Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

They come from places like Vietnam, China, Mexico and Guatemala, lured by promises of better-paying jobs and legal immigration. Instead, they’re smuggled into the U.S., forced to work around the clock as bussers, wait staff and cooks, and housed in cramped living quarters. For this, they must pay exorbitant fees that become an insurmountable debt, even as their pay is often withheld, stolen or unfairly docked.

In restaurants, bars and food trucks across America, many workers are entrapped in a form of modern slavery. That’s according to a new report by Polaris, an organization that fights human trafficking and helps survivors.

In the report the group offers a detailed portrait of human trafficking as it occurs in the U.S., breaking it down into 25 distinct business models, from nail salons to hotel work and domestic service.

“Because human trafficking is so diverse … you can’t fight it all at once and there are no single, silver bullet solutions. You have to … fight it type by type,” Bradley Myles, CEO of Polaris, told reporters on a press call. “We see this report as a major breakthrough in the field.”

He called the report the largest data set on human trafficking in the U.S. ever compiled and publicly analyzed. The Polaris team analyzed 32,208 reports of human trafficking, and 10,085 reports of labor exploitation processed through its hotlines for victims between 2007 and 2016. The goal: to identify profiles of traffickers and their victims — and the methods they use to recruit and control them — across industries, in order to better thwart them.

Janet Drake, a senior assistant attorney general in Colorado who has prosecuted human trafficking cases, called the new report “a game changer.”

Only 16 percent of cases identified through the hotline calls involved labor trafficking, Drake says, “but now we realize through the work we’ve done that labor trafficking is probably at least as prevalent, if not more so, than sex trafficking. And that’s a real problem we’ve had as prosecutors – being able to identify and disrupt these labor trafficking networks.”

Three of the 25 categories the group tracked involve the food industry: restaurants, bars and agriculture.

From dairy farms to orange orchards, nearly 2,000 of the cases involved the agriculture industry. Workers — mostly men from Mexico and Central America — often were enticed with assurances of an hourly rate, but once they showed up in the U.S., they were paid on a much lower piece-rate basis. Many reported being denied medical care and protective gear to do their job, forced to live in squalid conditions, and threatened with deportation.

Of the more than 1,700 restaurant industry cases, the vast majority of victims involved immigrants, recruited from Mexico, Central America and East and Southeast Asia. Nearly one in five was a minor. They included cooks, wait staff and bussers at restaurants, food trucks, buffets and taquerias.

Traffickers often take advantage “of language barriers between exploited workers and patrons — and in some cases other workers at the same restaurant who are not being abused — to help avoid detection,” the report says.

Workers who try to leave may face threats of deportation. Traffickers also may threaten to injure or even kill the worker’s family back home. About a third of the cases involved immigrants without legal status in the U.S., but many other victims were here on valid work visas.

Some victims were forced to provide both sex and labor. Women from Latin America — including many minors — come to America beguiled by promises of good wages, safe migration or even a romantic relationship. They’re put to work selling drinks, and sex, at bars and cantinas, says Jennifer Penrose, data analysis director for Polaris and co-author of the report.

Many times these are “legitimate bars and restaurants, where they’ll sell alcohol, often at inflated prices,” Penrose says. But behind the scenes, “forced commercial sex may occur on-site or nearby at a hotel or warehouse.” In this model, she says, traffickers tend to be “part of larger criminal organizations.”

Because the report was based solely on hotline calls and text, Myles notes there are limits to what it can tell us. “Potentially, restaurant trafficking may be much higher than we’re learning about, but we’re just not getting enough of those hotline calls to be able to describe that,” he said.

Maria Godoy is a senior editor with NPR and host of The Salt. She’s on Twitter @mgodoyh.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

President Trump is expected to sign into law a decision by Congress to overturn new privacy rules for Internet service providers.

Passed by the Federal Communications Commission in October, the rules never went into effect. If they had, it would have given consumers more control over how ISPs use the data they collect. Most notably, the rules would have required explicit consent from consumers if sensitive data — like financial or health information, or browsing history — were to be shared or sold.

These rules wouldn’t have applied to the likes of Google or Facebook — massive data collectors and digital advertisers — and that’s been a major point of contention for ISPs. But consumer groups argue that’s no reason to roll back restrictions on Internet providers. Plus, they point out, you could abandon those companies in favor of other websites, if you disagree with their policies; switching Internet providers is not so easy.

