Big Brother News Watch
TSA Visited Apple and Google to Discuss Collaboration for Digital ID + More
TSA Visited Apple and Google to Discuss Collaboration for Digital ID
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is continuing collaboration with Big Tech concerning the use of biometric surveillance technology, but also the development of digital IDs for passengers.
On its site, the TSA revealed that its officials traveled to California recently where they met with representatives of Apple and Google to talk about continuing work on implementing digital ID on people’s phones. The TSA delegation to Silicon Valley, led by Administrator David Pekoske, referred to Apple and Google as their “innovation partners.” The goal is to continue with yet another example of “public-private” aka, government-Big Tech “partnership.”
Interestingly, in March, the Biden White House said there were effectively new rules that would allow travelers to opt out of TSA’s facial recognition process, “without losing their place in line.”
The reality on the ground, however, can be quite different, as Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, found out when he tried to avoid facial recognition at a Washington airport last year. Reports the newspaper: “(Markley) was pressured by a TSA officer who told the senator to step aside while others were allowed to bypass him. The senator published a video showing the TSA officer’s actions on his website.”
Maine High Court Says EMS Board Had Authority to Impose Vaccine Mandate
Maine’s highest court has ruled a state board overseeing emergency medical service workers had the authority to impose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. That decision from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, released Thursday, upheld a Superior Court judge’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit brought against the Maine EMS Board.
A group of EMS workers had sued the board claiming it lacked the authority to impose a mandate requiring COVID-19 and influenza vaccines.
The modified vaccine mandate survived numerous lawsuits and was ultimately upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The state, in September 2023, reversed course and lifted the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, though still requiring vaccinations against other diseases such as measles, mumps and tuberculosis.
Stop Using Your Face or Thumb to Unlock Your Phone
Last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California released a ruling that concluded state highway police were acting lawfully when they forcibly unlocked a suspect’s phone using their fingerprint. You probably didn’t hear about it. The case didn’t get a lot of coverage, especially because the courts weren’t giving a blanket green light for every cop to shove your thumb to your screen during an arrest.
But it’s another toll of the warning bell that reminds you to not trust biometrics to keep your phone’s sensitive info private. In many cases, especially if you think you might interact with the police (at a protest, for example), you should seriously consider turning off biometrics on your phone entirely.
The ruling in United States v. Jeremy Travis Payne found that highway officers acted lawfully by using Payne’s thumbprint to unlock his phone after a drug bust. The three-judge panel said cops did not violate Payne’s 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination nor the 4th Amendment’s protections against unlawful search and seizure for the “forced” use of Payne’s thumb (which was more to say unlocking his phone was coerced, rather than physically placed on the screen by a third party). The court panel admitted from the outset “neither the Supreme Court nor any of our sister circuits have addressed whether the compelled use of a biometric to unlock an electronic device is testimonial.”
The 9th Circuit’s ruling was narrow and doesn’t necessarily create a new precedent, but it points out that the arguments surrounding the 5th Amendment and biometrics are still unsettled. The ruling was also complicated by the fact that Payne was on parole at the time, back in 2021, when he was stopped by California Highway Patrol where he allegedly had a stash of narcotics including fentanyl, fluoro-fentanyl, and cocaine. He was charged with possession with intent to sell.
Health Insurance Giant Kaiser Will Notify Millions of a Data Breach After Sharing Patients’ Data With Advertisers
U.S. health conglomerate Kaiser is notifying millions of current and former members of a data breach after confirming it shared patients’ information with third-party advertisers, including Google, Microsoft and X (formerly Twitter).
In a statement shared with TechCrunch, Kaiser said that it conducted an investigation that found “certain online technologies, previously installed on its websites and mobile applications, may have transmitted personal information to third-party vendors.”
Kaiser said that the data shared with advertisers includes member names and IP addresses, as well as information that could indicate if members were signed into a Kaiser Permanente account or service and how members “interacted with and navigated through the website and mobile applications, and search terms used in the health encyclopedia.” Kaiser said it subsequently removed the tracking code from its websites and mobile apps.
