual surveys by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The FBI counts 6,121 hate crimes in 2016, and the BJS estimates 250,000 hate crimes a year.

We were told early on that while the law required the Department of Justice to report hate crime statistics, local and state police departments aren’t bound to report their numbers to the FBI — and many don't. Complicating matters further is that hate crime laws vary by state, with some including sexual orientation as a protected class of victims and some not. Five states have no hate crime statute at all.

We decided to try collecting data ourselves, using a mix of social media news gathering and asking readers to send in their personal stories. We assembled a coalition of more than 130 newsrooms to help us report on hate incidents by gathering and verifying tips, and worked on several lines of investigation in our own newsroom.

Along the way, we’ve learned a lot about how hate crimes fall through the cracks:

• More than half of hate crime victims don't file reports to the police, according to a June BJS report.
• Many police officers get little to no training about how to handle hate crimes. Only 12 states have statutes requiring this type of instruction at police academies.
• At the local level, there are widespread discrepancies in what police consider a hate crime, as well as confusion about how and whether to track hate crimes as such.
• Last year, almost 90 percent of local law enforcement agencies reported having zero hate crimes in their communities.
• Even if hate crimes are investigated, they aren't always prosecuted. In Texas, 981 potentially bias-motivated crimes were reported to police from 2010 to 2015. Only eight cases ended in convictions.
• Like local police, federal agencies often fail to send their hate crime statistics to the FBI, too.
• Violence by white supremacist groups sometimes goes unchecked by police, as was the case in Charlottesville and with members of the so-called Rise Above Movement.

We’ve received thousands of tips so far through our embeddable incident reporting form. We’ve also added tips sent to us by civil rights groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center.

ProPublica and reporters in newsrooms around the country used those tips to tell the stories of people who’ve come forward as victims or witnesses. They’ve identified a number of patterns:

• Hate incidents are an ongoing problem at schools and universities. BuzzFeed took a deep dive into school-based incidents and college campuses. The New York Times opinion section, Univision, The Seattle Times and Chico Sol also reported on incidents at educational institutions. A Southern Poverty Law Center survey of educators also found a spate of incidents in schools.
• In some cities, hate incidents on public transportation rose. The Boston Globe, The New York Times opinion section and Univision covered this.

• Over and over, we've seen people of color say they've been targeted with the phrase “Go back to your country.” Univision, HuffPost, The New York Times opinion section and The Cincinnati Enquirer told these stories.

• Xenophobic bias incidents targeting immigrants and people of color are common. The Boston Globe, Univision, India Currents and ProPublica wrote about this. Univision also found that some Latinos have been targeted for speaking Spanish in public.

• Islamophobia remains a fact of life across AmericaProPublica, the Star Tribune, HuffPost, New America Media, Splinter and Fusion looked at this. Meanwhile, the Council on American-Islamic Relations says anti-Muslim incidents rose 9 percent in the first three quarters of the year.

• Anti-Semitic vandalism incidents happen all over the country. HuffPost, The Arizona Republic, The New York Times opinion section, Reveal and ProPublica reported stories on this. The Anti-Defamation League found anti-Semitic incidents increased 67 percent during the first three quarters of this year.

Impact

Our mission at ProPublica is to do journalism that has impact. We’ve seen significant impact from Documenting Hate.

• The official Virginia state after-action report on the Charlottesville rally cited ProPublica’s reporting and made recommendations for better police practices based on our journalism.
• Cloudflare changed their complaint policies following a ProPublica story on how the company helps support neo-Nazi sites. The company cited our reporting when they later shut down The Daily Stormer, a major neo-Nazi site.
• After we asked for their records, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, which had not sent a hate crime report to the state of Florida in years, began reporting hate crime data for the first time since 2013.
• The Miami-Dade Police Department started an internal audit after we talked to them in October. Detective Carlos Rosario, a spokesman for the department, told us they found four hate crimes that they had failed to report to the state. Rosario also told us that they are in the process of creating a digital hate crime reporting process as a result of our reporting.
• The Colorado Springs, Colorado, police department fixed a database problem that had caused the loss of at least 18 hate crime reports. The error was discovered after we asked them questions about their records.
• The Madison, Wisconsin, police department changed how they categorize hate crimes before they send them to the FBI based on our records request.
• A group of nine senators led by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., sent a letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos asking what the administration will do in response to racist harassment in schools and universities, citing Buzzfeed’s reporting for the project.
• The Daily Stormer in Spanish removed the name of a popular Spanish forum from its site after legal action was threatened following a Univision story.
• The Matthew Shepard Foundation said it would increase resources dedicated to training police officers to identify and investigate hate crimes, citing our project.

Even after the 100 news stories produced by the Documenting Hate coalition, we’re by no means finished. ProPublica and our partners will spend next year collecting and telling more stories from victims and witnesses. And we still have a lot of questions that demand answers. You can help.

• Have you experienced or witnessed a hate incident? Tell us your story.
• Interested in helping tell the stories of victims and witnesses? We’re hiring a reporting fellow for next year! See the job announcement.
• Are you a journalist in a local newsroom and want to receive tips? Sign up to join the project.

Filed under: Civil Rights

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Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

[Editor's note: everyone looks for a new job during their life. Today's guest blog post, by the reporters at ProPublica, explores an advertising practice by recruiters using social networking sites. Today's post is reprinted with permission.]

By Julia Angwin and Ariana Tobin of ProPublica, with Noam Scheiber, of The New York Times

A few weeks ago, Verizon placed an ad on Facebook to recruit applicants for a unit focused on financial planning and analysis. The ad showed a smiling, millennial-aged woman seated at a computer and promised that new hires could look forward to a rewarding career in which they would be "more than just a number."

Some relevant numbers were not immediately evident. The promotion was set to run on the Facebook feeds of users 25 to 36 years old who lived in the nation’s capital, or had recently visited there, and had demonstrated an interest in finance. For a vast majority of the hundreds of millions of people who check Facebook every day, the ad did not exist.

Verizon is among dozens of the nation's leading employers — including Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Target and Facebook itself — that placed recruitment ads limited to particular age groups, an investigation by ProPublica and The New York Times has found.

The ability of advertisers to deliver their message to the precise audience most likely to respond is the cornerstone of Facebook’s business model. But using the system to expose job opportunities only to certain age groups has raised concerns about fairness to older workers.

Several experts questioned whether the practice is in keeping with the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which prohibits bias against people 40 or older in hiring or employment. Many jurisdictions make it a crime to “aid” or “abet” age discrimination, a provision that could apply to companies like Facebook that distribute job ads.

"It’s blatantly unlawful," said Debra Katz, a Washington employment lawyer who represents victims of discrimination.

Facebook defended the practice. "Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason: it helps employers recruit and people of all ages find work," said Rob Goldman, a Facebook vice president.

The revelations come at a time when the unregulated power of the tech companies is under increased scrutiny, and Congress is weighing whether to limit the immunity that it granted to tech companies in 1996 for third-party content on their platforms.

Facebook has argued in court filings that the law, the Communications Decency Act, makes it immune from liability for discriminatory ads.

Although Facebook is a relatively new entrant into the recruiting arena, it is rapidly gaining popularity with employers. Earlier this year, the social network launched a section of its site devoted to job ads. Facebook allows advertisers to select their audience, and then Facebook finds the chosen users with the extensive data it collects about its members.

The use of age targets emerged in a review of data originally compiled by ProPublica readers for a project about political ad placement on Facebook. Many of the ads include a disclosure by Facebook about why the user is seeing the ad, which can be anything from their age to their affinity for folk music.

The precision of Facebook’s ad delivery has helped it dominate an industry once in the hands of print and broadcast outlets. The system, called microtargeting, allows advertisers to reach essentially whomever they prefer, including the people their analysis suggests are the most plausible hires or consumers, lowering the costs and vastly increasing efficiency.

Targeted Facebook ads were an important tool in Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election. The social media giant has acknowledged that 126 million people saw Russia-linked content, some of which was aimed at particular demographic groups and regions. Facebook has also come under criticism for the disclosure that it accepted ads aimed at "Jew-haters" as well as housing ads that discriminated by race, gender, disability and other factors.

Other tech companies also offer employers opportunities to discriminate by age. ProPublica bought job ads on Google and LinkedIn that excluded audiences older than 40 — and the ads were instantly approved. Google said it does not prevent advertisers from displaying ads based on the user’s age. After being contacted by ProPublica, LinkedIn changed its system to prevent such targeting in employment ads.

