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Several federal and state agencies are investigating how racist mass texts were sent to black people across the country ahead of this week’s presidential election.
Text messages calling for slavery were sent to black men, women and children, prompting investigations by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.
The anonymously sent messages have been reported in several states, including New York, Alabama, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Tennessee.
The FBI said it had communicated with the Justice Department about the messages, and the Federal Communications Commission said it was investigating along with federal and state law enforcement.
“These messages are unacceptable,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said.
She said the agency “takes this type of targeting very seriously.”
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Although the texts varied somewhat, all directed recipients to “board a bus” that would transport them to a “plantation” to work as slaves, officials said.
They said the messages were sent to school-aged children and students, causing a lot of distress.
Whoever sent the messages used a VPN to disguise their origin, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said Thursday morning.
The Maryland attorney general’s office said it has received multiple reports of racist text messages sent to black residents, including children.
In a press release Thursday night, officials said the messages appear to be part of a national campaign targeting black people ahead of the election.
“These messages are appalling, unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a statement.
Officials asked recipients of the messages to report them to local police.
Brown said it’s disturbing that children are being included in data sets typically collected on adults, such as campaign donors or magazine subscribers.
“This is a frightening, threatening use of technology” that likely violated multiple laws, Brown said.
“And our goal is to make sure we uncover all the facts and then use all the tools and resources available to us to hold accountable whoever is behind these text messages.”
Phone service provider TextNow said that “one or more of our accounts” were used to send racist text messages and that it quickly disabled those accounts for violating its terms of service.
“As part of our investigation into these messages, we learned they were sent through multiple carriers across the US and are working with partners and law enforcement to investigate this attack,” the statement said Friday.
Major carriers AT&T and Verizon said it was an industry-wide problem and forwarded the comment Friday to an industry trade group.
The US wireless industry has blocked thousands of messages and the numbers that send them,” said Nick Ludlum, SVP and chief communications officer for CTIA, the wireless communications trade association.
“Through CTIA’s Secure Messaging Initiative, participants have identified the platforms used by bad actors to send these messages and are working with law enforcement on this matter.”
These racist text messages are spreading across the country, mostly targeting black Americans, and more specifically, black high school kids.
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Nicole, a North Carolina mother who asked that her last name not be used because of her profession, said she was disturbed and concerned by the messages her high school student showed her Thursday night.
The texts instructed her to get ready to return to the plantation.
This was her daughter’s first real experience with this type of racism, Nicole said, and as a parent she didn’t want to have these kinds of conversations with her children.
“It’s like a slap in the face and it shows me that it’s still a problem that hasn’t changed at all,” she said.
Nicole said her daughter didn’t say much after the message, deleted the message and went to bed.
As for Nicole, she said she needs to sit down and process her feelings.
She said the situation was so shocking that it didn’t seem real, and she was sad for her daughter.
“She has a lot of friends of different races. She is the one who does not see color and does not see the difference. Well, I feel for her, it really showed her that not everyone is like her,” Nicole said.
“Racism is still a very prominent thing in our country right now.”
Nicole said parents need to be vigilant, especially with older children, and have the tough conversations, even if you don’t want to or feel you have to.
“However your child is feeling, approach them with open arms and be very receptive to it and just take it day by day.”
Several historically black students received a message with a similar tone but with different wording.
dr. Robert Greene II, an assistant professor of history at Claflin University, said he’s heard stories from his students about it, as well as from campus officials.
Greene said he thinks the timing of this mass messaging is not only intentional, but that the focus is on young black students.
“It’s a way of saying, especially to black students, that this is the world they live in now, that this kind of overt racist intimidation is returning to the norm in American society and American politics,” Greene said.
“There’s no doubt about it, fear and intimidation are at the heart of what’s going on with these text messages.”
This kind of resentment towards the black community is not a new phenomenon.
Intimidation was physical violence in the early 1900s and around the time of World War II, it was done through suppressive methods like the poll tax, Greene said.
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But what makes this time different is the form of communication, and the introduction of technology makes this tactic more sinister, he added.
“The technology that we take for granted, that brings us all together through the internet, social media, cell phones, is now being used to intimidate people,” Greene said.
“It adds to the atmosphere of fear and paranoia. Certainly, there is that feeling of, well, if they can text me, how else can they get in touch with me? What else do they know about me personally?”
Those responsible for sending the messages have taken advantage of the mass messaging industry designed to help legitimate marketers reach people on their phones.
“This is now the primary way most Americans communicate,” said Cori Faklaris, assistant professor of software and information services at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
“So, people who need to advertise or sell services, go where the people are. Unfortunately, scammers and haters are also following suit.”
Faklaris said they also likely used collections of personal information that can be purchased relatively cheaply in some corners of the Internet.
Combined with other data, such as where you live or past purchases, Faklaris says it can be easy to use machine learning algorithms to infer demographic data.
“All this means is that it might be easier than most people think to make a really good guess about the race or ethnicity of the person associated with that phone number,” she said.
Unlike email or social media, the US regulates text messaging like a utility and tries to remain neutral about content shared via text.
As a result, there is little filtering to block this week’s flood of racist messages, Faklaris said.
In the US, there is no universal system for flagging texts as suspicious or spam before they are viewed, she said.
But after the explosion of text fraud that accelerated during the pandemic, Faklaris said law enforcement agencies have developed better investigative tools and it should be “relatively easy for authorities to track down this attack.”
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