#HASHTAG CRIMINAL ACTIVITY HASHTAG GANGS

[uenodivision]

"Know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles."

Timeline

Age 0:

She is born to Miyata and Taniuchi Iyo in Ueno City.

Age 5:

Her younger sister, Morino is born, making her an older sister.

Age 18:

She graduates high school with honors.

She enters university to obtain her degree in law.

Age 21:

She graduates from university and obtains her bachelor's degree.

She works to obtain her J.D. degree.

Age 23:

She meets her fiancé, Saito Yuzairu, during a class assignment.

Friendship forms between the two which blossoms into love.

Age 24:

She obtains her J.D. degree and becomes a prosecutor.

Saito proposes to her and she accepts. The two eventually marry.

Age 25:

She meets and befriends Jyuto Iruma of Yokohama. She agrees to join him in his crusade against drugs.

She gives birth to her daughter, Yomi Yuzairu.

Age 26:

Her husband is tragically killed by a drunk driver whilst driving home after spying on Jyuto, whom he was suspicious of, making her a widow.

She finds out about Jyuto's activities from a letter her husband left behind. She cuts off all ties with him and swears to incarcerate him.

She stakes her claim by arresting all members of the Black Dragon gang.

She publicly announces her intentions of removing all crime from Ueno City and Japan, no matter what.

Age 27:

She is accosted by a group of ruffians sent by Jyuto. She fights and drives them off with the help of Shisuta Heisha, whom she befriends.

Age 28:

She is introduced to, by Shisuta, Aranai Norikoru, whom she immediately dislikes, due to her previous activities as a Bōsōzoku.

However, the two begin tolerating each other after Aranai helps subdue and arrest a criminal Kisouna was searching for.

Age 29:

Present.

She becomes the third member of Ueno Division rap battle group, Sakurai Clan, alongside Aranai Norikoru and Shisuta Heisha.

Schedule

12 a.m. - 6 a.m.: Asleep

6 a.m. - 8 a.m.: Gets self and daughter ready for work/school

8 a.m. - 8:30 a.m.: Drops daughter off at school

8:30 - 8:35 a.m.: Stops by coffee place and picks up morning coffee

8:35 a.m. - 9 a.m.: Arrives at work

9 a.m. - 1 p.m.: Work on court cases/documents

1 p.m. - 2 p.m.: Late lunch

2 p.m. - 4 p.m.: Continue work on court cases/documents

4 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.: Call Shisuta to make sure Yomi is picked up

4:30 p.m. - 9 p.m.: Continue work on court cases/documents

9 p.m. - 10 p.m.: Return home

10 p.m. - 10:15 p.m.: Tuck Yomi into bed

10:15 p.m. - 11 p.m.: Have a late dinner

11 p.m. - 12 a.m.: Review documents for work

Character Hashtags

Regular Hashtags

#Diligent in everything

#Unforgiving to all crime

#Loving mother and friend

Trauma Hashtags

#His face inside the coffin

#Enemies all around me

#Die Jyuto

Other Info

Hobby: Reading books

Weakness: Overworks self

Trauma: "July 29th: the day that the light in my life disappeared."

Twitter: @Yuzairu0501

Drinks: Occasionally

Smokes: No

Special Skill: "I don't want to brag, but I'm pretty good when it comes to Sudoku."

Intro Quote: "I'll show everyone how powerful the law is through my lyrics."

Trauma Quote: "Yomi, my daughter... I'm so sorry. Your mother isn't the same anymore."

[melissatsanchez01]

How much do ‘Free’ Online Services Really Cost | Shifu Digital

In this episode, We will discuss in detail How much do ‘Free’ Online Services Really Cost. How many of you have been using free Internet services for years now without bothering about who is able to access your private information and to what extent? Whenever some get to know that a service is being offered online free of cost, they immediately jump on to avail themselves of the opportunity because who likes to pay for online services, right? But have you ever wondered how these free online service platforms earn their money to keep operating?

You might be surprised to know that using free online services could be a bad idea as it consumes much more than money.

Privacy Violations: While most people who use the Internet are the least bothered when it comes to their online identity and personal information, it can cause them a huge issue. There are various free online websites on the Internet that need your personal information to provide access, and the mishandling of personal information may lead to serious issues. For example, illegal activity such as fraud and theft can occur online by hackers or gangs using your personal information and identity. If these criminal activities get caught or are serious, it could lead you to a jail sentence very easily.

Spam and Advertising: If you access free online websites for services, then you must be well aware of the ‘weird’ spam and advertisements that come up which are unrelated to what you are looking for. Spam advertising is one of the common ways that free online services earn money. By spamming the consumers with the same advertisements again and again, these websites play with the minds of people, which eventually leads them to purchase despite not needing the product or service.

Malicious Software and Viruses: Viruses and spyware, which are also known as malware, are attracted when an individual visits a malicious website, opens infected emails, and downloads links with viruses in them. Free online services are usually questionable, so most people get viruses on their system, corrupting all their data. Most computers or devices also get hacked. All their private information no longer remains secure as hackers download all their data within seconds when the individuals visit websites offering free services. Viruses also damage your valuable data, and if they occur frequently, they can make your system entirely worthless.

Health Issues and Obesity: How many of you have free accounts on Facebook or Instagram which you keep on scrolling aimlessly all day long? Surfing the Internet and using free sources drains all of your energy, makes you lazy, all of which leads to an unhealthy and obese lifestyle. Everything in life should be maintained with a balance, and similarly, such websites or social media apps should be avoided, which leads to nothing creative or motivating.

Many people might think that free online services are the best thing that has ever happened. The services might apparently be free, but they consume much more out of a person. Free online services not only lead to privacy or health issues but also cost a person their mental health and peace.

Hashtags: ----------------- #Shifu_Digital #Free_Online_Services #Free_Online_Services_Cost #How_much_Free_Online_Services_Cost #Health_Issues #Obesity #Malicious_Software #Malicious_Viruses #Spam_and_Advertising #Privacy_Violations #Online_Services_Cost #Free_Accounts_Facebook #Free_Accounts_Instagram

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[nhkamira]

MY SPRING 2021 ANIME WATCHLIST🌼🌈✨

Spring is officially starting and what a marvelous season we have ahead. Full of great anime continuations and some news that I’m really looking forward to. Since I post practically every review (only Horimiya left) here I present you my Spring 2021 watchlist:

1. Boku no Hero Academia 5th Season (27/03). Can y’all hear me screaming?😭 Finally, our heroes are back and I couldn’t be more excited. Many friends told me this season would be really amazing and I can’t wait! Bones studio is still in charge of the series so we will continue having a great animation. Genres: Action, Comedy, Super Power, School, Shounen.

2. Koi to Yobu ni wa Kimochi Warui (29/03). A strange encounter spurs the meeting of Amakusa Ryou, a high spec businessman, and his high school sister's best friend, Arima Ichika. From there, he falls madly in love and tries to approach her, while she responds simply disgusted, insulting him without hesitation. Can this be a nice shoujo anime? We’ll see. Studio Nomad is doing the work, I haven’t seen their previous work but the trailer animation looks nice. Genres: Comedy, Romance.

3. Jouran: The Princess of Snow and Blood (31/03). An original and first series by Bakken Records. Set in alternate history Japan in 1931 the anime will follow the activities of "Nue," an organization of shogunate executioners who enforce the government. The dissident organization Kuchinawa strives to overthrow the administration, while the Nue of the Tokugawa regime, which was entrusted with its extermination, is in conflict. Sawa Yukimura, whose family was killed when she was young, continues to search for Janome, the executioner of the Nue. I don’t usually enjoy historical anime but hopefully, this would be good. Genres: Action, Historical, Supernatural.

4. Shaman King - 2021 (1/04). Can believe this actually got a remake, which I’m really really excited for. In a brief, Shamans are extraordinary individuals with the ability to communicate with ghosts, spirits, and gods. To life circumstances You befriends Manta due to his ability to see spirits, they set out to accomplish You's goal of becoming the next Shaman King. Studio Bridge is in charge, the ones behind my all-time favorite “Fairy Tail” ^^. Genres: Action, Adventure, Supernatural, Comedy, Shounen.

5. Mashiro no Oto (3/04). Lowkey I’m expecting this to be as good as “Kono Oto Tomare. Shin-Ei Animation is the studio behind this and they’ve worked in the Doraemon and Shin-chan movies. The story follows Sawamura Setsu, since their grandfather's death, he dropped out of high school, moved to Tokyo, and has been drifting, not knowing what to do besides playing his Shamisen. That's when his successful and rich mother, Umeko, storms into his life and tries to shape Setsu up. She enrolls him back into high school, but little does Setsu know that he is about to rediscover his passion for Shamisen. Genres: Music, Drama, School.

6. Hige wo Soru. Soshite Joshikousei wo Hirou (5/04). Project no.9 the studio of Jaku-chara is bringing a more dramatic story this season. Office worker Yoshida has been crushing on his coworker, Airi Gotou, for five years. Despite finally scoring a date with her, his confession is promptly rejected. Drunk and disappointed, he stumbles home, only to find a high school girl sitting on the side of the road. The girl, needing a place to stay the night, attempts to seduce Yoshida. Despite rejecting her advances, he nevertheless invites her into his apartment. Genres: Drama, Romance

7. Fruits Basket: The Final (6/04). If I started talking about this anime and how excited I am I will never stop talking. I’m ready to cry, get flustered, angry, and be happy. I’m sad but at the same time happy that the story is ending I’m dying to see the zodiac members at least feeling peaceful. Genres: Slice of Life, Drama, Romance, Shoujo, Comedy, Supernatural.

8. Shadows House (11/04). CloverWorks is doing this one and it would probably be beautifully animated. The story is about faceless shadow nobles living in a vast mansion, attended by living dolls who spend much of their time cleaning up the soot endlessly emitted by their mysterious masters. It's not horror but I like the creepy vibe. Hope is good. Genres: Slice of Life, Supernatural, Seinen.

9. Edens Zero (11/04). My Fairy Tail heart is singing of joy. J.C.Staff is animating the series so we know it would be good. Ever since the manga came out I started immediately. It’s really good so I hope people enjoy it without being too critical about the resembles of Fairy Tail. Here is a brief: At Granbell Kingdom, an abandoned amusement park, Shiki has lived his entire life among machines. But one day, Rebecca and her cat companion Happy appear at the park's front gates. Little do these newcomers know that this is the first human contact Granbell has had in a hundred years! As Shiki stumbles his way into making new friends, his former neighbors stir at an opportunity for a robo-rebellion… And when his old homeland becomes too dangerous, Shiki must join Rebecca and Happy on their spaceship and escape into the boundless cosmos. Genres: Action, Sci-Fi, Adventure, Shounen

10. Tokyo Revengers (11/04). I really don’t know what to expect from this since LIDENFILMS has done some pretty awful or uninteresting works, but the trailer looked very cool. Our mc is Takemichi Hanagaki, his life is at an all-time low. Just when he thought it couldn't get worse, he finds out that Hinata Tachibana, his ex-girlfriend, was murdered by the Tokyo Manji Gang: a group of vicious criminals that has been disturbing society's peace for quite some time. Wondering where it all went wrong, Takemichi suddenly finds himself traveling through time, ending up 12 years in the past—when he was still in a relationship with Hinata. Realizing he has a chance to save her, Takemichi resolves to infiltrate the Tokyo Manji Gang and climb the ranks in order to rewrite the future and save Hinata from her tragic fate. Genres: Action, Drama, School, Shounen.

11. Fumetsu no Anata e (12/04). I think this is the most expected new anime for this season, and one of the most visually beautiful this season. Follows the story of It, a mysterious immortal being, is sent to the Earth with no emotions nor identity. However, It is able to take the shape of those around that have a strong impetus. Acquiring the form of a boy, It sets off on a never-ending journey, in search of new experiences, places, and people. Genres: Adventure, Supernatural, Drama, Shounen.

12. Marimashita! Iruka-kun 2nd Season (17/04). Yes yes yess. So we finally are going to find out what happened to Iruma-chi at the end of the first season. I’m really excited to see everyone again ^^ if you haven’t seen season 1 I invite you to do it and you can also read my review under this anime hashtag ^^ Genres: Comedy, Demons, Supernatural, School, Fantasy.

This season looks very promising!

[itsmedianuh]

Week #11 Blog Post due 11/04/20:

What influence does the mainstream media play in how black victims of police brutality are depicted?

“Days following the deaths of Garner and Brown, news reports of the incidents characterized Brown as a thug, gang member, and lawbreaker. Garner was characterized as a repeat offender with news reports discussing his criminal history. News reports also made reference to the height and body size of both Brown and Garner, using fear-mongering labels such as ‘giant’ and ‘huge’ to make Brown and Garner seem superhuman, dangerous, and therefore needing to be tamed.” (Lee, 2017). Mainstream media takes an innocent black individual and draws them out as the enemy, the one to blame, dangerous and “needing to be tamed”, finding the smallest of details from their lives and amplifying it through a negative lens to justify the use of force and police brutality. Cops are put in place to deescalate situations. Even if an individual is found guilty, cops do not play the role of executioner, jury or judge. Mainstream media forgets that when it comes to black lives. They find any reason or image to justify the cops’ abuse of power towards the black community and paint the individual as a ‘thug’, threat, danger, and criminal. Mainstream media enables cops and the law to further feed into this idea that it’s okay to kill black people if cops feel threatened. Mainstream media enables our society to be okay with this behavior from cops who are meant to protect us— not create fear in communities and kill innocent lives through the use of force and illegal tactics. Mainstream media adds gasoline to the fire that already exists in the tension between cops and black communities.

