Citizen Suburban Times Weekly 9-18-2019

Citizen Week of Sept. 18, 2019

| Vol. 3 | No. 6 | www.thechicagocitizen.com

SUBURBAN TIMES WEEKLY

Rich Township High School District 227 is currently considering plans to repair or replace the buildings in the district and the potential closure of Rich East High School in Park Forest. Photo Credit: Provided by the Village of Park Forest

SOUTH SUBURBAN SCHOOL DISTRICT EXPLORES CLOSING FLAGSHIP HIGH SCHOOL

Rich Township High School District 227 is currently considering the closure of Rich East High School, 300 Sauk Trail, in Park Forest due to what the board claims to be a decreasing student body population and the need to make significant repairs to all of the district’s three buildings. SEE PAGE 2

POLITISCOPE How disinformation could sway the 2020 election PAGE 2

NEWS

NEWS

Tackling the Housing Affordability Crisis PAGE 3

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Shh…Your Devices May Be Listening to You PAGE 4

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COMMUNITY

South Suburban School District Explores Closing Flagship High School Continued from page 1

BY KATHERINE NEWMAN

Rich Township High School District 227 is currently considering the closure of Rich East High School, 300 Sauk Trail, in Park Forest due to what the board claims to be a decreasing student body population and the need to make significant repairs to all of the district’s three buildings.

Rich Township High School District 227 currently includes Rich Central High School, Rich East High School, and Rich South High School.

Back in June, the Rich Township High School District 227 board presented several options for repairing and readjusting the school district’s facilities. Six options were presented and they

ranged from the most expensive option to repair and upgrade all of the buildings at an estimated cost of $399 million to the cheapest option which would be to purchase a new facility and partially renovate an existing facility for an estimated cost of $105.6 million. The cheapest plan includes the closure of Rich East High School which is the district’s oldest building.

“If we do nothing and continue to try to staff all of the schools and make repairs out of operating dollars, then we’ll see declines in revenues, increases in expenditures, and declines in fund balances,” said Dr. Alicia Evans, assistant superintendent for Business and Operations for Rich Township High School District 227.

The six options that were presented to the

Rich Township High School District 227 board members at the meeting in June were created as a result of school and community surveys, according to Evans.

“Because we gathered information from various groups we had different stakeholders who responded differently based on who they were.

Students responded as well as staff and we were able to glean some general information. Based on all of that data, we were asked to provide the Board of Education with some options and they are true options that we are looking at,” said Evans.

Since then, the Rich Township High School District 227 has hosted a series of community forums to discuss the options at hand.

Most recently, the Mayor of Park Forest,

Jonathon Vanderbilt made public a letter that he sent to Park Forest residents in which he stated that he is against closure Rich East High School.

Vanderbilt said that he believes the closure of Rich East High School would harm the Village’s economic efforts and decrease property values in Park Forest.

“The Village of Park Forest has let School District 227 know that closing Rich East High School is a very bad and near-sighted decision for our community,” said Mayor Vanderbilt “It is my sincere hope that all Park Foresters grasp the magnitude of what is being considered with Rich East High School. Please join me and other Village Officials in making sure that our collective voices are heard.”

POLITISCOPE

How disinformation could sway the 2020 election

By PAUL M. BARRETT

In 2016, Russian operatives used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to sow division among American voters and boost Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

What the Russians used to accomplish this is called “disinformation,” which is false or misleading content intended to deceive or promote discord.

Now, with the first presidential primary vote only five months away, the public should be aware of the sources and types of online disinformation likely to surface during the 2020 election.

First, the Russians will be back.

Don’t be reassured by the notorious Russian Internet Research Agency’s relatively negligible presence during last year’s midterm elections. The agency might have been keeping its powder dry in anticipation of the 2020 presidential race. And it helped that U.S. Cyber Command, an arm of the military, reportedly blocked the agency’s internet access for a few days right before the election in November 2018.

