theroot--2020-06-03--An Artist Without 'Equals': Remembering Artist-Activist Emma Amos

Emma Amos may not have enjoyed the same level of name recognition of some of her contemporaries in the art world ; but as an artist addressing sexism and racism in her work years before the term “ intersectionality “ was coined , she was a pivotal figure in what she called “ a man ’ s scene , black or white.
” A member of the brief but renowned African-American artists ’ collective Spiral , on May 21 , Amos died of complications of Alzheimer ’ s disease in her home in Bedford , N.H. She was 83 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the New York Times reports Amos was of multiracial heritage but raised within a community of black intellectuals in Atlanta , in which the likes of Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B .
Du Bois were entertained at her parents ’ home .
Both would eventually make their way into Amos ’ art , the Times notes .
Beginning formal art training at age 11 , by her teens , Amos ’ artwork was being exhibited in the former Atlanta University , now part of HBCU Clark Atlanta .
Amos would major in art @ @ @ @ @ @ @ further her studied in London before making her way to New York City , where she entered graduate school at N.Y.U .
While still a student , in 1964 , she was invited to join Spiral , then a collective formed in response to the March on Washington .
The group included well-established black artists like Romare Bearden and family friend Hale Woodruff , who reportedly extended the invitation to Amos .
The Times writes that “ the group was formed to discuss and debate the political role of black artists and their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a skilled painter and weaver , was the only woman in the collective , which would disband in 1966 .
Nevertheless , she was already inured to the sexism of the art world .
“ I probably seemed less threatening to their egos , as I was not yet of much consequence , ” she said of the male members of Spiral , the Times reports , citing a 1999 Art Journal profile written by Amos .
After completing her graduate degree , Amos began to teach in nearby New Jersey , first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Industrial Art , where she taught textile design , and later at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University until her retirement in 2008 .
She also opened a shop on New York City ’ s Bleeker Street called Threadbare , which specialized in yarn and weaving , and created and co-hosted a crafts show called Show of Hands , which aired on public broadcasting in Boston in the late ‘ 70s .
During those decades , the Times described her evolving body of work as such : As she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Amos was often the subject of her own work , examples of which are her Wonder Woman-themed self-portrait “ Tightrope ” ( 1994 ) , and 1992 painting “ Equals , ” which combined photography , fabric and paint to render a visual indictment of American ideals : the stars of the nation ’ s flag are displaced by a sharecropper ’ s shack as patches of Malcolm X ’ s visage stare out from the perimeter and Amos ’ figure “ is seen floating in free fall , ” writes the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more famous artists in her imagery ; specific examples include Gauguin ’ s iconic Tahitian women and the work of portraitist Lucian Freud .
Like many of us , Amos was “ skeptical of the overwhelmingly white feminist movement , ” the Times reports .
In a 1991 interview in Art Papers , she explained : “ From what I heard of feminist discussions in the park , the experiences of black women of any class were left out .
I came from a line of working women who were not only mothers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and who had been treated as equals by their black husbands .
I felt I could not afford to spend precious time away from studio and family to listen to stories so far removed from my own.
” A mother to a daughter and son herself , Amos wouldn ’ t have any formal involvement in the movement before the mid-1980s , an era which coincided with the rise of black feminists—or what writer Alice Walker termed “ womanists.
” Joining the political feminist collective Heresies in 1984 , Amos wrote in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had always hoped existed : serious , knowledgeable , take-care-of-business feminists giving time to publish the art and writings of women.
” Amos would later also become a member of the more provocative and still active art-activist group Guerrilla Girls .
“ It ’ s always been my contention that for me , a black woman artist , to walk into the studio is a political act , ” she said , the Times reports .
Despite industry recognition—including placements in several museums and a 2004 lifetime achievement award from the Women ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ work surged in the years before her death .
In 2017 , her work was featured in two lauded and widely toured retrospectives : “ Soul of a Nation : Art in the Age of Black Power ” and “ We Wanted a Revolution : Black Radical Women , 1965–85.
” In 2018 , her work was included in the Brazilian exhibition , “ Histórias Afro-Atlânticas ” A touring solo retrospective , “ Emma Amos : Color Odyssey , ” is scheduled to open in in 2021 at the Georgia Museum of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Times ’ obituary notes , Amos ’ death , just four days before the murder of George Floyd , occurred at a moment in American history as fraught with racial tension and human rights concerns as any in her 83 years , making her work as relevant as ever .

Maiysha Kai on The Glow Up, shared by Maiysha Kai to The Root

Emma Amos may not have enjoyed the same level of name recognition of some of her contemporaries in the art world; but as an artist addressing sexism and racism in her work years before the term “intersectionality “ was coined, she was a pivotal figure in what she called “a man’s scene, black or white.” A member of the brief but renowned African-American artists’ collective Spiral, on May 21, Amos died of complications of Alzheimer’s disease in her home in Bedford, N.H. She was 83.
Born Emma Veoria Amos in 1937, the New York Times reports Amos was of multiracial heritage but raised within a community of black intellectuals in Atlanta, in which the likes of Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B. Du Bois were entertained at her parents’ home. Both would eventually make their way into Amos’ art, the Times notes.
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Beginning formal art training at age 11, by her teens, Amos’ artwork was being exhibited in the former Atlanta University, now part of HBCU Clark Atlanta. Amos would major in art at Ohio’s Antioch College, further her studied in London before making her way to New York City, where she entered graduate school at N.Y.U.
While still a student, in 1964, she was invited to join Spiral, then a collective formed in response to the March on Washington. The group included well-established black artists like Romare Bearden and family friend Hale Woodruff, who reportedly extended the invitation to Amos. The Times writes that “the group was formed to discuss and debate the political role of black artists and their work”; Amos, by then a skilled painter and weaver, was the only woman in the collective, which would disband in 1966. Nevertheless, she was already inured to the sexism of the art world.
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“I probably seemed less threatening to their egos, as I was not yet of much consequence,” she said of the male members of Spiral, the Times reports, citing a 1999 Art Journal profile written by Amos.
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After completing her graduate degree, Amos began to teach in nearby New Jersey, first at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art, where she taught textile design, and later at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University until her retirement in 2008. She also opened a shop on New York City’s Bleeker Street called Threadbare, which specialized in yarn and weaving, and created and co-hosted a crafts show called Show of Hands, which aired on public broadcasting in Boston in the late ‘70s.
During those decades, the Times described her evolving body of work as such:
Ms. Amos’s paintings from the 1960s and ’70s often depicted, in bright Pop colors, scenes of black middle-class domestic life, a subject little explored in contemporary art at the time. Her work from the following decades became increasingly personal and formally experimental, combining painting, print media and photographic technology.
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As she increasingly explored themes of race and gender, Amos was often the subject of her own work, examples of which are her Wonder Woman-themed self-portrait “Tightrope” (1994), and 1992 painting “Equals,” which combined photography, fabric and paint to render a visual indictment of American ideals: the stars of the nation’s flag are displaced by a sharecropper’s shack as patches of Malcolm X’s visage stare out from the perimeter and Amos’ figure “is seen floating in free fall,” writes the Times. Amos would occasionally also reference more famous artists in her imagery; specific examples include Gauguin’s iconic Tahitian women and the work of portraitist Lucian Freud.
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Like many of us, Amos was “skeptical of the overwhelmingly white feminist movement,” the Times reports. In a 1991 interview in Art Papers, she explained: “From what I heard of feminist discussions in the park, the experiences of black women of any class were left out. I came from a line of working women who were not only mothers, but breadwinners, cultured, educated, and who had been treated as equals by their black husbands. I felt I could not afford to spend precious time away from studio and family to listen to stories so far removed from my own.”
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A mother to a daughter and son herself, Amos wouldn’t have any formal involvement in the movement before the mid-1980s, an era which coincided with the rise of black feminists—or what writer Alice Walker termed “womanists.” Joining the political feminist collective Heresies in 1984, Amos wrote in Art Journal: “the group I had always hoped existed: serious, knowledgeable, take-care-of-business feminists giving time to publish the art and writings of women.” Amos would later also become a member of the more provocative and still active art-activist group Guerrilla Girls.
“It’s always been my contention that for me, a black woman artist, to walk into the studio is a political act,” she said, the Times reports.
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Despite industry recognition—including placements in several museums and a 2004 lifetime achievement award from the Women’s Caucus for Art—public interest in Amos’ work surged in the years before her death. In 2017, her work was featured in two lauded and widely toured retrospectives: “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” and “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85.” In 2018, her work was included in the Brazilian exhibition, “Histórias Afro-Atlânticas” A touring solo retrospective, “Emma Amos: Color Odyssey,” is scheduled to open in in 2021 at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, Ga.
As the Times’ obituary notes, Amos’ death, just four days before the murder of George Floyd, occurred at a moment in American history as fraught with racial tension and human rights concerns as any in her 83 years, making her work as relevant as ever.