ISPs have long attempted to break into the ad-targeting and online marketing world, where the competition is intense. For context on what that market looks like, I turned to Jules Polonetsky, privacy expert and CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum, a nonprofit organization promoting responsible data collection.

Below are excerpts of the interview, edited for clarify and length.

Interview Highlights

On what’s going on and what changes

For the average consumer, just about every site they visit online is sharing data with other ad networks, with other third parties, for the purpose of either measuring or targeting ads. … Even most privacy organizations end up using Google Analytics or some other basic tools. …

For better or worse, the predominant business model online has become ad-supported. … So for the average user, the experience isn’t likely to change one way or another — today they see ads targeted based on their activity; tomorrow they’ll see ads based on their activity.

Now, what choices people have maybe has gotten a little bit more complicated. … ISPs have historically played a very small role in (the ad targeting) market for a range of reasons. The most interesting and valuable data is search, social media data — and that is typically only available to the big portals that have that data. The ISPs don’t have it if it’s encrypted.

… The big challenge for big advertisers is that their audience is dispersed across laptop, and mobile, and tablet, and TV and elsewhere. And linking that user’s identity is a challenge. … And this is a place where ISPs are able to play a role. … They now have something to offer — cross-device capabilities — that others can do, but others have to do it differently. …

On existing opt-out options

The ad networks of the world offer an opt-out of ad targeting today. If there’s a triangle ‘i’ on your banner ad, that means that that company is tailoring ads based on your Web surfing and is offering you an opt-out.

Mobile devices offer a bunch of options to allow or not allow information about apps to be used. My iPhone lets me clear my ad ID if I don’t want apps to be able to track me or work with their ad network partners to track me. … Apps don’t support cookies, but the ad ID supplied by the operating system — Apple now lets you wipe that out, Google lets you reset it. So that’s a pretty effective opt-out system for apps at least. Use of location, similarly.

On ISPs’ argument that Google, Facebook, et al. are collecting more data and yet have less stringent regulation

For better or worse, online data has been democratized and there are third-party ad exchanges where anybody can show up and have access to a big swath of your Web surfing.

The BlueKai Bluebook, which is provided to potential advertisers, has 80 sources of data where Oracle’s BlueKai data exchange has linked together data from Web surfing, from offline purchases, from all sorts of providers who have pulled data about you that they have online. …

So I’ve kind of looked at some of this debate with a bit of bemusement because I see the activity in these third-party data markets and that horse is out of that barn. I think for consumers who a more privacy-protective experience, there are a number of options, none of them are perfect — other than, perhaps using a VPN, which may not be easy for everyone to use. …

The good news that an increasing amount of the activity online is encrypted, due to lots of advocacy. … Increasingly, much of what you do is shielded from third parties because of encryption in place.

The ISPs typically — in their efforts to use this data even before this (FCC) rule — have been providing consumers with ISP-level opt-outs. … People should look for emails — typically they do push out an announcement when they roll out an ad-targeting program.

On the regulatory oversight of privacy

The FTC has generally been the lead privacy enforcer, and I think has been very aggressive at doing so. If you look at the recent Vizio case, they were able to take very strong action against sharing of your viewing history. …

At the end of the day, the willingness of the FCC and the FTC to use their authority effectively is what will determine whether the consumers are protected. The FCC (has in the past) used even its high-level authority very aggressively, and the FTC certainly historically has. We obviously don’t know exactly how the new chairs will. …

On how ISPs’ data collection compares to that of Google, Facebook and others

The ad networks of the world typically share, swap and trade data via various exchanges. Google and Facebook have policies that to some degree use your data for ad targeting, but may limit the further use of it. For instance, Facebook does not want your Facebook data being shared — they’d like advertisers to come to Facebook to (place) ads on Facebook.

That may be a nuance because … to a consumer, data being used to tailor their experience is probably what makes a difference — whether it’s being sold or used in a way that tracks and targets them.

So theimplementations that we see in the market of ISPs have focused on allowing the ISP to help ad network partners to do a better job of recognizing users. …

I think at the end of the day, for consumers, it ends up being parsing hairs. So the question is … do the sites I visit get information that allows ads to be targeted based on other information about me? And that information isn’t just Web browsing — a big part of ad-targeting today involves pinging on offline data, my actual purchases at a supermarket, my actual transactions. …

So what the advertisers are often looking to do is to work with partners who are able to put them and their offers in front the users they want to reach. Sometimes, that’s “here’s the Web browsing history,” which they can get from an exchange, or they can get by going on one of the big portals, or presumably they’ll be able to get by going to ISPs.