The practice has begun to attract legal challenges. On Wednesday, a class-action complaint alleging age discrimination was filed in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of the Communications Workers of America and its members — as well as all Facebook users 40 or older who may have been denied the chance to learn about job openings. The plaintiffs’ lawyers said the complaint was based on ads for dozens of companies that they had discovered on Facebook.

The database of Facebook ads collected by ProPublica shows how often and precisely employers recruit by age. In a search for “part-time package handlers,” United Parcel Service ran an ad aimed at people 18 to 24. State Farm pitched its hiring promotion to those 19 to 35.

Some companies, including Target, State Farm and UPS, defended their targeting as a part of a broader recruitment strategy that reached candidates of all ages. The group of companies making this case included Facebook itself, which ran career ads on its own platform, many aimed at people 25 to 60. "We completely reject the allegation that these advertisements are discriminatory," said Goldman of Facebook.

After being contacted by ProPublica and the Times, other employers, including Amazon, Northwestern Mutual and the New York City Department of Education, said they had changed or were changing their recruiting strategies.

"We recently audited our recruiting ads on Facebook and discovered some had targeting that was inconsistent with our approach of searching for any candidate over the age of 18," said Nina Lindsey, a spokeswoman for Amazon, which targeted some ads for workers at its distribution centers between the ages of 18 and 50. "We have corrected those ads."

Verizon did not respond to requests for comment.

Several companies argued that targeted recruiting on Facebook was comparable to advertising opportunities in publications like the AARP magazine or Teen Vogue, which are aimed at particular age groups. But this obscures an important distinction. Anyone can buy Teen Vogue and see an ad. Online, however, people outside the targeted age groups can be excluded in ways they will never learn about.

"What happens with Facebook is you don’t know what you don’t know," said David Lopez, a former general counsel for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission who is one of the lawyers at the firm Outten & Golden bringing the age-discrimination case on behalf of the communication workers union.

‘They Know I’m Dead’

Age discrimination on digital platforms is something that many workers suspect is happening to them, but that is often difficult to prove.

Mark Edelstein, a fitfully employed social-media marketing strategist who is 58 and legally blind, doesn’t pretend to know what he doesn’t know, but he has his suspicions.

Edelstein, who lives in St. Louis, says he never had serious trouble finding a job until he turned 50. “Once you reach your 50s, you may as well be dead,” he said. "I’ve gone into interviews, with my head of gray hair and my receding hairline, and they know I’m dead."

Edelstein spends most of his days scouring sites like LinkedIn and Indeed and pitching hiring managers with personalized appeals. When he scrolled through his Facebook ads on a Wednesday in December, he saw a variety of ads reflecting his interest in social media marketing: ads for the marketing software HubSpot ("15 free infographic templates!") and TripIt, which he used to book a trip to visit his mother in Florida.

What he didn’t see was a single ad for a job in his profession, including one identified by ProPublica that was being shown to younger users: a posting for a social media director job at HubSpot. The company asked that the ad be shown to people aged 27 to 40 who live or were recently living in the United States.

"Hypothetically, had I seen a job for a social media director at HubSpot, even if it involved relocation, I ABSOLUTELY would have applied for it," Edelstein said by email when told about the ad.

A HubSpot spokeswoman, Ellie Botelho, said that the job was posted on many sites, including LinkedIn, The Ladders and Built in Boston, and was open to anyone meeting the qualifications regardless of age or any other demographic characteristic.

She added that “the use of the targeted age-range selection on the Facebook ad was frankly a mistake on our part given our lack of experience using that platform for job postings and not a feature we will use again.”

For his part, Edelstein says he understands why marketers wouldn’t want to target ads at him: "It doesn’t surprise me a bit. Why would they want a 58-year-old white guy who’s disabled?"

Looking for ’Younger Blood’

Although LinkedIn is the leading online recruitment platform, according to an annual survey by SourceCon, an industry website. Facebook is rapidly increasing in popularity for employers.

One reason is that Facebook’s sheer size — two billion monthly active users, versus LinkedIn’s 530 million total members — gives recruiters access to types of workers they can’t find elsewhere.

Consider nurses, whom hospitals are desperate to hire. “They’re less likely to use LinkedIn,” said Josh Rock, a recruiter at a large hospital system in Minnesota who has expertise in digital media. "Nurses are predominantly female, there’s a larger volume of Facebook users. That’s what they use."

There are also millions of hourly workers who have never visited LinkedIn, and may not even have a résumé, but who check Facebook obsessively.

Deb Andrychuk, chief executive of the Arland Group, which helps employers place recruitment ads, said clients sometimes asked her firm to target ads by age, saying they needed “to start bringing younger blood” into their organizations. “It’s not necessarily that we wouldn’t take someone older,” these clients say, according to Andrychuk, “but if you could bring in a younger set of applicants, it would definitely work out better.”

Andrychuk said that “we coach clients to be open and not discriminate” and that after being contacted by The Times, her team updated all their ads to ensure they didn’t exclude any age groups.

But some companies contend that there are permissible reasons to filter audiences by age, as with an ad for entry-level analyst positions at Goldman Sachs that was distributed to people 18 to 64. A Goldman Sachs spokesman, Andrew Williams, said showing it to people above that age range would have wasted money: roughly 25 percent of those who typically click on the firm’s untargeted ads are 65 or older, but people that age almost never apply for the analyst job.

"We welcome and actively recruit applicants of all ages," Williams said. "For some of our social-media ads, we look to get the content to the people most likely to be interested, but do not exclude anyone from our recruiting activity."

Pauline Kim, a professor of employment law at Washington University in St. Louis, said the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, unlike the federal anti-discrimination statute that covers race and gender, allows an employer to take into account “reasonable factors” that may be highly correlated with the protected characteristic, such as cost, as long as they don’t rely on the characteristic explicitly.

The Question of Liability

In various ways, Facebook and LinkedIn have acknowledged at least a modest obligation to police their ad platforms against abuse.

Earlier this year, Facebook said it would require advertisers to "self-certify" that their housing, employment and credit ads were compliant with anti-discrimination laws, but that it would not block marketers from purchasing age-restricted ads.

Still, Facebook didn’t promise to monitor those certifications for accuracy. And Facebook said the self-certification system, announced in February, was still being rolled out to all advertisers.

LinkedIn, in response to inquiries by ProPublica, added a self-certification step that prevents employers from using age ranges once they confirm that they are placing an employment ad.

With these efforts evolving, legal experts say it is unclear how much liability the tech platforms could have. Some civil rights laws, like the Fair Housing Act, explicitly require publishers to assume liability for discriminatory ads.

But the Age Discrimination in Employment Act assigns liability only to employers or employment agencies, like recruiters and advertising firms.

The lawsuit filed against Facebook on behalf of the communications workers argues that the company essentially plays the role of an employment agency — collecting and providing data that helps employers locate candidates, effectively coordinating with the employer to develop the advertising strategies, informing employers about the performance of the ads, and so forth.

Regardless of whether courts accept that argument, the tech companies could also face liability under certain state or local anti-discrimination statutes. For example, California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act makes it unlawful to "aid, abet, incite, compel or coerce the doing" of discriminatory acts proscribed by the statute.

"They may have an obligation there not to aid and abet an ad that enables discrimination," said Cliff Palefsky, an employment lawyer based in San Francisco.

The question may hinge on Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which protects internet companies from liability for third-party content.

Tech companies have successfully invoked this law to avoid liability for offensive or criminal content — including sex trafficking, revenge porn and calls for violence against Jews. Facebook is currently arguing in Federal court that Section 230 immunizes it against liability for ad placement that blocks members of certain racial and ethnic groups from seeing the ads.

"Advertisers, not Facebook, are responsible for both the content of their ads and what targeting criteria to use, if any," Facebook argued in its motion to dismiss allegations that its ads violated a host of civil rights laws. The case does not allege age discrimination.

Eric Goldman, professor and co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law, who has written extensively about Section 230, says it is hard to predict how courts would treat Facebook’s age-targeting of employment ads.

Goldman said the law covered the content of ads, and that courts have made clear that Facebook would not be liable for an advertisement in which an employer wrote, say, “no one over 55 need apply.” But it is not clear how the courts would treat Facebook’s offering of age-targeted customization.

According to a federal appellate court decision in a fair-housing case, a platform can be considered to have helped “develop unlawful content” that users play a role in generating, which would negate the immunity.

