Gretchen Peters Testifies at House Hearing on Wildlife Trafficking and the Growing Online Marketplace

 

Testimony to the House Subcommittee on Waters, Oceans and Wildlife. Delivered at the 27 April 2021 Hearing entitled, “Wildlife Trafficking and the Growing Online Marketplace.”

Thank you for inviting me to testify about wildlife crime on the Internet. My name is Gretchen Peters and I am the executive director of the Alliance to Counter Crime Online.

Our alliance brings together academics, cyber-security experts, conservation groups, and citizen investigators working collaboratively to eradicate serious organized crime from surface web platforms. ACCO has more than 40 members – about half of whom focus on the illegal online wildlife trade. This includes organizations like the Wildlife Justice Commission and the World Parrot Trust as well as academics who track primates, big cats, elephants, rhinos, marine creatures, reptiles, insects and other invertebrates. We also have members like Lady Freethinker that document online cruelty to animals, including the fake animal rescue videos that abound on YouTube and Tik Tok, and the horrific animal fight and torture groups found on Facebook.

Distinguished committee members: The world’s largest markets for wildlife crime are right inside your smart phones. The biggest social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and WeChat have become ground zero for wildlife crime syndicates to connect with buyers, market their illegal goods, and move money.

This has happened for four reasons:

  1. Surface web platforms provide much the same anonymity as the dark web, and a far greater reach of customers – about 40% of the world’s population;

  2. Social media algorithms help criminals connect cost-free to customers, thus amplifying crime;

  3. Outdated U.S. laws provide immunity to the tech industry when tech firms knowingly host illicit content; and

  4. This immunity leaves tech firms with little incentive to develop technologies that would block it.

In the wildlife crime sector, this has increased the pressure on multiple already endangered species, including pangolins, elephants, cheetahs, various ape and parrot breeds, and it has created a truly ghastly global market for animal torture and fight videos. I’m submitting for the written record our wildlife Fact Sheet, which provides a summary of the type of content we find.

U.S. tech firms, in particular Facebook, often paint looming competition from China as a reason to let them get away with their monopolistic behavior. Yet when it comes to addressing wildlife trafficking, Facebook is being outdone by its Chinese competitors.

Facebook joined other tech companies like Chinese Tencent in the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online, in pledging to remove 80% of wildlife crime from their platforms by 2020.

That didn’t happen, but Tencent’s work with law enforcement did lead to the rescue of hundreds of live endangered animals, the removal of thousands of trafficking accounts, and the dismantling of an illicit trafficking network.

And what did Facebook and Instagram do in the same time period? They launched a reporting mechanism for wildlife sales.

Facebook is not the only American tech platform that hosts wildlife crime, but the world’s largest social media platform has an extensive wildlife crime problem, and easy fixes the firm could apply aren’t being implemented.

In a 2020 study, ACCO researchers ran manual searches using 17-word combinations in four different languages – simple search terms like “cheetah cubs for sale” or “buy elephant ivory.”

Fifty-seven percent of the Pages we found had the terms “for sale” “sell” or “buy” in their title, as did about a quarter of the Facebook Groups where wildlife appeared to be illegally traded.

You don’t need artificial intelligence to find and eliminate this content. Simple “If” code could block search results and flag and remove any Groups and Pages that combine sales terms with animal species terms.

Facebook has chosen not to implement this simple fix. The question lawmakers should be asking the firm is why?

In that same study, Facebook algorithms recommended another 29% of the pages and groups our researchers found. In other words, Facebook isn’t just failing to remove wildlife crime; its algorithms actively accelerate it.

Why haven’t these algorithms been dialed back? I’m submitting our report “Two Clicks Away” and request that it be included in the Congressional record of these proceedings.

Facebook could make other changes, like increasing moderation of private and secret groups, and making it explicit to users that the firm will hand over apparent evidence of wildlife crime or animal torture to law enforcement, the same way they must do with toxic content related to children.

Plus, there are legal reforms Congress could enact.

We support reforms to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to insert a duty of care for tech firms, who should lose their lose their liability shield if they don’t take reasonable steps to remove criminal activity, whether it’s illegal drug sales, child sex abuse content or wildlife crime.

Distinguished committee members, if it’s illegal to do it in real life, it should be illegal to host it online.

We also support the passage of H.R. 864, the Wildlife Conservation and Anti-Trafficking Act, that will be introduced again this year. I’d like to thank the 9 members of this subcommittee who sponsored the bill:

  • Don Young

  • Aumua Amata Coleman

  • Jenniffer González-Colón

  • Grace Nolapinto

  • Debbie Dingle

  • Ed Case

  • Steve Cohen

  • Darren Soto

  • And Nadia M. Velázquez

This bill has critical provisions for fighting wildlife crime online, and it establishes a whistleblower program that provides financial incentives, plus crucial anonymity protections for relators of wildlife crime.

Distinguished committee members: Reforming laws take time, something endangered species don’t have. Luckily, the U.S. government has various options.

I’m leading a team of whistleblowers who filed a complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission about rampant organized crime activity on Facebook, including wildlife crime.

The Department of Justice could investigate Facebook to determine the extent to which there may be racketeering violations under RICO.

Finally, the Federal Trade Commission could investigate the firm’s deceptive practices around its willingness and capacity to restrict and remove illicit content, including wildlife crime, from its platforms.

Distinguished committee members, I am calling on you, as our elected representatives to reach out to the SEC, the DOJ and the FTC and urge these agencies to act now. I’m confident we can reign in the tech industry, and make the Internet a safer place for humans and animals alike. Thank you.