The market doesn’t think about it in terms of selling data — the market thinks about it in terms of “how does an advertiser find the audience that it thinks it wants.” … And different providers in the market will create those audiences.

On what users can do to restrict or entirely limit their data from being collected

It pays to opt out of the behavioral advertising, when you see that triangle ‘i’ because thousands of companies will at least not target you — they may still be collecting data, but they’re not gonna be tailoring the ads that you see.

I think turning on Do-Not-Track on your browser, despite the fact that only a small number of companies respect it — a significant number of companies like Twitter, Medium and others do respect it. … Choosing encrypted tools when you use email or make decisions about what sites and services (to use) — far less information about what you do during the day is going to be available.

For the changes that have been made today, those tools are going to be effective, because the uses that the ISPs are likely to be interested are, frankly, these tailoring and targeting uses — and so (these tools) for most people are going to be reasonable. They’re not going to promise you absolute privacy, but neither would have the FCC rule. …

If you’re really looking to disengage from the commercial world, it’s hard to take advantage of much of the Web without being fairly technically savvy. … If today’s vote allows ISPs broader latitude with how they can use data, primarily for advertising and marketing uses, most of these tools will turn off those functions. And consumers should look for the options that the ISPs should offer in addition.

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The Associated Press has tallied up business lost in North Carolina because of the controversial “bathroom bill,” and estimates the total cost is at least $3.76 billion over 12 years.

That estimate is probably low, the wire service says.

The law in question, HB2, was passed just over a year ago. It blocks local jurisdictions from passing protections for gay and transgender people, and requires transgender people in government facilities to use bathrooms that match the sex on their birth certificate.

The bill has prompted a backlash from businesses and sports organizations, from Paypal to the NCAA. In December, the state and the city of Charlotte struck a deal to repeal the law, but it fell apart amid accusations of bad faith, and the law remains in place.

To estimate how much the bill has cost the state, the AP drew on interviews and public records to tally up canceled relocations, conventions, projects, concerts and sporting events.

“A business project was counted only if AP determined through public records or interviews that HB2 was why it pulled out,” the wire service writes. Some business leaders are concerned that decisions might be made “quietly,” where HB2 is a factor but not publicly discussed as such, AP notes.

You can read the full piece from the Associated Press here, and see the full list of events and projects here.

The largest loss is also the highest profile one: $2.66 billion from Paypal backing out of plans to expand a center in Charlotte, creating some 400 jobs.

Other major blows, according to the AP’s estimates: a half a billion dollars from Deutsche Bank canceling plans in Cary, N.C., a quarter of a billion from CoStar opening a research center in Virginia instead of North Carolina and $100 million from an NBA All-Star Game being moved out of Charlotte.

The AP notes that North Carolina is, in general, doing well economically:

“The vast majority of large companies with existing operations in the state – such as American Airlines, with its second-largest hub in Charlotte – made no public moves to financially penalize North Carolina.

“Shortly after he signed the law, Republican then-Gov. Pat McCrory issued a statement assuring residents it wouldn’t affect North Carolina’s status as ‘one of the top states to do business in the country.’

“HB2 supporters say its costs have been tiny compared with an economy estimated at more than $500 billion a year, roughly the size of Sweden’s. … Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, one of the strongest supporters, accused news organizations of creating a false picture of economic upheaval.”

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

The negotiator-in-chief couldn’t seal the deal.

President Trump, the former businessman who has never been shy about touting his negotiating skills, has for several weeks been involved in a high-profile negotiation and persuasion effort with members of his own party in an effort to pass the American Health Care Act.

That effort failed.

But this is how Trump sold himself.

“All those politicians in Washington, and not one good negotiator,” he bemoaned in August 2011. It was the day after then-President Obama and congressional Republicans struck a deal over raising the debt ceiling in a high-stakes negotiation.

A year and a half later, he offered, “If the Republicans need a chief negotiator I am always available.”

In his 1987 book, Trump: The Art of The Deal, the president and his co-author Tony Schwartz wrote about how Trump approaches negotiations. In Chapter 2, Trump describes “The Elements of the Deal,” with sections like “Think Big,” “Enhance Your Location” and “Contain the Costs.”

Here are a few excerpts that seem newly relevant in light of the health care bill’s failure:

“Deliver the Goods”

“You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on … I’d never understood how Jimmy Carter became president. The answer is that as poorly qualified as he was for the job, Jimmy Carter had the nerve, the guts, the balls, to ask for something extraordinary. That ability above all helped him get elected president. But, then, of course, the American people caught on pretty quickly that Carter couldn’t do the job, and he lost in a landslide when he ran for reelection.”