Temporarily shutting down the Internet Research Agency won’t be enough to stop the flow of harmful content. Lee Foster, who leads the disinformation team at the cybersecurity firm FireEye, told me in an interview that the agency is “a small component of the overall Russian operation,” which also includes Moscow’s military intelligence service and possibly other organizations. Over time, Foster said, “All of these actors rework their approaches and tactics.”

And there’s more to fear than just the Russians. I’m the author of a new

Paul M. Barrett

report on disinformation and the 2020 election published by the New York University Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. In the report, I predict that the Russians won’t be alone in spreading disinformation in 2020.

Their most likely imitator will be Iran, especially if hostility between Tehran and Washington continues to mount.

Disinformation isn’t just Russian In May, acting on a tip from FireEye, Facebook took down nearly 100 Iranian-related accounts, pages and groups. The Iranian network had used fake American identities to espouse both conservative and liberal political views, while also promoting extremely divisive anti-Saudi, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian themes.

As Senate Intelligence Committee co-chair Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, has said, “The Iranians are now following the Kremlin’s playbook.”

While foreign election interference

has dominated discussion of disinformation, most intentionally false content targeting U.S. social media is generated by domestic sources.

I believe that will continue to be the case in 2020. President Trump often uses Twitter to circulate conspiracy theories and cast his foes as corrupt.

One story line he pushes is that Facebook, Twitter and Google are colluding with Democrats to undermine him. Introducing a right-wing “social media summit” at the White House in July, he tweeted about the “tremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination, and suppression practiced by certain companies.”

Supporters of Democrats also have trafficked in disinformation. In December 2017, a group of liberal activists created fake Facebook pages designed to mislead conservative voters in a special U.S. Senate race in Alabama. Matt Osborne, who has acknowledged being involved in the Alabama scheme, told me that in 2020, “you’re going to see a movement toward [political spending from undisclosed sources] on digital campaigns in the closing days of the race.” He suggests there could be an effort to discourage Republicans from voting with “an image of a red wave with a triumphal statement that imbues them with a sense of inevitable victory: ‘No need to bother voting.

Trump has got it in the bag.’”

Spreading fake videos Also likely to surface next year: “deepfake” videos. This technique produces highly convincing – but false – images and audio. In a recent www.thechicagocitizen.com

letter to the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, wrote: “A timely, convincing deepfake video of a candidate” that goes viral on a platform “could hijack a race – and even alter the course of history. …

The consequences for our democracy could be devastating.”

Instagram could be a vehicle for deepfakes. Owned by Facebook, the photo and video platform played a much bigger role in Russia’s manipulation of the 2016 U.S. election than most people realize, and it could be exploited again in 2020. The Russian Internet Research Agency enjoyed more user engagement on Instagram than it did on any other platform, according to a December 2018 report commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Instagram is likely to be a key battleground on an ongoing basis,” the report added.

Companies could step up The social media companies are responding to the problem of disinformation by improving their artificial intelligence filters and hiring thousands of additional employees devoted to safety and security. “The companies are getting much better at detection and removal of fake accounts,” Dipayan Ghosh, co-director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Platform Accountability Project, told me.

But the companies do not completely remove much of the content they pinpoint as false; they merely reduce how often it appears for users, and sometimes post a message

noting that it’s false.

In my view, provably false material should be eliminated from feeds and recommendations, with a copy retained in a cordoned-off archive available for research purposes to scholars, journalists and others.

Another problem is that responsibility for content decisions now tends to be scattered among different teams within each of the social media companies. Our report recommends that to streamline and centralize, each company should hire a senior official who reports to the CEO and is responsible for overseeing the fight against disinformation. Such executives could marshal resources more easily within each company and more effectively coordinate efforts across social media companies.

Finally, the platforms could also cooperate more than they currently do to stamp out disinformation. They’ve collaborated effectively to root out child pornography and terrorist incitement. I believe they now have a collective responsibility to rid the coming election of as much disinformation as possible. An electorate that has been fed lies about candidates and issues can’t make informed decisions.

