19 June 22
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There is nothing past tense about January 6, 2021
The congressional committee investigating the insurrection represents not merely a fact-finding exercise to correctly document history, as important as that mission would be. They are firefighters battling a blaze of autocracy and unconstitutional depravity sweeping across the country.
In the hearings this week, the esteemed Michael Luttig, a retired conservative federal judge, starkly concluded that had Donald Trump been successful in his attempts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election, America “would immediately have been plunged into…a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis."
As becomes more and more clear through a cascade of revelations, this was an organized attempt to destroy the United States as a nation based upon the rule of law and the principle that when we hold elections, we honor the results, no matter if our preferred candidate wins or loses. And the pressure on Pence was only part of the plan. It also included attempts to appoint alternative slates of electors in battleground states in direct contradiction of the will of the voters in those states. The goal was to sow confusion, violence in the streets be damned, just as long as Trump could remain in power.
Trump and his confederates — and I choose that word in full recognition of its historical meaning — sought to foment this chaos through the raw exploitation of power and intimidation to nullify Joe Biden’s victory. That a conservative of Judge Luttig’s stature would speak with such unequivocal force, and that it would be echoed by Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and the Republican staffers on the committee, makes clear that there is a delineation in what they are investigating that is based not on politics but on fidelity to the law and America’s democratic principles.
As the hearings paint a devastating picture of Trump’s plot, there is an emerging Republican talking point that this is all old news. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, whose ambition to be president is about as naked as a jaybird, called it “beating a dead horse.” It’s an approach that works both to minimize the coup attempt and suggest the Republican Party should move beyond Trump and embrace something new (as in him).
DeSantis’s self-serving protestations, and those of others like him, deliberately obscure the truth. Exposing an attempt to override elections and the will of the voters is not beating a dead horse, unless that horse is American democracy. Promoting the Big Lie as an excuse to nullify Democratic victories has become a mantra for large swaths of the Republican Party.
In his Thursday testimony, Judge Luttig made this chillingly clear. He wasn’t there just to talk about the past; he emphasized that his greatest fears lie in what might come next.
Judge Luttig believes former Pres. Trump and his supporters "are a clear and present danger to American democracy," saying he worries they will "succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020."
— ABC News (@ABC) June 16, 2022
"I don't speak those words lightly."
More: https://t.co/uStgMcKNft pic.twitter.com/UEUNmhZGSd
The focus thus far of the January 6 committee has rightfully been on exploring and clarifying the narrative around what happened that day, and specifically President Trump’s role in fomenting the violent coup attempt. But as we can see with the statement above from Judge Luttig, hanging over this entire proceeding is the current danger America faces.
In a front-page article this week, The New York Times analyzed recent election results and concluded something many of you already know: In several battleground states, Republicans have nominated extremist candidates eager to do Trump’s bidding — or that of any Republican leader who wants to dynamite the American political system.
Republicans Who Deny 2020 Election Outcome Press Closer to Power Over Future Elections - The New York Times https://t.co/7gphkvyikN
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) June 16, 2022
This is of course an American problem, because it threatens our entire constitutional order. But we need to be very clear — this is a cancer that resides firmly within the Republican Party. It has been allowed to linger and grow, and now metastasize. And it is taking root by infecting state and local governance in ways that could very well turn what happened on January 6 into just an opening act.
What makes this so dangerous is that Republican election officials don’t need to actually overturn elections to serve their purpose. They can just cause havoc and chaos, and by doing so undermine the faith the American people have in our democratic systems. We saw a preview of this recently in New Mexico.
Expect more of this… wake up America and GOP, this will destroy us. This is now the plan for MAGA, place people in low levels who can refuse to do their basic duty.
— Adam Kinzinger🇺🇦🇺🇸✌️ (@AdamKinzinger) June 15, 2022
GOP commission refuses to certify New Mexico primary vote | AP News https://t.co/JTTfdSA7Zd
It is notable that Congressman Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the January 6 committee, called it out, along with its implications. Because this movement animates the Republican Party, it is incumbent on all those Republican leaders who eagerly wrap themselves in the mantle of “patriotism” to stamp out this contagion. But what do we hear? Many enthusiastically back these extremists. Others offer tacit endorsements or silence. This is a party that would rather hold on to power than our democracy.
The likes of Bill Barr can call “bullshit” on the Big Lie in sworn depositions, but they should receive no accolades for their forced honesty. Where were their statements at the time? And what are they saying now about the same, pardon again the language, “bullshit” about future elections? Where is Senator Mitch McConnell? Or Vice President Pence? Or the Bushes? Or almost any other Republican of note, past or present?
All who are looking the other way, keeping their heads down, obfuscating, accepting, or outright endorsing this autocracy are willingly gambling with the future of American democracy. Whether it’s born of a desire for power or from cowardice doesn’t matter. Now is a time to stand up and be counted; almost every Republican leader is failing the test.
So what are the rest of us to do? Hopelessness and despair are not options. First and foremost, this should be a major issue on everyone’s radar. And I think the January 6 committee will help with that. But all citizens have a role to play. Getting out to vote for those who would protect democracy and encouraging others to do so is essential. This is not a matter of policy. This is about the basic mechanisms of democracy. Do we respect our elections? Do we count the votes and declare those who won the most to be the winner?
As with issues like abortion and guns, I think a large majority of Americans want our basic democratic system to continue. They might even want reforms to make it fairer. And this points to another approach to countering those who would attack our system. We can shame them, call out their playbook now, let them know that we see what they will attempt to do, and declare their “voter fraud” propaganda what it is — a farce and a lie. Put all Republican officials on the record.