"Depending on how the targeting is happening, you can make potentially different sorts of arguments about whether or not Google or Facebook or LinkedIn is contributing to the development" of the ad, said Deirdre K. Mulligan, a faculty director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

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In The News: Net Neutrality And I've Been Mugged Blog

On Sunday, December 17, 2017, WERS Radio (88.9 FM), a college radio station in Boston, broadcast on Sunday an interview about net neutrality. The persons interviewed included myself and Nina Vyedin, of Indivisible Somerville.

You can listen to the interview on SoundCloud. The interviewer, Jonathon House, and I met during the December 7th demonstration in Boston to save net neutrality protections for consumers.

Related posts:

• Net Neutrality: Massachusetts Joins Multi-State Lawsuit Against FCC. What Next?
• FCC Action To Kill Net Neutrality Will Likely Hurt Public Libraries, The Poor, And The Disabled
• Was Your Identity Information Misused To Submit Fake Comments To The FCC About Net Neutrality?
• Futurism: Your Life Without Net Neutrality Protections
• 'Tens Of Thousands' Of Fake Comments Submitted. New York State Attorney General Demands Answers From the FCC
• The Bogus Claims By Broadband Providers And Their Allies About Net Neutrality
• FCC Says Denial-Of-Service Attacks Caused Its Site To Crash Sunday Morning

Hate Crime Training for Police Is Often Inadequate, Sometimes Nonexistent

[Editor's note: today's guest blog post, by the reporters at ProPublica, is first in a series which explores the approaches by law enforcement to hate crimes in the United States. Today's post is reprinted with permission.]

By A.C. Thompson, Rohan Naik and Ken Schwencke. ProPublica

To become a police officer in the U.S., one almost always has to enroll in an academy for some basic training. The typical academy session lasts 25 weeks, but state governments — which oversee police academies for local and state law enforcement officers — have wide latitude when it comes to choosing the subjects that will be taught in the classrooms.

How to properly identify and investigate hate crimes does not seem terribly high on the list of priorities, according to a ProPublica review.

Only 12 states, for example, have statutes requiring that academies provide instruction on hate crimes.

In at least seven others — Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Nevada, Missouri, South Dakota and Texas — recruits aren’t required to learn about hate crimes at all, according to law enforcement officials.

Even states that provide new recruits with at least some education on hate crimes often provide training that is cursory at best.

Officials overseeing police training in three states — Wisconsin, North Carolina and Washington — told ProPublica that their recruits spent about 30 minutes of class time on the subject.

Hate crimes in America have made no shortage of headlines over the last year as the country has once more confronted its raw and often violent racial, religious and political divisions. Just how few hate crimes get formally reported and analyzed has shocked many. Fewer still get successfully prosecuted, a fact that has provoked frustration among some elected officials and law enforcement agencies.

But the widespread lack of training for frontline officers in how to handle potential hate crimes, if no great surprise, might actually be the criminal justice system’s most basic failing. There is, after all, little way to either accurately tabulate or aggressively prosecute hate crimes if the officers in the street don’t know how to identify and investigate them.

Hate crimes are not, by and large, simple to deal with. Different states identify different categories of people to be protected under their laws. And the authorities must prove not only guilt, but intent. It isn’t enough to find fingerprints on a weapon. The authorities must explore a suspect’s state of mind, and then find ways of corroborating it.

“Hate crimes are so nuanced and the laws can be so complex. You’re trying to deal with the motivation of a crime,” said Liebe Geft, director of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, which has for years provided training to officers as expert consultants.

“Thirty minutes in the academy is not enough,” Geft said.

Though each state operates its police academies differently, most of them rely on a training council or commission to oversee the institutions, shape the curriculum and set minimum standards for graduation.

ProPublica spent weeks trying to answer the question of how, if at all, police departments prepare their officers to respond to possible hate crimes, which are known as bias crimes in some jurisdictions. We interviewed key officials in 45 states and the District of Columbia about the lessons being taught to new recruits during their police academy classes. We reviewed thousands of pages of training material — curricula, detailed lesson plans, legal guidance, PowerPoint presentations and videos. We studied the statutes and regulations governing police training around the nation and interviewed experts who have spent years educating officers and federal agents. Several states declined to discuss their instructional practices, or provide ProPublica with any training materials.

Among our findings:

A key federal training program was scuttled during the early days of the Obama administration as police leaders concerned about violence colored by race, religion and politics shifted their focus toward Islamic extremists and terrorism. That program, which was run by an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, sent experts around the country to teach local and state police officers how to respond to hate crimes.

State leaders at times displayed a lack of even basic knowledge about hate crimes. In Alaska, the state Department of Public Safety told ProPublica that officers in that state don’t learn about hate crimes during their time in the academy because Alaska doesn’t have a hate crimes law. In fact, Alaska’s hate crimes statute has been on the books since 1996.

Training materials used in Kansas explain the history behind the federal hate crimes law, but make no mention of Kansas Statute 21-6815 — the state’s hate crimes code — which is likely to be of more use to a local officer in Topeka or Wichita.

Some states that require hate crimes training often combine the instruction with what has long been called cultural sensitivity training. Such instruction typically involves material on the subtleties of dealing with specific ethnic or religious communities. Our review, however, showed some of those materials to be either hopelessly out of date or downright inflammatory.

Law enforcement leaders point to several factors to explain, if not justify, the lack of emphasis on training for hate crimes. While the offenses can be dramatic and highly disturbing — like the incident earlier this year in which a white supremacist impaled an African-American man with an 18-inch sword in New York’s Times Square — they represent a very small percentage of the nation’s overall crime. Working with often limited budgets, police officials have to make difficult decisions about what to prioritize during training, and hate crimes can lose out.

That said, the events of the last 18 months, driven in great part by the racially charged presidential campaign of 2016, seem to suggest an adjustment of priorities might be in order.

The number of Americans reporting hate crimes to the authorities has grown in recent years, with FBI figures showing an increase of nearly 5 percent in 2016 alone, a tally that included more than 2,000 physical attacks and beatings. More recent data shows double-digit hate crime spikes in several major cities.

Melissa Garlick, the Northeast Area Civil Rights Counsel at the Anti-Defamation League, would like to see every state pass legislation requiring hate crimes training. “We want law enforcement to have the tools they need to properly investigate hate crimes,” she said.

Hate crimes laws are not new. The earliest legislation was adopted by a pair of states in the Pacific Northwest — Oregon and Washington — in 1981 and, since then, 43 states and the District of Columbia have passed their own hate crimes bills. In 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law a federal hate crimes bill named after murder victims James Byrd and Matthew Shepard. The FBI, for its part, has asked local and state law enforcement agencies to track hate crimes since 1990.

Yet today, nearly four decades after the first hate crimes law was passed, police officers in much of the country get little or no training on how the laws work, or what to look for when responding to a potential hate crime.

At the police academy in Huntsville, Alabama, instructors dedicate two weeks to educating recruits about the state’s penal code. Capt. Dewayne McCarver, who heads the academy, said he isn’t sure precisely how much time his staff spends discussing the Alabama hate crime law during those 10 days of legal instruction. In an interview, McCarver questioned whether the school needed to devote more than an hour, at most, to the subject.

The law, which dates to 1993, is similar to others across the country and focuses on individuals whose crimes are motivated by their victim’s “race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or physical or mental disability.” It acts as a “sentence enhancement,” adding time behind bars in cases ranging from property destruction to murder.

In class, McCarver said, instructors caution students to be “very careful” in classifying offenses as possible hate crimes when writing up incident reports. He worries that logging incidents as potential hate crimes can cause trouble for officers when they testify in court: an aggressive defense attorney might challenge the officer’s decision to label the offense as a hate crime, particularly if prosecutors don’t wind up charging it as such.

He told ProPublica that officers in Huntsville “rarely, if ever” designate offenses as hate crimes.

“It’s really a box that I personally wish they didn’t put on a case report,” he said.

In fact, according to FBI records, the Huntsville Police Department has never reported a bias-motivated crime to the federal government.

Brian Levin, a former New York City police officer, takes issue with McCarver’s approach.

“We should always train law enforcement to tag it as a possible hate crime at the time of report, as long the evidence is there,” said Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “We need accurate data, so communities can be aware of the extent of the problem and the characteristics of the offenses.”

Last year, the entire state of Alabama reported only 14 hate crimes to the FBI, a figure criminologists believe is inaccurate and represents a small sliver of the true number of hate crimes.