Kaiser is the latest healthcare organization to confirm it shared patients’ personal information with third-party advertisers by way of online tracking code, often embedded in web pages and mobile apps and designed to collect information about users’ online activity for analytics. Over the past year, telehealth startups Cerebral, Monument and Tempest have pulled tracking code from their apps that shared patients’ personal and health information with advertisers.
FTC Awarding More Than $5 Million in Refunds to Ring Customers Over Privacy Settlement
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began distributing more than $5 million in refunds to Amazon Ring customers Tuesday, enforcing a settlement with the tech giant over claims that Ring failed to protect consumer privacy.
The FTC claimed in a 2023 complaint that Ring allowed employees and contractors improper access to records from the company’s security cameras, potentially putting customers’ privacy at risk. Ring allegedly used such footage to train algorithms without consent, among other purposes. The agency called the lapses “egregious violations of users’ privacy.”
Amazon, which owns Ring, settled the claims last year and agreed to pay $5.6 million in refunds to Ring customers. The company separately settled a second privacy claim over its Alexa voice assistant for $25 million.
The FTC said it will send refunds to more than 115,000 customers who owned certain Ring devices, including indoor cameras, via PayPal. The refunds perpetuate public concerns about Ring camera data privacy. The company announced in January that it would no longer share video with law enforcement, following criticism from customers.
ByteDance Says It Won’t Sell TikTok Business in U.S.
TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, said it will not sell the popular video sharing app to continue its business in the U.S., despite facing a potential ban under a law President Biden signed Wednesday.
The bill, included in a foreign aid package Biden signed, gives ByteDance up to a year to sell TikTok or be banned from operating in the U.S. The proposal was fueled by national security concerns raised by the supporters, who argued the Chinese government could compel TikTok to share U.S. user data.
“Foreign media reports that ByteDance is exploring the sale of TikTok are untrue,” ByteDance said in the statement. “ByteDance doesn’t have any plan to sell TikTok,” it continued.
The other route for TikTok to remain active in the U.S. is through a successful court case. TikTok announced Wednesday, immediately after Biden signed the law, that it would challenge it in court.
YouTube Delivers $8.1 Billion in Quarterly Ad Revenue, Beating Wall Street Expectations
The Hollywood Reporter reported:
The Google-owned video platform on Thursday reported advertising revenue of $8.1 billion in Q1 2024, up more than 20% from $6.7 billion in the Q1 quarter a year ago. Wall Street estimates were for YouTube ad revenue of $7.7 billion.
Q1 is often a soft one for advertising, in Q4 (which is usually the best quarter for ads), YouTube had ad revenue of $9.2 billion. Both quarters were up by more than $1.2 billion from a year ago.
YouTube parent company Alphabet reported revenue of $80.5 billion, and net income of more than $23.6 billion. The bulk of that revenue is still from Google search.
Cashless Society: WEF Boasts That 98% of Central Banks Are Adopting CBDCs + More
Cashless Society: WEF Boasts That 98% of Central Banks Are Adopting CBDCs
Whatever happened to the WEF? One minute they were everywhere in the media and now they have all but disappeared from public discourse. After the pandemic agenda was defeated and the plan to exploit public fear to create a perpetual medical autocracy was exposed, Klaus Schwab and his merry band of globalists slithered back into the woodwork. To be sure, we’ll be seeing them again one day, but for now, the WEF has relegated itself away from the spotlight and into the dark recesses of the Davos echo chamber.
Much of their discussions now focus on issues like climate change or DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), but one vital subject continues to pop up in the white papers of global think tanks and it’s a program that was introduced very publicly during COVID. Every person who cares about economic freedom should be wary of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) as perhaps the biggest threat to human liberty since the attempted introduction of vaccine passports.
A cashless society would be the end game for economic anonymity and freedom in trade. Unless alternative physical currencies are widely adopted in protest, CBDCs would make all transactions traceable and easily interrupted by governments and banks. Imagine a world in which all trade is monitored, all revenues are monitored and transactions can be blocked if they are found to offend the mandates of the system. Yes, these things do happen today, but with physical cash they can be circumvented.