In the lead-up to the war in Ukraine, the United States did a masterful job of preempting Russian propaganda. We let the world know what the Russians would do and the lies they would use to justify it. We can use the same approach toward those lining up to attack our democracy. We see them. We know their tactics. They aren’t trying to hide them. There can be no “false equivalence” allowed around this matter, in the media or in the public at large.
What these would-be autocrats are saying is they want a system that is essentially, if I win, I win, if you win, I win. They claim fraud only when Democrats win the vote. They claim a vice president can overthrow an election only when a Republican is vice president. This isn’t a matter of politics. It’s a matter of democracy. The stakes aren’t between Republicans and Democrats. All Republicans who understand this, the Judge Luttigs, the Liz Cheneys, the Adam Kinzingers, and any who join the ranks now, should be welcomed and encouraged.
The dividing line is pretty simple, and I believe the vast majority of Americans fall on one side. This is about who believes in the health and security of the United States, our Constitution, and our rule of law, and who does not.
A woman in Borodianka, Ukraine, walks past a poster seeking information on people who have gone missing during the Russian invasion. (photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty)
He was hoping to hear that his 16-year-old son, Vlad, had safely escaped the Ukrainian city of Melitopol, where Moscow’s forces were quickly closing in. Instead, it was a Russian military man on the other end of the line.
They had taken his son, the soldier said, and he was being kept in an undisclosed location.
Almost overnight, Buryak, head of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration, was thrust into a frantic, detective-like pursuit, scrambling for clues, trying to figure out where Russian soldiers were holding his son, and how to get him back.
Soon, Vlad found a guard who allowed him to make occasional calls. The teenage boy was growing desperate, his father said. At home, Vlad loved computer games. In his cell, he was surrounded by the constant, terrible sound of other prisoners being tortured.
“What are you doing to get me out of here?” Vlad asked his father.
For nearly four months, the world has watched in horror as Russian forces flattened Ukrainian cities, with images of slaughtered civilians in Bucha and Mariupol attracting international outrage and prompting Western powers to increase their military aid. But all the while a less visible phenomenon was taking place in homes, at checkpoints, during street protests: Russian soldiers were detaining and abducting hundreds — perhaps thousands — of civilians.
All over the country, people are missing. A schoolteacher who refused Russian soldiers’ demands that she speak their language. A volunteer paramedic tending to the injured in the port city of Mariupol. The father of a journalist, taken to blackmail his daughter into providing access to her news outlet’s website. A village leader who was escorted from a government building with a bag over his head. And untold others.
Authorities and human rights advocates say these cases are part of a larger pattern of Russian abductions and disappearances, a military tactic meant to terrorize communities and demoralize civilian resistance.
Many among the missing are victims of forced disappearance — detainment followed by silence, the captor refusing to even acknowledge they’ve taken someone captive. Others are locked in Russian-controlled jails, sometimes used to barter for Russia’s captured soldiers, or extract information.
For many more, their whereabouts are unclear: Some are simply incommunicado, others are likely dead. And for each person missing, one expert said, there are “concentric rings of harm” that ripple through their communities.
The Ukrainian government has recorded at least 765 cases — which can involve more than one victim — of what they call forced disappearances, an umbrella term to describe different forms of illegal deprivation of liberty.
Experts and officials agree the real number is almost certainly much higher. How much higher? No one really knows, but Ukraine’s national police have fielded more 9,000 missing person reports since Russia invaded.
“It is just tip of the iceberg,” said Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties, one of Ukraine’s most well-known human rights organizations, which has documented 459 cases of civilians held in captivity since the beginning of the invasion.
A final text message
It was the end of March when it became clear Russia was about to seize Melitopol. But despite Buryak’s desperate pleas, Vlad refused to leave his grandfather, who was bedridden and battling stage-four cancer.
“I will stay with grandpa until the end,” Vlad told his father.
Roughly one week later, his grandfather died. Still mourning the loss, Vlad was ready to leave.
Buryak found his son a seat in a car with two women and three children, all trying to escape the city. They left early and made it roughly 45 miles north to the city of Vasylivka, where they ran into the last Russian checkpoint. Soldiers went car to car, interrogating the passengers.
Vlad was in the back seat looking at his phone when one of the Russian guards took his device and soon after learned his father was a government official. The car’s other passengers were released, but Vlad was detained.
Buryak immediately started calling all his friends and met with high-ranking authorities, pleading for help to arrange a prisoner exchange, which the Russian soldiers had said was the only way to secure Vlad’s release. But conversations with Ukrainian authorities led nowhere, he said.
The Security Service of Ukraine assigned an investigator to his case, but Buryak said she has made little progress. The Security Service did not respond to an interview request. Vlad’s case sheds a somber light on the hurdles Ukrainians face in finding their loved ones, when even a prominent government official with connections struggles to arrange his son’s release.
“Except for my friends, nobody is helping me,” Buryak said in a recent interview.
Some 300 miles north of where Vlad was taken, Viktoria Andrusha, a 25-year-old schoolteacher, managed to send her sister one last text: “They just passed down the street.” Soon after, they — a group of Russian soldiers driving an armored vehicle — stormed into her parents’ home in the village of Staryi Bykiv, about 60 miles east of Kyiv.
They tore through the house and found Andrusha’s cellphone with the message to her sister, Iryna. Their parents later recounted to Iryna the terrifying moments that followed. The soldiers accused Andrusha of sharing intelligence with the Ukrainian military and blamed Russian casualties on her text. As they questioned her with guns drawn, they demanded that she speak Russian. She refused.
“You’re nobody here, this won’t happen your way,” Andrusha told the soldiers, Iryna said. “We are on our land, you’re not welcome here.”
That day in late March would be the last time her family saw her.
A flood of disappearances
Yuriy Belousov, Ukraine’s lead prosecutor for human rights violations, said his team is overwhelmed.