Once on the force, McCarver said, Huntsville officers get 40 hours of additional training each year. That added instruction, however, does not include hate crimes, he said.

“We have a limited amount of time,” McCarver said. “We have not had a reason to put hate crimes into the curriculum other than what we learn in the basic class.”

Huntsville isn’t unique: Across the border in Florida, two of that state’s largest law enforcement agencies, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and the Miami-Dade Police Department, also do not refresh cops on hate crimes after their initial instruction.

Boe Turner is chief of training for Nevada’s Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, the body that oversees academies in that state. Turner thinks officers shouldn’t go looking into the motivation of suspected offenders. That’s the job of prosecutors, he said. Victims, he added, tend to have little insight into the motivations of their assailants.

Experts disagree. Victims, they say, are critical sources of information, particularly in hate crime cases. Because the cases are difficult to prove — prosecutors must show conclusively that the offender was motivated by bigotry or bias — it’s crucial for police to gather as much evidence as possible, they argue, and victims often understand the circumstances surrounding a crime better than anyone.

“Training for law enforcement officials on identifying and investigating hate crimes is critical,” said Becky Monroe, a former federal prosecutor who now works for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Decent training, she added, can prepare officers for a pair of intertwined tasks: gathering the right evidence and calming the fears of community members who may feel frightened and vulnerable in the aftermath of an attack.

To better equip officers for such investigations, some state academies have developed thorough and detailed lessons on hate crimes. Instructors at the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, for instance, work from a 61-page handbook, which ProPublica obtained. The manual profiles local white supremacist leaders and extremist groups, examines recent criminal cases and offers practical guidance for investigators.

But not all training guides are so impressive. A six-page handout used in Arizona lists a host of white supremacist groups that have completely disbanded or faded from relevancy, but fails to mention the Hammerskins or Vinlanders, two Nazi skinhead gangs that have murdered people in the state in recent years.

In Wisconsin, trainers fold hate crimes training into broader courses about cultural sensitivity and biased policing. The material includes some dubious racial generalizations.

“African Americans may distrust the motives or honesty of a speaker who is carefully neutral, objective, and unemotional,” one section of the guide states. “By contrast, European Americans may see someone who is speaking with a great deal of emotion as irrational.”

The federal government, for its part, has mounted several different training initiatives over the years, some more successful than others. Since the 1990s, the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services branch has run training programs aimed at teaching law enforcement agencies how to collect hate crimes statistics and submit that data to the FBI; today, however, around 12 percent of those agencies still don’t gather the information at all and many more fail to give the bureau reliable data.

After the federal Shepard-Byrd Act passed in 2009, Cynthia Deitle, while serving as head of the FBI’s Civil Rights unit, began organizing hate crimes conferences for state and local officers, educational events that explained the mechanics of the various state laws and laid out the ways the FBI could assist with local hate crime cases. She remembers stressing to local officers the importance of gathering every possible clue, no matter how insignificant it might seem. Unfortunately, many of the events weren’t well attended, pulling in maybe 20 to 50 police officers apiece.

“We could not force a police officer to come to our training,” said Deitle, who is now an executive at the Matthew Shepard Foundation, an advocacy group, adding that she understood the challenges faced by smaller agencies — many simply couldn’t take officers off the street for extra schooling.

While Deitle was trying to launch a new training effort, another federal program was coming to end.

For more than a decade, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers ran a program called “Train-the-Trainer” that routinely sent hate crimes specialists around the country to work with state and local cops. The idea was to educate police trainers and command staff about hate crimes so they could return to their departments and teach new recruits and frontline officers.

“It was a great program,” recalled Levin, the director of the extremism center in California who was one of the instructors. “I did stuff on everything from the hate groups to legal issues such as Supreme Court cases.” Levin said he volunteered his time out of a sense of mission and worked alongside experts from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ADL, as well as law enforcement figures.

But interest in the issue eventually waned. Several people familiar with the effort say it came to a halt in the early days of the Obama administration, in 2009, at a time when police departments were shifting their attention toward combating acts of terrorism.

“Departments really wanted to focus on terrorism rather than hate crimes,” said Levin.

At FLETC, Communications Officer Christa Thompson wasn’t sure why the program shut down, but she did know what kind of courses the agency — which teaches local, state, federal and tribal law enforcement — is holding these days: internet investigations, active shooter response, marksmanship and more.

She said, “We do not currently offer hate crimes training” on a regular basis.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for their newsletter.

 

Net Neutrality: Massachusetts Joins Multi-State Lawsuit Against FCC. What Next?

The Attorney General (AG) for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is suing the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after the FCC voted on December 14th to repeal existing net neutrality rules protecting consumers. Maura Healey, the Massachusetts AG, announced that her office has joined a multi-state lawsuit with the New York State AG:

"... joined New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman in announcing that they will be filing a multi-state lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over its vote to rollback net neutrality protections...The FCC recently issued a proposed final order rolling back net neutrality protections and on December 14th, voted 3-2 on party lines to implement the final order. On December 13th, AG Healey joined a coalition of 18 attorneys general in sending a letter to the FCC after reports emerged that nearly two million comments submitted in support of the agency were fake."

AG Healey said about the multi-state lawsuit:

"With the FCC vote, Americans will pay more for the internet and will have fewer options... The agency has completely failed to justify this decision and we will be suing to stand up for the free exchange of ideas and to keep the American people in control of internet access."

The December 13th letter to the FCC about fake comments was signed by AGs from California, District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, and Washington. The AGs' letter stated, in part:

"One of the most important roles that we perform is to prosecute fraud. It is a role we take extremely seriously, and one that is essential to a fair marketplace... The ‘Restore Internet Freedom’ proposal, also known as net neutrality rollback (WC Docket No. 17- 108) has far-reaching implications for the everyday life of Americans... Recent attempts by New York Attorney General Schneiderman to investigate supposed comments received by the FCC have revealed a pattern of facts that should raise alarm bells for every American about the integrity of the democratic process. A careful review of the publicly available information revealed a pattern of fake submissions using the names of real people. In fact, there may be over one million fake submissions from across the country. This is akin to identity theft on a massive scale – and theft of someone’s voice in a democracy is particularly concerning.

As state Attorneys General, many of our offices have received complaints from consumers indicating their distress over their names being used in such a manner. While we will investigate these consumer complaints through our normal processes, we urge the Commission to take immediate action and to cooperate with law enforcement investigations. Woven throughout the Administrative Procedures Act is a duty for rulemakers to provide information to the public and to listen to the public. We know from advising our rulemakers at the state level that listening to the public provides insights from a diversity of viewpoints. But, if the well of public comment has been poisoned by falsified submissions, the Commission may be unable to rely on public comments that would help it reach a legitimate conclusion to the rulemaking process. Or, it must give less weight to the public comments submitted which also undermines the process..."

The FCC ignored the AGs' joint letter about fraud and proceeded with its net-neutrality vote on December 14. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai had blown off the identity theft and fraud charges as maneuvers by desperate net neutrality advocates.

California AG Xavier Becerra said:

"... the FCC failed to do what is right... The FCC decided that consumers do not deserve free, open, and equal access to the internet. It decided to ignore the millions of Americans who voiced their strong support for our existing net neutrality rules. Here in California – a state that is home to countless start-ups and technology giants alike – we know that a handful of powerful companies should not dictate the sources for the information we seek..."

Residents in some states can use special sites to notify their state's AG about the misuse of their identity data in fake comments submitted to the FCC: Pennsylvania, New York.

The FCC under Chairman Pai seems to listen and respond to the needs of corporate internet service providers (ISPs), and not to consumers. A November 21 - 25 poll found that 52 percent of registered voters support the current rules, including 55 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of Republicans.

While that is down from prior polls, a majority support net neutrality rules. A poll by Mozilla and Ipsos in June, 2017 found overwhelming support across party lines: 76% of Americans, 81% of Democrats, and 73% of Republicans favor keeping net neutrality rules. The poll included approximately 1,000 American adults across the U.S. with 354 Democrats, 344 Republicans, and 224 Independents.

Before the FCC affirmed net neutrality rules in 2015, a poll by the Center for Political Communication at the University of Delaware in 2014 found strong and widespread support:

"... About 81 percent of Americans oppose allowing Internet providers like Comcast and Verizon to charge Web sites and services more if they want to reach customers more quickly... Republicans were slightly more likely to support net neutrality than Democrats. 81 percent of Democrats and 85 percent of Republicans in the survey said they opposed fast lanes."

