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Cybersecurity Experts Encourage System of Reporting Workers to Employers for “Online Abuse”

A new initiative launched by cybersecurity experts encourages companies to create a system that makes it easier for people to be reported to their employers for “online abuse.”

The new program is called Respect in Security and was created by Trend Micro’s Rik Ferguson and Red Goat Cyber Security’s Lisa Forte.

According to Forte, the current system, which is largely based on a combination of AI and human reviewers working for social media companies, is a “no man’s land” and not very effective.

“The best solution we have, if the culprit is identifiable, is to approach their employer,” she argues.

According to Ferguson, companies currently only deal with “abuse” that happens internally and are ill-equipped to monitor what their staff are saying online.

Companies who sign up for the initiative are required to agree to seven principles and create a public reporting system that encourages employees to keep tabs on each other’s behavior.

“If you know your organization has made that commitment, it may make you think twice about doing it,” Ferguson said. “We need to take action.”

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A Bad Cop’s Best Friend?

One morning in late January 2019, Rhogena Nicholas texted a prayer to her mother, Jo Ann Nicholas, just as she did every day. A widow in her eighties, Jo Ann could no longer make the four-hour drive from Natchitoches, Louisiana, to visit her daughter and her son-in-law, Dennis Tuttle, at their bungalow in the Pecan Park neighborhood of southeast Houston, but the family remained close, texting and speaking on the phone regularly. Rhogena, 58, worked as a bookkeeper, among other jobs. That afternoon, on January 28, she called Jo Ann to warn her against venturing outside in the icy weather gripping central Louisiana. Then she said goodbye, telling her mother that she and Tuttle were going to take a nap.

Less than an hour later, eleven armed Houston Police Department officers broke down the door of 7815 Harding Street and killed Rhogena, Tuttle, and their dog in a fusillade of bullets; autopsies would reveal that police shot Rhogena three times and Tuttle nine times. Four officers were also shot, allegedly by Tuttle, a 59-year-old disabled Navy veteran.

At a press conference that evening, Houston police chief Art Acevedo said that a neighbor had tipped off officers that heroin was being sold at the Harding Street home, leading a judge to issue a search warrant. Then Joe Gamaldi, the 37-year-old president of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, stepped up to the microphones.

A native of Long Island who started his career in the New York Police Department, Gamaldi has a slender build and short stature—his former NYPD partner affectionately calls him a “good little man”—that belie his street fighter instincts. And on this night, with four of his officers in the hospital, he was ready for a brawl.

“We are sick and tired of having dirtbags trying to take our lives,” Gamaldi announced in his reedy New York accent, jabbing his forefinger at the assembled reporters. “And if you’re the ones that are out there spreading the rhetoric that police officers are the enemy—well, just know, we’ve all got your number now.” To Gamaldi, the deadly Harding Street raid was the latest skirmish in what he considers a war on cops being waged by a panoply of sinister left-wing groups.

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