Speaker 1: In a small high school in a rural part of Idaho.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in a cramped office with a police officer
Speaker 1: called David Gomez. We're looking at his phone, scrolling through
Speaker 1: a feed of short videos on the popular app TikTok.
Speaker 1: This is something David does often. It's part of his
Speaker 1: job as a school resource officer and one of the
Speaker 1: ways he keeps tabs on the kids here. By monitoring
Speaker 1: what students are posting, David can keep an eye out
Speaker 1: for drug dealers and predators, anyone who could pose a risk.
Speaker 1: Right now, we're watching a video of a girl in
Speaker 1: jeans and a sweaters singing along to a song, and
Speaker 1: to me, it looks pretty normal. So this is a
Speaker 1: good example of our show parents, completely innocent video, right,
Speaker 1: But guys will copy this and they'll say, hey, we'll
Speaker 1: look at this. She should wear this kind of bras,
Speaker 1: she should do this. She's got seventy five thousands, that's right,
Speaker 1: seventy five thousand likes. When David started doing this work
Speaker 1: about seven years ago, he thought it would involve breaking
Speaker 1: up fights and keeping guns and drugs out of school,
Speaker 1: but he quickly learned that kids social lives had moved
Speaker 1: onto platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube, and that
Speaker 1: came with a whole new set of dangers. So these
Speaker 1: are people she doesn't know at all. What a cliche,
Speaker 1: but it too we honest him made Land said Harry write.
Speaker 1: They're telling her she's interrexit. They're telling her. What a cliche,
Speaker 1: but it's very honestly. This is a story about trying
Speaker 1: to keep up with a generation that spends more and
Speaker 1: more of its waking hours in a virtual reality and
Speaker 1: learning how to protect them from some of its very
Speaker 1: real world repercussions. I'm Piaga Kari and I'm Shelley Banjo
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Decrypton. Officer David Gomez is forty
Speaker 1: five and he's a tall, laid back guy. School officials
Speaker 1: say he's a good cop and he's incredibly friendly. Hi,
Speaker 1: it's so nice to meet you. Thank you. He got
Speaker 1: assigned as a school resource officer because he was good
Speaker 1: at dealing with kids. Over the years, he's worked at
Speaker 1: a number of schools. I went there to meet him
Speaker 1: in his small rural community an hour outside of Boise, Idaho.
Speaker 1: Before becoming a police officer, David Gomez spent more than
Speaker 1: a decade working in tech at a contractor for chipmaker Micron.
Speaker 1: About ten years ago, I saw an ad in the
Speaker 1: paper for law enforcement opening, and I took the job there.
Speaker 1: My first three years there were on patrol, just street
Speaker 1: cop like everybody else. And then I became the school
Speaker 1: resource officer at a middle school. That's where my education
Speaker 1: and social media began, he says. At that time, his
Speaker 1: main experience with social media was an outdated my Space page,
Speaker 1: but he had to quickly get up to speed on
Speaker 1: a bunch of hot apps once he realized just how
Speaker 1: much time the kids at school spent on their phones.
Speaker 1: Every problem had something to do with social media, whether
Speaker 1: it was pulling, drug dealing, doping, suicidal kids, everything was
Speaker 1: on social media. Early on in his new job, he
Speaker 1: decided to run a little experiment. He created a Facebook
Speaker 1: account with a fake name and photo, pretending to be
Speaker 1: a fellow student at the middle school he worked at.