theroot--2020-06-03--Get a Jump on Spring Cleaning Without Cleaning Out Your Wallet With These Dyson Deals

The best Dyson deals on vacuums and air purifiers for June 2020 are here .
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Molly Horan and Andrew Hayward on Roundups, shared by Gabe Carey to The Root

Featured Deal: Dyson V7 Animal (Refurbished) | $170 | Walmart
The best Dyson deals on vacuums and air purifiers for July 2021 are here.
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It’s no slender stick-like vacuum, but this multi-use machine is powerful. Equipped with a HEPA filter, the Dyson Ball promises to tackle dirt and allergens, while accessories like a reach wand allow you to clean high molding and even ceiling cobwebs. Save $44 at Amazon.
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theroot--2020-06-03--For John Boyega, Black Lives Matter More Than the Possibility of Burning Hollywood Bridges

*Cue Star Wars theme* A short time ago in a country far , far away , John Boyega once again proved that he ’ s about that life—black life , to be specific .
On Wednesday , many gathered to participate in the Black Lives Matter protest and demonstration located in Hyde Park , a public park in Central London .
In addition to the movement touching every single state in the U.S. , the protests have had a major global impact , as well .
“ It ’ s a problem that ’ s happening worldwide .
In every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racism is happening and it needs to be addressed in every single corner .
That is why I am doing this today , ” Black Lives Matter London organizer Naomi Smith told the Evening Standard .
Boyega joined the uproarious protest in his hometown , which was sparked after the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd .
Today many descended on Hyde Park , where Star Wars actor Boyega referenced two other black Americans who controversially died in the US , as well as the racist UK murder of Stephen Lawrence .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ physical representation of our support for George Floyd .
We are a physical representation of our support for Sandra Bland .
We are a physical representation of our support for Trayvon Martin .
We are a physical representation of our support for Stephen Lawrence.
” “ Look I don ’ t know if I ’ m going to have a career after this but , fuck that , ” Boyega reportedly told the crowd .
The “ fuck it ” force is strong with this one—and I love every bit of it .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Star Wars fave has been about that life and has not coddled white folks ( well-meaning or otherwise ) when it comes to discussing how much he hates racists .
Frankly , if defending the rights and lives of our people leads to the loss of employment , brand sponsorship or anything else that allows us to provide for ourselves and our family , then that gives us all the more reason to fight to abolish this trash system .
Still , Black Hollywood made sure to let the record show : they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Notables such as Tracy Y. Oliver , Jordan Peele and Matthew A. Cherry have already chimed in ; Cherry , specifically , called for non-black industry players to pledge their unrelenting support for Boyega in a tweet that quickly went viral .
At one point during the protest , Boyega became reasonably emotional , screaming through the megaphone : “ Black men , we need to take care of our black women !
They are our hearts !
” Specifying this was a significant gesture , as we also try to raise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being pushed aside in the mainstream movement , such as Breonna Taylor and Nina Pop .
“ Black lives have always mattered .
We have always been important .
We have always meant something .
We have always succeeded regardless .
And now is the time .
I ain ’ t waiting , ” Boyega exclaimed to the cheering crowd .
Black Lives Matter .
That ’ s it , that ’ s all .
The end .
Fin ( n ) .

Tonja Renée Stidhum on The Grapevine, shared by Tonja Renée Stidhum to The Root

*Cue Star Wars theme* A short time ago in a country far, far away, John Boyega once again proved that he’s about that life—black life, to be specific.
On Wednesday, many gathered to participate in the Black Lives Matter protest and demonstration located in Hyde Park, a public park in Central London. In addition to the movement touching every single state in the U.S., the protests have had a major global impact, as well.
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“It’s a problem that’s happening worldwide. In every single corner of this whole universe, racism is happening and it needs to be addressed in every single corner. That is why I am doing this today,” Black Lives Matter London organizer Naomi Smith told the Evening Standard.
Boyega joined the uproarious protest in his hometown, which was sparked after the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.
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According to Metro UK:
Today many descended on Hyde Park, where Star Wars actor Boyega referenced two other black Americans who controversially died in the US, as well as the racist UK murder of Stephen Lawrence. He told demonstrators: “We are a physical representation of our support for George Floyd. We are a physical representation of our support for Sandra Bland. We are a physical representation of our support for Trayvon Martin. We are a physical representation of our support for Stephen Lawrence.”
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“Look I don’t know if I’m going to have a career after this but, fuck that,” Boyega reportedly told the crowd. The “fuck it” force is strong with this one—and I love every bit of it.
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As you may know, the 28-year-old Star Wars fave has been about that life and has not coddled white folks (well-meaning or otherwise) when it comes to discussing how much he hates racists.
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Frankly, if defending the rights and lives of our people leads to the loss of employment, brand sponsorship or anything else that allows us to provide for ourselves and our family, then that gives us all the more reason to fight to abolish this trash system.
Still, Black Hollywood made sure to let the record show: they’ve got Boyega’s back. Notables such as Tracy Y. Oliver, Jordan Peele and Matthew A. Cherry have already chimed in; Cherry, specifically, called for non-black industry players to pledge their unrelenting support for Boyega in a tweet that quickly went viral.
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At one point during the protest, Boyega became reasonably emotional, screaming through the megaphone: “Black men, we need to take care of our black women! They are our hearts!” Specifying this was a significant gesture, as we also try to raise awareness about the black women who are being pushed aside in the mainstream movement, such as Breonna Taylor and Nina Pop.
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“Black lives have always mattered. We have always been important. We have always meant something. We have always succeeded regardless. And now is the time. I ain’t waiting,” Boyega exclaimed to the cheering crowd.
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Black Lives Matter. That’s it, that’s all. The end. Fin(n).