Votes will be based on falsehoods.

And that means the future of American democracy – in 2020 and beyond – depends on dealing effectively with disinformation.

Paul M. Barrett is the Deputy Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at the Stern School of Business and Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University.

CITIZEN | Suburban Times Weekly | Week of Sept. 18, 2019

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NEWS

Tackling the Housing Affordability Crisis StatePoint - As housing prices soar nationwide, a growing number of Americans are unable to find affordable housing. Experts say that the problem has reached a crisis point, and is harming the welfare not only of individuals and families, but of communities and the economy at-large.

Since 2012, housing prices have increased by 53 percent, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Unfortunately, salaries have not kept pace. The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University reports that 18 million Americans commit more than 50 percent of their income toward a safe place to live.

America needs 7 million units of affordable housing, according to a March 2019 National Low Income Housing Coalition report, which also found that no state has enough affordable rental inventory.

“America’s housing affordability crisis isn’t restricted to cities on the East and West coasts.

Families in rural, suburban and urban areas in all 50 states are sacrificing necessities like food, healthcare and education in order to make rent or mortgage payments,” says Brandee McHale, president of the Wells Fargo Foundation.

“Only when people can afford to live in their

America needs 7 million units of affordable housing, according to a March 2019 National Low Income Housing Coalition report, which also found that no state has enough affordable rental inventory.

neighborhoods can communities thrive.”

Recognizing the extent of the problem, non-profits, think tanks and corporations are stepping in to find solutions that will unlock housing options for more Americans and reduce the cost burden of housing. One largescale effort underway is being spearheaded by Wells Fargo and the Wells Fargo Foundation.

Drawing on its resources and expertise, the company is working in collaboration with public- and private-sector organizations to develop and implement new solutions in

communities of need, and is committing a $1 billion philanthropic investment through 2025.

The $1 billion will be used to address multiple facets of the U.S. housing affordability crisis, including homelessness, available and affordable rentals, transitional housing and homeownership. Beyond this commitment, programs that increase financial literacy among individuals and create small business growth for local entrepreneurs round out an overall strategy to help people and

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communities find more financial stability.

This new philanthropic strategy comes on the heels of previous efforts designed to secure affordable housing for more Americans. Since 2012, Wells Fargo has provided charitable grants for homebuyers and homebuyer education through its philanthropic NeighborhoodLIFT, and other LIFT programs in collaboration with NeighborWorks America, creating more than 22,000 homeowners -- the majority from low- and moderate-income households -through over $475 million in down-payment assistance grants. In addition, 10-year lending commitments are in place to help more than 170,000 African American and Hispanic individuals purchase homes.

“Financial stability starts with a place you can afford to call home, but to help more people find that, it’s going take all of us looking more holistically at the spectrum of housing needs,” says McHale.

As markets all over the country struggle with high housing prices, policymakers, advocates, philanthropists and non-profits will need to work together to find long-term solutions that will help millions of Americans meet their most basic needs.

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NEWS

Shh…Your Devices May Be Listening to You We have become accustomed to carrying our mobile phones and tablet devices everywhere we go. The mobile phone has essentially become an integral part of our everyday lives, helping us to communicate, make payments and socialize.

Unfortunately, the smart devices of today are equipped with many different types of sensors that may be listening in on our conversations.

Ragib Hasan, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says these sensors include accelerometers, GPS, gyroscopes and more.

“In reality, we have threats from two directions — malicious apps that hijack the phone sensors to spy on us, and otherwise benign apps secretly listening to or sensing our activities, and then sending the data ‘home’ for advertising and other activities,” Hasan said.

Hasan says the first type of threat — malicious apps — are easier to prevent, especially if users install apps only from trusted sources.

The second types of threats — otherwise benign apps secretly eavesdropping on us — are harder to identify and prevent.