Speaker 1: And when I added some of the popular kids, they
Speaker 1: all accepted me that same Within the hour, they were
Speaker 1: accepting me, and once I had all the popular kids
Speaker 1: as friends because I had friends in common with them,
Speaker 1: everybody else started adding me. I didn't even have to
Speaker 1: add people. After that, that first Facebook account opened a
Speaker 1: whole new world for David. Now he could see who
Speaker 1: the kids in his school we're talking to and what
Speaker 1: they were saying to each other. Pretty soon he identified
Speaker 1: a threat. But when we met a predator who had
Speaker 1: advertised himself as a twenty six year old marine sergeant
Speaker 1: um he came to meet as it was actually a
Speaker 1: homeless guy, and so to see what kind of a
Speaker 1: problem he had, we made a bunch of fake accounts
Speaker 1: and we realized that the problem was huge, of sexual
Speaker 1: predators right here low All that summer, David helped start
Speaker 1: what the police force called a predator Team. The idea
Speaker 1: was to understand how adults were targeting kids and identify
Speaker 1: this kind of behavior online before it got dangerous for
Speaker 1: students at the school. It became clear that part of
Speaker 1: that job would be explaining to parents and students what
Speaker 1: some of the risks were on these platforms, and that's
Speaker 1: how he found himself asking parents to tell their kids
Speaker 1: not to send naked pictures of themselves over the internet.
Speaker 1: David says people would be shocked if they knew how
Speaker 1: often and how easily could send naked photos of themselves
Speaker 1: He says that because they see an unending stream of
Speaker 1: sexualized photos and music flow through platforms like Snapchat and TikTok,
Speaker 1: it doesn't even feel weird for young kids anymore when
Speaker 1: friends or even strangers ask for them. At the high
Speaker 1: school level, and any big high school, by eleventh grade,
Speaker 1: I would say the girls have sent out their naked
Speaker 1: picture by eighth grade, meaning in the middle school we're
Speaker 1: at about and weekly were to can report of eight
Speaker 1: year olds, nine year olds, ten year old sending out
Speaker 1: naked pictures just because they've been groomed to think that
Speaker 1: it's okay, it's not that big a deal. While I
Speaker 1: was in Idaho, I sat down with several students at
Speaker 1: the schools where David worked, and all of the girls
Speaker 1: said they had been asked for nude photos. It was
Speaker 1: like asking if they had heard of Kim Kardashian, like,
Speaker 1: of course they had. Here's one high school junior, Alexa Porter.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been asked for a nude photo? Uh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Have you ever sent any? No? And do you feel
Speaker 1: any pressure or anxiety around the kinds of things that
Speaker 1: you post or how frequently you post? Yeah? I do
Speaker 1: so I kind of like monitor my posting range to
Speaker 1: who I'm catering to, which sounds really bad, but it's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I do. But not every student is as careful.
Speaker 1: Some boys will make a fake Snapchat account and they
Speaker 1: will contact girls on Snapchat and they'll say, hey, I
Speaker 1: have a naked picture of you, send me a new
Speaker 1: one to me personally or else. They call it blasting.
Speaker 1: I'll last year naked picture all over the place, meaning
Speaker 1: I'll put on Instagram, I'll send into your family, I'll
Speaker 1: send it to everybody. Now, so many girls have sent
Speaker 1: out their naked picture that the chance that they have
Speaker 1: a naked pictures possible. Concerns about what kids are exposed
Speaker 1: to on the Internet have been around since the early
Speaker 1: days of a old chat rooms, but today of US
Speaker 1: teens use smartphones and say they're online almost constantly, according
Speaker 1: to the Pew Research Center. Meanwhile, the social media industry
Speaker 1: is booming. TikTok has been downloaded more than a billion
Speaker 1: times globally. Instagram's parent company Facebook is now valued at
Speaker 1: half a trillion dollars. YouTube and snap that's the company
Speaker 1: which owns Snapchat, continues to pull in a growing share
Speaker 1: of ad dollars each year. And some ways these platforms
Speaker 1: are great because they helped bring people closer together, but
Speaker 1: in other ways they seem pretty harmful. Besides the potential
Speaker 1: for abuse, there's also just the hours of screen time