theroot--2020-06-03--‘Damn That Statue’: Birmingham Proves Protests Work by Forcing Mayor to Confront Racism With ‘Gangst

‘Damn That Statue’: Birmingham Proves Protests Work by Forcing Mayor to Confront Racism With ‘Gangsta Shit’

Compared to most cities its size , Birmingham , Ala. , didn ’ t really have a police brutality problem .
While extrajudicial killings are always a problem , Birmingham sat near the bottom of the spectrum for American cities with 4.7 police killings per 100,000 citizens , according to Mapping Police Violence .
And curiously , as the fourth-blackest city in the nation , Birmingham is one of the few places that actually kills more white people per capita than black .
Between 2013 and 2019 , law enforcement officers in the city killed four black people and three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ white citizens are two-and-a-half times more likely to be killed by a cop .
The city also has a long history of activism .
Protests are commonplace in Birmingham .
So , when uprisings broke out across the country over the death of George Floyd , Birmingham ’ s activists began to organize .
But with the city ’ s long legacy in the civil rights movement , what could local activists complain about ?
Well , Birmingham still has racism .
First of all , it ’ s in Alabama .
Secondly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country ’ s top 50 most unequal school systems , according to Edbuild .
It ranks second in the nation for violent crime and has the 34th-most contaminated drinking water .
And did I mention it ’ s in Alabama ?
And then there are the Confederate statues .
Even though the city of Birmingham didn ’ t even exist during the Civil War , the city has three monuments to slave owners , including two Confederate statues in Linn Park , where people gathered to protest police brutality on Sund ay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actually free to protest because Alabama is one of the few places in America that closes state offices on June 1 to honor Confederate leader Jefferson Davis ( Did I mention the part about Alabama ? )
.
On Sunday , during the rally at Linn Park , the crowd grew violent until the protesters remembered where they were .
They began focusing their attention on the statue to the park ’ s namesake , Charles Linn , a Confederate sailor and industrialist who founded one of Alabama ’ s largest banks , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The crowd also damaged a statue of Thomas Jefferson , in front of the Jefferson County courthouse .
But when the crowd turned its ire on the most-hated Confederate statue in the city , the 52-foot obelisk dedicated to traitorous Civil War soldiers and sailors would not come down .
They kept trying .
The police closed in on the protesters .
They would not stop .
The statue would not come down .
Then , one of the protesters stepped in to offer some help .
“ I actually physically walked into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and attempting to knock it down , ” the protestor told The Root .
“ They actually tied a rope around the statue and attached it to a [ Dodge ] 1500 truck .
I told them , ‘ Please stand down.
’ And then I asked them , ‘ if you give me a window , I ’ ll take it down.
’ He promised the crowd that if they gave him until noon Tuesday , he would take that shit down forever .
And , if the statue didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ across the city worried that subsequent protests would be uglier and more violent than Sunday ’ s .
The promising protester knew he had to do it .
And because everyone in the crowd knew this particular protester hated that statue , they stood down for a day .
“ The reason is simple , ” Woodfin explained to The Root .
“ I ’ d rather take it down and receive the punishment from the state than have all the civil unrest in the city , the riots or someone getting hurt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he had already seen the violence in the city coming from three different groups .
“ The protesters are different from the looters and the looters are different from the anarchists , looters and rioters in the city ” Woodfin noted .
“ I do believe anarchists and the looters co-opt and exploit [ the protesters ] being there .
But I ’ m also honest , which is why I went out there .
I went out there to plead with them , to say : ‘ Listen , what you ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re doing is illegal .
However , I understand why you ’ re doing it .
So ultimately , if anybody ’ s going to do something illegal , it probably should be the city of Birmingham because the weight of us taking it down does not put any lives in jeopardy .
It does not cause any more civil unrest .
It doesn ’ t get people arrested .
Doesn ’ t put the police in a position to engage in something where there ’ s all these other soft targets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ precincts in our malls and other commercial districts.
” If this seems reasonable , there is one other thing to consider : Woodfin was essentially promising to break the law .
Three years ago , Alabama ’ s history-conscious lawmakers passed the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017 , prohibiting the “ relocation , removal , alteration , renaming , or other disturbance of any architecturally significant building , memorial building , memorial street , or monument located on public property which has been in place for 40 or more years.
” While @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Confederate memorials or white supremacist traitors to their country , it imposed a $ 25,000 fine for any municipality that violated the law .
In January 2019 , a federal judge voided the law when Birmingham city officials decided to remove a Confederate monument that was erected in a downtown park in 1905 .
After Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall appealed the decision , Birmingham came up with a workaround : They built a wooden box around the memorial to white people getting their asses kicked .
But a federal court eventually imposed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ obstructing the monument .
That still wasn ’ t enough .
In February , Alabama state Sen. Gerald Allen ( R-Tuscaloosa ) came up with a unique way to celebrate Black History Month .
He introduced a bill that increased the fine to $ 10,000 per day for any city that disrespected the sanctity of the “ lost cause ” memorials , a bill that black legislators called “ nothing but racism.
” “ Should the City of Birmingham proceed with the removal of the monument in question , based upon multiple conversations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ understand I will perform the duties assigned to me by the Act to pursue a new civil complaint against the city , ” said Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall , threatening Woodfin in a press conference the next day .
“ In the aftermath of last night ’ s violent outbreak , I have offered the City of Birmingham the support and resources of my office to restore peace to the city.
” “ Well , we already have one fine , by the way , because we lost the court case when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Woodfin told The Root .
“ We already owe $ 25,000 and they should go about collecting it.
” And then there were the death threats .
The Root has obtained audio files of phone calls from the city ’ s 911 emergency system made by mourners to the lost cause of the Confederate States of America ’ s white supremacist utopia .
The calls giving Woodfin a piece of their racist minds include such hits as : • “ If you take down that statue in Linn Park , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ na come down there with an AK-47 and start blowing the pigs away .
And the protesters .
You hear me ?
” • “ I ’ m gon na assassinate nigger Randall Woodfield [ sic ] and kill that dead nigger .
You better call that shit off right now.
” • You think I ’ m playing ?
It ’ ll be all over the news , punk ass .
I ’ m coming down there right now ( unintelligible ) to blow your fucking head off , asshole • Fuck @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you from a tree , nigger .
On Monday , cops lined up , preparing for the ensuing melee .
A GoFundMe page created to pay the penalty raised more than enough money to pay the fine .
The racists prepared to assassinate “ and kill that dead nigger ” ( After consulting with the country ’ s top dead nigger assassination experts , The Root still could not figure out how that works ) before Woodfin moved the statue .
The protesters woke up on Tuesday morning preparing to show the city @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And when the groups convened at Linn Park to celebrate or protest the statue ’ s removal , everyone was disappointed .
The statue was gone .
Using an outside contractor , Woodfin had workers disassemble the monument until about 3 a.m. Tuesday morning .
Asked if he thinks taking down the statue alleviated some of the violence and property damage seen in other cities gripped by uprisings , Woodfin answered simply : “ I don ’ t know what the symbol of oppression in other cities in America is , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a lot of cities have , unfortunately , some form of a tangible thing that represents oppression for black people .
And when you have such a vivid situation that happened to George Floyd , you got to remember—even if we are outraged every time an unarmed black man is killed by a white officer—none of us in our lifetime have ever seen an officer take his knee , put it on a man ’ s neck .
After the man dies , his knee is still on his neck .
And the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is ‘ I don ’ t give a damn about this person ’ s life.
’ You better believe in these American cities , separate from the anarchists , separate from the looters , the protesters are going to go to the site of anything they deem oppressive and find a way to demand that it not be there because this warranted outrage of not caring for black people has to come out in some way.
” Perhaps the toughest question Woodfin had to answer was not about the statue , but whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the violent protests work .
“ Yes , ” he said without hesitation .
“ They made this conversation come back to the face and heart of our city and we had a decision to make .
Let ’ s be clear , that statue was coming down.
” Aside from the dead nigger assassin squad , perhaps the person who is upset about this turn of events is the Alabama attorney general .
“ He ’ s already filed the motion with the court today that we ’ re in violation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told The Root .
So , less than 24 hours of me taking it down , he ’ s already filed a motion against us.
” But they have the money , so there should be nothing to worry about , right ?
Even if the residents miss the statue , they could read books , visit a museum or ... “ Damn that statue , ” Woodfin said before drifting into a short silence .
“ But this is Alabama , ” he added .