This is what you might call a cautionary tale. Trump is only two months into his presidency. He has time to start delivering the goods. But at the moment, many of his biggest promises remain unfulfilled or stalled. He promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act way back in 2011, when he was contemplating a run for president, and he promised it throughout his successful 2016 campaign. Now it remains the “law of the land,” as House Speaker Paul Ryan put it on Friday.

Trump says he plans to move on to tax reform — something people on both sides of the aisle say will be an incredibly heavy lift. It’s been 30 years since Congress last found consensus to rewrite the tax code, and there have been numerous failed attempts since.

“Maximize Your Options”

“I also protect myself by being flexible. I never get too attached to one deal or one approach.”

Trump is known to be ideologically flexible. Some have argued it is an asset. In the case of the health care bill, it may have been a liability. His decision to move in the direction of conservative House Freedom Caucus members made the bill unpalatable for moderate Republicans, and even for some not-so-moderate representatives.

“Know Your Market”

“I’m a great believer in asking everyone for an opinion before I make a decision. It’s a natural reflex.”

House Republicans praised Trump for listening to their concerns. Even as recently as early this week, representatives left meetings with Trump saying he had heard them out. But listening is not the same thing as closing a deal.

“Protect the Downside and the Upside Will Take Care of Itself”

“It’s been said I believe in the power of positive thinking. In fact, I believe in the power of negative thinking. I happen to be very conservative in business. I always go into the deal anticipating the worst. If you plan for the worst — if you can live with the worst — the good will always take care of itself.”

Maybe that’s what Trump was doing on Jan. 4 as congressional Republicans gathered to discuss their agenda for the year ahead. Vice President-elect Mike Pence was in the room giving House Republicans a pep talk, while Trump sent out three tweets warning Republicans to “be careful” with health care. This was before Trump took the oath of office and before the American Health Care Act was even introduced.

Trump has spent almost as much time talking about the idea of letting Obamacare fail as promoting the legislation, potentially sending mixed messages to congressional Republicans, whose jobs could be on the line and whose constituents would be personally affected by the changes.

“The chaos that Obamacare has created and for which congressional Democrats — and you see that — are alone responsible for requires swift action,” Trump said in a Feb. 27 meeting with health care executives at the White House. “I actually told the Republicans that if we did nothing, just did nothing for a two-year period, let Obamacare totally implode — which it’s doing right now anyway — that would be from a political standpoint the best thing we could do.”

He repeated that talking point again in brief remarks in the Oval Office on Friday, after deciding to pull the bill.

At times it has seemed as though the president wasn’t completely invested in the legislation, even as he said he was 100 percent behind the bill.

“Use Your Leverage”

“The worst thing you can possibly to in a deal is seem desperate to make it. … In other words, you have to convince the other guy it’s in his interest to make a deal.”

Thursday night, Trump sent a message to members of his own party that he was done negotiating. Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told lawmakers that the president wanted a vote and would move on, leaving the Affordable Care Act in place if it failed. He argued their failure to vote would be a political disaster after they had spent years campaigning on the message of repealing and replacing the law. Trump was essentially walking away from the table and arguing that passing the bill was more important to members of Congress than it was to him.

They called his bluff. As the day went on Friday, it became increasingly clear the bill would fail as lawmakers who previously had been undecided said they would vote no.

“Fight Back”

“Much as it pays to emphasize the positive, there are times when the only choice is confrontation. In most cases I’m very easy to get along with. I’m very good to people who are good to me. But when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard.”

During the campaign, Trump described himself as a counter-puncher. Will he punch back at congressional Republicans who didn’t support the health care bill? He was asked if he feels betrayed by members of the Freedom Caucus, who negotiated concessions from him before ultimately saying they still couldn’t support the bill. “I’m not betrayed,” Trump said. “They’re friends of mine. I’m disappointed because we could’ve had it. So I’m disappointed. I’m a little surprised, I could tell you.”

Trump doesn’t quickly forget. We’ll know how he really feels when he starts tweeting, or starts backing non-incumbents in Republican primaries.

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The State Department will approve the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline, a U.S. official tells NPR. That will set the stage for President Trump to reverse a decision former President Barack Obama made in 2015 to reject the project.

Four days after Trump was sworn into office he invited TransCanada to resubmit its application for the pipeline. Trump also directed the State Department to make its national-interest determination within 60 days. That deadline is Monday.