What is ‘Black Twitter’ and ‘blacktags’ as described in the reading, “Black Twitter: A Response to Bias in Mainstream Media”?

The term ‘Black Twitter’ refers to the black community present on Twitter. Blacktags refers to: “Building on this concept, this article is interested in the textual poaching that occurs in social media, specifically black Twitter, for purposes of challenging and resisting dominant degrading narratives placed on black and brown bodies through mainstream news coverage...She argues that black Twitter’s power comes from its participatory democratic nature—the idea that users, through the creation of ironic, yet cutting-edge hashtags, create a space to address social issues of racial bias and discrimination. Indeed, this forum allows for textual poaching as resistance, where the user produces content that challenges dominant (oppressive) cultural ideologies and norms, including racial bias” (Lee, 2017). This is an act of demanding justice where justice is lacking or not present. This is an effective response through the use of hashtags to inform and expose the injustices that the black community is constantly facing socially, economically, politically, educationally, culturally, and overall any possible aspect. Through blacktags, Black Twitter draws out the oppression and racism that still exists against them and their entire community. This is a smart and strategic way in utilizing social media platforms to create conversation where progress and fixing is very much needed. Through the use of twitter, information and voices are amplified and spread at a significant speed, making action follow faster than it normally would.

How can one be an active ally to people of color, particularly the black community?

“Ross shared his own story of ‘criming while white’ to mark the racialized double-standard of our criminal justice system, and encouraged other white folks to share their stories...this hashtag, which was named one of the most trending hashtags for 2014, demonstrated an unequal justice system and a racial double standard…[An example provided being:] When I was 20, I stole a pack of cigs, cop prayed with me and made me promise I wouldn’t do it again. #CrimingWhileWhite..” (Lee, 2017). People get uncomfortable when it's time to talk about racism and white privilege, but the time to talk about it is now, even when we don’t know how to get started. Getting the conversation going is the first step to creating a voice, community, and action in fighting for true justice for all. One can not say they are not racist and stay silent about the issues that black communities are currently facing. It is especially our responsibility to dismantle the structure and systems we currently have in place that strive off the oppression of the black community. The incarceration of the black community is a huge example of modern day slavery, the acts of inhumanity and violence towards them is an example of racism, hate, white supremacy and oppression that is still very much alive in our country and all over the world. To be an ally, we must use our privilege to speak and amplify what it is they are demanding, equality and humanization, equal opportunities, equity, and overall respect of their entire existence and identity, to acknowledge their suffering and to most importantly, listen. It is not our place to speak for them, but rather to share their stories, hear them out, and fight against injustices happening every single day.

What are some positive benefits that can be obtained through internet activism?

“Public awareness is achieved by accessing information that is relevant to the cause. Naturally there is often difficulty involved. Since the traditional information channels may well be controlled by those whose interest is counter to that of the activists, the Internet may serve as an alternative news and information source. The news and information are provided by individuals and independent organizations, largely focusing on events and issues not reported, underreported, or misreported in the mainstream mass media. The forms of obtaining information include visiting relevant Web sites or participating in different types of email distribution lists.” (Veghs, 2003). Through internet activism, as I stated earlier, information travels at a significant speed, making it faster and easier for information to travel across the world and form communities that share the same goal and values. This creates a sense of unity for some communities where it may be harder to find that overall safe space offline. The internet allows for many opportunities to arise with the use of forming and planning events such as protests, creating and participating in signing petitions, creating groups, sharing stories and overall posts with a message and purpose. Internet activism, if done right and being aware of falling into slacktivism, it can create widespread and rapid change if enough people are able to amplify the message, and with the internet, it is much faster and easier to bring this level of awareness to issues and problems that our country is currently facing— whether it be a hashtag, a headline, a post, or group messages. All of these are a few examples of the benefits that internet activism could provide for some communities in getting stuff done at a faster and widespread rate.

Fuchs, C. (2004). Social media and communication power. In social media: A critical introduction (pp. 69-94). London: Sage Publications Ltd. doi:10.4135/9781446270066.n4

Lee, L. (2017). Black Twitter: A Response to Bias in Mainstream Media. Social Sciences, 6(1), 26. doi:103390/socsci6010026

Vegh, S. (2003). Classifying Forms of Online Activism: The Case of Cyberprotests against the World Bank.

[georginna-shnani]

WGST 320: Week 11. Nov 4th, 2020.

1. How do news media outlets misrepresent black people? 

In the paper, Black Twitter: A response to Bias in Mainstream Media by Latoya A. Lee, she explains throughout the paper how people of color use social media to dispute racial biases. One particular part in the paper that captured my attention was when it was stated how “days following the deaths of Garner and Brown, news reports of the incidents characterized Brown as a thug, gang member, and lawbreaker. Garner was characterized as a repeat offender with news reports discussing his criminal history. News reports also made reference to the height and body size of both Brown and Garner, using fear-mongering labels such as giant and huge to make Brown and Garner seem super-human” (Lee, 2017). This is something that we all see after police brutally murder black people. They are always misrepresented in the media, and always made to seem as if they were “evil” or try to dig up dirt on their past to misrepresent and enforce the idea that they somewhat even “deserved” to be a victim of police brutality and murder. It’s extremely disgusting and so heartbreaking to see media outlets try and paint the victims from police brutality as the bad ones and try to paint the police officer as the innocent ones. It's completely misleading, racist and also leads to more cops abusing their power because they see that other police have gotten away with this abuse and corruption. 

2. How does Twitter create a safe place for Black people to voice their hurt and anger? 

In the paper, Black Twitter: A response to Bias in Mainstream Media by Latoya A. Lee, it is stated in the paper that “Meredith Clark, a scholar researching black Twitter, and Kimberly Elise, author of The Bombastic Brilliance of Black Twitter, argue that black Twitter can be a space for jokes, for social viewing of a television series, and as a space where people can voice anger and frustration. According to Elise, black Twitter is one of the most largely interconnected and tightly interwoven subcultures, more so than any other subculture on Twitter. She argues that black Twitter’s power comes from its participatory democratic nature—the idea that users, through the creation of ironic, yet cutting-edge hashtags, create a space to address social issues of racial bias and discrimination” (Lee, 2017). I truly do believe that Twitter would not be what it is today without the black community. I also believe that Twitter is a great place to learn about the hardships that black people go through because we are hearing actual stories from black people and not media outlets that twist the truth and try to paint black people in a negative light. I would not have found out so much information if I did not see it on Twitter and I find it more informative for people to actually read about the hardships that black people face when they voice their hurt and anger on Twitter because it is the most accurate way to find out the truth and their side of the stories rather than it getting twisted in the media. 

3. What are the ways social media sites provide online activism? 

In the article titled Classifying Forms of Online Activism by Sandor Vegh, it is stated that “the traditional information channels may well be controlled by those whose interest is counter to that of the activists, the Internet may serve as an alternative news and information source” (Vegh, 2003). This is true because many different news outlets twist the truth and show a blurred vision of it. However, on social media sites, there are many areas of online activism. Many individuals share so much information about what is truly going on in the world and shed a light on it as well. There are links that are shared to donate, spread awareness and sources to help those in need. These forms of online activism are incredibly beneficial because it helps those in need and actually makes a difference because more people are aware of a problem that a news outlet probably would have not covered.

4. How is the internet capable of starting a movement? 

People on the internet are capable of starting a movement because the internet is “used for mobilization in three different ways” (Vegh, 2003). The internet is capable of starting a movement because it can be used to spread information and also it helps to cause action offline, by someone spreading awareness about something going on, like where a protest will be at. It can also help to find information online about congressional representatives and email them about a cause, which we saw a lot of this happening during the black lives matter movement. The internet is super capable of starting a movement because of the amount of information spread and the capability of bringing awareness to issues that need to be touched upon. 

Lee, L. (2017). Black Twitter: A Response to Bias in Mainstream Media. Social Sciences, 6(1), 26. doi:10.3390/socsci6010026

Vegh, S. (2003). Classifying Forms of Online Activism The Case of Cyberprotests against the World Bank.

[revlatte]

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. – James Baldwin

For a week, I have been sitting with the weight of #GeorgeFloyd. Stunned. Disgusted. Speechless. But unfortunately, not surprised. This is the exact treatment that Blacks have been dealing with since we were stolen loot brought to a stolen land. 

These young people are not out here in the streets just for #GeorgeFloyd. That is the lie of the mainstream media. They are acting like this civil unrest is about only the death of George Floyd. They are finding Black and Brown protesters to talk about how they wish there was no violence. And let’s be clear, the violence is property damage. When our Black bodies were brutalized and are still being brutalized, no one was in arms about the violence to people and assaults on our humanity and dignity. But, property… 

My partner and I found ourselves in Baltimore City last night. We went with the intention of picking up a leather reclining chair for our new house. Quickly, after entering the City, we realized we were in the police state. Helicopters circled around. Immediately, we witnessed police on motorcycles. Streets were being shut down by large trucks and government vehicles. We had been moving all day. I wanted a crabcake. As we parked our car at the Harbor, my partner looked at me. “A crabcake and $20…” We were both aware of the heightened police presence and the fact that “this is how they get you.” Did we look suspicious to police?

No, we are not JUST out there for #GeorgeFloyd.

I am out there with these young people because I have been in the school-to-prison pipeline. I have been incarcerated because of white lies from a white woman named Amy. I am out there with these young people because I am compelled, by my faith, and convicted in my soul to show up. I am called to public ministry, prophetic witness, and public engagement. I must be with my people. 

I am out there to bring awareness not just for #GeorgeFloyd but also #JerryWilliams #BreonnaTaylor #TonyMcDade and all of the other lives that will be snuffed out by police and rendered to a hashtag. 

I am out there because teachers villanized and criminalized me in the Harford County Public Schools. White teachers, principals, and administrators. I am out there for the time that I was forced to learn in a closet. I am out there because white teachers continued to separate, denigrate, and criminalize me. 

I am out there for the day when the police were called on me at Bel Air Middle School for “assaulting” a classmate. My classmate, Lauren McDonald, had her books stripped (knocked out of her arms) by someone else. I was simply helping her pick them up. A white teacher said I assaulted her. She called the white principal. The white principal immediately suspended me then later called the police. Both Lauren and I said the white teacher lied (Lauren is white). This continued, the police were involved, and finally things were dropped after personal visits to the McDonald family. 

I am out there because I witnessed, last night, police shooting rubber bullets, pepper spray, and throwing smoke grenades into crowds of peaceful protesters. 

I am out there for a boy I went to school with named Robert Venable. He was tortured by white teachers, ridiculed by classmates, and killed by the overwhelming weight of white supremacy via suicide. 

I am out there because less than a month ago, thousands of white folks, with armed weapons, disobeyed stay-at-home orders, infecting countless, and they were met with no violence from police. They were allowed to protest. With guns. And anger. Their white anger was not criminalized. I witness Black kids on the streets with enraged fists and signs, after another senseless murder, be tear gased. 

I am out there for a classmate Mark who killed himself in high school just fed up with whiteness. I remember talking to him the day before his suicide. Being Black and quirky was too hard. It was too much to bear. I remember him talking about there being no reprieve and preparing for life like this. I felt him. Ans it was too hard. 

I am out there for the times that I watched my father be called Boy and talked down too in front of his family. 

I am out there for other family members who serve in white organizations and are talked too like they are inferior and less than human. 

I am out there for the white woman with a doctorate in social justice education who called me a Nigger on the job. 

I am out there because my parents’ neighbor was Mr. Larry, the Grand Marshall of the local klan. He was mean, vicious, allowed his dogs to bite Black kids, and was just hateful. The last time I played with a friend in my backyard, it was because Mr. Larry was having a cookout and bragged about how it’d be a perfect night to see things hanging from trees. 

I am out there because the Harford County Public School system, filled with bad white actors, treated me like a dangerous criminal. I had to be up at 5a every day to get to school for morning detention. My homeroom was the office. I was on a “behavior contract.” If I did not score enough points, I had to face consequences. I was on hallway restriction. So I literally could not walk in the hallways with other people. I had lunch detention. After school detention. In school suspension. Out of school suspension. Janitor duty. And Saturday Morning Assistance Program (Saturday detention). By the way, all of this was “pre-emptive” so when I did “get in trouble” they would start with deducting from my “time served.” This is why I am out in the streets. 

I am out there because a white woman beat on me for months in undergrad then lied. She lied on friends who she enticed into sex while drunk and high. When she sobered up, she, a white girl, called the police on my Black male friends saying they raped her. This was not true. When I asked her why she did it, she said… she was ashamed and didn’t know what to tell her mother. These men were brought to the police station, questioned. It was a mess. And she lied. About Black men gang raping her, because she was ashamed. 

