Federal agencies are investigating racist mass texts sent to black people in Pa., elsewhere, after the election

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

The text messages calling for slavery were sent to black men, women and children, prompting investigations by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

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

“These reports are unacceptable,” said a statement from FCC Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel. She said the agency “takes this type of targeting very seriously.”

Although the texts varied slightly, they all instructed recipients to “get on a bus” that would transport them to a “plantation” to work as slaves, officials said. They said the messages were sent to school children and students, causing significant problems.

Whoever sent the messages used a VPN to obscure their origins, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said Thursday morning.

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said his office is receiving multiple reports of racist text messages sent to Black residents, including children. Officials said the messages appear to be part of a nationwide campaign targeting Black people in the wake of the election.

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

Brown said in an interview that it is troubling that children have been targeted, sometimes by name, in mass texts that typically rely on data sets collected on adults, such as campaign donors or magazine subscribers.

“This is an intimidating, threatening use of technology” that likely violates multiple laws, Brown said. He said investigators “will use all available tools and resources to hold whoever is behind these text messages accountable.”

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

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

Major carriers AT&T and Verizon both said it was an industry-wide problem and referred Friday to the CTIA, a wireless trade group.

The U.S. wireless industry has worked in recent days to block thousands of text messages and the numbers they are sent to, CTIA spokesman Nick Ludlum said. An industry group initiative is working with law enforcement and has “identified platforms that bad actors were using to send these messages,” he said.

These racist text messages span the country and primarily target Black Americans, and more specifically Black children as young as high school students.

Nicole, a mother in North Carolina who asked that her last name not be used because of her profession, said she was disturbed and concerned about the messages her high school daughter showed her Thursday evening. The text messages instructed her to get ready to go back to the plantation. This was her daughter’s first real experience with this kind of racism, Nicole said, and as a parent she didn’t want to have these conversations with her children.

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

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

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

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

“Whatever feelings it makes your child feel, approach it with open arms, be very receptive to it and just take it day by day.”

Several historically black students received a message with a similar tone but varied wording. Dr. Robert Greene II, an assistant professor of history at Claflin University, said he heard stories about it from his students, as well as from campus officials. Greene said he thinks the timing of these mass messages is not only intentional, but so is the focus on young Black students.

“It’s a way of saying to, especially black students, that this is the world they live in now, that this kind of outright racist harassment is becoming the norm again in American society and American politics,” Greene said. “There is no doubt about it: fear and intimidation are at the heart of what is happening with these text messages.”

This kind of criticism of the black community is not a new phenomenon. Physical violence was how intimidation occurred in the early 20th century and around the time of World War II through oppressive methods such as poll taxes, Greene said.

But what makes these times different is the form of communication and the introduction of technology makes this a sinister tactic, he added.

“The technology that we take for granted, that brings us all together through the internet, through social media, through cell phones, is now also being used to intimidate people,” Greene said. “It adds to the atmosphere of fear and paranoia. Certainly, there’s a sense of, if they can text me, how else can they contact me? What else do they know about me personally?”

Those responsible for sending the messages profited from a bulk messaging industry designed to help legitimate marketers reach people on their phones.

“This is the primary way most Americans will communicate now,” said Cori Faklaris, an assistant professor of software and information services at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “So people who need to advertise or market services go where the people are. Unfortunately, the scammers and haters are also following suit.”

Faklaris said they also likely used collections of personal data that can be purchased relatively cheaply in some places on the Internet. When combined with other data, such as places of residence or previous purchases, Faklaris says it can be easy to use machine learning algorithms to infer demographic information.

“All this means is that it may be easier than most people realize to make a very good guess as to the race or ethnicity of the person associated with that phone number,” she said.

Unlike email or social media, the US regulates text messaging as a utility and tries to remain neutral about content shared via text messaging. As a result, there is little filtering that could have blocked this week’s flood of racist messages, Faklaris said. There is no universal system in the U.S. for flagging texts as suspicious or unwanted before viewing them, she said.

But after an explosion of text message scams that has accelerated during the pandemic, Faklaris says law enforcement agencies have developed better investigative tools and that it “should be relatively easy for authorities to track this specific attack.”