The New York Times - USA (2020-12-07)

CHULA VISTA, CALIF. — When the Chula

Vista police receive a 911 call, they can

dispatch a flying drone with the press of

a button.

On a recent afternoon, from a launch-

pad on the roof of the Chula Vista Police

Department, they sent a drone across

the city to a crowded parking lot where a

young man was asleep in the front seat of

a stolen car with drug paraphernalia on

his lap.

When the man left the car, carrying a

gun and a bag of heroin, a nearby police

car had trouble following as he sprinted

across the street and ducked behind a

wall. But as he threw the gun into a

dumpster and hid the bag of heroin, the

drone, hovering above him, caught ev-

erything on camera. When he slipped

through the back door of a strip mall, ex-

ited through the front door and ran down

the sidewalk, it caught that, too.

Watching the live video feed, an officer

back at headquarters relayed the details

Police Drones

Are Starting to Think

For Themselves

Drones with artificial intelligence are helping police

investigations while presenting new civil rights questions.

By CADE METZ

CONTINUED ON PAGE B5

Left, Capt. Don

Redmond and Sgt.

James Horst at the

Police Department’s

rooftop launchpad

with a drone used in

police operations.

JOHN FRANCIS PETERS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2020 B1

N

TECH ECONOMY MEDIA FINANCE

2 WORKPLACE

Unilever New Zealand is the

latest company to try a

four-day workweek for its

employees.

3 TECHNOLOGY

The business of movies may

change forever after Warner

Bros.’ startling move last

week. On Tech.

5 WORKPLACE

Up to 30 million Americans

without college degrees could

be earning 70 percent more,

research shows.

Privacy concerns in Europe have

led to some of the world’s toughest

restrictions on companies like

Facebook and Google and the

ways they monitor people online.

The crackdown has been widely

popular, but the regulatory push is

now entangled in the global fight

against child exploitation, setting

off a fierce debate about how far

internet companies should be al-

lowed to go when collecting evi-

dence on their platforms of possi-

ble crimes against minors.

A rule scheduled to take effect

on Dec. 20 would inhibit the moni-

toring of email, messaging apps

and other digital services in the

European Union. It would also re-

strict the use of software that

scans for child sexual abuse im-

agery and so-called grooming by

online predators. The practice

would be banned without a court

order.

European officials have spent

the past several weeks trying to

negotiate a deal allowing the de-

tection to continue. But some pri-

vacy groups and lawmakers ar-

gue that while the criminal activi-

ty is abhorrent, scanning for it in

personal communications risks

violating the privacy rights of Eu-

ropeans.

“Every time things like these

unbelievable crimes are happen-

E.U. Rule

Will Limit

Online Hunt

For Abusers

By GABRIEL J.X. DANCE

and ADAM SATARIANO

CONTINUED ON PAGE B2

Worry of a setback for

global efforts to stop

child exploitation.

Last April, when Rob Flaherty,

the digital director for Joseph R.

Biden Jr.’s presidential campaign,

told me that the former vice

president’s team planned to use

feel-good videos and inspira-

tional memes to beat President

Trump in a “battle for the soul of

the internet,” my first thought

was: Good luck with that.

After all, we were talking

about the internet, which doesn’t

seem to reward anything uplift-

ing or nuanced these days. In

addition, Mr. Trump is a digital

powerhouse, with an enormous

and passionate following, a coali-

tion of popular right-wing media

outlets boosting his signal, and a

flair for saying the kinds of out-

rageous, attention-grabbing

things that are catnip to the

algorithms of Facebook, Twitter

and YouTube. And after I wrote

about Mr. Biden’s comparatively

tiny internet presence last

spring, I heard from legions of

nervous Democratic strategists

who worried that using “heal the

nation” messaging against the

MAGA meme army was like

bringing a pinwheel to a prize-

fight.

But in the end, the bed-wetters

were wrong. Mr. Biden won, and

despite having many fewer fol-

lowers and much less engage-

ment on social media than Mr.

Trump, his campaign raised

record amounts of money and

ultimately neutralized Mr.

Trump’s vaunted “Death Star” —

the name his erstwhile campaign

manager, Brad Parscale, gave to

the campaign’s digital operation.

Figuring out whether any

particular online strategy deci-

sively moved the needle for Mr.

Biden is probably impossible.

Offline factors, such as Mr.

Trump’s mishandling of the

How Biden

Beat Trump

On the Net

Kevin Roose

THE SHIFT

CONTINUED ON PAGE B3

As the American news business
shrank and struggled over the
past decade, a new wave of labor
activism caught fire. A younger
generation of labor leaders rose
up and offered a powerful and
progressive vision: They would
be transparent, sensitive to is-
sues of racism and sexism and

truly accountable to workers.

The movement delivered new

leadership, including a stunning

upset last December, as a 32-

year-old data reporter named

Jon Schleuss ousted the long-

time, 61-year-old president of the

NewsGuild, the nation’s largest

journalists’ union.

“We must do more to promote

democracy and transparency in

our own house,” declared Mr.

Schleuss, the first openly gay

president of the union.

So it would seem natural that

when Mr. Schleuss was alerted,

just days after his election, to

sexual misconduct by a promi-

nent union official, he would be

eager to investigate.

The initial accusation, as is

often so in these cases, was

unconfirmed and secondhand. Its

subject was a powerful union

figure any new leader would be

reluctant to alienate: Michael

Fuoco, the 69-year-old formida-

ble and charismatic president of

the Pittsburgh local, which was

headed toward a possible strike

in a bitter contract fight.

Mr. Schleuss did not ag-

gressively pursue the claims

about the Pittsburgh local presi-

dent, allowing Mr. Fuoco, a big-

foot crime reporter at The Pitts-

burgh Post-Gazette, to hold onto

his power.

But had he looked into Mr.

Fuoco’s conduct over decades at

the guild and the newspaper, he

would have found a startling

picture of a man repeatedly

accused of abusing his position.

And it would not have taken

much sleuthing.

An afternoon’s phone calls I

made this summer turned up

three former Post-Gazette jour-

nalists who described experi-

ences involving Mr. Fuoco mak-

ing unwanted advances on them

or sexually harassing them.

Other female journalists at the

paper told me they routinely

Decades of Inaction on Claims of Harassment by a Reporter

CONTINUED ON PAGE B4

Ben Smith

THE MEDIA EQUATION