Compared to most cities its size, Birmingham, Ala., didn’t really have a police brutality problem. While extrajudicial killings are always a problem, Birmingham sat near the bottom of the spectrum for American cities with 4.7 police killings per 100,000 citizens, according to Mapping Police Violence. And curiously, as the fourth-blackest city in the nation, Birmingham is one of the few places that actually kills more white people per capita than black. Between 2013 and 2019, law enforcement officers in the city killed four black people and three whites, meaning the city’s white citizens are two-and-a-half times more likely to be killed by a cop.
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The city also has a long history of activism. Protests are commonplace in Birmingham. So, when uprisings broke out across the country over the death of George Floyd, Birmingham’s activists began to organize. But with the city’s long legacy in the civil rights movement, what could local activists complain about?
Well, Birmingham still has racism.
First of all, it’s in Alabama. Secondly, the city also has six of the country’s top 50 most unequal school systems, according to Edbuild. It ranks second in the nation for violent crime and has the 34th-most contaminated drinking water. And did I mention it’s in Alabama?
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And then there are the Confederate statues.
Even though the city of Birmingham didn’t even exist during the Civil War, the city has three monuments to slave owners, including two Confederate statues in Linn Park, where people gathered to protest police brutality on Sunday. Some people in the crowd were actually free to protest because Alabama is one of the few places in America that closes state offices on June 1 to honor Confederate leader Jefferson Davis (Did I mention the part about Alabama?).
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Birmingham had two Confederate statues.
On Sunday, during the rally at Linn Park, the crowd grew violent until the protesters remembered where they were. They began focusing their attention on the statue to the park’s namesake, Charles Linn, a Confederate sailor and industrialist who founded one of Alabama’s largest banks, AmSouth.
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They tore that shit down
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The crowd also damaged a statue of Thomas Jefferson, in front of the Jefferson County courthouse. But when the crowd turned its ire on the most-hated Confederate statue in the city, the 52-foot obelisk dedicated to traitorous Civil War soldiers and sailors would not come down. They kept trying. The police closed in on the protesters. They would not stop. The statue would not come down.
Then, one of the protesters stepped in to offer some help.
“I actually physically walked into a sea of protestors who were banging and attempting to knock it down,” the protestor told The Root. “They actually tied a rope around the statue and attached it to a [Dodge] 1500 truck. I told them, ‘Please stand down.’ And then I asked them, ‘if you give me a window, I’ll take it down.’
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He promised the crowd that if they gave him until noon Tuesday, he would take that shit down forever. And, if the statue didn’t come down by the deadline, people across the city worried that subsequent protests would be uglier and more violent than Sunday’s. The promising protester knew he had to do it. And because everyone in the crowd knew this particular protester hated that statue, they stood down for a day.
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The protester was Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin.
“The reason is simple,” Woodfin explained to The Root. “I’d rather take it down and receive the punishment from the state than have all the civil unrest in the city, the riots or someone getting hurt taking it down.”
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Woodfin explained that he had already seen the violence in the city coming from three different groups.
“The protesters are different from the looters and the looters are different from the anarchists, looters and rioters in the city” Woodfin noted. “I do believe anarchists and the looters co-opt and exploit [the protesters] being there. But I’m also honest, which is why I went out there. I went out there to plead with them, to say: ‘Listen, what you’re doing is wrong. What you’re doing is illegal. However, I understand why you’re doing it. So ultimately, if anybody’s going to do something illegal, it probably should be the city of Birmingham because the weight of us taking it down does not put any lives in jeopardy. It does not cause any more civil unrest. It doesn’t get people arrested. Doesn’t put the police in a position to engage in something where there’s all these other soft targets, which include police headquarters and police precincts in our malls and other commercial districts.”
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If this seems reasonable, there is one other thing to consider:
Woodfin was essentially promising to break the law.
Three years ago, Alabama’s history-conscious lawmakers passed the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017, prohibiting the “relocation, removal, alteration, renaming, or other disturbance of any architecturally significant building, memorial building, memorial street, or monument located on public property which has been in place for 40 or more years.” While the legislation made no specific mention of Confederate memorials or white supremacist traitors to their country, it imposed a $25,000 fine for any municipality that violated the law.
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In January 2019, a federal judge voided the law when Birmingham city officials decided to remove a Confederate monument that was erected in a downtown park in 1905. After Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall appealed the decision, Birmingham came up with a workaround: They built a wooden box around the memorial to white people getting their asses kicked. But a federal court eventually imposed the fine on the city for just obstructing the monument.
That still wasn’t enough.
In February, Alabama state Sen. Gerald Allen (R-Tuscaloosa) came up with a unique way to celebrate Black History Month. He introduced a bill that increased the fine to $10,000 per day for any city that disrespected the sanctity of the “lost cause” memorials, a bill that black legislators called “nothing but racism.”
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“Should the City of Birmingham proceed with the removal of the monument in question, based upon multiple conversations I have had today, city leaders understand I will perform the duties assigned to me by the Act to pursue a new civil complaint against the city,” said Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, threatening Woodfin in a press conference the next day. “In the aftermath of last night’s violent outbreak, I have offered the City of Birmingham the support and resources of my office to restore peace to the city.”
By “resources,” Marshall presumably meant “cops,” specifically, Alabama State Troopers.
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Woodfin wasn’t studying that shit. Birmingham wasn’t studying that shit.
“Well, we already have one fine, by the way, because we lost the court case when we covered the statue with the box,” Woodfin told The Root. “We already owe $25,000 and they should go about collecting it.”
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And then there were the death threats. The Root has obtained audio files of phone calls from the city’s 911 emergency system made by mourners to the lost cause of the Confederate States of America’s white supremacist utopia. The calls giving Woodfin a piece of their racist minds include such hits as:
“If you take down that statue in Linn Park, that Confederate statue, I’m gonna come down there with an AK-47 and start blowing the pigs away. And the protesters. You hear me?”
“I’m gonna assassinate nigger Randall Woodfield [sic] and kill that dead nigger. You better call that shit off right now.”
You think I’m playing? It’ll be all over the news, punk ass. I’m coming down there right now (unintelligible) to blow your fucking head off, asshole
Fuck off asshole. I’ll hang you from a tree, nigger.
Everyone waited.
On Monday, cops lined up, preparing for the ensuing melee. A GoFundMe page created to pay the penalty raised more than enough money to pay the fine. The racists prepared to assassinate “and kill that dead nigger” (After consulting with the country’s top dead nigger assassination experts, The Root still could not figure out how that works) before Woodfin moved the statue. The protesters woke up on Tuesday morning preparing to show the city and the world that they meant business. And when the groups convened at Linn Park to celebrate or protest the statue’s removal, everyone was disappointed.
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The statue was gone.
Using an outside contractor, Woodfin had workers disassemble the monument until about 3 a.m. Tuesday morning.
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Asked if he thinks taking down the statue alleviated some of the violence and property damage seen in other cities gripped by uprisings, Woodfin answered simply:
“100 percent.”
“I don’t know what the symbol of oppression in other cities in America is,” Woodfin stated. “I do know a lot of cities have, unfortunately, some form of a tangible thing that represents oppression for black people. And when you have such a vivid situation that happened to George Floyd, you got to remember—even if we are outraged every time an unarmed black man is killed by a white officer—none of us in our lifetime have ever seen an officer take his knee, put it on a man’s neck. After the man dies, his knee is still on his neck. And the entire time the look on his face is ‘I don’t give a damn about this person’s life.’ You better believe in these American cities, separate from the anarchists, separate from the looters, the protesters are going to go to the site of anything they deem oppressive and find a way to demand that it not be there because this warranted outrage of not caring for black people has to come out in some way.”
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Perhaps the toughest question Woodfin had to answer was not about the statue, but whether his removal of the oppressive symbol means that the violent protests work.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “They made this conversation come back to the face and heart of our city and we had a decision to make. Let’s be clear, that statue was coming down.”
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Aside from the dead nigger assassin squad, perhaps the person who is upset about this turn of events is the Alabama attorney general.
“He’s already filed the motion with the court today that we’re in violation of the act again,” Woodfin told The Root. So, less than 24 hours of me taking it down, he’s already filed a motion against us.”
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But they have the money, so there should be nothing to worry about, right? Even if the residents miss the statue, they could read books, visit a museum or...
“Damn that statue,” Woodfin said before drifting into a short silence.
“But this is Alabama,” he added.
“That’s what you gotta worry about.”