Speaker 1: and amped up social pressure. Studies have linked social media
Speaker 1: with anxiety, depression, and even suicide in teens. These problems
Speaker 1: exist across social media, but three platforms kept coming up
Speaker 1: during our interviews with David and other law enforcement officials
Speaker 1: as well as parents, kids, and regulators Want a Snap,
Speaker 1: where parents say that disappearing messages make it harder to
Speaker 1: keep tabs on their kids. Another is YouTube, which has
Speaker 1: come under fire for its recommendation system. It can surface
Speaker 1: unsavory content and also make it easy for pedophiles to
Speaker 1: watch videos of young children. And the third one is
Speaker 1: newcomer TikTok, which David says can be risky precisely because
Speaker 1: it seems so innocent. So TikTok snuck up on people
Speaker 1: and when kids would show their parents the fun video
Speaker 1: making things that you could lip sick and you can
Speaker 1: make funny whatever, for parents thought because it's a kid's app,
Speaker 1: it must be safe for kids, and that was what
Speaker 1: kind of bypass some of the regular questions that parents
Speaker 1: should ask of applications, like hey, does it put your
Speaker 1: GPS on? There? Can you private message? Who else is
Speaker 1: watching these videos? Snap, TikTok, and YouTube all said they
Speaker 1: take children's safety very seriously. They emphasize that their platforms
Speaker 1: aren't designed for kids younger than thirteen, and when they
Speaker 1: find underage users, they close those accounts. YouTube said in
Speaker 1: the first quarter it took down eight hundred thousand videos
Speaker 1: over violations of its child safety policy. Snap told us
Speaker 1: that it's model of private messaging serves to protect kids
Speaker 1: because it's harder for harmful content to go viral. But
Speaker 1: social media has completely changed the nature of David's job
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. For example, drug sales work
Speaker 1: completely differently now. When I visited him in Idaho, he
Speaker 1: pulled out his phone and opened his fake Snapchat account
Speaker 1: to demonstrate clicking through stories from local drug dealers showcasing
Speaker 1: vape cartridges and marijuana for sale. David said some of
Speaker 1: these accounts are from past students. Others are people who
Speaker 1: accepted his friend requests even though they don't know him.
Speaker 1: So this is supposed in the last twenty four hours
Speaker 1: this guy, so they're open for business, which means they'll
Speaker 1: deliver um. So here these are going to be vape
Speaker 1: cartridges um, and they're going to be marijuana cartridge is
Speaker 1: because nobody pays thirty dollars for one cartridge. They're usually
Speaker 1: like five dollars, so thirty dollar one is going to
Speaker 1: have a full lot. Snap said accounts used to sell
Speaker 1: drugs are an intentional abuse of their terms of service,
Speaker 1: and that the company removes these accounts when they're reported. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: David says, who uses these Snapchat accounts to rest drug dealers?
Speaker 1: Once those people are close to campus with cocaine or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, he can bust them. But there's something else,
Speaker 1: something even more serious, that's always on his mind. What
Speaker 1: if someone wants to hurt the kids in his school.
Speaker 1: Often social media provides the first clues about a school
Speaker 1: shooter or another kind of attack, and it's these cases
Speaker 1: where law enforcement will take extraordinary measures. After spending some
Speaker 1: time with Officer David Gomez, I realized that drug busts
Speaker 1: and tracking down predators is stuff he does all the time,
Speaker 1: but there are other less frequent incidents that he's always
Speaker 1: on the alert for, including school shooter threats. David said,
Speaker 1: that Not long ago, a parent reached out to him
Speaker 1: after seeing messages on Snapchat that suggested someone was planning
Speaker 1: an attack. David used his Snapchat account to look at
Speaker 1: the messages, and then the next day he saw another message.
Speaker 1: This one included some specifics. Hey, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: at the school tomorrow at this location, and don't be
Speaker 1: there if you want to live. This is the kind
Speaker 1: of lead. He has to investigate quickly to determine if
Speaker 1: there is real so he reached out to Snapchat itself.
Speaker 1: He said, hey, look, I've got a threat to the school.
