African Americans sent ‘report to the plantation’ racist text messages

FBI launches investigation over ‘horrific’ texts sent in wake of presidential election

An FBI investigation has been launched after racist texts were sent to African Americans in the wake of the presidential election.
The anonymous messages, which were also sent to children and mentioned some of them by name, were reported in several states, including New York, Alabama, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Tennessee.
The contents of the “horrific” text messages varied, but largely instructed recipients to “board a bus” that would transport them to a “plantation” to work as slaves.
It is not yet clear who is behind the mass messages.
Officials said the messages were sent to school-aged children and college students, causing significant distress.
Monèt Miller, an Atlanta-based publicist, said she had received a text message telling her to report to her “nearest plantation”. When she spoke about it on social media, many other African Americans told her they had received similar texts.
“To find out that all these African American people are getting it, that was the scariest part about it,” she said. “Who is doing that?”
The FBI said it has communicated with the Justice Department about the messages, and the Federal Communications Commission said it was investigating alongside federal and state law enforcement.
“These messages are unacceptable,” said Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC chairman. She said the agency took “this type of targeting very seriously”.
The messages were sent using a VPN to obscure their origin,  Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s attorney general, said Thursday morning.
Anthony Brown, Maryland’s attorney general, said his office was fielding multiple reports of racist text messages being sent to black residents, including children.
Officials said the messages appeared to be part of a nationwide campaign targeting African Americans in the wake of the election.
“These messages are horrific, unacceptable, and will not be tolerated,” Mr Brown said in a statement.
He added that the messages were “an intimidating, threatening use of technology” that likely violated multiple laws.
Mr Brown said investigators would use “all the tools and resources available to us to hold accountable whoever is behind these text messages.”
TextNow, a phone service provider, said that “one or more of our accounts” were used to send the racist text messages and that it quickly disabled those accounts for violating its terms of service.
“As part of our investigation into these messages, we learned they have been sent through multiple carriers across the US and we are working with partners and law enforcement cooperatively to investigate this attack,” the Canada-based company said in a statement on Friday.
Major providers AT&T and Verizon both said it was an industry-wide problem and referred comment to the CTIA, a wireless communications trade group.
The US wireless industry has been working in recent days to block thousands of the texts and the numbers sending them, said Nick Ludlum, CTIA spokesman.
An industry group initiative is working with law enforcement and has “identified platforms bad actors used to send these messages,” he said.