Ukrainian authorities have opened more than 13,000 investigations into possible war crimes, an unprecedented effort during a bloody and ongoing conflict. They have registered nearly 800 instances of forced disappearances. In just one of the cases, Russian soldiers took 70 Ukrainians from their houses and kept them in a basement for weeks, Belousov said.
Officials and nongovernmental organizations say they are struggling to keep up with the flood of reported disappearances, and some experts say Ukraine’s criminal justice system is unprepared to deal with the vast number of cases. They also have proved especially difficult to investigate, since many of the missing people have been secreted away to Russia or Russian-held territory, putting them out of authorities’ reach, activists and officials say.
“But it doesn’t mean that we can’t do anything,” Belousov said in a recent interview. “We are instructing and telling our staff at our regional offices to not wait for the Russians to leave.”
Belousov’s focus is to ensure Russian perpetrators are convicted in eventual war crimes trials. When they can, investigators rush to the crime scene and gather evidence: they talk to witnesses and relatives, they search for fingerprints and forgotten belongings of Russian soldiers.
They also scan social networks and Russian media, where they often find videos of captured Ukrainians that offer tidbits of information to puzzle cases together and they interview victims who have been released.
Before the war, Belousov led a small unit of 45 people, investigating wrongdoings committed by Ukrainian law enforcement. Now, almost every employee in prosecutors’ offices across the country has been asked to investigate war crimes, he said.
The scale of atrocities has prompted international organizations, including the International Criminal Court and the International Commission on Missing Persons, to help document the reported cases.
The United Nations has recorded 210 cases of forced disappearances since the beginning of the war, its mission in Ukraine said in a statement to The Post last month. Investigators have found that victims were usually taken at their home, workplace, or at checkpoints. Many men disappeared after being taken to “filtration camps.”
In most of these cases, the U.N. mission said, victims “were held incommunicado in improvised places of detention” — schools, government buildings, warehouses, barns and police stations. After days or weeks of detention, many victims were transferred to Russia, or Russian-held areas like Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk, regions controlled by Russian-affiliated armed groups before the February invasion.
Only in rare cases have relatives received information directly from Russian military officials, the U.N. mission said.
The United Nations also has documented 11 cases of forced disappearances committed by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies.
Russian officials have in the past denied reports of kidnappings and forced dislocations, calling their alleged use of filtration camps a “lie” and blaming civilian harm on Ukrainians. The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment on the reported forced disappearances.
‘The crime of absence, the crime of invisibility’
In recent history, scholars trace the tactic of forced disappearances to Nazi Germany, when Adolf Hitler’s “Night and Fog” decree ordered the seizure of anyone in occupied territory who was “endangering German security.” They were transferred to Germany and effectively vanished without a trace. Since then, disappearances have been “the authoritarian’s gateway into violating people’s fundamental rights with impunity,” said Elisa Massimino, executive director of Georgetown Law’s Human Rights Institute.
Tetiana Pechonchyk, director of ZMINA, a Kyiv-based human rights organization, said the majority of the disappearances she has logged have come from Russian-occupied or recently liberated regions, such as Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Kyiv. Once investigators gain access to occupied territory, the numbers are expected to soar.
Pechonchyk said Russian forces are targeting prominent community members, many of whom are actively involved in opposing the Russian invasion — journalists, activists, humanitarian volunteers and local officials.
“Why? To break local resilience,” she said. “The Russians saw how strong Ukrainian civilians were in opposing the war and so they have chosen precise people to send a signal to dissuade and stop this resilience.”
Olena Kuvaieva, a lawyer with the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, is compiling evidence of abductions for an eventual case in front of the European Court of Human Rights, where an emergency provision could compel Russia to release unlawful detainees or, at least, improve their living conditions. But there’s no guarantee Moscow would comply.
“We’re trying to create a situation where Russia is pressed from every corner — from the journalists, from the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations, the international community,” Kuvaieva said. “We hope this pressure will work.”
But some human rights activists in Ukraine have said that the international outpouring has done little to deter Russian forces from committing such crimes. A case in The Hague’s International Criminal Court is nice, they say, but a verdict in the distant future does not prevent Ukrainians’ ongoing suffering.
“We have a completely ineffective international system,” said Matviichuck, of the Center for Civil Liberties. Despite the robust architecture of international courts and mandates “what we have learned is that they can do nothing.”
Massimino said the frustration is justified, but she argued the international justice system has improved in recent years, both at the intergovernmental and state levels, pointing to tribunals set up to prosecute war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and a growing infrastructure to support domestic prosecutions.
It will take both international and local efforts to deter and prevent war crimes, she said.
Ukraine took an important first step last month when it handed down a guilty verdict in its first war crime trial. Investigating and prosecuting a kidnapping or forced disappearance will be even more difficult, experts say.
“You can’t see a picture of a forced disappearance,” Massimino said. “It’s the crime of absence, the crime of invisibility.”
The practice has been used in Pinochet’s Chile and Argentina’s Dirty War. In Algeria, as many as 20,000 people disappeared during the civil war in the 1990s, and activists say the government is still denying the practice and suppressing information about victims. In Bosnia, investigators are still finding bodies of the roughly 30,000 people who went missing during the war there nearly three decades ago. And more recently, about 100,000 people have been reported disappeared in Syria and Mexico.
The human rights nonprofit Freedom House bluntly declared last year: “Impunity for perpetrators of enforced disappearances remains the norm.”
‘The silence scares us’
After weeks of frantic efforts and sleepless nights, Buryak recently managed to orchestrate a plan he thinks will get Vlad home. He said the Russian counterparts have agreed to it, but declined to offer more details, fearing it could endanger his son and the negotiation process.