Speaker 1: I need help. So the tech companies go through and say, hey, look,
Speaker 1: here's the IP address, here's the email address, or here's
Speaker 1: a phone number. So then I look and they tell
Speaker 1: me when the account was created too, so I can
Speaker 1: see if it just got created for this purpose or
Speaker 1: if it's a mature account. In some cases, this would
Speaker 1: be enough information to figure out which kid is making
Speaker 1: the threat. This time, though, he needed more information, so
Speaker 1: David called the cable company, gave it the IP address
Speaker 1: of the web browser he'd received from snap and a
Speaker 1: cable company matched it to a physical home address. And
Speaker 1: so once I find the address, we're going there. How
Speaker 1: long does it take the tech companies to get that
Speaker 1: information to you? I probably I can have the address
Speaker 1: of where the person is in twenty minutes, and as
Speaker 1: long as you have the right authority and you give
Speaker 1: them the right paperwork afterwards or before. Sometimes I just
Speaker 1: have to mail them on a letterhead that says I
Speaker 1: will follow up with whatever for work is needed. David
Speaker 1: found the kid making the threats, Luckily this time it
Speaker 1: was a hoax. In other situations where he's found evidence
Speaker 1: an attack was being planned, he's had to make an arrest,
Speaker 1: but in this case, he turned matters over to the school,
Speaker 1: who suspended the student for a week. Hearing David talk
Speaker 1: about this made me curious about exactly how this relationship
Speaker 1: between the police and the tech companies works. So a
Speaker 1: threat to the school, suicidal person, kidnapping, you know, some
Speaker 1: kind of a domestic violence were imminent danger means there's
Speaker 1: likeliness to be great bodily harm or death. So any
Speaker 1: situation where there's a possibility of imminent danger which is
Speaker 1: great bodily harm or death, they will help us very quickly.
Speaker 1: Snap says it received nearly seven thousand criminal legal requests
Speaker 1: for data from July to December of last year, including
Speaker 1: search warrants and why a tap orders. It comply with
Speaker 1: seven percent of them. A spokesman confirmed that in cases
Speaker 1: where police officers quote swear there is an imminent threat
Speaker 1: to life or safety, Snap can disclose certain user information
Speaker 1: right away, officers are required to follow up with the
Speaker 1: correct legal process, like a subpoena, after the threat has subsided.
Speaker 1: And the same goes for Facebook, which said it complied
Speaker 1: with se of the one hundred and ten thousand data
Speaker 1: requests from law enforcement during that same period, and across
Speaker 1: the board. The law enforcement agents and regulators we talked
Speaker 1: to said the tech companies are mostly responsive and accessible,
Speaker 1: but some of these tactics also highlights an uncomfortable trade
Speaker 1: off between safety and privacy. It raises the question of
Speaker 1: how much surveillance is too much, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to children. Take TikTok, for example. I learned in the
Speaker 1: course of my reporting that TikTok now uses facial recognition
Speaker 1: to predict the ages of users and to identify when
Speaker 1: someone might be under age. That's a protection measure, but
Speaker 1: that also means it's scanning kids aces that in itself
Speaker 1: can seem a little creepy for some people. But some
Speaker 1: experts think that developing new technology will have to be
Speaker 1: part of the solution, like Julie man Grant, who worked
Speaker 1: at Microsoft and Twitter for two decades and now heads
Speaker 1: up a commission on Internet Safety for the Australian Government.
Speaker 1: For a long time, we have been seen incremental innovations
Speaker 1: and changes. I think we're starting to see the deployment
Speaker 1: of more technology tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning,
Speaker 1: which have a great ability to help detect and remove
Speaker 1: abusive and harmful material before it's posted. But I think
Speaker 1: we need more of that, and we need real leadership
Speaker 1: to change the culture around how technology and services are developed.
Speaker 1: Safety has to be and children's rights and um ethics
Speaker 1: need to be at the core of technology development rather
Speaker 1: than just an afterthought. But a lot of children's advocates
Speaker 1: think tech companies need to do more to keep young
Speaker 1: kids off the sites in the first place. Earlier this year,
Speaker 1: TikTok had to pay a record fine to the US
Speaker 1: government for illegally collecting data of users under age thirteen,
Speaker 1: even for all minors using these platforms. Duly emphasized that
Speaker 1: once tech companies have sensitive information about their youngest users.