I am out there for the white woman named Amy who lied about me to have me arrested. She put hands on me and my mother, on Mother’s Day. She was drunk and high. She ripped the literally shirt of my back. Blood coming from my arms. Permanently damaged my mother’s car doors. The police arrived and asked if we wanted to press charges. NO, my mother and I both responded. We don’t believe in police. Imagine the surprise when I was arrested for assaulting this white woman. This literally never happened. There were eye witnesses, police present, an OnStar tape. But I sat in jail. I was held without bond. No previous criminal record. This white woman named Amy then called the jail and said “I was a threat.” I was taken to solitary confinement and not given food or water for 5 days. That’s why I’m out on these streets. 

I am out there because this same white woman, Amy, (legit her name), filled fake charges against me and my brother after she was assaulted. She said, in no unclear terms, it was us. The eyewitness reports said it was two, tall, skinny, Black men… with dark skin. When they came to arrest us, we had video surveillance to show where we were, security footage, store security footage, witnesses…. It did not matter. They filled my brother’s home in West Baltimore to “capture” us. They refused to look at the evidence, though we literally had it pilled up in folders in the living room. There was over 15 officers at the house that day, including the Sergeant. The Sergeant promised us that if they found out this white woman, Amy, was lying (again), she would be held responsible. I sat in jail, for weeks, awaiting my release for crimes I literally did not commit. The white Amy was never held responsible. 

I am out there because I could not breathe while in jail because of lies from a white woman named Amy. They messed up my medication and would not listen to me. I sat there, with a “cardiac emergency,” and waited as the COs figured out what to do… the Goon squad came in. Paramedics had to be called to the jail. Though I was in severe cardiac emergency, they had to put over 30 pounds of chains all over and around me. I was shackled to the stretched while the paramedics continued to impress upon the jail the importance of me getting medical attention. At that moment, all I could think about was my Momma having to watch me die on jail footage. 

I am out there for the young man I witnessed, a young Black boy, beaten by a mob of Trump supporters in North Carolina. As he walked away, trying to escape the mob, he was arrested. Why in the world was he arrested? My partner and I went to inquire and provide context. The police and secret service had it wrong. We crossed the line, according to the officers. Before I knew it, they had thrust me on the ground so hard it knocked the wind out of me. I was no threat. I had no weapon. I was simply asking why they were arresting this man who was obviously the victim. We were held. They pounced on me. I remember thinking, it that moment, how difficult it was to breathe in that position. 

I am out there for the family of Jerry Williams who will never get justice from the city of Asheville and the Asheville Police Department. 

I am out there for my cousin who is now an Ancestor that was hunted like a dog, boxed in by an illegal police trap, and fled the guns of white supremacy leaping to his death. I am out there for Bronson. 

I am out there for the bodies that my family remembers seeing hanging on trees growing up in the South. 

I am out there for the lying white folks that say they are “allies” and “praying” and “holding this in their hearts” while actively assassinating the character and opportunities of Black and Brown people behind closed doors. I am out there for the white ministers “dismantling white supremacy” publicly and privately destroying the lives of Black and Brown people with toxic whisper campaigns. I am out there for my family who have died in wars they should not have been fighting to protect white freedom and property. 

I am out there because I can no longer stomach the injustice. A white woman, on probation for attempted murder, was high, and assaulted me. She, while on security footage and high, dragged me with her car while holding the collar of my hoodie. Though there were eye witnesses, security footage, and everything you could think of... she was found not guilty. That night, before she dragged me, she told me she would get off. She told me she would lie to the police and commissioners. She told me all she had to do was start crying and say she was afraid. Then she “acted it out” to show me how quickly she could cry, on the spot, to have my freedom revoked. She told me she knew she could do this to me in Baltimore City because a jury would never convict her, a white woman, of a crime against me, a Nigger. She is also the mother of two Black children and a Black grandchild. And, she was right. No justice served. And my face wears the memory of this as a permanent scar.

I am out there because enough is enough. 

I don’t care if they burn Wells Fargo. How dare someone talk about “property damage” and not realize the collateral consequences of oppression. Black people forced to live in the cities are not receiving bailouts. No, that’s corporations like Wells Fargo with the hundreds of millions they’ve been receiving. Wells Fargo in these communities is a reminder of what we’ll never be… 

I am out there because I cannot, with integrity, be a minister compelled to live the gospel… as Paul said, to be worthy of the gospel… and not be with my people. “Remember the poor…”

I am out there for all the Black women and queer folks who are murdered by police… whose stories and lives remain invisibilized and suppressed… even in their dying. 

I am out there, in the streets of Baltimore, because a white woman called the police and hospital security on me after a psychiatric crisis. They held me against my will, had the nurses drug me (sedate me… also against my will) and took me away while my father listened and was on the phone with the hospital advocate. That day, they threw my body into the back of that transport vehicle. Didn’t shut the door. Started driving off. I was cuffed. In the hospital. They finally stopped the vehicle when others  alerted them to the door being open. The older white officer, in response to my pleas for help, let me know: “Today, all the white officers who killed Freddie Gray got off.” My life was in the hands of this man. Who then later forced to me strip naked before entering the ward. Which I knew was against my rights. I am out there for their hatred. I am out there because I cannot rest any longer. We cannot continue being complicit in the system. 

It’s not just about the Police State, State Violence, the school-to-prison pipeline, or mass incarceration. It is about all of it. All. Of. It. 

We are out there because of all of the white people who have witnessed, who know, and still …. do…. nothing. These were the people on the perimeters of the lynch mobs. Shaking their heads. Going back to their churches. And continuing with business as usual.

These protests are about being completely fed up, exhausted, with the weight of white supremacy everywhere. Snuffing out our lives. We are out there because we could fill libraries with individual accounts with police officers, white teachers, white employers… white everything… that sees us as less than human and disposable. We are out in the streets and causing “riots” and “property damage” but over just one death but for the millions of bodies murdered in the name of this “Democracy.” For the genocide that is currently happening on this land. For the systemic and institutional injustice. We were “sick and tired” five decades ago… This cannot continue. 

And Black people have been so patient. We have sat with whites in conversations as beloveds… we have been in healing circles… we have held space for white fragility and growth… we have used non violent communication… we have done everything to make space for “well-meaning whites” to get involved and create “easier access points and entryways” to justice. We have tried not to overwhelm them and give them too much. We have listened to their confessions and been containers for their white tears. Dismantling white supremacy on their terms while holding on to all the unearned privilege, dollars, property… And heaven forbid if you are angry or irritated… No. Then you are problematic and… guess what? They’re ready to call the police. 

We are beyond the point of tired. 

And before you say, we’re “improper influences.” GUESS WHAT, WHITE SUPREMACIST AMERICA? YOU’RE THE MOTHER…. IMPROMPER INFLUENCE.

We are out there because we can’t sit with the injustice any longer. There will continue to be Black death because that is the goal of the State… to exploit us, use our labor, extract our dollars, get us addicted, throw us in jail, and render our lives insufferable. There will be death… and if we must die… now is the time for fighting back. I am ready for the fire this time.

If we must die, 

let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursèd lot.

If we must die, 

O let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shedIn vain; 

then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead

!O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!~ Claude McKay

[skoolthangs]

Sleeping Giants:  Why the Department of Homeland Security poses the greatest threat to our privacy

With the exponential reliance on technology comes an exponential sharing of our data. Consider this app, which is used to predict periods and provide fertility information to users. On the one hand, it helps its users predict fertility, the symptoms that may be prevalent during pregnancy, accompanying moods, change in libido, vaginal secretions and so forth, which may allow users to become more familiar with their bodies and take control of their reproductive health.  On the other, it provides companies with essential data which they use to strategically market products that are related to menstruation, pregnancy, or even to bolster political initiatives like those that seek to abolish abortions and restrict bodily autonomy (Glenza, 2019). Many people consider this privacy theft or express the sentiment that this gathering of data by businesses and companies is unethical. However, when discussing privacy concerns, the most dangerous entity to make use of one’s data is law enforcement as seen through the Department of Homeland Security’s current use of people’s data.  

Before delving into what makes law enforcement’s access to data so alarming, we must make ourselves aware of some of the core issues at hand when addressing privacy.  In unearthing the details of the recent Cambridge Analytical scandal, a very specific term arose - ‘psychographic targeting’. Psychographic targeting refers to the ability to ‘target’ consumers (in this case the population of the United States which used Facebook) based on a ‘digital footprint of human behavior’ which had been amassed by assessing user data to answer the question of why we like what we like. Psychographics is concerned with “understanding cognitive attributes, such as customer emotions, values, and attitudes, among other psychological factors” - including strong emotional responses (CBI Insights, 2019).  This data exists within the links we click, what we say in comments and what we comment on, our ‘likes’ and ‘loves’, what pages we ‘follow’, who we ‘follow’, the conversations we have with people in instant and direct messages, what time of day we access social media, how often we do so, for how long, and many other behaviors we may feel are innocuous or private and personal.  

The cataloging and utilization of these behaviors has been supported by companies seeking to use the information for profit – be that payment by political campaigns such as Trump in 2016 and the period-tracker app listed above, or companies which provide services or products and hope to present their product in an opportune time and place to those that are more likely to purchase.  This data accumulation for profit has become intrinsic in our market to the degree that it has been coined Surveillance Capitalism - a “form of information capitalism that aims to predict and modify human behavior as a means to produce revenue and market control” (Zuboff, 2015).  This profit motive allowed the widespread ability to continuously surveil and document the global population on an individual level.  The seemingly ubiquitous data collection for profit has been highly contested in public discourse.

Unlike corporations, the majority of society has already accepted the dominion of bodies of law enforcement. Law enforcement has the means to forcibly detain and, in many cases, end the lives of anyone they decide is a ‘threat’ with extensive militarized and social backing.  Engaging with social media provides law enforcement with information that can erroneously be used to irrevocably alter or end the lives of ourselves or others.  We are watching this unfold before our eyes in cases of the inhuman enactment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainment and deportation of immigrants and targeting of activists who aim to limit such actions.

While it appears that Facebook is attempting to limit access to data by many corporations, this does not apply to the law enforcement agency ICE.  Dating as far back as 2012 and as recently as April of this year, DHS has been utilizing data collected via social media.  A recent review of the Department of Homeland Security’s Social Media Monitoring conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice found eight ‘common threads’ to categorize this surveillance:

1. “Social media information is collected from travelers, including Americans, even when they are not suspected of any connection to illegal activity.”  In 2016, DHS began asking those traveling to the United States to voluntarily provide their social media identifiers – over 23 million people annually.

2. “Social media checks extend to travelers’ family, friends, business associates, and social media contacts.”  In conducting a background check on those seeking entry to the United States, DHS identifies those that the individual contacts most frequently and surveys those individuals for potential concerns, including downloading the entirety of their social media data via Twitter, Facebook, etc.

3. “DHS frequently uses social media information for vague and open-ended evaluations that can be used to target unpopular views or populations” Specifically those from countries with high Muslim populations including refugee applicants from “Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, as well as North Korea”.  This was illustrated as recently as last month when news stories appeared discussing a Harvard student who was denied entry to the US at Logan airport in Boston due to social media content posted by people the student was connected to on social media (Keane, 2019).

4. “DHS is continuously monitoring some people inside the United States and plans to expand these efforts.”  DHS monitors those who have come to the U.S. after their entry to watch for any changes in status, even if they have been deemed to not be any sort of ‘threat’ whatsoever.

5. “DHS is increasingly seeking and using automated tools to analyze social media.”  DHS uses tools provided by data-collection firms such as Palantir to aggregate data and assess any patterns or concerns.

6. “Social media information collected for one purpose is used by DHS in a range of other contexts, increasing the likelihood of misinterpretation.” Much of the risk-assessment designation software has proven to be flawed and passes through many sources, leading to something akin to a game of telephone.

7. “Social media information collected by DHS is shared with other law enforcement and security agencies under broad standards.” DHS has shown itself to be less-than-judicial in its discernment of who it provides an individual’s data with for further analysis, providing slim and wobbly justification for such sharing.

8. “DHS systems retain information for long periods, sometimes in violation of the department’s own rules.” DHS often holds on to the entirety of one’s social media history far exceeding set standards, which creates an opportunity for the inevitable cultural evolution to change the context of content.  What means one thing in 2007 may mean something wholly different in the year 2020 (Levinson-Waldmen, Patel, DenUyl, & Koreh, 2019).

These conclusions are staggering, and the information collected is already being put to use.

In early 2017, ICE agents utilized data acquired via Facebook and the data-analytics firm Palantir to locate an immigrant suspected of ‘criminal activity’.  Earlier this year it obtained cellphone information from an immigrant it was pursuing in Detroit from the app and ran it through high-grade surveillance software to aid in locating the individual for deportation. It collects photos of individuals engaging in ‘suspicious behavior’ - wearing clothes ICE associated with gang colors or mannerisms which can be used in conjunction with highly-flawed facial recognition software (Fang, 2018). It compiles data regarding ‘anti-trump’ protests and organizers of such events, photos and locations of advocates of migrant rights.  These examples are limited in comparison with what is known about these data surveillance activities, and likely represent a drop in the bucket when held up against what remains unknown.

When confronted with these incredibly dangerous privacy concerns, it brings the question of what we may do as an individual to protect against such gargantuan threats to our privacy.  While many call for government oversight, the government cannot be entrusted as they themselves are guilty of mismanaging and using our data for unjust activities which directly limit our freedom.  It could be easily said that the United States government is structurally reliant on tools which oppress and control the population.  For these reasons any action on behalf of lawmakers may prove a further disservice to upholding the privacy of Americans.