theroot--2020-06-02--Your Phone Is a Goldmine of Hidden Data for Cops. Here's How to Fight Back

For the thousands of people protesting and reporting on George Floyd ’ s death at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department—or even for bystanders caught up in the demonstrations—arrests , injuries , and even death are becoming commonplace in this moment .
And just like protests we ’ ve experienced within the past decade , confrontation with police comes coupled with risks to people ’ s lives through digital means , too .
Federal authorities have more than proven that they aren ’ t above siphoning off nearly every digital footprint we make in the name of profiling and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If you ’ re ( rightfully ) trying to fly under this radar while attending a protest of your own , the good news is that there are resources galore detailing some steps you can take to keep yourself from being surveilled .
You can wrap your face in an old t-shirt to slip by facial recognition algorithms , and you can tighten the settings on your social media profiles to keep sensitive intel from slipping into the wrong hands .
You can also—ideally—leave your phone at home altogether , or only bring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ throw surveillance systems off your trail .
The bad news is that it ’ s damn near impossible to keep some sort of data from slipping through .
In a sense , this is by design : For the past few years , tech companies have quietly been engineering labyrinthian backdoors meant to hoover nearly every piece of our digital data with little regard for the person whose data is being hoovered .
Put another way , turning off your phone ’ s location services alone doesn ’ t protect that data from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protect that data from authorities .
It just means that data ’ s getting mined from somewhere else .
Understanding how the data-hoovering happens—and how to protect yourself—requires a bit of background .
While most of us think about location as just well , location , the truth is that our phone ’ s built-in GPS is only one part of the puzzle .
When a person turns off location services on her phone but uses a credit card to buy a six-pack at her local drugstore , there are countless adtech orgs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out the coordinates of that store , and the beer-buyer in question .
If , after that , she walks over to her friend ’ s house to , say , watch old Pokemon reruns , that same process happens : mapping out whose wifi network it is , where it ’ s located , and who ’ s the Poke-fan doing the connecting .
Even though there ’ s no geolocation data explicitly changing hands here , if there ’ s any data leaking out , you can rest assured that there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of organizations on the other end whose sole job is mapping that back to you .
We ’ d call that creepy as hell , but the adtech world just calls it “ identity resolution ” : the tech tying every digital breadcrumb back to the original human that left it .
And for the most part , this isn ’ t a solo effort .
You can expect that the point-of-sale data generated by our beer-buyer is going to pass from one data aggregator , to another , to another , piecing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gathered until then .
At the end of this chain are obscure companies like the data-mining behemoth Liveramp , which rakes in close to $ 400 million annually by watching our every move while many of us have no idea they even exist .
The California Consumer Privacy Act ( CCPA ) that rolled out this year only mandates that if , say , a weather app wants to access our location , it should ask for consent before doing so .
Because the legislation doesn ’ t do a damn thing about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re allowed to siphon this data with no questions asked .
And because the CCPA ’ s definition of “ selling data ” is , to put it bluntly , complete trash , the Rube Goldberg happening behind our screens isn ’ t “ selling ” our identities as much as “ sharing ” them .
And when that data ’ s shared with advertisers , you can bet that it ’ ll reach local authorities just as easily .
Cops that already have access to a library full of cell-snooping tech @ @ @ @ @ @ @ surprise—keep an eye on protestors .
Back in 2016 , the ACLU got ahold of documents that found one of these aggregators , called Geofeedia , was actively packaging data from the phones of people protesting the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore police .
Since then , we ’ ve seen similar data handed over to ICE agents for the purposes of finding where immigrants are sheltering at the border .
This type of surveillance is the result of laws that are entirely unequipped for dealing with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adtech vendors are private companies , cops can sidestep the Fourth Amendment hurdles they ’ d typically encounter with this sort of data .
Because these private companies aren ’ t dealing with any of us directly , they have no loyalty or legal obligation to let us know that they ’ re mining our data , compiling our data , and handing our data to the cops .
And because there ’ s a virtual continent of companies in this space that ’ s only swelling overtime , it ’ s practically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with whom until it ’ s far too late .
In the sense that our legal system willingly leaves our identities up for digital grabs , yes .
We ’ re also fucked in the sense that the sprawl and scope of these companies make it downright impossible to know if you ’ ve successfully gone off the grid .
It ’ s wormholes like this that let companies like Facebook get away with preaching their commitment to privacy to you and me , while building out more of these backdoors for its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that lawmakers aren ’ t savvy enough to tackle these systems , and they also know that it ’ s a nightmare for anyone to crawl out .
All that said , there are some things you can do to limit your exposure .
I ’ m not going to promise a guide to complete anonymity , but I can give some advice to get most of the way there—which , if you ’ re protesting , will give you a fighting chance at bypassing a federal watchlist .
• At the bare @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Bluetooth turned off as often as possible , you should be your phone ’ s mobile adID—it ’ s a small string of code that comes prepackaged on Android and iOS devices , the sole purpose of which is tying all of the data generated from our normal human activities back to your personal device .
It ’ s an incredibly invasive—but technically anonymous—tidbit because it ’ s tied to your phone , and not you .
But because this is 2020 , the two are one the same—maybe not legally , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot about a person if they ’ re downloading apps explicitly targeted to , or to , or anything else you can think of .
And even if the apps themselves aren ’ t tying these details to something like your location , I can promise you that someone else will .
Meanwhile , these IDs are directly responsible for a ton of geolocation snitching .
If an advertiser wants to keep track of the number of folks visiting his store , there are companies that will help him to keep track of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in .
In the context of our current hellscape , these sorts of geofences could be used by , say , police who want the digital data of everyone who ’ s centered around a given protest site .
In that scenario , a person who ’ s wiped their ID before that protest would ’ ve wiped most of their digital paper trail along with it—and because you can wipe those IDs as often as you want , you can show up as a stranger to any future gathering you might be—rightfully @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on an iPhone is more effective than on Android for reasons we ’ ll get more into below .
Thanks to Google ’ s sweeping advertising business , however , Android users are going to have to take additional precautions .
That said , it ’ s ridiculously easy to deanonymize your adID-wiped phone—which is kind of by design since these IDs were created for that purpose .
Overall , there are responsible for letting your real self slip , but both can be tricked with a bit of legwork .
• The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” that links together a given device based on some sort of personal identifier , like an email address or a social media account .
If you ’ re someone who regularly logs into a Twitter or other social media account on your phone , and logs into that same account on your computer , eventually there ’ s going to be someone behind the scenes that ’ ll realize these are both your devices .
If you ’ re wiping your ID for privacy purposes , either log out of or delete @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it—and don ’ t log back in on that device until you feel safe to do so .