A U.S. official tells NPR the State Department will find that building the pipeline is in the national interest. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was CEO of ExxonMobil and recused himself from the review. Undersecretary for Political Affairs Tom Shannon will sign the determination.

The proposed pipeline is controversial because of the oil it would transport. It’s designed to move crude from Canada’s oil sands in Alberta, south to the U.S. Gulf Coast where it could be refined or exported. Environmentalists oppose oil sands because producing it requires additional processing that emits more pollution.

“The same communities who defeated this pipeline before — Indigenous leaders, landowners, farmers, and grassroots activists — are ready to fight again,” says 350.org Executive Director May Boeve.

That fight is expected to take place in states the pipeline would travel through, especially in Nebraska where some landowners and environmentalists have led a years-long legal battle to stop the pipeline.

The oil industry and some labor unions have supported the pipeline, largely for the thousands of construction jobs the project would provide. But those jobs are temporary. Once built the State Department has estimated the pipeline will employ about 35 people.

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Dan Fazio says his phone is “ringing off the hook” these days.

He’s executive director of WAFLA, an organization that helps fruit growers in Washington state find workers — and specifically, foreign workers who are allowed to enter the U.S. specifically as seasonal workers on farms.

WAFLA takes care of the bureaucratic details. It applies for permission from the Department of Labor to bring in workers for specific jobs. It certifies that it has looked for U.S. citizens to do these jobs and can’t find them. Then it locates people in places like Mexico, or Central America. These “guest workers” get a special visa, called an H-2A visa, that lets them stay in the country temporarily, usually for no more than 10 months. WAFLA brings them by bus to the fields and orchards of Washington.

“This year, we’ll get labor certifications for over 10,000 workers,” Fazio says.

Interest in WAFLA’s services is surging for two different reasons. There’s a shortage of farm workers across the country. But more recently, it’s also been driven by fear of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

“We haven’t seen any raids, but we have seen the paranoia,” says Fazio. “A government vehicle drives by a farm, and all the farm workers run away.”

The workers, many of whom are in the country without legal authorization, are worried about deportation. But farm employers are worried, too. Because if they lose their workers, they could also lose their harvest.

So they’re getting on the phone to Fazio, looking for workers who are here legally, and won’t run away.

Use of these H-2A visas has already been growing in recent years, because farmers are finding it hard to find enough workers.

Users of the program include tobacco and sweet potato growers in North Carolina, small organic farms in Pennsylvania, even the Trump Winery, in Virginia.

They’re turning to workers like Felipe Montan.

Montan’s home is in Veracruz, Mexico. That’s where I reached him, by phone. But he’ll soon leave his family there and get on a bus to North Carolina, to work in sweet potato fields. He’s been doing this for the past ten years. He’ll spend most of the year there.

The separation from his family is hard, Montan says, but there’s just not much work at home in Veracruz. He’s also moved to other parts of Mexico, for months at a time, to find work. But the work in North Carolina pays much more. “It has helped me to improve my house,” he says. “It has allowed me to pay for education for my kids. I have a daughter who’s in the university.”

The guest worker program has plenty of critics. The H-2A visa ties a worker to one employer. That can leave workers vulnerable to abuse or exploitation.

Montan says it’s generally worked out well for him. He gives a lot of credit to a union contract between a group of North Carolina growers and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, which is part of the AFL-CIO. These are the only H-2A workers who are covered by a union contract.

In California, the country’s biggest agricultural state, guest workers are rare. Most farmers there have refused to use the H-2A program, due to the many regulations that come with it.

Employers are required to provide free housing and transportation to workers. They also have to pay a wage that the government sets for each area. This year, in California, that minimum hourly wage is $12.57.

But some of those farmers now are so worried about immigration enforcement that they’re calling Jeanne Malitz, a lawyer in San Diego who specializes in guest worker applications. Malitz is hiring more people in her law firm to handle the workload.

“I don’t sleep very much these days!” she says.

I reached Malitz right after she finished talking to farmers in the town of San Luis Obisbo. “They want to know, what are all the rules? What do we do? Where are we going to get housing?” Malitz says.

Last year, nationwide, about 160,000 farm jobs were filled by guest workers. That comes to about 10 percent of all the jobs in fields and orchards, taking care of planting, pruning, and harvesting.

Malitz wouldn’t be surprised if that number doubled over the next five years.

In fact, she’s wondering if the Department of Labor will have enough people to handle all the applications that they’re about to receive.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)