On the individual level, in addressing self-regulation, there are myriad formulas for attempting to maintain personal privacy and retain control of ones’ safety and autonomy.  The first step in combatting data collection is to be conscious of the issues at hand and aware of what it is we are posting.  Tagging other users, location data, photos of faces which can be run through facial recognition software, hashtags such as #blacklivesmatter are all trackable and open to data accumulation which may prove to have consequences. There are alternative messaging platforms available to avoid the use of iMessage, WhatsApp, and messaging services provided by social media platforms.  Signal is a prime example of such. Signal limits the storage of user data, is encrypted, allows for user-set limits for how long messages stay on your device, and is very easy to use.  Unlike other end-to-end encrypted messaging apps such as WhatsApp and iMessage, Signal does not upload any information to a cloud nor parent company.  This was substantiated by a recent government subpoena wherein Signal was forced to hand over its data.  In doing so it was revealed that Signal only retains “phone number, account creation date, and time of user’s last connection.” (Jeong, 2017) While this is pretty minimal compared to the majority of apps, it still leaves a trail.

Unfortunately, despite the efforts we attempt at safeguarding our privacy, the reality is that it may already be too late.  Due to the retention of backlogs, deleting profiles is not likely to be a sufficient measure of protection.  There is also evidence that those who do not use social media are subject to profiling through data provided by their friends who do.  Computational social scientist David Garcia, discovered that using data provided by active users, “he could predict characteristics such as the marital status and sexual orientation of users’ friends who were not on the social media network”.  He describes the interactions we have on and offline to be similar to touching each other with wet paint – no matter the amount of interactions, nor how long ago, one will be able to discern which layer and color of paint corresponds to your hand (Brookshire, 2017).  The fact of the matter is, that the mechanisms which support these threats are large and sturdy.  Shoshana Zuboff describes the process thusly:

These new institutional facts have been allowed to stand for a variety of reasons: they were constructed at high velocity and designed to be undetectable. Outside a narrow realm of experts, few people understood their meaning. Structural asymmetries of knowledge and rights made it impossible for people to learn about these practices.  

This disparity stood as consumers became increasingly reliant on new tools, and with no precedents to look to, there were no effective barriers against such dangerous sharing.  By the time the general layman became aware of those dangers, the tools we had accepted were at that point necessary for social engagement, and the technology far beyond our ability to curtail.  We had already shared so much it was too late to put the genie back in the bottle.    

It would seem we are at an impasse.  We are at a stage wherein we are finally becoming aware of the dangerous implications of our own actions.  Concurrently, we are dependent on the very systems which jeopardize and utilize the most nuanced aspects of our personal activities and tendencies.  These matters are combined with an incredibly frightening time in U.S. history wherein people are again subject to unlawful detainment by the Department of Homeland Security and Law Enforcement.  This compounds and intensifies the stakes greatly.  In addressing these concerns, an individual will not be able to combat such forces on their own and there are no “life hacks” to come to our rescue.  If there is any hope for us to regain ‘privacy’, it will take immense collective action to stop the speeding train of data collection and surveillance capitalism.

References

Brookshire, B. (2017, August 24). On social media, privacy is no longer a personal choice. Retrieved from https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/social-media-privacy-no-longer-personal-choice?tgt=nr

Fang, L. (2019, April 29). Homeland Security Used a Private Intelligence Firm to Monitor Family Separation Protests. Retrieved from https://theintercept.com/2019/04/29/family-separation-protests-surveillance/

Glenza, J. (2019, May 30). Revealed: women's fertility app is funded by anti-abortion campaigners. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/30/revealed-womens-fertility-app-is-funded-by-anti-abortion-campaigners

Jeong, S. (2017, November 27). The Motherboard Guide to Avoiding State Surveillance. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a37m4g/the-motherboard-guide-to-avoiding-state-surveillance-privacy-guide

Keane, S. (2019, September 6). Harvard student gets to classes after being denied US entry over friends' social media posts. Retrieved from https://www.cnet.com/news/harvard-student-gets-into-us-after-entry-denied-over-friends-social-media-posts/

Levinson-Waldmen, R., Patel, F., DenUyl, S., & Koreh, R. (2019). Social Media Monitoring: How the Department of Homeland Security Uses Digital Data in the Name of National Security. Social Media Monitoring: How the Department of Homeland Security Uses Digital Data in the Name of National Security. Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Retrieved from https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/publications/2019_DHS-SocialMediaMonitoring_FINAL.pdf

(2019, April 4). Privacy Policy for Operational Use of Social Media Directive 110-01. Retrieved from https://www.dhs.gov/publication/privacy-policy-operational-use-social-media-directive-110-01

Staff, W. I. R. E. D. (2018, March 22). The Cambridge Analytica Story, Explained. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/amp-stories/cambridge-analytica-explainer/

(2019, April 18). What Is Psychographics? Understanding The 'Dark Arts' Of Marketing That Brought Down Cambridge Analytica. Retrieved from https://www.cbinsights.com/research/what-is-psychographics/

Zuboff, S. M., Möllers, N. M., Wood, D. M., & Lyon, D. M. (2015). Surveillance Capitalism: An Interview with Shoshana Zuboff. Surveillance & Society, 17(1/2), 257–266. doi: 10.24908/ss.v17i1/2.13238

[gregnator-greg]

      Husbands go to work, wives stay at home and watch over the house, clean the house like housewives, great days like the 50’s or 60’s of even the 70’s, well news flash or hashtag – those days are gone. Now women are taking the stage, doing the things that men around the world are doing, like trading bullets in gun-fights. These wives are not living a normal life, how?  their husbands are involved with gangs, some of their husbands become targeted by enemy mobsters, The wives are definitely not living a nice and quiet life as they hoped. Dangerous mobsters, oh yeah, dangerous mobsters, they got weapons, the capability and also they got sources – friends. Now what is a widow? a woman married to man who was once alive, was been the key-word. These Widows have things in common and its not just the fact that they each lost of their husbands, but also there is another reason as to how they are widows. Viola Davis, the same lady who playing Amanda Walla in the Dc Cinematic, she has got to be the ring-leader of this group. There is going to be a lot of blood , a lot bruises and a lot bodies as people will die. These Widows, are going to mingle with gangsters, mobsters for that matter, very few have tackled with gangsters and have survived. We also need keep in mind that there is a sick-minded boss who is forcing these women to finish what their husbands failed to do. Survival becomes the objective for these women who have lost their husbands, obviously it is not going to be easy. Expect drugs, expect criminal activity, murder, and feel  free to take a trip into the underground, a.k.a the black-market where criminal activity remains functional, that is until it is raid by police or FBI.

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Ad For Sale at low cost Husbands go to work, wives stay at home and watch over the house, clean the house like housewives, great days like the 50's or 60's of even the 70's, well news flash or hashtag - those days are gone.

[newslegendry]

Despite protests and a pandemic, law enforcement are killing people at a rate consistent with previous yearsLos Angeles police officers have continued to kill civilians at alarming rates and under questionable circumstances in the last three months, despite a summer of unprecedented activism and growing political pressure from lawmakers.Most recently, two deputies with the Los Angeles sheriff’s department (LASD) fatally shot a bicyclist, 29-year-old Dijon Kizzee, who was fleeing after officers tried to stop him for an alleged “vehicle code” violation. The killing on Monday of yet another Black man in South LA was one of more than 10 fatal police shootings in the LA region since the George Floyd protests erupted at the end of May.“If they are killing in this climate, even with the light that has been shined on this, then it’s obvious that it’s their intent,” said Myesha Lopez, 35, whose father was killed by LASD in June. “I think the protests are only making them more agitated, more trigger-happy, more volatile, more unstable. I don’t believe these officers have the ability to reform themselves.”Police leaders have put forward accounts of each killing that they say justify the use of force. But civil rights activists and victims’ families say the repeated bloodshed is a sign that police continue to escalate conflicts and resort to violence, even in the most routine of encounters – and that a more radical response is needed to prevent the next tragedy. Steady killings during protests and pandemicPolice shoot an average of three to four people in LA county each month, or roughly 45 victims each year, according to an analysis by the LA Times. In the last two decades, officers have killed more than 1,000 people in the county, according to Youth Justice Coalition (YJC), an activist group.Despite the pandemic shutdowns and heightened attention to police brutality, LA law enforcement is killing civilians at a rate that appears to be fairly consistent with previous years. From the start of 2020 through June, police in the county have killed at least 23 people, YJC says.“It’s like there’s no end to it, it just keeps happening,” said Lupita Carballo, a 21-year YJC organizer who lives in South LA, near the site of the latest killing.Since the end of May, when mass protests erupted in LA, officers have fatally shot 11 people, according to Black Lives Matter LA, which also tracks killings. The sheriff’s department, which is separate from the LA police department (LAPD) and patrols areas outside of the city, was responsible for seven of these deaths. > If they are killing in this climate, even with the light that has been shined on this, then it’s obvious that it’s their intent> > Myesha LopezLASD is the largest county police agency in the US, with jurisdiction in nearly 200 different towns and cities, and has a track record of brutality and controversial killings, racial profiling and corruption cases.LASD scandals have piled up this summer at a dizzying pace. On 18 June, during the height of protests, an LASD Compton deputy killed Andres Guardado, an 18-year-old security guard who was fleeing and shot five times in the back. Recently, a deputy whistleblower alleged that Compton was home to a gang of violent deputies who have violated civilians’ rights and used excessive force.In another LASD unit, more than two dozen deputies faced discipline in August for their links to a gang of tattooed officers, and a high-ranking official was reassigned after he said Guardado “chose his fate”. One lawsuit filed last month further accused LASD of fabricating a story and withholding evidence.“It’s a reign of terror,” said Paula Minor, a BLM activist in LA. “The sheriff’s department does whatever they want to do, and they know that no one will be held accountable.”In LASD’s initial account of Dijon Kizzee’s killing this week, a spokesperson alleged that he had dropped a bundle of clothes while fleeing and the deputies spotted a handgun. The agency later claimed he “made a motion” toward the gun, and also accused the man of punching a deputy, though the officers did not sustain any injuries. Witnesses disputed the police account, and a family attorney said it appeared police shot at him 15 to 20 times. There was no body-camera footage.“People run because of their innate fear of police,” said Marina Vergara, a South LA resident whose brother, Daniel Hernandez, was killed by police in April. She noted that some neighborhood residents arm themselves for protection: “When you are in South LA, you are not afforded the second amendment. We’re not seen as citizens who are protecting ourselves. We are seen as criminals.” The forgotten victims: ‘We have no answers’Most of the summer’s killings received almost no news coverage, with the limited information released about them coming from police. In a 27 May killing of a Latino man in North Hollywood, an officer was called to a “neighbor dispute” and killed a man with a “sword”. In a 29 May killing in north LA county, police said they approached a man who was “walking on the sidewalk”, and when they saw he had a firearm, ended up taking him to the ground and killing him. In an East LA suburb on 7 June, police killed a 38-year-old who had reportedly been hit by a train; police said when they approached him he had a knife.One victim who did not become a hashtag is Michael Thomas, a 61-year-old grandfather killed by LASD deputies on 11 June inside his home in Lancaster, north of the city. LASD alleged that the officers were responding to a suspected domestic violence call and that Thomas, who was unarmed, reached for the officer’s gun. But Thomas’ girlfriend said the two were only having an argument, and that he was trying to stop the officers from unlawfully entering his home, citing the fourth amendment.Myesha Lopez, one of Thomas’ five daughters, said her father had watched a special on George Floyd the previous night and was terrified police would shoot him: “He said, ‘I know if I open this door, you’re going to kill me.’”The officers, it appears, did just that, fatally shooting him in the chest.Lopez said she believed that the “fact that he knew his rights incited the officer’s rage”, adding that she was devastated to learn that his girlfriend couldn’t even hold his hand or comfort her father as he lay dying. “They didn’t value his life. They didn’t care.”In the Guardado case, authorities released key documents under intense public pressure. But Lopez said she has struggled to get the most basic information from LASD, including the names of the officers, or an incident report. She said she has even begged the department to allow the officer who killed her father to speak with her anonymously, just so she can understand what happened in the final moments: “We have no answers.”Even a simple acknowledgment of the family’s pain would go a long way, she said: “We charge these people with authority over our lives, and they are unwilling to even say, ‘I’m sorry.’”The sheriff’s office did not respond to inquiries about the case. ‘The system isn’t broken’Los Angeles’ elected leaders have responded to the calls for police accountability this summer with a range of proposals – more community policing, minor cuts to police budgets, legislative efforts to prevent brutality and more.But Kizzee’s killing this week has reignited calls for a more radical and urgent response – the dismantling of the embattled sheriff’s department.Regardless of Kizzee’s final moments, activists said a suspected bike violation should never end in death, and that police can’t be trusted as first responders given how quickly they resort to lethal force.“We don’t want to pay for more training. The culture is not going to change,” said Vergara, noting that the bloodshed will stop only when officers lose the many protections that give them license to kill with impunity. And she fears that might not happen until the public in LA sees a video akin to George Floyd’s death, one that captures an entire interaction from start to finish and clearly demonstrates an officer’s disregard for human life.Lopez, Thomas’s daughter, also argued that the police should be disbanded, noting that LASD doesn’t provide safety for communities like hers, and that they often only engage in harmful acts when they are called to assist people in crisis or with other challenges.“Officers are trained to think someone is trying to take their lives, so they are trained to kill,” said Lopez, noting she has never called police. “You can’t say that the system is broken. It’s doing what it was intended to do. It’s operating at optimum level.”Lopez knew she wanted to get in engaged in local activism after watching George Floyd’s death. In June, she wrote to the mayor of Ontario, the southern California city where she lives, and outlined her own experiences with police over the years and the ways officers mistreat Black families like hers. She called on city leaders to stand up to systemic racism: “I tell you about us so that you are convinced that we matter.”On 10 June, a police official responded to her email, thanking her for her words, but suggesting the George Floyd tragedy was unique and did not represent officers’ behavior.The following day, police killed her father. from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2EUrF48

http://newslegendry.blogspot.com/2020/09/reign-of-terror-summer-of-police.html

[socialjusticeartshare]

Child Trafficking & the Shame of a President

President Donald Trump thinks of himself as a champion against human trafficking. He addressed a White House Summit on the issue in January claiming there was a “humanitarian crisis” at the border fomented by criminal organizations and that “traffickers victimize countless women and children.” 