Vlad, who has been transferred to a different location, has slowly recovered his optimism and is “holding up strong.”
Buryak is hopeful, but with uncertain days ahead, he said emotion is a luxury he can’t afford.
“Vlad needs me like this: coldblooded, rational and wise,” he said. “I have no right to get into my feelings right now. When we free him up then we will cry, we will be happy, we will do everything.”
The months since also have been agonizing for Andrusha’s family. They have heard nothing from her Russian captors, but have learned through the informal whisper network of captured and returned Ukrainians that she was being held in a detention center in the western Russian region of Kursk, where human rights monitors say many others are also being kept. But their most recent information is from early May. Since then, nothing.
Andrusha’s family has contacted the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, they have called every number they can find and filled out every online form available. They have plastered Andrusha’s photo across their social media feeds.
“What reaction can there be? Anger!” Iryna said. “The silence scares us. It’s a dead end. Since we cannot go there on our own, we cannot get any information.”
Still, the family has hope. A math instructor devoted to her work, Andrusha is beloved in the classroom.
“The whole school is looking for her — all of her students, their parents, honestly, the whole country,” Iryna said. “Everybody keeps waiting until we can finally post that she’s back home and she’s okay.”
Emancipation Day celebration, June 19, 1900 in Austin, Texas. (photo: Austin Public Library)
However, many will start the day with a long-standing tradition: worship.
The Lord by Moses to Pharaoh said:
"O let my people go!
If not, I'll smite your firstborn dead,
Then let my people go!"
Go down, Moses
Way down in Egypt's land
Tell old Pharaoh
Let my people go
These lyrics, from "The Song of the Contrabands: O Let My People Go," will have a special significance at services this Sunday because they echo the spirit of the holiday. It's a biblical story about the experience of Israel — from Egyptian bondage to their exodus. The enslaved Africans identified with the story. Generations later, this hymn is still sung to remember how it felt to be a slave and to continue to seek equality and justice.
"Gospel music has been a comfort to the Black community indeed," says gospel singer Tye Tribbett, who is performing at the Juneteenth Unityfest 2022 event Sunday. "Its power to harness the ability of hope, aspiration, and faith to give courage over fear during our culture's most difficult times is part of our and the music's legacy."
In Galveston, Texas — the birthplace of Juneteenth — congregants at Reedy Chapel A.M.E. Church will begin their service at 11 a.m. and end the day with a freedom march. This was one of the locations the enslaved people heard these words, from General Order, No. 3, the original Juneteenth order, on June 19, 1865: "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free."
Juneteenth is also called Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day and Freedom Day. It's the most recent new federal holiday, since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was introduced in 1983. Because it falls on "The Lord's Day," pastors will share a special message with their congregation.
Bishop T.D. Jakes of The Potter's House, in Dallas, says that in order to protect this nation's legacy, one must acknowledge and learn from the past.
"Although the origin of Juneteenth commemorations begin in Texas, it's vital we all must remember when liberty and justice is delayed or denied it causes traumatic ripples throughout future generations," he says.
Jakes adds: "As we collectively stop to acknowledge and learn from the delayed liberties of our nation's ancestors, we must not allow those same systems to repeat injustices."
In San Francisco, Grace Cathedral congregants will celebrate and lament during their service. Actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith will deliver their morning message.
"Her deep knowledge and narrative accounts of the school-to-prison pipeline, and grounded Episcopal faith, will guide us toward the work of emancipation today. We call that End Slavery for Good, ensuring that no one be subject to slavery, even as punishment for a crime," says the Rev. Canon Anna E. Rossi.
The Rev. Joshua Lawrence Lazard, associate pastor of Church of the Covenant, a predominantly white congregation in Boston, plans to take his sermon title from James Baldwin's book, You Mean It or You Don't.
"I will remind listeners that Christians have a duty to manifest the themes of liberation and freedom," Lazard says. "Our faith requires us to be active in restoring and repairing the wrongs that stem from America's original sin of slavery."
According to historians, many American institutions played a role in justifying slavery and white supremacy — including the Christian church, which used the Bible to justify the enslavement of African Americans.
In the documentary, Juneteenth: Faith & Freedom, Christian apologist Lisa Fields says it doesn't surprise her that the first institution that the emancipated people of Galveston established legally was a church. Fields says that "they were believing God to liberate them" – not Abraham Lincoln nor their slave masters.
That brings to mind another popular hymn that could be heard on Juneteenth Sunday — "We have come this far by faith," written by Albert A. Goodson:
We have come this far by faith,
Leaning on the Lord,
Trusting in His holy Word,
He's never failed us yet.
Singin' oh, oh, oh, can't turn around,
We've come this far by faith.
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'While lawmakers in Missouri have worked furiously to constrict reproductive health care, politicians and providers in Illinois have been working to increase access.' (photo: Neera Satam/Getty)
The Pixel tracking system collects and sends site visitor data to Meta, and Meta can match this to a user's profile on Facebook or Instagram. (photo: Jason Alden/Bloomberg)
There doesn’t seem to be a corner of the internet Meta isn’t tracking.
This week, the Markup, a nonprofit news outlet that covers technology’s harms, has been publishing the latest findings of its investigation into Meta’s Pixels, which are pieces of code developers can embed on websites to track their visitors. So far, those stories reveal how websites owned by the government, pregnancy counseling centers, and hospitals are sending data to Meta through Pixels, much of which would be considered sensitive to the users who unwittingly provided it.