Imagine a world where your ability to spend money can be limited to certain retailers, certain services, certain products and chosen regions based on your politics, your social credit score and your background. The control that comes with CBDCs is immense and allows for complete micromanagement of the population. The fact that 98% of central banks are already adopting this technology should be one of the biggest news stories of the decade, yet, it goes almost completely ignored.
The AI Camera Stripping Away Privacy in the Blink of an Eye
It’s natural to be leery regarding the ways in which people may use artificial intelligence to cause problems for society in the near future. On a personal level, you may be concerned about a future where artificial intelligence takes your job or creates a Terminator that comes back in time to try to eliminate a younger you. (We admittedly might be overthinking that one.)
One fear regarding AI on a personal level that you should know about, because it’s very much in the present, is the creation of deepfake photos, including those that strip you of the most basic of privacy rights: the right to protect images of your body.
Two German artists recently created a camera called NUCA that uses AI to create deepfake photos of subjects by stripping away their clothing. The automated removal of the photo subject’s clothing occurs in close to real-time, speeding up the creepy factor exponentially.
The two German artists, Mathias Vef and Benedikt Groß, decided to create the camera to show the implications of AI’s rapid advancements. The pair were trying to think of the worst possible uses of AI to affect someone’s privacy, and they realized that the technology needed to create a camera like NUCA was already possible.
Fauci to Testify Before Congress for the First Time Since Stepping Down
Anthony Fauci, former chief medical adviser to President Biden, will testify before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on June 3, making it the first time he will appear before a congressional panel since leaving government work at the end of 2022.
Subcommittee Chair Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) announced the hearing Wednesday. Fauci had committed to testify late last year along with agreeing to two days of interviews, which took place in January.
The closed-door interviews focused on gain-of-function research, alleged federal records violations, conflicts of interest and confusions around pandemic guidance. Fauci was joined by two attorneys during the entire course of the interviews.
“During Dr. Fauci’s closed-door interview in January, he testified to serious systemic failures in our public health system that deserve further investigation, including his testimony that the ‘6 feet apart’ social distancing guidance — which was used to shut down small businesses and schools across America — ‘sort of just appeared,’” Wenstrup said in a statement.
Wenstrup said a transcript of the meeting would be released prior to the June hearing.
Inside Google’s Plans to Combat Misinformation Ahead of the E.U. Elections
“We are all at risk of manipulation online right now.” So begins a short animated video about a practice known as decontextualization and how it can be used to misinform people online. The video identifies signs to watch out for, including surprising or out of the ordinary content, seemingly unreliable sources, or video or audio that appear to have been manipulated or repurposed.
Though it may not look like it, this 50-second video is actually an election ad — one of three that Google will be rolling out across five European countries next month in advance of the European Union’s June parliamentary elections. But unlike traditional election ads that are designed to persuade people how to vote, these are seeking to educate voters about how they could be misled. It’s an initiative that Google describes as preventative debunking — or, more simply, “prebunking.”
“It works like a vaccine,” Beth Goldberg, the head of research at Google’s internal Jigsaw unit, which was founded in 2010 with a remit to address threats to open societies, tells TIME. By enabling prospective voters to recognize common manipulation techniques that could be used to mislead them — such as scapegoating or polarization — Goldberg says that prebunking “helps people to gain mental defenses proactively.”
Concerns about AI-generated disinformation and the impact it stands to have on contests around the world continues to dominate this year’s election megacycle. This is particularly true in the E.U., which recently passed a new law compelling tech firms to increase their efforts to clamp down on disinformation amid concerns that an uptick in Russian propaganda could distort the results.
Congress’ First Tech Crackdown in Years Is a Gift to Big Tech
The prospect of a TikTok ban has loomed for years, but it’s closer to reality than ever. The Senate on Tuesday night passed a bill intended to force a sale or ban of the app as part of a broader foreign aid package. President Biden is expected to sign it into law today, after which TikTok will probably challenge it in court.