Experts have debated the various ways of moving forward after the December 14th FCC vote. Wired reported:

"Most immediately, the activity will move to the courts... The most likely argument: that the commission’s decision violates federal laws barring agencies from crafting “arbitrary and capricious” regulations. After all, the FCC’s net neutrality rules were just passed in 2015... as capricious as the current FCC's about-face may seem, legal experts say the challenges won’t be a slam-dunk case. Federal agencies are allowed to change their minds about previous regulations, so long as they adequately explain their reasoning... The FCC's main argument for revoking the 2015 rules is that the regulations hurt investment in broadband infrastructure. But, as WIRED recently detailed, many broadband providers actually increased their investments, while those that cut back on spending told shareholders that the net neutrality rules didn't affect their plans. University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Christopher Yoo says courts generally defer to an agency's expertise in interpreting evidence submitted into the record... net neutrality advocates could also argue that the agency's decision-making process was corrupted by the flood of fake comments left by bots. But FCC Chair AJit Pai will argue that the agency discarded low-quality and repeated comments and focused only on matters of substance... A long-term solution to net neutrality will require Congress to pass laws that won't change every time control of the White House passes to another party... Senator John Thune (R-South Dakota) recently called for Congress to pass bipartisan net neutrality legislation. In 2015, Thune and Representative Fred Upton (R-Michigan) introduced a bill that would have banned blocking or slowing legal content, but limited the FCC's authority over internet service providers. It never moved forward. Thune is clearly hoping that growing demand from the public for net neutrality protections will bring more Republicans to the table... Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) told WIRED earlier this year that he won't support a bill with weaker protections than the 2015 rules..."

President Trump appointed Pai as FCC Chairman in January, giving the Republican commissioners at the FCC a voting majority. Neither the President nor the White House staff said anything in its daily e-mail blast or in their website about the FCC vote; and instead discussed tax reform, general remarks about reducing regulation, and infrastructure (e.g., roads, bridges, tunnels).

Seems to me the internet is a key component of our country's infrastructure. What are your opinions? If your state isn't in the above list, we'd like to hear from you, too.

FCC Action To Kill Net Neutrality Will Likely Hurt Public Libraries, The Poor, And The Disabled

Jim Neal, the president of the American Library Association, released a statement condemning the December 14th vote by the Republican-led U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to kill net neutrality protections for internet users:

"The majority of the FCC has just dealt a blow to equitable access to online information and services which puts libraries, our patrons, and America’s communities at risk... By rolling back essential and enforceable net neutrality protections, the FCC has enabled commercial interests at the expense of the public who depends on the internet as their primary means of information gathering, learning, and communication. We will continue to fight the FCC’s decision and advocate for strong, enforceable net neutrality protections."

The Verge interviewed New York Public Library (NYPL) president Tony Marx, and Greg Cam the NYPL director of information policy. During 2017, the NYPL provided 3.1 million computer sessions across all branches (using 4,700 computers), plus 3 million wireless sessions. Based upon that activity, Marx said:

"... the simple fact is that the poorest of New York rely on the library as the only place they can go and get free use of computers and free Wi-Fi. It’s one of the reasons why the library is the most visited civic institution in New York. We have also, in recent years, been lending people what we call hot spots, which are Wi-Fi boxes they can take home, typically for a year. That gives them digital access at home — broadband access — which something like 2 million New Yorkers can’t afford and don’t have..."

And, New York City is one of the more prosperous areas of the country. It makes one wonder how citizens in poor or rural areas; or in areas without any public libraries will manage. Disabled users will also be negatively affected by the FCC vote. Marx explained:

"... the New York Public Library runs the Andrew Heiskell Library for the visually impaired. I believe it is a three-state depository, so it plays a role in getting access in all the ways you described — not just in New York City but way beyond. A lot of that now happens online and it could simply stop working, which means they’re gonna cut people off completely."

Cram explained the wide range of tasks people use the internet for at public libraries:

"Our users depend on the library, and libraries in general, for things like completing homework assignments, locating e-government resources, e-government services, accessing oral histories and primary source materials. Things that are resource-intensive like video and audio and image collections are dependent on a free and open internet. Also things like applying and interviewing for jobs. More and more jobs involve a first round of interviews that are done over the internet. If we have to put things in the slow lane, we’re worried about those interview services being downgraded."

"Slow lanes" are one of about five possible consequences by the FCC decision to kill net neutrality. Marx summarized the concerns of many library managers:

"We live in a world where access to information is essential for opportunity, for learning, for success, for civic life, for checking facts. Anything that reduces that, particularly for people who can’t afford alternatives, is a body blow to the basic democratic principles that the library stands for. Whether people or the library are shoved to the slow lane, and/or forced to pay to be in the fast lane with resources that are already stretched thin, is really sort of shocking. To put it sort of bluntly, the FCC should be defending communications."

Basically, internet access is a utility like water or electricity; something corporate providers have long denied and fought. Everyone needs and uses broadband internet. What are your opinions?

[Editor's addendum: for the latest information, visit the Guide to New York Libraries.]

More Year-End Considerations Given The Coming Likely Republican Tax Plan

A prior post discussed the questionable benefits and year-end considerations for middle-class taxpayers of the likely Republican tax reform plan making its way through Congress. The likely tax plan includes lower tax rates paired with many deductions eliminated.

The professional who prepares my taxes provided another warning:

"Dear clients:
It looks like almost a sure thing that, if you itemize deductions, beginning in 2018, you will no longer be able to take a deduction for the Excise Tax on your car or the income taxes that you pay to Massachusetts and other states. You will PROBABLY still be able to deduct your real estate property taxes up to $10,000 a year. If you currently pay the Alternative Minimum Tax (line 45 of your Form 1040), check with me before you follow these recommendations.

All others who itemize, I recommend that you consider the following actions this month (December):

1. If your total property taxes (including those for a second home) are more than $10,000, pay your city or town as much as you possibly can in December.
2. Be sure to pay... maybe even over-pay... as much of your State Income Tax as possible by December 31st. If you make estimated payments, your 4th quarter Massachusetts payment is due by January 15th. YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY PAY IT IN DECEMBER INSTEAD.
3. Even if you don't usually make Estimate Payments to Massachusetts, you should consider making one in December... For example, if you made a payment of $1,000, you might save $150 or $250 or more on your 2017 federal tax return. You will save NOTHING on any state income taxes that you pay in 2018.

I will reach out again if and when the tax bill is finalized and signed into law if there are any other changes that might affect your plans in December."

Obviously, you should consult the professional that prepares your income taxes, since your situation and state may dictate different actions. And, I am not an income tax professional. New legislation always has consequences, and it seems wise to be aware. hence, this informational blog post.

Some additional thoughts. Capping the real estate property tax deduction at $10,000 might help pay for the increased deficits the Republican tax plan would generate, but it will also hurt persons living in high-cost areas (e.g., cities, states with high state taxes, areas with high real estate prices). Plus, the tax cuts are temporary for individuals but permanent for corporations. Slick, eh? Is it fair? Seems not.

My college friends and I are discussing via e-mail the considerations listed above and in my prior blog post. The proposed elimination of deductions for state and local taxes (SALT) is a hot topic. You can find online articles discussing the advantages and disadvantages of eliminating SALT deductions. Regardless, more to discuss with your accountant and/or income tax professional.

Doug Jones Wins In Alabama, Net Neutrality, And The FCC

[7:30 am EST] Congratulations to Doug Jones and his supporters for a stunning victory Tuesday in a special election in Alabama for the open U.S. Senate seat. His victory speech is available online. Late last month, Doug Jones tweeted this:

I strongly support #NetNeutrality and believe every Alabamian should have access to a free and open internet.https://t.co/3XZ9ikWGaa

— Doug Jones (@GDouglasJones) November 28, 2017

Later today, the commissioners at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will likely vote during their December 2017 Open Commission Meeting to kill net neutrality rules protecting consumers free and open internet access. The planned vote comes despite clear and mounting evidence of widespread identity theft by unknown persons to submit fake comments distorting and polluting FCC record and website soliciting feedback from the public.