It’s easy and understandable to blame Meta for this, given the company’s much-deserved, less-than-stellar reputation on user privacy. In Pixel and other trackers, Meta has played an instrumental role in building the privacy-free, data-leaking online world we must navigate today. The company supplies a tracking system designed to suck up user data from millions of sites and spin it into advertising gold, and it knows very well that there are many cases where the tool was implemented poorly at best and abused at worst. But this may also be a rare case of a Meta-related privacy scandal that isn’t entirely Meta’s fault, partly because Meta has done its best to place that blame elsewhere.
Or, as security researcher Zach Edwards put it: “Facebook wants to have their data cake and not eat the violations, too.”
Businesses choose to put Meta’s trackers on their websites and apps, and they choose again which data about their visitors to send up to the social media giant. There’s simply no good excuse, in this day and age, for developers that use Meta’s business tools not to understand how they work or what user data is being sent through them. At the very least, developers shouldn’t put them on health appointment scheduling pages or inside patient portals, which users have every reason to expect not to be secretly sending their data to nosy third parties because they’re often explicitly told by those sites that they aren’t. Meta created a monster, but those websites are feeding it.
How Pixel makes tracking too easy
Meta makes Pixel available, free of charge, to businesses to embed in their sites. Pixel collects and sends site visitor data to Meta, and Meta can match this to a user’s profile on Facebook or Instagram, giving it that much more insight into that user. (There are also cases where Meta collects data about people who don’t even have Meta accounts.) Some data, like a visitor’s IP address, is collected by Meta automatically. But developers can also set Pixel up to track what it calls “events”: various actions users take on the site. That may include links they click on or responses in forms they fill out, and it helps businesses better understand users or focus on specific behaviors or actions.
All this data can then be used to target ads at those people, or to create what’s known as “lookalike audiences.” This involves a business asking Meta to send ads to people who Meta believes are similar to its existing customers. The more data Meta gets from businesses through those trackers, the better it should be able to target ads. Meta may also use that data to improve its own products and services. Businesses may use Pixel data for analytics to improve their products and services as well.
Businesses (or the third-party vendors they contract to build out their sites or run advertising campaigns) have a lot of control over what data about their customers Meta gets. The Markup discovered that, on some of the sites in its report, hospital website appointment pages were sending Meta the name of someone making an appointment, the date and time of the appointment, and which doctor the patient is seeing. If that’s happening, that’s because someone on the hospital’s end set Pixel up to do that. Either the hospital didn’t do its due diligence to protect that data or it didn’t consider it to be data worth protecting. Or perhaps it assumed that Meta’s tools would stop the company from collecting or using any sensitive data that was sent to it.
In its most recent hospital investigation, the Markup found that a third of the hospitals it looked at from a list of the top 100 hospitals in the country had a Pixel on appointment scheduling pages, and seven health systems had Pixels in their patient portals. Several of the websites removed Pixel after being contacted by the Markup.
How can a hospital justify any of this? The only hospital that gave the Markup a detailed response, Houston Methodist, claimed that it didn’t believe it was sending protected health information to Meta. The Markup found that the hospital’s site told Meta when someone clicked “schedule appointment,” which doctor they scheduled the appointment for, and even that the doctor was found by searching “home abortion.” But Houston Methodist said scheduling an appointment didn’t mean the appointment was ever confirmed, nor that the person who scheduled the appointment was the person that appointment was actually for. Houston Methodist might think it isn’t violating patient privacy, but its patients may well feel differently. But they’d also have no way of knowing this was happening in the first place without using special tools or having a certain level of technical knowledge. Houston Methodist has since removed the Pixel.
Another health system the Markup looked at, Novant Health, said in a statement that the Pixel was placed by a third-party vendor for a campaign to get more people to sign up for its patient portal system, and was only used to see how many people signed up. But the Markup found far more data than what was being sent to Meta, including medications that users listed and their sexual orientations. That third-party vendor appears to have made some mistakes here, but Novant’s the one that has a duty to its patients to keep their information private on websites that promise to do so. Not the third-party vendor, and not Meta.
This is not to let Meta off the hook. Again, it created the Pixel tracking system, and while it has rules and tools that are supposed to prevent certain types of sensitive information — like health conditions — from being sent to it, the Markup’s reports are evidence that those measures aren’t enough.
Meta told Recode in a statement that “our system is designed to filter out potentially sensitive data it detects.” But the Markup found those filters lacking when it came to data from at least one crisis pregnancy center’s website. Meta didn’t respond to Recode’s questions about what it does if it finds that a business is violating its rules.
Edwards, the security researcher, was even less charitable about how much blame Meta should get here.
“It’s 100 percent Facebook’s fault, in my opinion,” he said.
Meta also didn’t respond to questions from Recode asking what it does to ensure businesses are following its policies, or what it does with the sensitive information businesses aren’t supposed to send it. As it stands, it looks as though Meta is making and distributing a tracking tool that can materially benefit Meta. But if that tool is exploited or used incorrectly, someone else is responsible. The only people who pay the price for that, it seems, are the site visitors whose privacy is unknowingly invaded.
What you can do to avoid Pixel
There are a few things you can do to protect yourself here. Browsers like Safari, Firefox, and Brave offer tracker blockers. Todd Feathers, one of the reporters on the Markup’s hospital story, told Recode they used Chrome browsers with no privacy extensions for their tests. Speaking of privacy extensions, you can get those, too. VPNs and Apple’s paid private relay service can obscure your IP address from the sites you visit.
Finally, Meta has controls that limit tracking and ad targeting off of its platforms. The company claims that turning off “data about your activity from partners” or “off-Facebook activity” will stop it from using data collected by Pixel from being used to target ads to you. This means placing some trust in Meta that its privacy tools do what it claims they do.