If the law holds up, a sale is possible, though China has indicated it would block such a move. The alternative is a ban that would curtail TikTok’s presence in the United States.
While the bill’s stated aim is to protect Americans from Chinese spying and influence via the popular social media app, there’s another group that stands to benefit: the U.S. tech companies that have been struggling to compete with TikTok. Those include Meta, Google and, to a lesser extent, Snap and Amazon.
For Meta in particular, the bill could accomplish what Mark Zuckerberg and his company have been unable to do: neutralize the biggest and most stubborn competitor they’ve ever faced.
Republican Demands Investigation Into ‘Dangerous Dollars’ Sent to China
Republican Senator Joni Ernst has called for the expansion of an audit of the Department of Defense (DoD) into the extent of funding sent to Chinese research laboratories, including into work on advanced artificial intelligence that was exposed by Newsweek.
The audit by the Office of the Inspector General was spurred by a January 25 letter written by the Iowa lawmaker and former Wisconsin Representative Mike Gallagher. They requested information from the DoD on any funding provided to the People’s Republic of China or its affiliates for research activities relevant to the reporting requirement of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). That included funding for COVID-19 research.
In January, lawmakers also called for answers from the DoD after a Newsweek investigation showed that a top Chinese AI scientist had received more than $30 million in U.S. grants, including from the Pentagon.
According to the IG’s response to the lawmakers, the audit “will determine the extent to which the DoD awarded federal funds directly or indirectly through grants, contracts, subgrants, subcontracts, or any other type of agreement or collaboration, during the 10-year period from 2014 through 2023, to Chinese research labs or to fund research or experiments in China or other foreign countries designed to enhance pathogens of pandemic potential.”
Ernst has investigated multiple U.S. government agencies in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, including requesting the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) look closer into EcoHealth Alliance — a New York nonprofit found to have received grant funding to partner with the WIV to study bat coronaviruses, green-lighted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), then led by Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Poland’s Prosecutor General Says Previous Government Used Spyware Against Hundreds of People
Poland’s prosecutor general told the parliament on Wednesday that powerful Pegasus spyware was used against hundreds of people during the former government in Poland, among them elected officials.
Adam Bodnar told lawmakers that he found the scale of the surveillance ”shocking and depressing.” Bodnar, who is also the justice minister, didn’t specify who exactly was subject to surveillance by the spyware. His office said the information was confidential.
Bodnar was presenting information that the prosecutor general’s office sent last week to the Sejm and Senate. The data showed that Pegasus was used in the cases of 578 people from 2017 to 2022, and that it was used by three separate government agencies: the Central Anticorruption Bureau, the Military Counterintelligence Service and the Internal Security Agency.
Bodnar said that the software generated ”enormous knowledge” about the ”private and professional lives” of those put under surveillance. He also stressed that the Polish state doesn’t have full control over the data that is gathered because the system operates on the basis of a license that was granted by an Israeli company. He said ”the use of this type of method must raise serious doubts from the point of view of the protection of constitutional rights.”
Why Were Germany’s COVID Files Redacted?
There are two kinds of long COVID. One is a medical syndrome, the other manifests as a healthy obsession — an urge to shed light on what happened during the pandemic crisis.
Too many questions remain unanswered: why did Sweden come out of the pandemic better than other countries without having endured a lockdown? Why were masks imposed when scientific studies repeatedly demonstrated that they were unnecessary? Why was discrimination introduced between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated when it was clear that vaccines were incapable of blocking the transmission of the infection? And why, since the lockdowns, has there been such a high excess death rate in Europe?
Such questions have motivated Multi-polar, a small German online magazine, to fight for the disclosure of Robert Koch Institute (RKI) documents. RKI is the prestigious German equivalent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This institute is meant to provide the scientific basis for the public health (and lockdown) decisions of the German government. It also has extensive influence on smaller neighboring countries, such as Austria, where RKI’s suggestions are regarded as the gold standard for health policy.