Yesterday, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel released the following press release:

"Upon receipt of a letter from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman stating that it now appears that two million Americans’ identities may have been misused in the FCC record and a separate letter from 18 State Attorneys General calling on the FCC to delay its net neutrality vote because of its “tainted” record, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel released the following statement:

“This is crazy. Two million people have had their identities stolen in an effort to corrupt our public record. Nineteen State Attorneys General from across the country have asked us to delay this vote so they can investigate. And yet, in less than 24 hours we are scheduled to vote on wiping out our net neutrality protections. We should not vote on any item that is based on this corrupt record. I call on my colleagues to delay this vote so we can get to the bottom of this mess.” "

Despite the widespread identity theft and fraud, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has maintained his position to proceed with a vote today to kill net neutrality protections for consumers. President Trump appointed Pai as FCC Chairman in January, giving the Republican commissioners a majority when voting. Pai has blown off the identity theft and fraud charges as maneuvers by desperate net neutrality advocates.

[Update at 2:20 pm EST: earlier today, the FCC commissioners voted along party lines to kill existing net neutrality rules protecting consumers.]

Was Your Identity Information Misused To Submit Fake Comments To The FCC About Net Neutrality?

After creating a webpage specifically to help New York State residents determine if their identifies were misued for net neutrality comments, Attorney General Schneiderman announced:

"In the last five days alone, over 3,200 people have reported misused identities to the Attorney General’s office, including nearly 350 New Yorkers from across the state. Attorney General Schneiderman urges New Yorkers to continue to check whether their identity was misused and report it to his office in order to inform the investigation."

The webpage automatically links to only net neutrality (Docket 17-108) comments with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC)  site. So, at least 3,200 persons have confirmed the misuse of their identity information by unknown persons (or bots) to pollute feedback by the public about net neutrality rules protecting consumers' broadband freedoms. You'd think that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai would be concerned about the pollution and fraud; and would delay the upcoming December 14th vote regarding net neutrality. But he's not and blew off the fake comments allegations, as explained in this earlier blog post.

You might think that Chairman Pai and the FCC would be concerned about pollution and fraud in feedback submitted to the FCC site, given the massive Equifax data breach in September which exposed the data elements (e.g., name, street addresses) criminals and fraudsters could easily use to submit fake comments.

This makes one wonder if the FCC can be trusted under Chairman Pai's leadership. Hopefully, Attorneys General in other states will provide similar webpages to help residents in their states... and not only for comments about net neutrality.

Being curious, I visited the webpage by AG Schneiderman. It instructed:

"The Office of the New York State Attorney General is investigating whether public comments regarding net neutrality rules wrongfully used New Yorkers’ identities without their consent. We encourage you to search the FCC’s public comment website and tell us if you see any comments that misuse your name and address.

First, search below to find any comments that may have misused your identity. If results appear, click on any comment that uses your name, and when the comment appears review the name, the address, and the comment text. (If no results appear, your identity most likely was not misused.)"

You don't need to be a New York State resident to use this online tool. My initial search produced 1,046, so I narrowed it by entering my name in quotations ("George Jenkins") for a more precise match. That second search produced 40 comments about net neutrality (e.g., Docket 17-108), a manageable number. I browsed the list which included my valid comment submitted during May, 2017.

I did not see any other comments using my name and address. That's good because I only submitted one comment. I noticed comments by persons with the same name in other states. That seems okay. It's reasonable to expect multiple persons with the same name in a country with a population of about 360 million people.

I did not check the addresses of the other persons with the same name. I realize that could easily hide synthetic ID-theft. In traditional synthetic ID-theft, criminals mix stolen (valid) Social Security numbers with other persons' names to avoid detection. In the ECFS comments system, one could enter valid names with fake addresses; or vice-versa. I hope that AG Schneiderman's fraud analysis also checks for both types of synthetic ID-theft: 1) fake names at real addresses, and 2) real names at fake addresses.

If I had found fraudulent entries, I would have notified AG Schneiderman, the Attorney General's office in the state where I live, and the FCC.

Did you check for misuse of your identity information? What did you find?

Governors and Federal Agencies Are Blocking Nearly 1,300 Accounts on Facebook and Twitter

[Editor's note: today's guest blog post, by the reporters at ProPublica, highlights a little-known practice by some elected officials to block their constituents on social networking sites. Today's post is reprinted with permission.]

By Leora Smith and Derek Kravitz - ProPublica

Amanda Farber still doesn’t know why Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan blocked her from his Facebook group. A resident of Bethesda and full-time parent and volunteer, Farber identifies as a Democrat but voted for the Republican Hogan in 2014. Farber says she doesn’t post on her representatives’ pages often. But earlier this year, she said she wrote on the governor’s Facebook page, asking him to oppose the Trump administration’s travel ban and health care proposal.

She never received a response. When she later returned to the page, she noticed her comment had been deleted. She also noticed she had been blocked from commenting. (She is still allowed to share the governor’s posts and messages.)

Farber has repeatedly emailed and called Hogan’s office, asking them to remove her from their blacklist. She remains blocked. According to documents ProPublica obtained through an open-records request this summer, hers is one of 494 accounts that Hogan blocks. Blocked accounts include a schoolteacher who criticized the governor’s education policies and a pastor who opposed the governor’s stance against accepting Syrian refugees. They even have their own Facebook group: Marylanders Blocked by Larry Hogan on Facebook.

Hogan’s office says they “diligently adhere” to their social media policy when deleting comments and blocking users.

In August, ProPublica filed public-records requests with every governor and 22 federal agencies, asking for lists of everyone blocked on their official Facebook and Twitter accounts. The responses we’ve received so far show that governors and agencies across the country are blocking at least 1,298 accounts. More than half of those — 652 accounts — are blocked by Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, a Republican.

Four other Republican governors and four Democrats, as well as five federal agencies, block hundreds of others, according to their responses to our requests. Five Republican governors and three Democrats responded that they are not blocking any accounts at all. Many agencies and more than half of governors’ offices have not yet responded to our requests. Most of the blocked accounts appear to belong to humans but some could be “bots,” or automated accounts.

When the administrator of a public Facebook page or Twitter handle blocks an account, the blocked user can no longer comment on posts. That can create an inaccurate public image of support for government policies. (Here’s how you can dig into whether your elected officials are blocking constituents.)

ProPublica made the records requests and asked readers for their own examples after we detailed multiple instances of officials blocking constituents.

We heard from dozens of people. The governors’ offices in Alaska, Maine, Mississippi, Nebraska and New Jersey did not respond to our requests for records, but residents in each of those states reported being blocked. People were blocked after commenting on everything from marijuana legislation to Medicaid to a local green jobs bill.

For some, being blocked means losing one of few means to communicate with their elected representatives. Ann-Meredith McNeill, who lives in western rural Kentucky, told ProPublica that Bevin rarely visits anywhere near her. McNeill said she feels like “the internet is all I have” for interacting with the governor.

McNeill said she was blocked after criticizing Bevin’s position on abortion rights. (Last January, Bevin’s administration won a lawsuit that resulted in closing one of Kentucky’s two abortion clinics, the event that McNeill says inspired her comment.)

In response to questions about its social media blocking policies, Bevin’s office said in a statement that “a small number of users misuse [social media] outlets by posting obscene and abusive language or images, or repeated off-topic comments and spam. Constituents of all ages should be able to engage in civil discourse with Governor Bevin via his social media platforms without being subjected to vulgarity or abusive trolls.” McNeill told ProPublica, “I’m sure I got sassy” but she made “no threats or anything.”

Almost every federal agency that responded is blocking accounts. The Department of Veterans Affairs blocked 18 accounts as of July, but said most were originally blocked before 2014. The blocked accounts included a Michigan law firm specializing in auto accident cases and a Virginia real estate consultant who told ProPublica she had “no idea why” she was blocked. The Department of Energy blocked eight accounts as of October. The Department of Labor blocked seven accounts. And the Small Business Administration blocked two accounts, both of which were unverified and claimed to be affiliated with government loan programs.

Many governors and agencies gave us only partial lists or rejected our requests altogether. Outgoing Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s office told us they would not share their block lists due to “privacy concerns for those people whose names might appear on it.” Alabama declined to provide public records because our request did not come from an Alabama citizen.

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens’ office declined to share records from his Facebook or Twitter accounts, arguing they are not “considered to be the ‘official’ social media accounts of the Governor of Missouri” because he created them before he took office.

Increased attention on the issue of blocking seems to be having an impact. In September, the California-based First Amendment Coalition revealed that California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, had blocked more than 1,500 accounts until June, shortly before the organization submitted a request for his social media records.