And there’s always, of course, asking your lawmaker to push for privacy laws that would make some of these practices explicitly illegal, or forcing companies to inform and get user consent before collecting and sending their data to anyone else. A few new federal privacy bills or draft bills have been introduced as recently as this week. The interest is there among some members of Congress, but not in enough of them to come close to passing anything yet.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi talks to reporters during her weekly news conference in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center on June 16, 2022. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
The response is a shift for the House speaker, a stalwart supporter of Israel and longtime ally of the flagship Israel lobby group.
The contest between Edwards and corporate attorney Glenn Ivey had been relatively quiet. This week, the race was upended when United Democracy Project, an AIPAC-aligned super PAC that has spent millions to thwart the campaigns of progressive women of color, put big money behind an ad accusing Edwards of poor constituent services during her previous tenure in Congress.
On Friday, Edwards’s campaign held a press conference outside the headquarters of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 — one of several local labor unions that have endorsed her bid — where Edwards blasted Ivey for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in outside spending from “corporate interests that are fueled by AIPAC.” After Edwards condemned AIPAC and its allies’ intervention, a number of her supporters — including elected officials, labor leaders, and constituents — also rebuked the ad’s content. One critic, in particular, stood out: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
In a video recorded this week in response to AIPAC’s attacks, Pelosi dismissed the new ad’s claims against Edwards. “She was one of the most effective members in Congress,” Pelosi says in the video. “Donna fought hard for Prince George’s County — for jobs and investments in her community, to help constituents in need and to deliver results.”
Pelosi, a Maryland native who endorsed Edwards in May, is a long-standing ally of AIPAC and aligned pro-Israel forces. She attends the group’s yearly conferences and rarely departs from its hawkish pro-occupation stances.
In a spate of competitive Democratic primaries between progressives and moderates this election cycle, AIPAC has reliably weighed in on the side of the moderate — including those with spotty records on abortion and gun rights. Pelosi had declined to weigh in on some of the races and, in others, supported the AIPAC-backed moderates.
Liberal pro-Israel group J Street, which has supported Edwards in past elections, identified at least $1.5 million in upcoming ad spending over the next week — nearly $200,000 a day. They expect that number to increase dramatically in the run-up to the July 19 primary. If that happens, Edwards may face more outside spending from pro-Israel groups than any other candidate this cycle.
AIPAC and its allies Democratic Majority for Israel and Mainstream Democrats PAC previously spent millions against the campaigns of Summer Lee in Pennsylvania, who prevailed anyway, and Jessica Cisneros in Texas, whose race to unseat Rep. Henry Cuellar remains too close to call. Democratic Majority for Israel is already running ads supporting Ivey, but the full extent of their spending remains unclear until updated Federal Election Commission reports are filed.
The AIPAC ad’s attacks on Edwards’s constituent services echoed accusations that arose during her run for U.S. Senate against fellow Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen in 2016. In that race, Edwards was accused of not being a reliable supporter of Israel for eschewing many AIPAC-backed efforts on the Hill, including resolutions and letters in support of AIPAC’s agenda and sanctions against Iran being pushed by the group. Edwards was also criticized for joining nearly 60 other Democrats — including then-Vice President Joe Biden — in a boycott of a 2015 Capitol Hill speech by then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu where the right-wing politician asked Congress to reject the Iran nuclear deal that President Barack Obama had just struck.
The contest between Edwards and Van Hollen, who both represented Maryland in the House at the time, was in many ways a preview of Israel debates roiling the Democratic Party’s nominating contests this cycle. In the 2016 race, AIPAC endorsed and supported Van Hollen, who ultimately won the Senate seat. J Street, which supported Edwards during her original congressional run, backed Edwards. Now the two groups appear set to clash yet again.
In an interview with The Intercept Friday, Edwards highlighted AIPAC’s support for Republicans who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election victory, and she criticized Ivey for accepting the outside spending from the group. She called on Ivey, a former state’s attorney for Prince George’s County, to disavow the new ads.
In an email to The Intercept, a representative for the Ivey campaign defended the contents of UDP’s ad. “The facts are clear cut and well-documented,” the statement said. “Ms. Edwards has publicly acknowledged on multiple occasions her poor constituent services.” Ivey’s campaign did not respond to questions about AIPAC’s support for election deniers or their repeated targeting of marginalized candidates.
Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for UDP, defended his group’s entrance into the race in a statement provided to The Intercept: “Donna Edwards has a lengthy track record of hostility to the U.S.-Israel relationship, and on top of that was one of the worst members of Congress in terms of constituent service. We are looking at races where there is a clear contrast between a pro-Israel candidate and a detractor of Israel, and there is no doubt that Donna Edwards would undermine the U.S-Israel relationship at every turn should she get the opportunity.” AIPAC did not respond to a request for comment.
In a statement from J Street, spokesperson Kevin Rachlin condemned AIPAC’s latest ad blitz and lauded Pelosi for pushing back. “It’s great to see Speaker Pelosi standing with Donna Edwards to fight back against disingenuous smears funded by a right-wing group.” he said. “AIPAC has been attacking Democrats who stand for human rights and the rule of law on the one hand, while endorsing insurrectionist Republicans on the other. They shouldn’t be in the business of telling Democrats who to vote for, and Glenn Ivey should be disavowing these misleading ads.”
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
AIPAC is supporting REPUBLICAN INSURRECTIONISTS.
MAY 2022 AIPAC SENT A DISGUSTING MAILER ATTACKING SUMMER LEE in Pennsylvania with smears
[from Justice Democrats]:
Voters have already received this disgusting mailer smearing Summer and attempting to tie her to Trump. We only have 10 days to fight these overfunded lies.
This mail piece is so gross and misleading that a slate of high-profile Democratic elected officials in Pennsylvania urged Summer’s opponent, corporate lawyer Steve Irwin, to condemn AIPAC’s lies.