He signed an executive order and diverted $400 million in funding to combat the issue, boasting in his usual manner that “we have signed more legislation on human trafficking than any other administration has ever even thought about.” But in recent months, the administration has been found to be flouting the United States’ own anti-trafficking laws by deporting thousands of children and families seeking asylum, practically delivering them into the hands of traffickers across the border in Mexico.

Dr. Amy Cohen, executive director of Every Last One, explained to me in an interview that under the Trump administration’s so-called “Remain in Mexico” program, “the United States has been essentially feeding vulnerable migrant children and families to cartel traffickers in Mexico continuously.” The program, officially known by the Orwellian-sounding title of “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP), sends immigrants seeking entry into the United States across the border to Mexico to await the adjudication of their cases. While the Department of Homeland Security claimed that MPP would “decrease the… ability of smugglers and traffickers to prey on vulnerable populations,” in fact it does the opposite.

But if we care about children and about protecting them from horrific torture and abuse, Trump’s role as Child-Trafficker-in-Chief ought to be central to our election discourse.

Cohen elaborated on this horrific phenomenon, saying, “migrants are dropped off with nothing on the other side of the border, with no shelter, with no protection, with no food, with no money. And within minutes, they are picked up by cartel gangs that are waiting.” As a child and family psychiatrist who works closely with traumatized migrant children, she did not mince words, saying that families are, “kidnapped and used for extortion, which is a form of trafficking. Sometimes they are tortured. Sometimes they are raped. Children are compelled to watch. Sometimes children themselves are raped.”

The only way to view the outcome of this policy is that the United States is actively participating in a trafficking operation. The Trump administration cannot claim ignorance of the outcome of MPP. According to Cohen, “This is happening in cities literally all along the border. This is not a secret; this is widespread.” So extensive is the abuse that according to her, “The vast majority of asylum seekers who we’ve placed into the MPP program have at one time or another experienced at least one, sometimes multiple, episodes of what I would consider trafficking, of kidnapping, and some form of psychological or physical torture.”

Because of the extreme danger that the Trump administration has put families in, according to Cohen it has “forced many parents into a decision” about whether to keep their children with them or send them unaccompanied across the U.S. border.

But under cover of the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government has accelerated the expulsion of even unaccompanied children to Mexico and Central America—in violation of federal law. The Associated Press explained that “More than 2,000 unaccompanied children have been expelled since March under an emergency declaration enacted by the Trump administration, which has cited the coronavirus in refusing to provide them protections under federal anti-trafficking and asylum laws.”

Now reports have emerged of the government hiring a private security and transportation firm to move immigrant families and children into hotels in the United States before expelling them. According to the New York Times, which broke the story, the Trump administration has created “a largely unregulated shadow system of detention and swift expulsions without the safeguards that are intended to protect the most vulnerable migrants.” Children, some as young as one year old, are being cared for in hotels like Best Western and Hampton Inn by private security personnel who have no childcare training.

Cohen says advocates like her believe that “this has been a way for the United States to try to hide a number of these children who they are deporting.” Those children held in government facilities have to be registered as having entered the United States, which then triggers legal protections for them. But by holding children in hotels, effectively off the books and out of public view, “government attorneys are denying that they are actually in the custody” of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, says Cohen. Bizarrely, they are claiming that the children are in the custody of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) over concerns of COVID-19, and thereby flouting the legal mandate known as the Flores Settlement to maintain the safety, care, and oversight of the children.

Where the children end up once they are removed from the U.S. is not known, and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency will not say. According to Reuters, “Between April and June, U.S. officials arrested more than 3,300 unaccompanied children on the southwest border, but CBP has declined to say how many have been expelled under the new process or give a breakdown of arrests by nationality for that time period.” During that same time frame, out of the thousands of children apprehended, only about 160 remain in U.S. custody.

It is ironic, to say the least, that some of Trump’s most loyal followers are conspiracy theorists who label themselves QAnon claiming that the president is facing off against a “cabal of Democratic pedophiles.” So mainstream is this movement that one of its followers just won a GOP congressional primary in Georgia. QAnon is now appropriating the social media hashtag #SaveTheChildren and promoting fantastical claims of a widespread child sex trafficking ring. Its followers have even joined the anti-trafficking movement in the United States. But they have entirely ignored the very real trafficking and exploitation of children at the U.S. border that their president has unleashed.

More than two years ago, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions claimed that the government cared about children when he officially announced Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, saying, “If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law.” It was a thinly veiled attempt to punish those fleeing poverty and violence for a better life in America. And while mass public outrage forced Trump to back off (he signed an executive order in June 2018 to end what his own discretionary policy initiated), in truth the torture and trauma facing immigrant families did not end. It was simply moved out of our view across the border into even more dangerous conditions.

As America hurtles toward November 3 with a desperation unlike any we’ve felt for previous presidential elections, the issue of how President Trump has treated immigrant families and children has been largely off the radar. But if we care about children and about protecting them from horrific torture and abuse, Trump’s role as Child-Trafficker-in-Chief ought to be central to our election discourse.

Article Source

[noisyunknownturtle]

Robinhood Outages During Historic Price Action Sparks Heated Community Reaction

“Robinhood, a pioneer of commission-free investing, gives you more ways to make your money work harder.” At least, that’s what is stated on the website of Robinhood, the popular stock and cryptocurrency trading app. However, the app’s recent outages on March 2 and March 9 have shown that fancy words on landing pages are insufficient to make an application reliable — and now, traders are starting to gang up on Robinhood.

The reason for this turn of events is that on March 2, Robinhood traders were left unable to complete exchange orders and without access to their portfolios or charts as the app suffered a major technical outage that made it inoperable for over a day. Further outages took place on March 9 and March 12, causing traders to call for a class-action lawsuit against the app’s developers in hopes of receiving some kind of compensation.

Three outrages in two weeks

Technical reliability is not Robinhood’s strong suit, and three crashes in under two weeks is unacceptable for an app with over 10 million users — or so hundreds of traders think.

The company states it will be completing a major overhaul of the systems powering the platform, despite the fact that investors and users have shelled out over $900 million for its development. The outage of March 9 left the platform inoperable until 10:25 a.m. EDT, with services being restored at 3:30 p.m. EDT, less than 30 minutes before the markets closed. Even worse, on March 12, users reported that Robinhood was down again — a situation that raised even more questions.

Disgruntled traders demand compensation

The Robinhood team repeatedly issued statements claiming that the company was working hard to fix the issues, and even offered users compensation in the amount of $15. However, traders found this to be insufficient when compared to hundreds and thousands of dollars in losses, and they are complaining that the outages left them missing out on the biggest one-day point gain in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Traders have filed complaints with United States regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and have created a Twitter account — which has over 8,000 followers — as another tool for leverage. As the @ClassRobinhood account’s profile states:

“We are actively building a case against Robinhood for their negligence and late open on March 2, 2020. They have been fined by FINRA before.” 

And there is much to be had, as Robinhood controls a significant market share. The platform is valued at $7.6 billion and is well known in the crypto community for taking no commission on transactions. In December 2019, its co-founder Vladimir Tenev revealed that over 200,000 clients had already signed up for its new app for fractional stock trading, which is supposed to be releasing soon.

Do users have anything to worry about?

Strange as it may seem in light of recent events, Robinhood has historically had the support of the SEC and FINRA. But with Mt. Gox and Coincheck still fresh in the minds of the crypto community, a third outage in a row has made millions of traders fear that Robinhood may not be able to resume operations as they once were.

It appears that users were not only unable to use the platform, but that they couldn’t withdraw their money either. Many of them point to the poor technical expertise of Robinhood and blame its developers in particular. Some have been using the hashtag #LearnToCode to protest on Twitter alongside @RobinhoodClass, which shared:

“We’ve all lost money to Robinhood today. They made the decision to push an update the night before the biggest market day since 2008. They waited 2 hours to announce the outage on social media. People have lost thousands of dollars due to negligence. This is just criminal.”

Meanwhile, some traders have more serious intentions and are threatening to sue Robinhood, or are demanding that regulators fine it. Many people support these threats of lawsuits, with Twitter user @AssadManely bluntly stating, “Let’s start the class action lawsuit.”

In addition, nearly 3,500 people have signed a Change.org petition that calls for Robinhood to be barred from FINRA and banned from any activities related to financial securities. Some have questioned Robinhood’s financial reliability. In one Twitter thread, user @xrp_Prophet wrote: 

“Magically, Robinhood can always accept your money, even when the system is ‘down’ Makes me wonder if they EVEN HAVE THE MONEY! Is this another cryptocurrency exchange scam like MtGox??”

However, some experts believe that chances are slim that there was a financial motive — or any intentional misconduct — behind the outages at Robinhood. Pankaj Balaji, the CEO of Delta Exchange, pointed to extra loads caused by high volatility as a possible reason for the outage. He told Cointelegraph:

“The technology needs to be built in a fashion that it is able to distribute the load and handle such spikes. These frequent outages expose the fact that there are issues with Robinhood’s technology and its ability to handle volume spikes in such high volatility environment.” 

Anthony Ha, a financial expert and CEO of the trading platform Webull, didn’t believe that financial problems were to blame either: 

“This most recent outage has nothing to do with their financials as Robinhood Clearing is very well capitalized. If you are referring to RH drawing from their $200mm revolver, this is a common thing in the clearing world and I do not believe there is a story there.”

More outages to come?

Robinhood’s developers are now trying to regain the trust of its users. However, the fear that more outages are an inevitable result of the underlying technological infrastructure’s imperfection has made the community call on the platform to release detailed reports on the state of the system.

In response, the development team released a blog post, in which it identified the cause of the outage as being due to heavy strain on the app’s infrastructure. The unprecedented load caused by high trading volumes led to a “thundering herd” effect that triggered a failure of the platform’s Domain Name System.

The post included further details about other factors, such as highly volatile and historic market conditions, record volume and record account sign-ups that all compiled at the most inopportune moment and led to the crash. However, in a now-deleted tweet, one user claimed that the company’s excuse was just self-glorification of the service’s high demand.

Will Robinhood take responsibility? 

Although they are signing petitions and engaging in tweetstorms, users who hope to receive any sort of compensation are likely in for a disappointing blow. Robinhood’s legal team has done its homework, as the platform’s customer agreement explicitly states that it is not liable for “temporary interruptions in service due to maintenance, Website or App changes, or failures.”

J.R. Forsyth, the founder of the blockchain project Onfo, believes that although Robinhood traders have good reason to demand compensation for lost profits, they shouldn’t expect to receive anything:

“Any financial broker who has permission to conduct operations with currencies is required to take all measures to maintain the reliability of the service and be prepared for any kind of price fluctuations or high trading volumes. This means that the exchange is fully responsible for the outage. However, traders can expect that compensations will not be paid, because according to the terms and conditions published on the official website of Robinhood, the company is not responsible for such incidents.”

Balaji also shared a similar opinion with Cointelegraph, but added that Robinhood may offer some form of payment to recoup its reputation:

“In order to retain customers Robinhood might offer some kind of benefits to its users. Customers tend to be sticky for a brokerage business and losing them can be tricky as once lost it is very difficult to bring them back.”

Furthermore, according to the terms and conditions published on Robinhood’s website, the platform is not liable for extended interruptions due to failures beyond the company’s control. This, of course, threatens the prospects of any class-action lawsuit. 

Jaian Cuttari, the CEO of the financial companies Veltrust and Bdam Foundation, told Cointelegraph that Robinhood’s decision to compensate its traders will depend on the exact extent to which the company was responsible for the outages: 

“If it was gross negligence hidden as technical outage then they can be sued for damages. If the company has a solid policy user agreement which states they are not liable for service outages then it would be difficult for users to sue as the agreement acknowledges the company is not liable in certain instances.”

This type of wording in the platform’s documentation may not stop lawyers from launching class-action lawsuits, but if they do, it would most likely only be for their own benefit and not that of the users. Speaking about possible court action, Tal Weiss, the co-founder and chief technology officer of the software analytics company OverOps, pointed out that a wisely drafted agreement can seriously hinder any legal process, adding:

“Class action suits can take years to pursue, and must meet a high legal bar. Given the unique circumstances surrounding the market which are outside the company’s control, this will be a long and hard legal challenge.”