At some point before fulfilling the coalition’s request, Brown’s office unblocked every account.

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, blocked the activist group Indivisible Vermont on Twitter on Aug. 25. On Aug. 28, Vermont reporter Taylor Dobbs submitted a request for the governor’s full blocked list, shortly after ProPublica’s similar request. Later that day, Scott unblocked the group and released a statement saying the account was “misconstrued as spam.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s office unblocked at least two Facebook users after receiving ProPublica’s request. Here are screenshots they sent us showing that the users have been unblocked:

In the last year, a series of legal claims have called into question the legality of government officials blocking constituents on social media.

At least one federal district court held that government officials who block constituents are violating their First Amendment rights.

Constituents have pending lawsuits against the governors of Kentucky, Maine, and Maryland, as well as Representative Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., and President Trump.

We asked the White House, which is not subject to open-records laws, to disclose the list of people Trump is blocking. Officials there have not responded.

Filed under:

• Politics

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Photos: December 7 Demonstration In Boston To Keep Net Neutrality

Demonstrations occurred nationwide on December 7 to save net neutrality. Citizens took to the streets to keep our internet services open. About 200 persons attended the demonstration in Boston on Boylston Street. It was encouraging to meet several students from local universities participating in the event. They understand the issue and its seriousness. Several A.C.L.U. members also participated:

Browse photos from other demonstrations nationwide on December 7. Contact your elected officials in Congress, and learn about the next day of action on December 12, 2017. More resources:

• Futurism: Your Life Without Net Neutrality Protections
• 'Tens Of Thousands' Of Fake Comments Submitted. New York State Attorney General Demands Answers From the FCC
• The Bogus Claims By Broadband Providers And Their Allies About Net Neutrality
• Loss Of Net Neutrality Could Hurt Rural America
• Net Neutrality Needs You As Much As You Need It
• The Loss Of Net Neutrality Threatens Access To Telemedicine
• What Is Net Neutrality?

Futurism: Your Life Without Net Neutrality Protections

You've probably heard that Ajit Pai, the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is leading his agency towards a vote on December 14, 2017 to kill net neutrality. How will consumers' online lives change? Futurism described what your online life will be like without net neutrality:

"You’re at work and want to check Facebook on your lunch break to see how your sister is doing. This is not exactly a straightforward task, as your company uses Verizon. You’re not about to ask your boss if they’d consider putting up the extra cash every month so that you can access social media in the office, so you’ll have to wait until you get home.

That evening, you log in to pay your monthly internet bill — or rather, bills.

See, there’s the baseline internet cost, but without net neutrality, you also have to pay a separate monthly fee for social media, another for "leisure" pages like Reddit and Imgur, and another still for liberal-leaning news sites — because your provider’s CEO is politically conservative. Not only is your bill confusing, you’re not sure you can really afford to access all these websites that, at one point in time, you took for granted.

In addition to the sites you can access if you pay for them, there are also websites that have just become lost to you. Websites that you once frequented, but that now, you aren’t even sure how to access anymore. You can’t even pay to access them. You used to like reading strange Wikipedia articles late at night and cruising for odd documentaries — but now, all those interests that once entertained and educated you in your precious and minimal free time are either behind yet another separately provided paywall or blocked entirely. You’ve started to ask around, see if your friends or coworkers with other providers have better access... but the story is pretty much always the same."

In short, without net neutrality:

1. You will lose the freedom to use the internet bandwidth you've purchased monthly as you desire;
2. Corporate internet service providers (ISPs) increase their their revenues and profits by adding tolls to each package in a sliced-and-diced approach to internet content;
3. Your internet bill will become just as confusing, frustrating, and expensive as your cable-TV bill, where ISPs force you to buy several expensive packages of sites in order to access your favorite sites;
4. The new, expensive tolls allow ISPs to decide what internet content you see and don't see. Sites or content producers unwilling to pay fees to ISPs will find their content blocked or relegated to "slow" speed lanes; and
5. Both middle-class and poor online users will bear the brunt of the price increases.

If you think this can't happen in the United States, consider:

"Some countries are already living this reality. In New Zealand, Vodafone offers mobile internet packages that are comprised of different types of services. You might have to pay a certain amount to access social apps like Snapchat and Instagram, and a separate fee to chat with friends via Facebook Messenger and iMessage. A similar framework is used by Portugal’s MEO, where messaging, social media, music streaming, video streaming, and email are also split into separate packages.

Long ago, FCC Chairman Pai made his position clear. Breitbart News reported on April 28, 2017:

"Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that an open and free internet is vital for America in the 21st century. During a speech at the Newseum on Wednesday, Pai said he plans to roll back the net-neutrality regulations and to restore the light-touch regulatory system established by President Bill Clinton and Congressional Republicans by the 1996 Telecommunications Act... Chairman Pai said during his speech that the internet prospered before net neutrality was enacted... Breitbart News asked the FCC chief why he thinks that net neutrality is a problem, and why we must eliminate the rule. He said: "Number one there was no problem to solve, the internet wasn’t broken in 2015. In that situation, it doesn’t seem me that preemptive market-wide regulation is necessary. Number two, even if there was a problem, this wasn’t the right solution to adopt. These Title II regulations were inspired during the Great Depression to regulate Ma Bell which was a telephone monopoly. And the broadband market we have is very different from the telephone market of 1934. So, it seems to me that if you have 4,462 internet service providers and if a few of them are behaving in a way that is anti-competitive or otherwise bad for consumer welfare then you take targeted action to deal with that. You don’t declare the entire market anti-competitive and treat everyone as if they are a monopolist. Going forward we are going to propose eliminating that Title II classification and figure out the right way forward. The bottom line is, everyone agrees on the principles of a free and open internet what we disagree with is how many regulations are needed to preserve the internet." "

Note the language. Pai uses "free and open internet" to refer to freedoms for ISPs to do what they want; a slick attempt to co-opt language net neutrality proponentsused for freedoms for consumers go online where they want without additional fees. Pai's "Light touch" means fewer regulations for ISPS regardless of the negative consequences upon consumers. Pai's comments in April attempted to spin existing net neutrality laws as antiquated ("the telephone market of 1934"), when, in fact, net neutrality was established recently... in 2010. Even the same Breitbart News article admitted this:

"Net neutrality passed under former Democrat Tom Wheeler’s FCC in 2010."

Pai's exaggerations and falsehoods are astounding. Plenty of bogus claims by Pai and net neutrality critics. In January of this year, President Donald Trump appointed Ajit Pai, a former lawyer with Verizon, as the FCC Chairman. Earlier this year, CNN reported:

"More than 1,000 startups and investors have now signed an open letter to Pai opposing the proposal. The Internet Association, a trade group representing bigger companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, has also condemned the plan. "The current FCC rules are working for consumers and the protections need to be kept in tact," Michael Beckerman, president and CEO of the Internet Association, said at a press conference Wednesday."

Regular readers of this blog are aware that more than "a few" ISPs committed abused consumers and content producers. (A prior blog post listed many historical problems and abuses of consumers by some ISPs.) Also, consider this: Pai made his net-neutrality position clear long before the public submitted comments to the FCC this past summer. Sounds like he never really intended to listen to comments from the public. Not very open minded.

As bad it all of this sounds, it's even worse. How? An FCC Commissioner, 28 U.S. senators, and the New York State Attorney General (AG) have lobbied FCC Chairman Pai to delay the net neutrality vote planned by the FCC on December 14, due to clear and convincing evidence of the massive fraud of comments submitted to the FCC's online commenting system.

In short, the FCC's online comments system is corrupted, hacked, and unreliable. The group (e.g., FCC commissioner, 28 Senators, and NY State AG) also objects to the elimination of net neutrality on the merits.

The fraud evidence is pretty damning, but Chairman Pai seems intent upon going ahead with a vote to kill net neutrality despite the comments fraud. Why? How? Ars Technica reported on December 4th:

"FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says that net neutrality rules aren't needed because the Federal Trade Commission can protect consumers from broadband providers... When contacted by Ars, Pai's office issued this statement in response to the [delay request] letter: "This is just evidence that supporters of heavy-handed Internet regulations are becoming more desperate by the day as their effort to defeat Chairman Pai's plan to restore Internet freedom has stalled. The vote will proceed as scheduled on December 14."