PA Democrats who urged the condemnation said: "Not only is this an outright lie, but it is shrouded in the racism and sexism that has prevented so many Black women before her from running for and holding elected office."
When the establishment gets desperate it will lie and spend a lot of money spreading the lies — all to stop our working-class progressive Justice Democrats.
From JUSTICE DEMOCRATS 2021:
We’re not surprised that the powerful hawkish lobbying group AIPAC launched Facebook ads attacking Ilhan Omar. Ilhan Omar has been a leading voice in Congress, speaking out against war, but her identity as a Black Muslim woman — and her advocacy on behalf of the Palestinian people — makes her the target of these Islamophobic far-right attacks.
And it isn’t just Ilhan they are going after. For too long, AIPAC has had a stranglehold on American foreign policy. At their last conference, they hosted several Islamophobic speakers — even one pastor who accused President Obama of being Muslim. As Justice Democrats are standing up against the far-right Israeli government, AIPAC is attacking the Squad.
2021 AIPAC ATTACK ADS - some removed from facebook:
Targeted By AIPAC Ads Over Support for Palestinian Rights, Omar Vows 'No Level of Harassment Will Silence Me'
"The rights of Palestinians and all people yearning for freedom and self-determination will not be ignored."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/05/20/targeted-aipac-ads-over-support-palestinian-rights-omar-vows-no-level-harassment
From 2020: excerpts:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer have kept their word to AIPAC in pushing pro-Israel measures in the congressional chambers that they control - including a resolution condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
In fact, many of them forcefully rejected the president's AIPAC-backed plan to end the conflict, which would allow Israel to annex all of its settlements in the West Bank. Meanwhile, progressives' criticism of Israel became more vocal.
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/61336-how-aipac-is-losing-the-support-of-democrats
AIPAC is not about DEMOCRACY!
AIPAC offers smears, supports anti-democratic candidates, supports Republican Insurrectionists.
AIPAC has consistently opposed the Iran Agreement even though Iran was abiding by its terms and there were inspectors on the ground.
from Just Foreign Policy - AIPAC is dictating US policy:
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/?s=AIPAC
From Justice Democrats:
AND the same AIPAC-affiliated Super PAC that spent $3 million attacking Summer Lee in PA-12 has spent $2 million against Jessica in TX-28.
Summer Lee Faces AIPAC Spending Onslaught in Final Days of Pennsylvania Primary
excerpt:
Irwin, who led a division at his Pittsburgh law firm offering services in “union avoidance,” has been buoyed by almost $3 million in outside spending — most of it from political action committees associated with DMFI and AIPAC.
“As Democrats from across the commonwealth, we find it shameful that you would team up with a corporate super PAC that has endorsed over 100+ pro-insurrectionist Republicans to attack and smear our Democratic colleague, state Rep. Summer Lee, as not a Democrat,” the group wrote.
https://www.rsn.org/001/summer-lee-faces-aipac-spending-onslaught-in-final-days-of-pennsylvania-primary.html
Progressives, "Massively Outgunned," Ditched Nina Turner
excerpt:
In the 2021 cycle, DMFI PAC spent just under $2 million on ads supporting Brown and attacking Turner. The AIPAC-aligned Pro-Israel America PAC gave Brown’s campaign more than half a million dollars. Last year, Justice Democrats helped raise more than $100,000 for Turner and supported a half-million dollar independent expenditure backing her.
https://www.rsn.org/001/progressives-massively-outgunned-ditched-nina-turner.html
AIPAC Is Helping Fund Anti-Bernie Sanders Super Pac Ads in Nevada
https://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/61358-aipac-is-helping-fund-anti-bernie-sanders-super-pac-ads-in-nevada
Look at the targeted funding by AIPAC & DMFI:
INVESTIGATION: THE SUPER PACS TRYING TO TAKE DOWN WORKING CLASS CANDIDATES FOR CONGRESS
Inside the flood of billionaire super PAC money — $18 million in 3 months — that's targeting working class candidates
https://perfectunion.us/investigation-super-pacs-working-class-candidates-2022/
Bravo, Bernie, for Skipping AIPAC. It's a Platform for Anti-Muslim Bigotry excerpt:
Sanders announced his decision to skip this year’s AIPAC conference on Sunday, in a fiery statement denouncing “the platform AIPAC provides for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights.”
The Israeli people have the right to live in peace and security. So do the Palestinian people. I remain concerned about the platform AIPAC provides for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights. For that reason I will not attend their conference. 1/2
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 23, 2020
excerpt:
Democratic Voters Deliver Stinging Rebuke to Party's Manchin-Sinema Wing
Big-money groups spent some $15 million in those three House races — two in Oregon and one in Pennsylvania — while outside progressive groups managed just over $2 million yet prevailed in all three. In North Carolina, the super PACs had better luck, spending $7 million against former state Sen. Erica Smith and Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam. The spending came from AIPAC, Democratic Majority for Israel, and Mainstream Democrats, the super PAC organized and funded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
DMFI and AIPAC dropped some $1.4 million on state Sen. Valerie Foushee over Allam, with the crypto-backed Protect Our Future kicking in another million. Allam benefited from just $300,000 in outside spending from progressive groups. DMFI and AIPAC put a staggering $3 million behind state Sen. Don Davis over Smith, with Smith benefiting from roughly $600,000 in outside support, most of it from the Working Families Party.
https://www.rsn.org/001/democratic-voters-deliver-stinging-rebuke-to-partys-manchinsinema-wing.html
In this photo provided by Tom Hennigan, British Journalist Dom Phillips poses for a photo during a hike in Paraty, Brazil, April 2, 2010. (Photo: Tom Hennigan/AP)
British journalist Dom Phillips’ quest to unlock the secrets of how to preserve Brazil’s Amazon was cut short this month when he was killed along with a colleague in the heart of the forest he so cherished. Some of his discoveries may yet see the light of day.