Lawsuits are unlikely to yield any results but may be a nuisance for Robinhood, considering that it is required by FINRA and the SEC to have backup plans on hand in case of temporary interruptions. FINRA also requires “prompt and accurate processing of securities transactions” — a point that lawyers may latch onto.

While it’s not clear whether or not the company will compensate its users for their losses beyond the $15 it has already offered — or if it will be fined by regulators — Robinhood is certainly losing the trust of traders, which may lead to thousands of users leaving the platform. Balaji predicted that once Robinhood is up and running once again, users may withdraw their funds and shift to other brokers. He added:

“This would be a double whammy as not only will Robinhood lose customers but it will also lose good quality capital which will create a strain on its balance sheet.”

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The post Robinhood Outages During Historic Price Action Sparks Heated Community Reaction appeared first on For Crypto.

from For Crypto https://ift.tt/2xxkNFw

[cryptowavesxyz]

Robinhood Outages During Historic Price Action Sparks Heated Community Reaction

“Robinhood, a pioneer of commission-free investing, gives you more ways to make your money work harder.” At least, that’s what is stated on the website of Robinhood, the popular stock and cryptocurrency trading app. However, the app’s recent outages on March 2 and March 9 have shown that fancy words on landing pages are insufficient to make an application reliable — and now, traders are starting to gang up on Robinhood.

The reason for this turn of events is that on March 2, Robinhood traders were left unable to complete exchange orders and without access to their portfolios or charts as the app suffered a major technical outage that made it inoperable for over a day. Further outages took place on March 9 and March 12, causing traders to call for a class-action lawsuit against the app’s developers in hopes of receiving some kind of compensation.

Three outrages in two weeks

Technical reliability is not Robinhood’s strong suit, and three crashes in under two weeks is unacceptable for an app with over 10 million users — or so hundreds of traders think.

The company states it will be completing a major overhaul of the systems powering the platform, despite the fact that investors and users have shelled out over $900 million for its development. The outage of March 9 left the platform inoperable until 10:25 a.m. EDT, with services being restored at 3:30 p.m. EDT, less than 30 minutes before the markets closed. Even worse, on March 12, users reported that Robinhood was down again — a situation that raised even more questions.

Disgruntled traders demand compensation

The Robinhood team repeatedly issued statements claiming that the company was working hard to fix the issues, and even offered users compensation in the amount of $15. However, traders found this to be insufficient when compared to hundreds and thousands of dollars in losses, and they are complaining that the outages left them missing out on the biggest one-day point gain in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Traders have filed complaints with United States regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and have created a Twitter account — which has over 8,000 followers — as another tool for leverage. As the @ClassRobinhood account’s profile states:

“We are actively building a case against Robinhood for their negligence and late open on March 2, 2020. They have been fined by FINRA before.” 

And there is much to be had, as Robinhood controls a significant market share. The platform is valued at $7.6 billion and is well known in the crypto community for taking no commission on transactions. In December 2019, its co-founder Vladimir Tenev revealed that over 200,000 clients had already signed up for its new app for fractional stock trading, which is supposed to be releasing soon.

Do users have anything to worry about?

Strange as it may seem in light of recent events, Robinhood has historically had the support of the SEC and FINRA. But with Mt. Gox and Coincheck still fresh in the minds of the crypto community, a third outage in a row has made millions of traders fear that Robinhood may not be able to resume operations as they once were.

It appears that users were not only unable to use the platform, but that they couldn’t withdraw their money either. Many of them point to the poor technical expertise of Robinhood and blame its developers in particular. Some have been using the hashtag #LearnToCode to protest on Twitter alongside @RobinhoodClass, which shared:

“We’ve all lost money to Robinhood today. They made the decision to push an update the night before the biggest market day since 2008. They waited 2 hours to announce the outage on social media. People have lost thousands of dollars due to negligence. This is just criminal.”

Meanwhile, some traders have more serious intentions and are threatening to sue Robinhood, or are demanding that regulators fine it. Many people support these threats of lawsuits, with Twitter user @AssadManely bluntly stating, “Let’s start the class action lawsuit.”

In addition, nearly 3,500 people have signed a Change.org petition that calls for Robinhood to be barred from FINRA and banned from any activities related to financial securities. Some have questioned Robinhood’s financial reliability. In one Twitter thread, user @xrp_Prophet wrote: 

“Magically, Robinhood can always accept your money, even when the system is ‘down’ Makes me wonder if they EVEN HAVE THE MONEY! Is this another cryptocurrency exchange scam like MtGox??”

However, some experts believe that chances are slim that there was a financial motive — or any intentional misconduct — behind the outages at Robinhood. Pankaj Balaji, the CEO of Delta Exchange, pointed to extra loads caused by high volatility as a possible reason for the outage. He told Cointelegraph:

“The technology needs to be built in a fashion that it is able to distribute the load and handle such spikes. These frequent outages expose the fact that there are issues with Robinhood’s technology and its ability to handle volume spikes in such high volatility environment.” 

Anthony Ha, a financial expert and CEO of the trading platform Webull, didn’t believe that financial problems were to blame either: 

“This most recent outage has nothing to do with their financials as Robinhood Clearing is very well capitalized. If you are referring to RH drawing from their $200mm revolver, this is a common thing in the clearing world and I do not believe there is a story there.”

More outages to come?

Robinhood’s developers are now trying to regain the trust of its users. However, the fear that more outages are an inevitable result of the underlying technological infrastructure’s imperfection has made the community call on the platform to release detailed reports on the state of the system.

In response, the development team released a blog post, in which it identified the cause of the outage as being due to heavy strain on the app’s infrastructure. The unprecedented load caused by high trading volumes led to a “thundering herd” effect that triggered a failure of the platform’s Domain Name System.

The post included further details about other factors, such as highly volatile and historic market conditions, record volume and record account sign-ups that all compiled at the most inopportune moment and led to the crash. However, in a now-deleted tweet, one user claimed that the company’s excuse was just self-glorification of the service’s high demand.

Will Robinhood take responsibility? 

Although they are signing petitions and engaging in tweetstorms, users who hope to receive any sort of compensation are likely in for a disappointing blow. Robinhood’s legal team has done its homework, as the platform’s customer agreement explicitly states that it is not liable for “temporary interruptions in service due to maintenance, Website or App changes, or failures.”

J.R. Forsyth, the founder of the blockchain project Onfo, believes that although Robinhood traders have good reason to demand compensation for lost profits, they shouldn’t expect to receive anything:

“Any financial broker who has permission to conduct operations with currencies is required to take all measures to maintain the reliability of the service and be prepared for any kind of price fluctuations or high trading volumes. This means that the exchange is fully responsible for the outage. However, traders can expect that compensations will not be paid, because according to the terms and conditions published on the official website of Robinhood, the company is not responsible for such incidents.”

Balaji also shared a similar opinion with Cointelegraph, but added that Robinhood may offer some form of payment to recoup its reputation:

“In order to retain customers Robinhood might offer some kind of benefits to its users. Customers tend to be sticky for a brokerage business and losing them can be tricky as once lost it is very difficult to bring them back.”

Furthermore, according to the terms and conditions published on Robinhood’s website, the platform is not liable for extended interruptions due to failures beyond the company’s control. This, of course, threatens the prospects of any class-action lawsuit. 

Jaian Cuttari, the CEO of the financial companies Veltrust and Bdam Foundation, told Cointelegraph that Robinhood’s decision to compensate its traders will depend on the exact extent to which the company was responsible for the outages: 

“If it was gross negligence hidden as technical outage then they can be sued for damages. If the company has a solid policy user agreement which states they are not liable for service outages then it would be difficult for users to sue as the agreement acknowledges the company is not liable in certain instances.”

This type of wording in the platform’s documentation may not stop lawyers from launching class-action lawsuits, but if they do, it would most likely only be for their own benefit and not that of the users. Speaking about possible court action, Tal Weiss, the co-founder and chief technology officer of the software analytics company OverOps, pointed out that a wisely drafted agreement can seriously hinder any legal process, adding:

“Class action suits can take years to pursue, and must meet a high legal bar. Given the unique circumstances surrounding the market which are outside the company’s control, this will be a long and hard legal challenge.”

Lawsuits are unlikely to yield any results but may be a nuisance for Robinhood, considering that it is required by FINRA and the SEC to have backup plans on hand in case of temporary interruptions. FINRA also requires “prompt and accurate processing of securities transactions” — a point that lawyers may latch onto.

While it’s not clear whether or not the company will compensate its users for their losses beyond the $15 it has already offered — or if it will be fined by regulators — Robinhood is certainly losing the trust of traders, which may lead to thousands of users leaving the platform. Balaji predicted that once Robinhood is up and running once again, users may withdraw their funds and shift to other brokers. He added:

“This would be a double whammy as not only will Robinhood lose customers but it will also lose good quality capital which will create a strain on its balance sheet.”

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[coinfirst]

Robinhood Outages During Historic Price Action Sparks Heated Community Reaction

“Robinhood, a pioneer of commission-free investing, gives you more ways to make your money work harder.” At least, that’s what is stated on the website of Robinhood, the popular stock and cryptocurrency trading app. However, the app’s recent outages on March 2 and March 9 have shown that fancy words on landing pages are insufficient to make an application reliable — and now, traders are starting to gang up on Robinhood.

The reason for this turn of events is that on March 2, Robinhood traders were left unable to complete exchange orders and without access to their portfolios or charts as the app suffered a major technical outage that made it inoperable for over a day. Further outages took place on March 9 and March 12, causing traders to call for a class-action lawsuit against the app’s developers in hopes of receiving some kind of compensation.

Three outrages in two weeks

Technical reliability is not Robinhood’s strong suit, and three crashes in under two weeks is unacceptable for an app with over 10 million users — or so hundreds of traders think.

The company states it will be completing a major overhaul of the systems powering the platform, despite the fact that investors and users have shelled out over $900 million for its development. The outage of March 9 left the platform inoperable until 10:25 a.m. EDT, with services being restored at 3:30 p.m. EDT, less than 30 minutes before the markets closed. Even worse, on March 12, users reported that Robinhood was down again — a situation that raised even more questions.

Disgruntled traders demand compensation

The Robinhood team repeatedly issued statements claiming that the company was working hard to fix the issues, and even offered users compensation in the amount of $15. However, traders found this to be insufficient when compared to hundreds and thousands of dollars in losses, and they are complaining that the outages left them missing out on the biggest one-day point gain in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Traders have filed complaints with United States regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and have created a Twitter account — which has over 8,000 followers — as another tool for leverage. As the @ClassRobinhood account’s profile states:

“We are actively building a case against Robinhood for their negligence and late open on March 2, 2020. They have been fined by FINRA before.” 

And there is much to be had, as Robinhood controls a significant market share. The platform is valued at $7.6 billion and is well known in the crypto community for taking no commission on transactions. In December 2019, its co-founder Vladimir Tenev revealed that over 200,000 clients had already signed up for its new app for fractional stock trading, which is supposed to be releasing soon.

Do users have anything to worry about?

Strange as it may seem in light of recent events, Robinhood has historically had the support of the SEC and FINRA. But with Mt. Gox and Coincheck still fresh in the minds of the crypto community, a third outage in a row has made millions of traders fear that Robinhood may not be able to resume operations as they once were.

It appears that users were not only unable to use the platform, but that they couldn’t withdraw their money either. Many of them point to the poor technical expertise of Robinhood and blame its developers in particular. Some have been using the hashtag #LearnToCode to protest on Twitter alongside @RobinhoodClass, which shared:

“We’ve all lost money to Robinhood today. They made the decision to push an update the night before the biggest market day since 2008. They waited 2 hours to announce the outage on social media. People have lost thousands of dollars due to negligence. This is just criminal.”

Meanwhile, some traders have more serious intentions and are threatening to sue Robinhood, or are demanding that regulators fine it. Many people support these threats of lawsuits, with Twitter user @AssadManely bluntly stating, “Let’s start the class action lawsuit.”

In addition, nearly 3,500 people have signed a Change.org petition that calls for Robinhood to be barred from FINRA and banned from any activities related to financial securities. Some have questioned Robinhood’s financial reliability. In one Twitter thread, user @xrp_Prophet wrote: 

“Magically, Robinhood can always accept your money, even when the system is ‘down’ Makes me wonder if they EVEN HAVE THE MONEY! Is this another cryptocurrency exchange scam like MtGox??”

However, some experts believe that chances are slim that there was a financial motive — or any intentional misconduct — behind the outages at Robinhood. Pankaj Balaji, the CEO of Delta Exchange, pointed to extra loads caused by high volatility as a possible reason for the outage. He told Cointelegraph:

“The technology needs to be built in a fashion that it is able to distribute the load and handle such spikes. These frequent outages expose the fact that there are issues with Robinhood’s technology and its ability to handle volume spikes in such high volatility environment.” 

Anthony Ha, a financial expert and CEO of the trading platform Webull, didn’t believe that financial problems were to blame either: 

“This most recent outage has nothing to do with their financials as Robinhood Clearing is very well capitalized. If you are referring to RH drawing from their $200mm revolver, this is a common thing in the clearing world and I do not believe there is a story there.”