Multipolar has sought to investigate on which scientific grounds fundamental liberties were curtailed, schools closed, lockdowns established and vaccines imposed. It is especially surprising that this legitimate curiosity has until recently not been shared by the wider German media. As a result of an ongoing legal battle, Multipolar finally succeeded (at least partially) in its aims.
In the spring of last year it received the 2,500 pages of the RKI’s COVID protocols, from early in 2020 to April 2021. But the files were heavily redacted — as if they contained state secrets concerning high diplomacy or military matters. So Multipolar has filed a second legal action to enforce disclosure of the redacted parts, which amount to about one-third of the files. This court hearing will take place next month.
Pupils in England ‘Facing Worst Exam Results in Decades’ After COVID Closures
Children in England could face the worst exam results in decades and a lifetime of lower earnings, according to research that blames failures to tackle the academic and social legacies of school closures during COVID. The study funded by the Nuffield Foundation predicts that national GCSE results in key subjects will steadily worsen until 2030 when it expects fewer than 40% of pupils to get good grades in maths and English.
Lee Elliot Major, a professor of social mobility at Exeter University and one of the report’s co-authors, said: “Without a raft of equalizing policies, the damaging legacy from COVID school closures will be felt by generations of pupils well into the next decade.”
Pepe Di’Iasio, a former headteacher and the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the research was “a devastating warning” of the risk of educational decline.
“The current government failed to rise to the challenge during and after the pandemic because its investment in education recovery fell woefully short of what was needed. The same mistake must not be made again, and ministers both now and in the future must invest in schools, colleges and teachers,” Di’Iasio said.
A Senate Committee Has Called for a Royal Commission Into Australia’s COVID Response. Here’s Why It’s Not Happening
A Senate committee has recommended a royal commission to examine Australia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on the community, including of lockdown and quarantine measures. It recommended the scope also include contact tracing, the procurement of vaccines and medical supplies, and the capacity of a range of systems to respond — including health, aged care, housing and domestic violence services.
Late last year, the federal government announced a 12-month inquiry into the government response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The inquiry can still call witnesses and examine the response of governments during the pandemic, but it does not have the same powers as a royal commission.
The scope of the inquiry will cover COVID-19 responses since the pandemic began in January 2020, including governance and key health response measures, as well as advice for dealing with future pandemics.
However, decisions made solely by state and territory governments in response to the pandemic — including lockdowns and border closures — are not in the scope of the inquiry.
What Is the Meta AI Tool? Can You Turn It off?
Meta unveiled its artificial intelligence tool, Meta AI, last week in more than a dozen countries across its various platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The tool created by Meta, the parent company of Facebook, can be used to “get things done, learn, create and connect with the things that matter to you,” according to an April 18 release from the company. Meta AI is free, and can be used in feeds, chats, search and more without having to leave the app you’re using. It also has an image generation tool that can quickly produce AI images and GIFs.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp rolled out the new, free AI feature available on those platforms to more than a dozen countries in English, including in the U.S.
There is currently no option to disable the feature, Meta AI confirmed in a chat, but people can continue to search as they normally would to “engage with a variety of results.”
UnitedHealth Says Hackers Possibly Stole Large Number of Americans’ Data + More
UnitedHealth Says Hackers Possibly Stole Large Number of Americans’ Data
UnitedHealth Group (UNH.N) said on Monday that hackers stole health and personal data of potentially a “substantial proportion” of Americans from its systems in February, as the largest U.S. health insurer scrambles to contain the damage.
The intrusion at its Change Healthcare unit, which processes about 50% of U.S. medical claims, was one of the worst hacks to hit American healthcare and caused widespread disruption in payment to doctors and health facilities.
The disclosure suggests patients’ healthcare information remains vulnerable. An initial review of the compromised data showed files with protected health information or personally identifiable information “which could cover a substantial proportion of people in America,” the company said in a statement on its website.
That theft on Feb. 21 occurred despite a ransom payment.
AI Can Predict Political Orientations From Blank Faces — and Researchers Fear ‘Serious’ Privacy Challenges
Researchers are warning that facial recognition technologies are “more threatening than previously thought” and pose “serious challenges to privacy” after a study found that artificial intelligence can be successful in predicting a person’s political orientation based on images of expressionless faces.