“Dom’s book project was on the cutting edge of environmental reporting in Brazil. It was extremely ambitious, but he had the experience to pull it off,” said Andrew Fishman, a close friend and journalist at The Intercept. “We cannot let his assassins also kill his vision.”
Phillips’ disappearance and then confirmed death has brought calls for justice from Brazil and abroad from actors, musicians and athletes, along with appeals for help to support his wife. Phillips would be gobsmacked to learn that his fate has troubled current and former U.K. prime ministers.
He wrote about Brazil for 15 years, in early days covering the oil industry for Platts, later freelancing for the Washington Post and New York Times then regularly contributing to The Guardian. He was versatile, but gravitated toward features about the environment as it became his passion.
Phillips often hiked in Rio de Janeiro’s Tijuca Forest National Park and, atop his paddle board at Copacabana beach, was in his element: floating above the natural world and observing. He might message friends out of the blue, sharing news of spotting a ray with a 3-foot wingspan, reflecting a wonder more common among children than 57-year-old men, and he brought that spirit to his reporting.
He was curious and thorough, whether parsing studies of projected rainfall decline in the agricultural heartland caused by Amazon deforestation or tracking down the driving test administrator who discovered a man disguised as his own mother to take her exam. He recalled an editor telling him: “You spend too much time researching news stories.”
Among local correspondents, he earned respect for his humility as well, often sharing others’ reportage rather than tooting his own horn.
Phillips claimed the spotlight, inadvertently, during a televised press conference in July 2019. Noting rising deforestation and that the environment minister had met with loggers, Phillips asked President Jair Bolsonaro how he intended to demonstrate Brazil’s commitment to protect the Amazon region.
“First, you have to understand that the Amazon is Brazil’s, not yours, OK? That’s the first answer there,” Bolsonaro retorted. “We preserved more than the entire world. No country in the world has the moral standing to talk to Brazil about the Amazon.”
Within weeks, man-made fires ravaged the Amazon, drawing global criticism, and the clip of Bolsonaro’s testy response spread among his supporters as evidence the far-right leader wouldn’t be admonished by foreign interlopers. Phillips then received abuse, but no threats.
That didn’t stop him from attending rallies to seek the views of die-hard Bolsonaro backers. He was alarmed by Bolsonaro’s laissez-faire environmental policy, but mindful that prior leftist governments also had spotty records, often catering to agribusiness and building a massive hydroelectric dam that wrought calamitous local damage while vastly underdelivering. His allegiance was to the environment and those depending on it for survival.
Amazon deforestation has hit a 15-year high, and some climate experts warn the destruction is pushing the biome near a tipping point, after which it will begin irreversible degradation into tropical savannah.
Phillips spoke to farmers who deny climate change even as extreme weather threatens their crops. But he returned from a recent trip with spirits buoyed after meeting some reintroducing biodiversity to their land, said Rebecca Carter, his agent. After his disappearance, a video on social media showed him speaking with an Indigenous group, explaining he had come to learn how they organize and deal with threats.
“I’m grateful to have coexisted with a man who loved human beings,” his wife, Alessandra Sampaio, told the newspaper O Globo. “He didn’t speak of villains. He didn’t want to demonize anyone. His mission was to clarify the complexities of the Amazon.”
Phillips was also a crisp writer with an ear for readability. A 2018 story for The Guardian had one of journalism’s most dramatic introductions:
“Wearing just shorts and flip-flop as he squats in the mud by a fire, Bruno Pereira, an official at Brazil’s government Indigenous agency, cracks open the boiled skull of a monkey with a spoon and eats its brains for breakfast as he discusses policy.”
Phillips described his 17-day voyage with Pereira through the remote Javari Valley Indigenous territory at that time as “physically the most grueling thing I have ever done.” This June, he was with Pereira in the same region — it was to be one of his final reporting trips for his book — when they were killed together.
Three suspects are in custody, and police say one confessed. Pereira had previously busted people fishing illegally within the Indigenous territory and received threats.
Phillips, meanwhile, also had been preoccupied with risks to his professional future, betting on a book with wallet-wilting travel costs and praying it would resonate. He had set aside newspaper work to focus on it.
“I’m a freelancer with nothing but a book in my life and not even enough to live on next year while I write it,” he told the AP in a private exchange in September. “Not so much all the eggs in the same basket as the entire hen house.”
He and Sampaio had moved to the northeastern city of Salvador. He was charged up by the change of scene and teaching English to children from poor communities. They had begun the process to adopt a child.
Sampaio told the AP that she doesn’t know what will become of her husband’s book, but she and his siblings want it published — whether only the four chapters already written or including others completed with outside help. Phillips’ optimistic message — that the Amazon can be preserved, with the right actions — could still reach the world.
“We would very much like to find a way to honor the important and essential work Dom was doing,” Margaret Stead, his publisher at Manilla Press, wrote in an email.
The book’s title was “How to Save the Amazon.” Bolsonaro has bristled at the idea it needs rescue, saying some 80% of Brazil’s portion remains intact and offering to fly foreign dignitaries over its vast abundance. But Phillips knew the view is different from the forest floor; big hardwood trees have been logged to scarcity in many seemingly pristine areas. His companions traveling through the Javari Valley celebrated when coming upon one.
“The Amazon is much less pristine and protected than most people think it is and much more threatened than people realize,” he wrote to the AP in September.
He noted, with a hint of intrigue, that he recently visited a preserved area of virgin forest full of massive trees. Places like that, he said, were usually inaccessible.
And where is that hallowed ground?
“You can read it in the book,” he wrote, “when it comes out.”
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