More outages to come?

Robinhood’s developers are now trying to regain the trust of its users. However, the fear that more outages are an inevitable result of the underlying technological infrastructure’s imperfection has made the community call on the platform to release detailed reports on the state of the system.

In response, the development team released a blog post, in which it identified the cause of the outage as being due to heavy strain on the app’s infrastructure. The unprecedented load caused by high trading volumes led to a “thundering herd” effect that triggered a failure of the platform’s Domain Name System.

The post included further details about other factors, such as highly volatile and historic market conditions, record volume and record account sign-ups that all compiled at the most inopportune moment and led to the crash. However, in a now-deleted tweet, one user claimed that the company’s excuse was just self-glorification of the service’s high demand.

Will Robinhood take responsibility? 

Although they are signing petitions and engaging in tweetstorms, users who hope to receive any sort of compensation are likely in for a disappointing blow. Robinhood’s legal team has done its homework, as the platform’s customer agreement explicitly states that it is not liable for “temporary interruptions in service due to maintenance, Website or App changes, or failures.”

J.R. Forsyth, the founder of the blockchain project Onfo, believes that although Robinhood traders have good reason to demand compensation for lost profits, they shouldn’t expect to receive anything:

“Any financial broker who has permission to conduct operations with currencies is required to take all measures to maintain the reliability of the service and be prepared for any kind of price fluctuations or high trading volumes. This means that the exchange is fully responsible for the outage. However, traders can expect that compensations will not be paid, because according to the terms and conditions published on the official website of Robinhood, the company is not responsible for such incidents.”

Balaji also shared a similar opinion with Cointelegraph, but added that Robinhood may offer some form of payment to recoup its reputation:

“In order to retain customers Robinhood might offer some kind of benefits to its users. Customers tend to be sticky for a brokerage business and losing them can be tricky as once lost it is very difficult to bring them back.”

Furthermore, according to the terms and conditions published on Robinhood’s website, the platform is not liable for extended interruptions due to failures beyond the company’s control. This, of course, threatens the prospects of any class-action lawsuit. 

Jaian Cuttari, the CEO of the financial companies Veltrust and Bdam Foundation, told Cointelegraph that Robinhood’s decision to compensate its traders will depend on the exact extent to which the company was responsible for the outages: 

“If it was gross negligence hidden as technical outage then they can be sued for damages. If the company has a solid policy user agreement which states they are not liable for service outages then it would be difficult for users to sue as the agreement acknowledges the company is not liable in certain instances.”

This type of wording in the platform’s documentation may not stop lawyers from launching class-action lawsuits, but if they do, it would most likely only be for their own benefit and not that of the users. Speaking about possible court action, Tal Weiss, the co-founder and chief technology officer of the software analytics company OverOps, pointed out that a wisely drafted agreement can seriously hinder any legal process, adding:

“Class action suits can take years to pursue, and must meet a high legal bar. Given the unique circumstances surrounding the market which are outside the company’s control, this will be a long and hard legal challenge.”

Lawsuits are unlikely to yield any results but may be a nuisance for Robinhood, considering that it is required by FINRA and the SEC to have backup plans on hand in case of temporary interruptions. FINRA also requires “prompt and accurate processing of securities transactions” — a point that lawyers may latch onto.

While it’s not clear whether or not the company will compensate its users for their losses beyond the $15 it has already offered — or if it will be fined by regulators — Robinhood is certainly losing the trust of traders, which may lead to thousands of users leaving the platform. Balaji predicted that once Robinhood is up and running once again, users may withdraw their funds and shift to other brokers. He added:

“This would be a double whammy as not only will Robinhood lose customers but it will also lose good quality capital which will create a strain on its balance sheet.”

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The post Robinhood Outages During Historic Price Action Sparks Heated Community Reaction appeared first on Coin First.

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[angryconnoisseurface]

Robinhood Outages During Historic Price Action Sparks Heated Community Reaction

“Robinhood, a pioneer of commission-free investing, gives you more ways to make your money work harder.” At least, that’s what is stated on the website of Robinhood, the popular stock and cryptocurrency trading app. However, the app’s recent outages on March 2 and March 9 have shown that fancy words on landing pages are insufficient to make an application reliable — and now, traders are starting to gang up on Robinhood.

The reason for this turn of events is that on March 2, Robinhood traders were left unable to complete exchange orders and without access to their portfolios or charts as the app suffered a major technical outage that made it inoperable for over a day. Further outages took place on March 9 and March 12, causing traders to call for a class-action lawsuit against the app’s developers in hopes of receiving some kind of compensation.

Three outrages in two weeks

Technical reliability is not Robinhood’s strong suit, and three crashes in under two weeks is unacceptable for an app with over 10 million users — or so hundreds of traders think.

The company states it will be completing a major overhaul of the systems powering the platform, despite the fact that investors and users have shelled out over $900 million for its development. The outage of March 9 left the platform inoperable until 10:25 a.m. EDT, with services being restored at 3:30 p.m. EDT, less than 30 minutes before the markets closed. Even worse, on March 12, users reported that Robinhood was down again — a situation that raised even more questions.

Disgruntled traders demand compensation

The Robinhood team repeatedly issued statements claiming that the company was working hard to fix the issues, and even offered users compensation in the amount of $15. However, traders found this to be insufficient when compared to hundreds and thousands of dollars in losses, and they are complaining that the outages left them missing out on the biggest one-day point gain in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Traders have filed complaints with United States regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and have created a Twitter account — which has over 8,000 followers — as another tool for leverage. As the @ClassRobinhood account’s profile states:

“We are actively building a case against Robinhood for their negligence and late open on March 2, 2020. They have been fined by FINRA before.” 

And there is much to be had, as Robinhood controls a significant market share. The platform is valued at $7.6 billion and is well known in the crypto community for taking no commission on transactions. In December 2019, its co-founder Vladimir Tenev revealed that over 200,000 clients had already signed up for its new app for fractional stock trading, which is supposed to be releasing soon.

Do users have anything to worry about?

Strange as it may seem in light of recent events, Robinhood has historically had the support of the SEC and FINRA. But with Mt. Gox and Coincheck still fresh in the minds of the crypto community, a third outage in a row has made millions of traders fear that Robinhood may not be able to resume operations as they once were.

It appears that users were not only unable to use the platform, but that they couldn’t withdraw their money either. Many of them point to the poor technical expertise of Robinhood and blame its developers in particular. Some have been using the hashtag #LearnToCode to protest on Twitter alongside @RobinhoodClass, which shared:

“We’ve all lost money to Robinhood today. They made the decision to push an update the night before the biggest market day since 2008. They waited 2 hours to announce the outage on social media. People have lost thousands of dollars due to negligence. This is just criminal.”

Meanwhile, some traders have more serious intentions and are threatening to sue Robinhood, or are demanding that regulators fine it. Many people support these threats of lawsuits, with Twitter user @AssadManely bluntly stating, “Let’s start the class action lawsuit.”

In addition, nearly 3,500 people have signed a Change.org petition that calls for Robinhood to be barred from FINRA and banned from any activities related to financial securities. Some have questioned Robinhood’s financial reliability. In one Twitter thread, user @xrp_Prophet wrote: 

“Magically, Robinhood can always accept your money, even when the system is ‘down’ Makes me wonder if they EVEN HAVE THE MONEY! Is this another cryptocurrency exchange scam like MtGox??”

However, some experts believe that chances are slim that there was a financial motive — or any intentional misconduct — behind the outages at Robinhood. Pankaj Balaji, the CEO of Delta Exchange, pointed to extra loads caused by high volatility as a possible reason for the outage. He told Cointelegraph:

“The technology needs to be built in a fashion that it is able to distribute the load and handle such spikes. These frequent outages expose the fact that there are issues with Robinhood’s technology and its ability to handle volume spikes in such high volatility environment.” 

Anthony Ha, a financial expert and CEO of the trading platform Webull, didn’t believe that financial problems were to blame either: 

“This most recent outage has nothing to do with their financials as Robinhood Clearing is very well capitalized. If you are referring to RH drawing from their $200mm revolver, this is a common thing in the clearing world and I do not believe there is a story there.”

More outages to come?

Robinhood’s developers are now trying to regain the trust of its users. However, the fear that more outages are an inevitable result of the underlying technological infrastructure’s imperfection has made the community call on the platform to release detailed reports on the state of the system.

In response, the development team released a blog post, in which it identified the cause of the outage as being due to heavy strain on the app’s infrastructure. The unprecedented load caused by high trading volumes led to a “thundering herd” effect that triggered a failure of the platform’s Domain Name System.

The post included further details about other factors, such as highly volatile and historic market conditions, record volume and record account sign-ups that all compiled at the most inopportune moment and led to the crash. However, in a now-deleted tweet, one user claimed that the company’s excuse was just self-glorification of the service’s high demand.

Will Robinhood take responsibility? 

Although they are signing petitions and engaging in tweetstorms, users who hope to receive any sort of compensation are likely in for a disappointing blow. Robinhood’s legal team has done its homework, as the platform’s customer agreement explicitly states that it is not liable for “temporary interruptions in service due to maintenance, Website or App changes, or failures.”

J.R. Forsyth, the founder of the blockchain project Onfo, believes that although Robinhood traders have good reason to demand compensation for lost profits, they shouldn’t expect to receive anything:

“Any financial broker who has permission to conduct operations with currencies is required to take all measures to maintain the reliability of the service and be prepared for any kind of price fluctuations or high trading volumes. This means that the exchange is fully responsible for the outage. However, traders can expect that compensations will not be paid, because according to the terms and conditions published on the official website of Robinhood, the company is not responsible for such incidents.”

Balaji also shared a similar opinion with Cointelegraph, but added that Robinhood may offer some form of payment to recoup its reputation:

“In order to retain customers Robinhood might offer some kind of benefits to its users. Customers tend to be sticky for a brokerage business and losing them can be tricky as once lost it is very difficult to bring them back.”

Furthermore, according to the terms and conditions published on Robinhood’s website, the platform is not liable for extended interruptions due to failures beyond the company’s control. This, of course, threatens the prospects of any class-action lawsuit. 

Jaian Cuttari, the CEO of the financial companies Veltrust and Bdam Foundation, told Cointelegraph that Robinhood’s decision to compensate its traders will depend on the exact extent to which the company was responsible for the outages: 

“If it was gross negligence hidden as technical outage then they can be sued for damages. If the company has a solid policy user agreement which states they are not liable for service outages then it would be difficult for users to sue as the agreement acknowledges the company is not liable in certain instances.”

This type of wording in the platform’s documentation may not stop lawyers from launching class-action lawsuits, but if they do, it would most likely only be for their own benefit and not that of the users. Speaking about possible court action, Tal Weiss, the co-founder and chief technology officer of the software analytics company OverOps, pointed out that a wisely drafted agreement can seriously hinder any legal process, adding:

“Class action suits can take years to pursue, and must meet a high legal bar. Given the unique circumstances surrounding the market which are outside the company’s control, this will be a long and hard legal challenge.”

Lawsuits are unlikely to yield any results but may be a nuisance for Robinhood, considering that it is required by FINRA and the SEC to have backup plans on hand in case of temporary interruptions. FINRA also requires “prompt and accurate processing of securities transactions” — a point that lawyers may latch onto.

While it’s not clear whether or not the company will compensate its users for their losses beyond the $15 it has already offered — or if it will be fined by regulators — Robinhood is certainly losing the trust of traders, which may lead to thousands of users leaving the platform. Balaji predicted that once Robinhood is up and running once again, users may withdraw their funds and shift to other brokers. He added:

“This would be a double whammy as not only will Robinhood lose customers but it will also lose good quality capital which will create a strain on its balance sheet.”

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The post Robinhood Outages During Historic Price Action Sparks Heated Community Reaction appeared first on Tip Crypto.

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[coinretreat]

Robinhood Outages During Historic Price Action Sparks Heated Community Reaction

“Robinhood, a pioneer of commission-free investing, gives you more ways to make your money work harder.” At least, that’s what is stated on the website of Robinhood, the popular stock and cryptocurrency trading app. However, the app’s recent outages on March 2 and March 9 have shown that fancy words on landing pages are insufficient to make an application reliable — and now, traders are starting to gang up on Robinhood.

The reason for this turn of events is that on March 2, Robinhood traders were left unable to complete exchange orders and without access to their portfolios or charts as the app suffered a major technical outage that made it inoperable for over a day. Further outages took place on March 9 and March 12, causing traders to call for a class-action lawsuit against the app’s developers in hopes of receiving some kind of compensation.

Three outrages in two weeks

Technical reliability is not Robinhood’s strong suit, and three crashes in under two weeks is unacceptable for an app with over 10 million users — or so hundreds of traders think.

The company states it will be completing a major overhaul of the systems powering the platform, despite the fact that investors and users have shelled out over $900 million for its development. The outage of March 9 left the platform inoperable until 10:25 a.m. EDT, with services being restored at 3:30 p.m. EDT, less than 30 minutes before the markets closed. Even worse, on March 12, users reported that Robinhood was down again — a situation that raised even more questions.