A recent study published in the journal American Psychologist says an algorithm’s ability to accurately guess one’s political views is “on par with how well job interviews predict job success, or alcohol drives aggressiveness.” Lead author Michal Kosinski told Fox News Digital that 591 participants filled out a political orientation questionnaire before the AI captured what he described as a numerical “fingerprint” of their faces and compared them to a database of their responses to predict their views.
The authors wrote that their findings “underscore the urgency for scholars, the public, and policymakers to recognize and address the potential risks of facial recognition technology to personal privacy” and that an “analysis of facial features associated with political orientation revealed that conservatives tended to have larger lower faces.”
“Perhaps most crucially, our findings suggest that widespread biometric surveillance technologies are more threatening than previously thought,” the study warned. “Previous research showed that naturalistic facial images convey information about political orientation and other intimate traits. But it was unclear whether the predictions were enabled by self-presentation, stable facial features, or both. Our results, suggesting that stable facial features convey a substantial amount of the signal, imply that individuals have less control over their privacy.”
TikTok Announces Crack Down on ‘Conspiracy Theories’
As of May 17, TikTok will start implementing new rules affecting content appearing on the app’s For You feed (FYF), and the changes are prompted by concerns about so-called “harmful speech” and “misinformation.”
FYF is vital for the visibility of content since it opens and plays videos automatically when the app is launched, something TikTok refers to as its “personalized recommendation system.”
A post on the company’s site titled, “For You Feed Eligibility Standards,” reveals that content that is deemed as health or news “misinformation” will be censored from this tab more stringently going forward.
On the health side, TikTok looks to clamp down on anything from videos promoting “unproven treatments,” dieting and weight loss, plastic surgery (unless related risks are included as well), videos allegedly misrepresenting scientific findings, to the very broadly defined content that is considered misleading, and “could potentially” cause harm to public health.
Former DHS Disinformation Office Chief Joins Nonprofit, Calls Out GOP Lawmakers
Nina Jankowicz, the former Department of Homeland Security disinformation chief, has joined a nonprofit to combat disinformation ahead of the 2024 election and as artificial intelligence (AI) is on the rise.
Jankowicz joined the American Sunlight Project and sent a letter to congressional leaders who have “done little to improve the health of our information environment” in the years since Russia interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The letter, addressed to GOP Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), James Comer (Ky.) and Dan Bishop (N.C.) claimed their House committees are using government resources to attack researchers who are examining the intersections of national security, technology and information.
“Disinformation knows no political party. Its ultimate victim is democracy,” they wrote. “This threat is growing more acute each day, and you have become the primary obstacle to addressing it.”
HHS Issues Final Rule to Protect Privacy of Reproductive Healthcare Data — ‘One Thing Dobbs Did Not Take Away, and That Is the Right of Americans to Their Privacy’
Patients who share their health information — including reproductive health information — with providers and health plans have the right to have that information kept private, according to a final rule issued Monday by HHS.
“Families who are hoping to have children through in vitro fertilization are finding that Dobbs may have ruined that opportunity,” he continued.
“They’re finding that access to contraception care, which is not abortion, [is] now being threatened as well. And so today Americans are living lives recognizing that at least for women, they have fewer rights today than their mothers did, and it is difficult sometimes to comprehend. But there is one thing Dobbs did not take away, and that is the right of Americans to their privacy.”
State COVID Policies Didn’t Translate Into Fewer Cases, Deaths, Study Suggests
A research letter published today in JAMA Network Open suggests that U.S. states and territories that had more policies aimed at reducing COVID-19 rates in nursing homes (NHs) and home healthcare agencies (HHAs) didn’t necessarily have a lower burden of the disease.
The Columbia University-led research team used NH- and/or HHA-specific policies from state and territory government websites to identify 38 COVID-19 policies implemented from March 2020 to July 2022. They then linked the policy data with community-level and NH-specific COVID-19 cases and deaths to create a dataset and dashboard to help researchers and public health officials assess policy effectiveness.