• Thanks to these linkages , screwing with any advertising identifiers on an Android device is next to impossible , since the phone comes baked in with your Google account from the get-go .
The only way around it , is , unfortunately , on your phone under a new Google account—something I ’ d strongly recommend for activists who are using an Android device .
If this sounds like a step too far , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ airplane mode for the duration of the protest ; data is here , but it ’ ll only be shared with Google , rather than Google and every third party , up to and .
( If you ’ re on an iOS device but are logged into any Google apps , or use a Gmail address , delete those apps—honestly , delete every app you can—and log out of any Google or Gmail account . )
The silver lining here is that Google might be a privacy shitshow , but it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under a from every federal agency you can name , not to mention dogged reporters here and abroad .
If the company slyly tried to slide some sort of protestor data over to the feds , the details of that deal have an infinitely higher chance of seeing the light of day than if those deals were happening between some small , shadowy third party and the feds instead .
• Outside of online accounts , it ’ s also important to keep an eye on any sort of “ ” that could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ offering it outright .
The frustrating ( and scary ) thing here is that there are no hard and fast rules for what kind of data you need to cut off , nor any standard for how long it takes a given algorithm to run this kind of guesstimate about who you are—so I ’ m gon na go of run through things as if we ’ re living in a full-on Minority Report-type of hell .
The steps below might be a bit overkill for some , and might just be realistic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attended a protest with your phone ( and your phone ’ s shiny new ad ID ) that may have been actively monitored by some sort of surveillance dragnet , the best thing you can do is immediately wipe that ID again and replace it with a new one .
By taking that step—and by scrapping any sort of sneaky apps from your phone beforehand , which , again , you should ’ ve done long before reading this—you ’ ve created an identifier that lives and dies in the protest .
Otherwise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( and thus yourself ) with an ID that was definitively at the scene of the action , and—assuming the Minority Report reality here—will keep being tracked with a frankly bonkers degree of accuracy .
Most major cities— —are running some sort of digital ad display in their public transportation , on their streets , , or just about anywhere else you can think of .
These screens are built to scan for any ad identifiers in their immediate surroundings—meaning that , in this case , your phone can be confirmed not only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And that ’ s not even mentioning the or that are driving through these same cities while being outfitted with similar ID-sniffing screens .
• Let ’ s say you get home , and let ’ s say you immediately pass out for some brief respite from the current hellworld we live in .
Depending on a of details about the way you run your phone and the apps you have downloaded , there ’ s a good chance that any nearby tech—your laptop , for example , which is still registered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and social media profiles—will get a silent ping from your phone .
These sorts of cross-device handshakes happen all the time in adtech since they ’ re key to creating “ ” data that can be used to discern specifics like whether , say , two folks in the same space are husband and wife , roommates , or just chill bros being chill bros. Because most tech companies have their own special sauce when it comes to your “ identity , ” the time it takes to link devices together like this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ phone might be doing a silent jig with your connected TV when she comes to visit , but unless she ’ s visiting frequently—and that jig continues—you ’ ll probably be regarded as two different people with two different lives , rather than a couple who ’ s planning to get engaged and spend a lot of money on a wedding .
A ping from your clean protestor phone to your actual , IRL laptop won ’ t immediately register you as the same person , but it will put some sort of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that keeps happening , again and again , one of those companies will catch on and link this phone and laptop together under the same owner .
Assuming the worst-case scenario here , that relationship might wind its way up from one aggregator to another until it inevitably lands on one with ties to the cops you were trying to escape in the first place .
Granted , this is an absurdly specific scenario—one of the literally countless variables that can happen when every device you own is geared to be a snitch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lose , it ’ s not a bad idea to either keep your phone off when you ’ re at home and wipe your ad identifier pre- and post-protest .
• On the same note , it ’ s not a bad idea to turn your phone off or put it into airplane mode while riding buses and subways , since they ( and just about any digital screen or billboard running an ad ) , can be just as snitchy , too .
Better yet , if you know your neighborhood has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ digital screens , you might want to just do this every time you walk outside .
• If you can , keep web browsing and news reading to a minimum .
It might be tough in the current climate , but every mobile ad that pops up is engineered to send back about your device—and sometimes your device ’ s location—back to a trove of tech companies on the other side .
I know this all sounds weird and scary and , frankly , like a giant pain in the ass—which is why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ always your best bet if you ’ re going to any protests .
But it ’ s weird and scary for other reasons , too .
It ’ s weird and scary that an industry as profitable and pervasive as adtech is allowed to run wild without these companies offering the folks they work with—or any of us—some sort of transparency into their process .
It ’ s weird and scary to hear that the lawmakers in charge of punching back against these systems are patting themselves on the back for their progress @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anything at all .
It ’ s weird and scary that this ecosystem encourages unchecked surveillance against protesters , who are frequently being beaten and sometimes killed by police .
Before joining Gizmodo , I had a job reporting on this sort of adtech stuff , but for the advertisers themselves , rather than the public .
Whenever I ’ d ask players in the various cogs of the system about where the responsibility for educating that side ultimately fell , the answer was always the same : anyone but them .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all boiled down to the notion that this stuff is either too complicated , or they ’ d be misinterpreted by a less-savvy audience , so why even try .
The thing is , we ’ re already seeing that happen regardless .
By and large , the stories we read about “ digital privacy ” —like the stunning work done by the New York Times on the topic—only scrape the surface of the way these systems operate .
But these inch-deep stories are ultimately the only thing a lawmaker knows to reference @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in court .
And when the ensuing regulations only scratch the surface , the systems we ’ re trying to control just continue to fester in an industry that ’ s only getting more crowded every year with more companies coming up with more ways to exploit us ( or at least keep an eye on us ) at every turn .
I really , really want to believe that lawmakers are misinformed rather than deliberately looking away , even though they have every reason to .
When the public sector and private @ @ @ @ @ @ @ battling a pandemic or battling off protestors , a whiff of regulation could spook the other side and cause everything to crumble .
Cracking down on digital ads would mean that , at the very least , officials are losing a fast track to tapping whatever data they want with as little oversight as possible , whenever and wherever they want .
I ’ m probably in denial , but I still think it ’ s a problem of education .
And I hope that this helps .
Looking for ways to advocate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ list of resources by our sister site Lifehacker for ways to get involved .
Clarification : An earlier version of this article stated that the CCPA requires apps to request user permission before collecting location data .
The law isn ’ t quite that strong—we wish it were .
Instead , it ’ s more of a suggestion .
We ’ ve updated the story above to make that clear .