I find the whole process deeply disturbing. First, only 28 U.S. Senators seem concerned about the massive comments fraud. Why aren't all 100 concerned? Second, why aren't any House members concerned? Third, President Trump hasn't said anything about it. (This makes one wonder if POTUS45 either doesn't care consumers are hurt, or is asleep at the wheel.) Elected officials in positions of responsibility seem willing to ignore valid concerns.

Many consumers are concerned, and protests to keep net neutrality are scheduled for later today outside Verizon stores nationwide. What do you think?

The Limitations And Issues With Facial Recognition Software

We've all seen television shows where police technicians use facial recognition software to swiftly and accurately identify suspects, or catch the bad guys. How accurate is that? An article in The Guardian newspaper discussed the promises, limitations, and issues with facial recognition software used by law enforcement:

"The software, which has taken an expanding role among law enforcement agencies in the US over the last several years, has been mired in controversy because of its effect on people of color. Experts fear that the new technology may actually be hurting the communities the police claims they are trying to protect... "It’s considered an imperfect biometric," said Clare Garvie, who in 2016 created a study on facial recognition software, published by the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law, called The Perpetual Line-Up. "There’s no consensus in the scientific community that it provides a positive identification of somebody"... [Garvie's] report found that black individuals, as with so many aspects of the justice system, were the most likely to be scrutinized by facial recognition software in cases. It also suggested that software was most likely to be incorrect when used on black individuals – a finding corroborated by the FBI's own research. This combination, which is making Lynch’s and other black Americans’ lives excruciatingly difficult, is born from another race issue that has become a subject of national discourse: the lack of diversity in the technology sector... According to a 2011 study by the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (Nist), facial recognition software is actually more accurate on Asian faces when it’s created by firms in Asian countries, suggesting that who makes the software strongly affects how it works... Law enforcement agencies often don’t review their software to check for baked-in racial bias – and there aren’t laws or regulations forcing them to."

Lower Tax Rate And Fewer Deductions. Questionable Help For Middle Class Taxpayers

Yesterday, I received an alert from the professional that prepares my income taxes:

"Dear Clients,
I know that Congress has not yet finalized the new tax law, but it looks pretty certain that Certain Miscellaneous Deductions will no longer be allowed in 2018. If you want to know if that affects you, see if there is an entry on your Schedule A, Line 27 from 2016. If you take the standard deduction, then don’t worry about it. These deductions include expenses for using your car on the job, un-reimbursed overnight travel and meals, union dues, uniforms, tools, and job training/education.

Some of my clients have huge union dues (police officers, carpenters, electricians, etc.) and others have Second Job Travel or 10-30,000 miles a year in their sales jobs. Every one of you will be hurt by this change.

If there are any expenses you can pay in December, be sure to do that so you can save 15 - 25% on your federal taxes... maybe even more. For example, do you have the option of paying your annual union dues all at once in December? Were you planning to buy a computer used for your job sometime soon? Is there a job-related course... or some tools and supplies... that you can pay for in December rather than next year? Remember... every $100 that you pay in December will save you $15 to $33 in taxes when we meet in a couple months...”

If you haven't consulted with your tax advisor, then now seems to be a good time to do so. I am not an income tax professional, and this blog post is informational.

Many people return to school to get better, high-paying jobs, or as required by their profession. The tax code allows companies to deduct expenses for business and trade associations, so why prevent union members from doing so? It seems that taxpayers with plenty of miscellaneous deductions will be hurt more than persons with fewer or no deductions.

And Republicans are probably hoping that voters won't notice nor feel the pain until after the 2018 elections. President Trump and the Republications promised to help the middle class and poor with tax reform, but the above impacts don't seem helpful. The benefits of lower tax rates are offset by the lost deductions. To use an old saying, that seems like Congress and Republicans are giving taxpayers, "the sleeves off their vests."

You might say this is a "mugging" of many taxpayers. What are your opinions?

Report: Several Impacts From Technology Changes Within The Financial Services Industry

For better or worse, the type of smart device you use can identify you in ways you may not expect. First, a report by London-based Privacy International highlighted the changes within the financial services industry:

"Financial services are changing, with technology being a key driver. It is affecting the nature of financial services from credit and lending through to insurance and even the future of money itself. The field known as “fintech” is where the attention and investment is flowing. Within it, new sources of data are being used by existing institutions and new entrants. They are using new forms of data analysis. These changes are significant to this sector and the lives of the people it serves. We are seeing dramatic changes in the ways that financial products make decisions. The nature of the decision-making is changing, transforming the products in the market and impacting on end results and bottom lines. However, this also means that treatment of individuals will change. This changing terrain of finance has implications for human rights, privacy and identity... Data that people would consider as having nothing to do with the financial sphere, such as their text-messages, is being used at an increasing rate by the financial sector...  Yet protections are weak or absent... It is essential that these innovations are subject to scrutiny... Fintech covers a broad array of sectors and technologies. A non-exhaustive list includes:

• Alternative credit scoring (new data sources for credit scoring)
• Payments (new ways of paying for goods and services that often have implications for the data generated)
• Insurtech (the use of technology in the insurance sector)
• Regtech (the use of technology to meet regulatory requirements)."

"Similarly, a breadth of technologies are used in the sector, including: Artificial Intelligence; Blockchain; the Internet of Things; Telematics and connected cars..."

While the study focused upon India and Kenya, it has implications for consumers worldwide. More observations and concerns:

"Social media is another source of data for companies in the fintech space. However, decisions are made not on just on the content of posts, but rather social media is being used in other ways: to authenticate customers via facial recognition, for instance... blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, is still best known for cryptocurrencies like BitCoin. However, the technology is being used more broadly, such as the World Bank-backed initiative in Kenya for blockchain-backed bonds¹⁰. Yet it is also used in other fields, like the push in digital identities¹¹. A controversial example of this was a very small-scale scheme in the UK to pay benefits using blockchain technology, via an app developed by the fintech GovCoin¹² (since renamed DISC). The trial raised concerns, with the BBC reporting a former member of the Government Digital Service describing this as "a potentially efficient way for Department of Work and Pensions to restrict, audit and control exactly what each benefits payment is actually spent on, without the government being perceived as a big brother¹³..."

Many consumers know that you can buy a wide variety of internet-connected devices for your home. That includes both devices you'd expect (e.g., televisions, printers, smart speakers and assistants, security systems, door locks and cameras, utility meters, hot water heaters, thermostats, refrigerators, robotic vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers) and devices you might not expect (e.g., sex toys, smart watches for children, mouse traps, wine bottles, crock pots, toy dolls, and trash/recycle bins). Add your car or truck to the list:

"With an increasing number of sensors being built into cars, they are increasingly “connected” and communicating with actors including manufacturers, insurers and other vehicles¹⁵. Insurers are making use of this data to make decisions about the pricing of insurance, looking for features like sharp acceleration and braking and time of day¹⁶. This raises privacy concerns: movements can be tracked, and much about the driver’s life derived from their car use patterns..."

And, there are hidden prices for the convenience of making payments with your favorite smart device:

"The payments sector is a key area of growth in the fintech sector: in 2016, this sector received 40% of the total investment in fintech²². Transactions paid by most electronic means can be tracked, even those in physical shops. In the US, Google has access to 70% of credit and debit card transactions—through Google’s "third-party partnerships", the details of which have not been confirmed²³. The growth of alternatives to cash can be seen all over the world... There is a concerted effort against cash from elements of the development community... A disturbing aspect of the cashless debate is the emphasis on the immorality of cash—and, by extension, the immorality of anonymity. A UK Treasury minister, in 2012, said that paying tradesman by cash was "morally wrong"²⁶, as it facilitated tax avoidance... MasterCard states: "Contrary to transactions made with a MasterCard product, the anonymity of digital currency transactions enables any party to facilitate the purchase of illegal goods or services; to launder money or finance terrorism; and to pursue other activity that introduces consumer and social harm without detection by regulatory or police authority."²⁷"

The report cited a loss of control by consumers over their personal information. Going forward, the report included general and actor-specific recommendations. General recommendations:

• "Protecting the human right to privacy should be an essential element of fintech.
• Current national and international privacy regulations should be applicable to fintech.
• Customers should be at the centre of fintech, not their product.
• Fintech is not a single technology or business model. Any attempt to implement or regulate fintech should take these differences into account, and be based on the type activities they perform, rather than the type of institutions involved."

Want to learn more? Follow Privacy International on Facebook, on Twitter, or read about 10 ways of "Invisible Manipulation" of consumers.