Having more state- and territory COVID-19 policies wasn’t consistently tied to lower community- or NH-level disease burden, which the authors said suggests that policy effectiveness may depend on implementation and compliance.
“For example, on May 24, 2020, Montana, Hawaii, and Alaska had no COVID-19 deaths or policies, in contrast with North Carolina’s moderate burden and several policies,” the researchers wrote. “By January 12, 2021, New York had a severe COVID-19 burden and the greatest number of policies, while Pennsylvania, Montana, and Florida had a similar COVID-19 burden but fewer policies.”
The Next U.S. President Will Have Troubling New Surveillance Powers + More
The Next U.S. President Will Have Troubling New Surveillance Powers
The ability of the United States to intercept and store text messages, calls, and emails of Americans in pursuit of foreign intelligence was not only extended but enhanced over the weekend in ways likely to remain enigmatic to the public for years to come.
On Saturday, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a controversial bill extending the life of a warrantless U.S. surveillance program for two years, bringing an end to a months-long fight in Congress over an authority U.S. intelligence agencies acknowledge has been widely abused in the past.
At the urging of the agencies and with the help of powerful bipartisan allies on Capitol Hill, the program has also now been extended to cover a wide range of new businesses, including U.S. data centers, according to a recent analysis by legal experts and civil liberties organizations that were vocally opposed to its passage.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, allows the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), among others, to eavesdrop on calls, texts, and emails traveling through U.S. networks, so long as one side of the communication is foreign.
Americans caught up in the program face diminished privacy rights.
Did TikTok Videos Inspire a Teen’s Suicide? His Mom Says She Found Graphic Evidence
It had been four months since Jennie DeSerio’s son died by suicide. Wracked by grief and wondering what she didn’t know, she picked up his phone and decided to go through his TikTok account.
What she found horrified her. Shortly before he died, she found that her 16-year-old, Mason Edens, had liked dozens of graphic videos about breakups, depression and suicide. She knew Mason had recently been through a bad breakup — she didn’t know what he was watching on a platform that he was increasingly engrossed with.
DeSerio said she found at least 15 videos Mason liked that directly promoted suicide, some of which are still on the platform more than a year later. At least five specifically promoted the method he had used. NBC News reviewed the videos and found that some had accrued tens of thousands of likes. TikTok uses likes as a signal for its “For You” page algorithm, which serves users videos that are supposed to resonate with their interests.
She’s now part of a lawsuit with eight other parents against several social media companies over what they say are product defects that led to their children’s deaths. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok targeted Mason with videos that promoted suicide and self-harm. Their suit is one of a group of lawsuits pursuing a novel legal strategy that argues that social media platforms like TikTok are defective and dangerous because they are addictive for young people. Advocates hope that can be a way for people to get justice for harms allegedly caused by social media.
Orwellian Sydney Police: We Will Be the ‘Source of Truth’
Offering a fresh perspective on the fallout of a recent Sydney stabbing attack, residents have expressed their anger and mistrust toward the police who have insisted they alone should be the arbiter of truth in this incident. These sentiments stem from a press briefing given by New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb last Thursday.
Webb, who was sharing information about a 16-year-old male being accused of terrorism following the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel of Christ The Good Shepherd Church, asserted that the police will be the utterly reliable source of updates. She warned against “misinformation,” but decided not to elaborate on what she was alluding to.
This attempt by the Australian police to monopolize control over the narrative of the incident has raised concerns among the online community about censorship, especially as the government has been pressuring online platforms to censor in recent days. The government has even gone as far as telling people to report their fellow citizens’ speech to the country’s chief censor.
TikTok Says U.S. House Bill That Could Ban App Would ‘Trample’ Free Speech
TikTok on Sunday repeated its free-speech concerns about a bill passed by the House of Representatives that would ban the popular social media app in the U.S. if Chinese owner ByteDance did not sell its stake within a year.
The House passed the legislation on Saturday by a margin of 360 to 58. It now moves to the Senate where it could be taken up for a vote in the coming days. President Joe Biden has previously said he would sign the legislation on TikTok.