Speaker 1: They have to make sure the data is used appropriately
Speaker 1: and is kept completely confidential. But you also need to
Speaker 1: make sure that if you're collecting this kind of really
Speaker 1: sensitive personal information, that you're not creating security and privacy
Speaker 1: issues by creating honey pots um of information um sensitive
Speaker 1: information that can be exploited in other ways. A TikTok
Speaker 1: spokesperson told us that promoting a safe and positive environment
Speaker 1: is a top priority and that this is a complex
Speaker 1: industry wide challenge. TikTok said it deploys a combination of
Speaker 1: technology and moderation to address misuse of its platform. Back
Speaker 1: in Idaho, office of David Gomez has started posting tutorials
Speaker 1: on his own Facebook page age trying to clue parents
Speaker 1: into what's going on with their kids social accounts. He's
Speaker 1: got a following of around ten thousand people, including parents
Speaker 1: and educators across the country. He says most parents, even
Speaker 1: the ones who are really engaged, will never know everything
Speaker 1: their kids are getting up to online. There's one thing
Speaker 1: they can control, though, when they give their child a phone.
Speaker 1: So I always tell parents the minimum age of thirteen
Speaker 1: plus the understanding that the kids are going to look
Speaker 1: at pornography, not child porn, butch is regular pornography. But
Speaker 1: what we're seeing is about third grade now, so eight
Speaker 1: seven and eight, many, many kids are already getting their
Speaker 1: own smartphones. We're taking bullying reports from third graders already
Speaker 1: because they're taking pictures, putting them online, posting them on
Speaker 1: Instagram accounts. Um. Some of my seventh and eighth grade
Speaker 1: girls have Tinder accounts. Other tips include abiding by app
Speaker 1: age limits, not allowing kids to keep their phones in
Speaker 1: their rooms at night, disabling messages and pop posting for
Speaker 1: young children, and making sure kids only accept friend requests
Speaker 1: from people they know. In real life, it can feel
Speaker 1: like a never ending task. As one parent I talked
Speaker 1: to J. C. Holman explained, I mean, it is truly
Speaker 1: a lot of work to try to stay on top
Speaker 1: of it. And I don't think it's possible to stay
Speaker 1: ahead of everything your kids are doing unless you are
Speaker 1: extremely tech savvy and devote a significant amount of your
Speaker 1: life to it. And it continues to get harder now
Speaker 1: that tech companies use artificial intelligence to create highly individualized
Speaker 1: social feeds, features like disappearing messages and vaults that hide
Speaker 1: certain posts. It means that what a parent sees on
Speaker 1: the app and whether kids see are often totally different. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: there's really no true way to know exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 1: It feels what you feel a little helpless, um because
Speaker 1: they all have phones and the only way to do
Speaker 1: it is to not allow them to have one, and
Speaker 1: in this day and age, it would be like cutting
Speaker 1: off the air they breathe, I mean in their minds.
Speaker 1: So it's it's really a mixed feeling because it gives
Speaker 1: me access to her, but on the flip side, it
Speaker 1: gave everybody else that's same axis. That's it for this
Speaker 1: week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening. We always like
Speaker 1: to know what you think of the show. You can
Speaker 1: write to us at Decrypted at Bloomberg dot net or
Speaker 1: I'm on Twitter at s Banjo and I'm at Pia
Speaker 1: gad Cary. And please help us spread the word about
Speaker 1: our show by leaving us a racing or review in
Speaker 1: your favorite podcast apt. This episode was produced by piagad
Speaker 1: Cary and Lindsay Cradwell. Our story editor was Ann Vandermay.
Speaker 1: Thank you also to Aki Ito, Emily Busso, and Brad Stone.
Speaker 1: Francesco Levi is head of Bloomberg podcasts. This episode marks
Speaker 1: the end of our spring season, but we'll be back
Speaker 1: in September with a full slate of news stories. Have
Speaker 1: a great summer.