“A tell-tale sign is what kinds of sensors an app is accessing — does it really need access to that for the advertised operation of the app?”

Hasan said. “For example, if a user is installing a calculator app, does it need access to the microphone or camera? Most likely, no. However, if the app requests access to such sensors, then it may indicate that the app is going to use that privilege to gather information.”

Nitesh Saxena, Ph.D., professor in the UAB Department of Computer Science, says consumers need to be sure they trust the apps downloaded to their devices.

“It’s not really the devices, but the apps run-

ning on these devices that may gather personal information, if they wish to,” Saxena said. “The Android OS employs a permission-based security model whereby the user is alerted at the time of the app’s installation as to what resources on the device — microphone, camera, GPS, etc. — the app has access to for its overall functioning.

So, if the user allows that app to have access to the microphone, that app can turn the microphone on. If that app is benign, it would just do what it is supposed to be doing. For example, a calling app will turn your microphone on only during a call. However, if the app happens to be a malicious one, it could turn the microphone on even when the user is not aware, and it may record the audio and exfiltrate it to a remote attacker.”

Another issue for users lies in checking the permissions an app requests. Some permissions may make a device vulnerable to malicious apps’ accessing resources to which they are not supposed to have access.

“A vast amount of security research shows that users do not pay much attention to these permissions while installing the apps on their devices; they don’t have the right mental models for these things or can easily get habituated to accepting without paying attention,” Saxena said.

“It is also possible for two malicious apps to collude with each other. For example, app A with user-granted access to a resource can share the data with app B, which may not have user-granted permission to access that resource.”

Researchers have also demonstrated side channel attacks in which a malicious app can exploit benign-looking resources — motion sensors such as accelerometer or gyroscope or power consumption readings — for which the Android OS does not explicitly ask any user

permission prior to granting access. By doing this, it can infer personal and sensitive information, including: * The PIN codes entered on the touch screen, an otherwise restricted resource, based on vibrations of finger presses; * Speech/speech characteristics, especially if you use your phone in the speakerphone mode.

It picks these up via the speech reverberations; * Tracking your locations when you are driving via vibration information captured from your phone placed in the car; and * Tracking your location based on the power consumptions. Your phone incurs different amounts of power when it is near different cell towers, etc.

Although these attacks may not be fully practical today, they definitely showcase the underlying vulnerability.

Saxena says some recent research studies have demonstrated that many apps in the Android ecosystem have actually been exploiting Android’s permission model to learn sensitive information, such as the device’s IMEI, MAC address or geolocation information to track the device/user, and even exploiting and exfiltrating audio and video data.

“The security vulnerability of smart speakers, like Amazon Alexa or Google Home, is slightly different,” said Saxena.

“Here, the user has installed a device in his home or office, and this device has a microphone that receives and understands users’ vocal commands,” Saxena said.

“Ideally, the speaker system should wake up only when the user issues a wake phrase like “OK, Google,” but there is nothing that prevents it from recording the audio at will on regular user conversations. Also, it is likely that,

as the speaker listens to our commands, which are often stored on the cloud servers of these companies, the audio could contain sensitive information spoken in the background — music and TV programs played in the background — that may be of interest to some malicious actors.

What can users do to prevent the threat to their privacy?

• Check all permissions given to various apps.

Does each app really need to access sensitive sensors — GPS, microphone, camera — to function? If something has requested and received more access and privileges than it should have, turn that off from the settings.

• When installing new apps, do the same check. Do not give permission to all privileges the app is asking for, unless it really needs the privilege to function.

• Only install apps from official or legitimate sources.

• For sensitive conversations, it might be a good idea to put your phone away or turn it off.

• Disable apps from recording and maintaining users’ location history — Google Maps, Facebook.

• Utilize anti-virus apps.

Research is underway attempting to solve some of these problems. Google is currently working on a project called Project Alias that aims to prevent the smart speaker devices, like Google Home, to eavesdrop on people’s conversations. The device works by inserting random noise into the microphone of the speaker except when the user issues a command to the speaker.