TikTok in February had criticized the original bill that ultimately stalled in the Senate, saying that it would “censor millions of Americans.” It had similarly argued that a state ban on TikTok in Montana passed last year was a violation of the First Amendment.
The legislation passed on Saturday gives a nine-month deadline that could be extended by three months if the president were to determine progress toward a sale.
EU to Investigate ‘Addictive’ TikTok Reward Feature
The European Commission is investigating TikTok over a feature that launched in France and Spain that offers users the ability to earn points for completing certain tasks on the app, the commission said Monday.
The investigation will look into whether TikTok’s “addictive” features of its “TikTok lite” program violated the European Union’s Digital Service Act (DSA) regulations, which include protections for minors online, the commission announced.
The investigation will focus on TikTok’s compliance with the regulations — which went into effect in February — through its “Task and Reward Lite” program, and the measures the company has taken to mitigate risks the program poses around the impact on minors’ mental health.
Medical Providers Still Grappling With UnitedHealth Cyberattack: ‘More Devastating Than COVID’
Two months after a cyberattack on a UnitedHealth Group subsidiary halted payments to some doctors, medical providers say they’re still grappling with the fallout, even though UnitedHealth told shareholders on Tuesday that business is largely back to normal.
“We are still desperately struggling,” said Emily Benson, a therapist in Edina, Minnesota, who runs her own practice, Beginnings & Beyond. “This was way more devastating than COVID ever was.”
Change Healthcare, a business unit of the Minnesota-based insurance giant UnitedHealth Group controls a digital network so vast it processes nearly 1 in 3 U.S. patient records each year. The network is a critical conduit for shuttling information between most of the nation’s insurance companies and medical providers, who submit claims through it to get paid for treating patients.
The company reported that the hacking has already cost it $870 million and that leaders expect the final tally to total at least $1 billion this year. To put that in perspective, the company reported $99.8 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2024, an 8.6% increase over that period last year.
New Report Reveals Faulty Data, Fallout From COVID Lockdowns in the Hoosier State
Known for many memorable aphorisms, Winston Churchill once expressed a determination to “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Over the ensuing decades, some leaders have used such logic to justify taking advantage of people’s fears during perilous times — trampling their liberties in ways the people would never tolerate during more normal circumstances.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the architect of much of the federal government’s initial COVID-19 response, admitted late last year that many directives — such as 6-foot social distancing — “sort of just appeared” without any serious science backing them up. So seems to be the case with many mandates and orders imposed in the individual states.
On March 6, 2020, Governor Eric Holcomb declared a public health emergency. Over the course of more than two years, various government officials issued and enforced COVID-19 mandates, including stay-at-home orders, capacity limits, vaccine mandates, mask requirements, and business, school, and church closures.
Unfortunately, few of the leaders responsible for these harsh measures have undertaken any serious effort in the aftermath of their actions to assess whether they responded appropriately to the threats we faced.
Japanese Doctors Demand Damages From Google Over ‘Groundless’ Reviews
A group of Japanese doctors has filed a civil lawsuit against U.S. search giant Google, demanding damages for what they claim are unpoliced derogatory and often false comments. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Tokyo District Court, demands 1.4 million yen ($9,400) in damages for 63 medical professionals.
Google said in an emailed statement Friday that it is working “24 hours a day” to reduce misleading or false information on its platform, combining human and technological resources “to delete fraudulent reviews.” The lawsuit claims groundless negative reviews have been posted on Google Maps, a very popular app in Japan, that allows people to write ratings of various institutions and their personal reviews.
It said Google has done very little to fix the problem, despite complaints. “The damage suffered is substantial, and the people have been powerless to fight back. We don’t agree that the platform shares no responsibility,” Yuichi Nakazawa, who leads the legal team for the plaintiffs, told reporters.
Earlier this month, Google agreed to purge billions of records containing personal information collected from more than 136 million people in the U.S. who had surfed the internet through its Chrome web browser. That was part of a settlement in a U.S. lawsuit that had accused Google of illegal surveillance.