Shoshana Wodinsky on Gizmodo, shared by Genetta M. Adams to The Root

For the thousands of people protesting and reporting on George Floyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department—or even for bystanders caught up in the demonstrations—arrests, injuries, and even death are becoming commonplace in this moment. And just like protests we’ve experienced within the past decade, confrontation with police comes coupled with risks to people’s lives through digital means, too. Federal authorities have more than proven that they aren’t above siphoning off nearly every digital footprint we make in the name of profiling and policing every person in the crowd.
If you’re (rightfully) trying to fly under this radar while attending a protest of your own, the good news is that there are resources galore detailing some steps you can take to keep yourself from being surveilled. You can wrap your face in an old t-shirt to slip by facial recognition algorithms, and you can tighten the settings on your social media profiles to keep sensitive intel from slipping into the wrong hands. You can also—ideally—leave your phone at home altogether, or only bring a cheap, prepaid burner device to throw surveillance systems off your trail.
Advertisement
The bad news is that it’s damn near impossible to keep some sort of data from slipping through. In a sense, this is by design: For the past few years, tech companies have quietly been engineering labyrinthian backdoors meant to hoover nearly every piece of our digital data with little regard for the person whose data is being hoovered.
Advertisement Advertisement
Put another way, turning off your phone’s location services alone doesn’t protect that data from advertisers, and it doesn’t protect that data from authorities. It just means that data’s getting mined from somewhere else.
Understanding how the data-hoovering happens—and how to protect yourself—requires a bit of background. While most of us think about location as just well, location, the truth is that our phone’s built-in GPS is only one part of the puzzle. When a person turns off location services on her phone but uses a credit card to buy a six-pack at her local drugstore, there are countless adtech orgs tapping into that single purchase to map out the coordinates of that store, and the beer-buyer in question. If, after that, she walks over to her friend’s house to, say, watch old Pokemon reruns, that same process happens: mapping out whose wifi network it is, where it’s located, and who’s the Poke-fan doing the connecting. Even though there’s no geolocation data explicitly changing hands here, if there’s any data leaking out, you can rest assured that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of organizations on the other end whose sole job is mapping that back to you.
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We’d call that creepy as hell, but the adtech world just calls it “identity resolution”: the tech tying every digital breadcrumb back to the original human that left it. And for the most part, this isn’t a solo effort. You can expect that the point-of-sale data generated by our beer-buyer is going to pass from one data aggregator, to another, to another, piecing together different parts of her digital footprint gathered until then.
At the end of this chain are obscure companies like the data-mining behemoth Liveramp, which rakes in close to $400 million annually by watching our every move while many of us have no idea they even exist. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) that rolled out this year only mandates that if, say, a weather app wants to access our location, it should ask for consent before doing so. Because the legislation doesn’t do a damn thing about players further down the chain, they’re allowed to siphon this data with no questions asked. And because the CCPA’s definition of “selling data” is, to put it bluntly, complete trash, the Rube Goldberg happening behind our screens isn’t “selling” our identities as much as “sharing” them.
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And when that data’s shared with advertisers, you can bet that it’ll reach local authorities just as easily. Cops that already have access to a library full of cell-snooping tech have dipped into these companies to—surprise, surprise—keep an eye on protestors. Back in 2016, the ACLU got ahold of documents that found one of these aggregators, called Geofeedia, was actively packaging data from the phones of people protesting the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore police. Since then, we’ve seen similar data handed over to ICE agents for the purposes of finding where immigrants are sheltering at the border.
This type of surveillance is the result of laws that are entirely unequipped for dealing with the way tech just... works. Because adtech vendors are private companies, cops can sidestep the Fourth Amendment hurdles they’d typically encounter with this sort of data. Because these private companies aren’t dealing with any of us directly, they have no loyalty or legal obligation to let us know that they’re mining our data, compiling our data, and handing our data to the cops. And because there’s a virtual continent of companies in this space that’s only swelling overtime, it’s practically impossible to know who’s working with whom until it’s far too late.
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So we’re fucked, right?
In the sense that our legal system willingly leaves our identities up for digital grabs, yes. We’re also fucked in the sense that the sprawl and scope of these companies make it downright impossible to know if you’ve successfully gone off the grid. It’s wormholes like this that let companies like Facebook get away with preaching their commitment to privacy to you and me, while building out more of these backdoors for its partners. All of these companies know that lawmakers aren’t savvy enough to tackle these systems, and they also know that it’s a nightmare for anyone to crawl out.
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All that said, there are some things you can do to limit your exposure. I’m not going to promise a guide to complete anonymity, but I can give some advice to get most of the way there—which, if you’re protesting, will give you a fighting chance at bypassing a federal watchlist.
At the bare minimum, along with keeping your location and Bluetooth turned off as often as possible, you should be resetting frightened women gay men someone else will
Meanwhile, these IDs are directly responsible for a ton of geolocation snitching. If an advertiser wants to keep track of the number of folks visiting his store, there are companies that will help him geofence the perimeter everyone who’s centered around a given protest site
That said, it’s ridiculously easy to deanonymize your adID-wiped phone—which is kind of by design since these IDs were created for that purpose. Overall, there are two major flavors of data