Disgruntled traders demand compensation

The Robinhood team repeatedly issued statements claiming that the company was working hard to fix the issues, and even offered users compensation in the amount of $15. However, traders found this to be insufficient when compared to hundreds and thousands of dollars in losses, and they are complaining that the outages left them missing out on the biggest one-day point gain in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Traders have filed complaints with United States regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and have created a Twitter account — which has over 8,000 followers — as another tool for leverage. As the @ClassRobinhood account’s profile states:

“We are actively building a case against Robinhood for their negligence and late open on March 2, 2020. They have been fined by FINRA before.” 

And there is much to be had, as Robinhood controls a significant market share. The platform is valued at $7.6 billion and is well known in the crypto community for taking no commission on transactions. In December 2019, its co-founder Vladimir Tenev revealed that over 200,000 clients had already signed up for its new app for fractional stock trading, which is supposed to be releasing soon.

Do users have anything to worry about?

Strange as it may seem in light of recent events, Robinhood has historically had the support of the SEC and FINRA. But with Mt. Gox and Coincheck still fresh in the minds of the crypto community, a third outage in a row has made millions of traders fear that Robinhood may not be able to resume operations as they once were.

It appears that users were not only unable to use the platform, but that they couldn’t withdraw their money either. Many of them point to the poor technical expertise of Robinhood and blame its developers in particular. Some have been using the hashtag #LearnToCode to protest on Twitter alongside @RobinhoodClass, which shared:

“We’ve all lost money to Robinhood today. They made the decision to push an update the night before the biggest market day since 2008. They waited 2 hours to announce the outage on social media. People have lost thousands of dollars due to negligence. This is just criminal.”

Meanwhile, some traders have more serious intentions and are threatening to sue Robinhood, or are demanding that regulators fine it. Many people support these threats of lawsuits, with Twitter user @AssadManely bluntly stating, “Let’s start the class action lawsuit.”

In addition, nearly 3,500 people have signed a Change.org petition that calls for Robinhood to be barred from FINRA and banned from any activities related to financial securities. Some have questioned Robinhood’s financial reliability. In one Twitter thread, user @xrp_Prophet wrote: 

“Magically, Robinhood can always accept your money, even when the system is ‘down’ Makes me wonder if they EVEN HAVE THE MONEY! Is this another cryptocurrency exchange scam like MtGox??”

However, some experts believe that chances are slim that there was a financial motive — or any intentional misconduct — behind the outages at Robinhood. Pankaj Balaji, the CEO of Delta Exchange, pointed to extra loads caused by high volatility as a possible reason for the outage. He told Cointelegraph:

“The technology needs to be built in a fashion that it is able to distribute the load and handle such spikes. These frequent outages expose the fact that there are issues with Robinhood’s technology and its ability to handle volume spikes in such high volatility environment.” 

Anthony Ha, a financial expert and CEO of the trading platform Webull, didn’t believe that financial problems were to blame either: 

“This most recent outage has nothing to do with their financials as Robinhood Clearing is very well capitalized. If you are referring to RH drawing from their $200mm revolver, this is a common thing in the clearing world and I do not believe there is a story there.”

More outages to come?

Robinhood’s developers are now trying to regain the trust of its users. However, the fear that more outages are an inevitable result of the underlying technological infrastructure’s imperfection has made the community call on the platform to release detailed reports on the state of the system.

In response, the development team released a blog post, in which it identified the cause of the outage as being due to heavy strain on the app’s infrastructure. The unprecedented load caused by high trading volumes led to a “thundering herd” effect that triggered a failure of the platform’s Domain Name System.

The post included further details about other factors, such as highly volatile and historic market conditions, record volume and record account sign-ups that all compiled at the most inopportune moment and led to the crash. However, in a now-deleted tweet, one user claimed that the company’s excuse was just self-glorification of the service’s high demand.

Will Robinhood take responsibility? 

Although they are signing petitions and engaging in tweetstorms, users who hope to receive any sort of compensation are likely in for a disappointing blow. Robinhood’s legal team has done its homework, as the platform’s customer agreement explicitly states that it is not liable for “temporary interruptions in service due to maintenance, Website or App changes, or failures.”

J.R. Forsyth, the founder of the blockchain project Onfo, believes that although Robinhood traders have good reason to demand compensation for lost profits, they shouldn’t expect to receive anything:

“Any financial broker who has permission to conduct operations with currencies is required to take all measures to maintain the reliability of the service and be prepared for any kind of price fluctuations or high trading volumes. This means that the exchange is fully responsible for the outage. However, traders can expect that compensations will not be paid, because according to the terms and conditions published on the official website of Robinhood, the company is not responsible for such incidents.”

Balaji also shared a similar opinion with Cointelegraph, but added that Robinhood may offer some form of payment to recoup its reputation:

“In order to retain customers Robinhood might offer some kind of benefits to its users. Customers tend to be sticky for a brokerage business and losing them can be tricky as once lost it is very difficult to bring them back.”

Furthermore, according to the terms and conditions published on Robinhood’s website, the platform is not liable for extended interruptions due to failures beyond the company’s control. This, of course, threatens the prospects of any class-action lawsuit. 

Jaian Cuttari, the CEO of the financial companies Veltrust and Bdam Foundation, told Cointelegraph that Robinhood’s decision to compensate its traders will depend on the exact extent to which the company was responsible for the outages: 

“If it was gross negligence hidden as technical outage then they can be sued for damages. If the company has a solid policy user agreement which states they are not liable for service outages then it would be difficult for users to sue as the agreement acknowledges the company is not liable in certain instances.”

This type of wording in the platform’s documentation may not stop lawyers from launching class-action lawsuits, but if they do, it would most likely only be for their own benefit and not that of the users. Speaking about possible court action, Tal Weiss, the co-founder and chief technology officer of the software analytics company OverOps, pointed out that a wisely drafted agreement can seriously hinder any legal process, adding:

“Class action suits can take years to pursue, and must meet a high legal bar. Given the unique circumstances surrounding the market which are outside the company’s control, this will be a long and hard legal challenge.”

Lawsuits are unlikely to yield any results but may be a nuisance for Robinhood, considering that it is required by FINRA and the SEC to have backup plans on hand in case of temporary interruptions. FINRA also requires “prompt and accurate processing of securities transactions” — a point that lawyers may latch onto.

While it’s not clear whether or not the company will compensate its users for their losses beyond the $15 it has already offered — or if it will be fined by regulators — Robinhood is certainly losing the trust of traders, which may lead to thousands of users leaving the platform. Balaji predicted that once Robinhood is up and running once again, users may withdraw their funds and shift to other brokers. He added:

“This would be a double whammy as not only will Robinhood lose customers but it will also lose good quality capital which will create a strain on its balance sheet.”

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[shirlleycoyle]

2020 Candidates Want To Fund A Program Used To Surveil Muslims On Social Media

For Muslims across the country, surveillance is part of everyday life. From smart street lights focused on San Diego’s mosques to the entrapment of three young Somali men in Minneapolis, the surveillance is ever present. Under President Obama, the U.S. government began the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program, inspired by a similar counter-terrorism initiative in the UK called Prevent. More recently, the program has extended beyond the physical and into the digital landscape.

Despite CVE's record as a civil rights disaster, top presidential candidates are proposing that we continue to fund and expand the program. 2020 presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg have publicly expressed support for the CVE program. Harris’ domestic terrorism plan promises $2 billion over the course of 10 years, while Buttigieg pledged $1 billion. Although both Harris and Buttigieg promote the idea that CVE will be used to counter white supremacist violence, the program has historically focused on the entrapment and surveillance of Muslims.

The internet and social media have led to an evolution in surveillance, Nicole Nguyen, an assistant professor and researcher at the University of Illinois, told Motherboard. “The security industry views social media, and the internet more generally, as a key tool in how so-called terrorists recruit and radicalize.”

Intended to promote a community policing strategy to "prevent violent extremism," CVE’s pilot programming launched in three cities in 2014: Los Angeles, Boston, and Minneapolis. Those targeted for surveillance were overwhelmingly Black Muslims, including Somali youth in both Minneapolis and Boston. The Department of Homeland Security awarded the first CVE grants, totaling $10 million per year, in 2016.

During those two years, the Boston Police Department (BPD) utilized social media monitoring software called Geofeedia, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union. The program allowed BPD to scan posts collected from platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, YiKYak, and Flickr. BPD began with monitoring hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter and words associated with protest.

However, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) targeted what it referred to as “Islamic Extremism Terminology.” That included monitoring the use of basic Arabic phrases in regular conversations along with the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter. Both the BRIC and BPD’s surveillance borrowed from CVE logic that paints Muslims as inherently suspicious and, the ACLU wrote, raised “serious civil liberties concerns.”

“Even in cases where BPD searched for keywords actually related to terrorist groups, like ‘ISIS,’ a review of the posts BPD collected pursuant to that search term revealed that the surveillance turned up nothing criminal or even suspicious. The posts mentioning ISIS were either jokes or references to current events,” Privacy SOS wrote.

Although most CVE discussions focus on DHS funding, money flows through multiple sources. In 2018, Operation 250, a program started by University of Massachusetts Lowell students and faculty in the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies, received a $1 million grant from the National Institute for Justice (NIJ). While Operation 250 claims to focus on all forms of extremism and online radicalization, Fatema Ahmad, deputy director of the Muslim Justice League, noted that the organization’s own name, a nod to the claim that 250 American citizens have left to join ISIS, betrays its focus.

“I worry about youth because, I think, just broadly, society accepts surveillance of youth,” Ahmad told Motherboard. “For youth here in Boston, they are just experiencing every level of being surveilled in every moment.”

In addition to nonprofits and law enforcement, academia also plays a key role in justifying these efforts. Operation 250 partners with both Harvard and Georgia State University.

BDP stopped using Geofeedia in 2016 after the ACLU of Northern California revealed that it marketed itself as a tool to monitor protesters. But the program’s name can also be found in another city where CVE has taken root: Chicago, where police contracted with Geofeedia between 2014 and 2016.

In 2014, Chicago Public Schools received a $2,197,178 grant from the NIJ to start Connect and Redirect To Respect (CRR), a social media monitoring program that utilizes the CVE framework to target street gangs. Both counterterrorism and counter-gang strategies assume that people vulnerable to extremism, or gang violence, can be identified through risk factors. Children identified as vulnerable to gang violence are subject to interventions that may include Chicago Police Department’s gang school safety team, “composed of gang enforcement police officers with no specialized training for working with children,” Nguyen said.

“For us, identifying ‘at-risk’ students and then conducting interventions to ‘off-ramp’ them from the pathway to violence, uses CVE logics to address gang violence,” Nguyen added. “Connecting anti-Black and anti-Muslim racisms (and their intersections) is important for social movement work, even if we know that these social formations employ different narratives and create different outcomes for communities. And, importantly, many Black Muslims live at these intersections.”

In addition to CRR, Chicago is also home to Life After Hate, an organization that brands itself as helping people leave white supremacist groups. Life After Hate gained support as an “anti-racist” organization after President Donald Trump cut the organization’s CVE funding in 2017, something referenced in both Harris and Buttigieg’s campaign strategies. However, In These Times noted that the group has a “troubling history of collaborating with Islamophobic ‘war on terror’ federal programing.”

Using algorithms furthers the idea that potential terrorists can be identified through a set of checklists—even when the criteria are skewed to target Muslims

In 2016, Life After Hate applied for a DHS grant with plans to expand its work to target “jihadism”. The organization wanted to use a program developed by Moonshot CVE, a company describing itself as using technology to "disrupt violent extremism." Its program "Digital Shepherds", developed in partnership with the UK’s Home Office, would “automate the process of identifying individuals at risk of radicalization.” Life After Hate planned to do so by using “publicly available data posted on Facebook to identify individuals at risk of falling into the orbit of extremist organizations” and assigning each user a risk score.

Algorithms like Digital Shepherds that derive risk scores by weighing variables such as identification of violent extremism ideology and frequency of engagement rely on debunked radicalization theories. A discredited 2007 New York Police Department report, “Radicalization in the West,” provided the ideological foundation for the NYPD Intelligence Division’s mass surveillance of Muslims, the ACLU noted.

Using algorithms furthers the idea that potential terrorists can be identified through a set of checklists —even when the criteria are skewed to target Muslims. Issues of bias in algorithms have popped up in similar systems designed to detect hate speech, which multiple studies have found to be biased against Black people.

Social media companies themselves are not quiet bystanders but often active participants in the programs. YouTube, Google’s Jigsaw, and Moonshot CVE have all collaborated to develop the Redirect Method, which finds users searching for keywords like “ISIS” and redirects them to videos debunking the extremist group’s narratives. Facebook works with both Life After Hate and Moonshot CVE, too.

“There’s a push for social media companies to identify speech that would radicalize people or even figure out algorithms that would take people away from this path,” said Ahmad. But when algorithms are built using CVE logics that frame Muslims, and Black communities in particular, as suspicious, all that happens is anti-Black Islamophobia becomes embedded in code.

Through CVE programming and logic, social media surveillance has taken on many forms. While CVE is often referred to as a “soft” approach to counterrorism that connects youth to resources, there’s nothing soft about surveillance. As Nguyen pointed out, “This approach ignores how children receive these services on the understanding that they might be ticking timebombs or budding violent gang members, rather than children deserving of such services as children.”

2020 Candidates Want To Fund A Program Used To Surveil Muslims On Social Media syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/