The bottom line, Saxena says, is that our phones and tablets now have eyes and ears and they can easily collect very intimate details about our personal lives. “We must be aware of the phone’s capabilities and take proactive actions,” he said.

Vocal, Visible, and Vigilant: The Black Women’s Agenda, Inc. Hosts 42nd Annual Symposium Town Hall & Awards Luncheon Darrell Garth Garth Darrell President // Publisher President Publisher Janice Garth Garth Janice SalesManager/ Manager/ General Sales General Manager Manager CST Weekly, published weekly on CST Weekly, published weekly on Wednesdays and distributed in the Wednesdays and distributed in the Township of Bloom, (publishing 52 Township of Bloom, (publishing 52 issues annually).

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Six months away from the first 2020 presidential primaries and caucuses, The Black Women’s Agenda, Inc. (BWA) hosted its 42nd Annual Symposium Town Hall and Awards Luncheon recently, encouraging the nearly 1,800 attendees to flex their political muscle and to help usher in the changes that they want to see in their communities and across the nation.

“A wise woman once said, ‘there is no power greater than a community that knows what it cares about,’” BWA President Gwainevere Catchings Hess said, offering welcome remarks. “It’s up to us to make sure that the presidential candidates understand and align themselves with our positions on issues that impact Black women, our families, and the neighborhoods where we live.”

Joy-Ann Reid, host of MSNBC’s “AM Joy,” moderated the Town Hall, sharing the stage with a panel of journalists, political commentators, and other experts who encouraged participants to live their best lives by giving voice to the issues that are important to them and exacting promises for their support. The panelists included Keith Boykin, a CNN political commentator and New York Times best-selling author; Michelle Singletary, a nationally syndicated personal finance columnist for The Washington Post;

Shermichael Singleton, political consultant, writer, commentator and contributing host of Vox Media’s “Consider It,” and Maya Wiley, senior vice president for social justice at the New School University and the Henry Cohen Professor of public and urban policy at the university’s Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Public Policy.

Following the 2018 midterm elections, Black women stand out as a demographic group with one of the largest voter turnouts, according to Fortune.com.

In 2014, 2016 and 2018, more than 74% of Black women said they voted out of a sense of responsibility rather than to support a specific candidate or ballot measure, according to Black Women in the United States, 2019, the sixth in an annual series of reports released by the Black Women’s Roundtable.

Increasingly, however, Black women indicate that they are looking for a return on their voting investment.

The BWA Awards Luncheon was a celebration of Black women who were among the first to enter and distinguish themselves in their fields. Among this year’s honorees were: The Honorable Cheri Beasley, the first Black woman Chief Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina; The Honorable Muriel Bowser, Mayor, District of Columbia; Dorothy Butler Gil-

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liam, the first Black woman reporter for The Washington Post; political powerhouses Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah D. Daughtry, and Minyon Moore; Dr. Patricia A. Harris, the first Black woman president, American Medical Association; Joi Gordon, CEO, Dress for Success Worldwide, and Deryl McKissack and Cheryl McKissack Daniel, president and CEO, McKissack & McKissack, oldest woman/minority-owned professional design and construction firm in the United States. Spelman College sophomore Jacqueline Thompson was also recognized as the recipient of BWA’s Bright Futures Scholarship Award.

“As Black women, we have proven that we are a force to be reckoned with,” Hess said, “however, securing our interests and maintaining a presence on the America’s landscape requires us to be ever vocal, visible and vigilant.”

Founded in 1977 in Washington, DC, The Black Women’s Agenda, Inc. is a nonprofit 501(C)3 organization that generates awareness and support for issues that secure, protect and advance the rights of Black women and their families. BWA is comprised of 22 collaborating organizations -- sororities, civic, service and faith-based -- representing millions of women worldwide.

CITIZEN | Suburban Times Weekly | Week of Sept. 18, 2019

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