The biggest culprit here is “deterministic data” that links together a given device based on some sort of personal identifier, like an email address or a social media account. If you’re someone who regularly logs into a Twitter or other social media account on your phone, and logs into that same account on your computer, eventually there’s going to be someone behind the scenes that’ll realize these are both your devices. If you’re wiping your ID for privacy purposes, either log out of or delete any social media apps before you wipe it—and don’t log back in on that device until you feel safe to do so.
Thanks to these linkages, screwing with any advertising identifiers on an Android device is next to impossible, since the phone comes baked in with your Google account from the get-go. The only way around it is, unfortunately, a hard reset
If this sounds like a step too far, I’d recommend keeping it on airplane mode for the duration of the protest; data is still monitored including the cops
The silver lining here is that Google might be a privacy shitshow, but it’s a privacy shitshow that’s under a massive spotlight
Outside of online accounts, it’s also important to keep an eye on any sort of “ probabilistic data
Assuming you’ve attended a protest with your phone (and your phone’s shiny new ad ID) that may have been actively monitored by some sort of surveillance dragnet, the best thing you can do is immediately wipe that ID again and replace it with a new one. By taking that step—and by scrapping any sort of sneaky apps from your phone beforehand, which, again, you should’ve done long before reading this—you’ve created an identifier that lives and dies in the protest.
Otherwise, you’ve tagged your phone (and thus yourself) with an ID that was definitively at the scene of the action, and—assuming the Minority Report reality here—will keep being tracked with a frankly bonkers degree of accuracy.
Most major cities— including Minneapolis at their gas stations rideshare vehicles taxicabs
Let’s say you get home, and let’s say you immediately pass out for some brief respite from the current hellworld we live in. Depending on a boggling array household-level
Because most tech companies have their own special sauce when it comes to your “identity,” the time it takes to link devices together in this way can vary. Your friend’s phone might be doing a silent jig with your connected TV when she comes to visit, but unless she’s visiting frequently—and that jig continues—you’ll probably be regarded as two different people with two different lives, rather than a couple who’s planning to get engaged and spend a lot of money on a wedding.
A ping from your clean protestor phone to your actual, IRL laptop won’t immediately register you as the same person, but it will put some sort of link between the two. And if that keeps happening, again and again, one of those companies will catch on and link this phone and laptop together under the same owner. Assuming the worst-case scenario here, that relationship might wind its way up from one aggregator to another until it inevitably lands on one with ties to the cops you were trying to escape in the first place.
Granted, this is an absurdly specific scenario—one of the literally countless variables that can happen when every device you own is geared to be a snitch. But if you have enough to lose, it’s not a bad idea to either keep your phone off when you’re at home and wipe your ad identifier pre- and post-protest.
On the same note, it’s not a bad idea to turn your phone off or put it into airplane mode while riding buses and subways, since they (and just about any place with a digital screen or billboard running an ad), can be just as snitchy, too. Better yet, if you know your neighborhood has roads that are frequented by vehicles with digital screens, you might want to just do this every time you walk outside.
If you can, keep web browsing and news reading to a minimum. It might be tough in the current climate, but every mobile ad that pops up is engineered to send back a wave of “bidstream” data
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I know this all sounds weird and scary and, frankly, like a giant pain in the ass—which is why a cheap, protest-ready burner device is always your best bet if you’re going to any protests. But it’s weird and scary for other reasons, too. It’s weird and scary that an industry as profitable and pervasive as adtech is allowed to run wild without these companies offering the folks they work with—or any of us—some sort of transparency into their process. It’s weird and scary to hear that the lawmakers in charge of punching back against these systems are patting themselves on the back for their progress while, in reality, barely doing anything at all. It’s weird and scary that this ecosystem encourages unchecked surveillance against protesto rs, who are frequently being beaten and sometimes killed by police.
Before joining Gizmodo, I had a job reporting on this sort of adtech stuff, but for the advertisers themselves, rather than the public. Whenever I’d ask players in the various cogs of the system about where the responsibility for educating that side ultimately fell, the answer was always the same: anyone but them. The excuses changed with time, but they all boiled down to the notion that this stuff is either too complicated, or they’d be misinterpreted by a less-savvy audience, so why even try.
The thing is, we’re already seeing that happen regardless. By and large, the stories we read about “digital privacy”—like the stunning work done by the New York Times on the topic—only scrape the surface of the way these systems operate. But these inch-deep stories are ultimately the only thing a lawmaker knows to reference when fighting against someone like Mark Zuckerberg in court. And when the ensuing regulations only scratch the surface, the systems we’re trying to control just continue to fester in an industry that’s only getting more crowded every year with more companies coming up with more ways to exploit us (or at least keep an eye on us) at every turn.
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I really, really want to believe that lawmakers are misinformed rather than deliberately looking away, even though they have every reason to. When the public sector and private companies partner together, be it for battling a pandemic or battling off protestors, a whiff of regulation could spook the other side and cause everything to crumble. Cracking down on digital ads would mean that, at the very least, officials are losing a fast track to tapping whatever data they want with as little oversight as possible, whenever and wherever they want.
I’m probably in denial, but I still think it’s a problem of education. And I hope that this helps.
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Looking for ways to advocate for black lives? Check out this list of resources by our sister site Lifehacker for ways to get involved.
Clarification: An earlier version of this article stated that the CCPA requires apps to request user permission before collecting location data. The law isn’t quite that strong—we wish it were. Instead, it’s more of a suggestion. We’ve updated the story above to make that clear.