Big Brother News Watch
New Report Blasts Government’s COVID Response, Warns of Repeating Same Mistakes + More
New Report Blasts Government’s COVID Response, Warns of Repeating Same Mistakes
A new report has sharply criticized the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, writing that lockdowns, school closures and vaccine mandates were “catastrophic errors” resulting in many Americans losing faith in public health institutions.
The report, published this week by the non-profit Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CTUP), paints a damning indictment of the government’s role in the crisis and offers ten lessons that must be learned, to avoid the same mistakes from being repeated.
Some of the guidance includes halting all binding agreements or pledges to the World Health Organization (WHO), term limits for all senior health agency positions as well as limiting the powers of health agencies to make sure they are strictly advisory and do not have the power to set laws or mandates.
The paper, titled “COVID Lessons Learned A Retrospective After Four Years,” states that granting unprecedented powers to public health agencies, many of which imposed strict limits on basic civil liberties, had little positive benefit and instead helped stoke fear among the public.
Can Biden Ask Facebook to Remove Misinformation? Supreme Court Case Being Heard Today Will Decide.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday in a case that will determine to what extent the federal government can contact and exert pressure on social media companies after two GOP-led states accused the Biden administration of “censorship” by “coercing” social media platforms to moderate misinformation.
The court will hear arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, a case brought by Missouri, Louisiana and several individuals that challenges the Biden administration’s contacts with social media companies.
The states accuse the government of waging “a broad pressure campaign designed to coerce social media companies into suppressing speakers, viewpoints, and content disfavored by the government,” such as by asking them to remove misinformation about the election and COVID-19 — which the states argue violates the First Amendment and unfairly suppresses conservative speech.
Justices will hear oral arguments in the case on Monday and then issue their opinion likely in a few months, sometime before the court’s term wraps up in late June.
What the Data Says About Pandemic School Closures, Four Years Later
Four years ago this month, schools nationwide began to shut down, igniting one of the most polarizing and partisan debates of the pandemic. Some schools, often in Republican-led states and rural areas, reopened by fall 2020. Others, typically in large cities and states led by Democrats, would not fully reopen for another year.
A variety of data — about children’s academic outcomes and about the spread of COVID-19 — has accumulated in the time since. Today, there is broad acknowledgment among many public health and education experts that extended school closures did not significantly stop the spread of COVID, while the academic harms for children have been large and long-lasting.
While poverty and other factors also played a role, remote learning was a key driver of academic declines during the pandemic, research shows — a finding that held true across income levels.
As experts plan for the next public health emergency, whatever it may be, a growing body of research shows that pandemic school closures came at a steep cost to students.
A TikTok Ban Could Embolden Authoritarian Censorship, Experts Warn
The proposed TikTok ban working its way through Congress could embolden authoritarian censorship abroad, experts warn, and shatter the United States’ reputation as an international champion of free speech.
The House of Representatives passed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act on Wednesday. The bill still needs a Senate vote, and then to be signed by President Joe Biden. If signed into law, ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, would either be forced to sell TikTok or the app would be banned from app stores, according to the bill’s proponents.
U.S. officials say the driving motivation to pass such a bill is to prevent TikTok from being used to disseminate Chinese propaganda or collect information on U.S. citizens for Chinese government use.
But to some critics of the bill, a ban would cede America’s moral authority when it condemns other countries over limiting their citizens’ internet access.
Fight Health Misinformation by Influencing the Influencers
Public health institutions are facing the challenge of a lifetime as social media breeds misinformation and disinformation about everything from COVID vaccines to climate change. Now, a creative program at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is trying to flip the script by influencing the influencers on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Given the monumental task, we need more experiments like this.
In a pilot program last year, Harvard researchers provided dozens of mental health influencers with simple toolkits (and in some cases, training from public health experts) providing accurate, evidence-backed information on specific mental health topics. The goal: to flood the zone with good information in the hope of drowning out the bad.
So far, it looks like the pilot is worth expanding. In a paper published last week, the team found that providing the toolkit increased the likelihood that the influencers would create content that includes the core themes the Harvard scientists were promoting. The effect was small — just a 3% increase in references to those topics — but even small shifts can matter given the volume of content created and the millions of views these posts might receive.
Government agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration have also experimented with ways to better reach the public, but have yet to come up with a winning formula. In a recent editorial warning that misinformation might be pushing the U.S. to a tipping point on vaccination, FDA leaders suggested the remedy is to dilute that bad information “with large amounts of truthful, accessible scientific evidence.” But who should take on this huge task? The FDA suggested anyone “directly interacting with individuals in a healthcare setting” — in other words, doctors, nurses and other providers.
U.S. Investigating Meta for Role in Illicit Drug Sales, WSJ Reports
U.S. prosecutors in Virginia are probing whether Facebook-parent Meta’s (META.O) social media platforms facilitated and profited from the illegal sale of drugs, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing documents and people familiar with the matter.
The prosecutors sent subpoenas last year and have been asking questions as part of a criminal grand jury probe, the report said, adding that they have also been requesting records related to drug content or illicit sale of drugs via Meta’s platforms.
Leading Adviser Quits Over Instagram’s Failure to Remove Self-Harm Content
A leading psychologist who advises Meta on suicide prevention and self-harm has quit her role, accusing the tech giant of “turning a blind eye” to harmful content on Instagram, repeatedly ignoring expert advice and prioritizing profit over lives.
Lotte Rubæk, who has been on Meta’s global expert group for more than three years, told the Observer that the tech giant’s ongoing failure to remove images of self-harm from its platforms is “triggering” vulnerable young women and girls to further harm themselves and contributing to rising suicide figures.
Such is her disillusionment with the company and its apparent lack of desire to change, the Danish psychologist has resigned from the group, claiming Meta does not care about its users’ wellbeing and safety. In reality, she said, the company is using harmful content to keep vulnerable young people hooked to their screens in the interest of company profit.
Google Has ‘Interfered’ With Elections 41 Times Over the Last 16 Years, Media Research Center Says
Google has “interfered” with major elections in the United States 41 times over the last 16 years, according to a new study from the Media Research Center.
“MRC researchers have found 41 times where Google interfered in elections over the last 16 years, and its impact has surged dramatically, making it evermore harmful to democracy. In every case, Google harmed the candidates — regardless of party — who threatened its left-wing candidate of choice,” MRC Free Speech America vice president Dan Schneider and editor Gabriela Pariseau wrote in a summary of their findings.
MRC Free Speech America, a division of the conservative Media Research Center, believes the most recent example was recorded after Google artificial intelligence Gemini “refused to answer questions damaging” to President Biden.
The group’s research found that from 2008 through February 2024, “Google has utilized its power to help push to electoral victory the most liberal candidates, regardless of party, while targeting their opponents for censorship.”
No Evidence of Havana Syndrome Brain Injury, U.S. Studies Find
A U.S. government research team found no significant evidence of brain injury among a group of federal employees reporting symptoms of the “Havana syndrome” ailment that emerged in 2016, according to studies published in a medical journal on Monday.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers also found no differences in most clinical measures between a group of 86 employees and their adult family members reporting unusual health incidents and a matched group of healthy volunteers who had similar work assignments.
Symptoms of the mysterious ailment, first reported by U.S. embassy officials in the Cuban capital Havana and later afflicting diplomats, spies and other personnel worldwide, have included hearing noise and experiencing head pressure followed by headache, migraines, dizziness, and memory lapses.
The findings, from two studies conducted from 2018 through 2022, do not match results from a different study done at the University of Pennsylvania and published in JAMA in 2019, which showed some subtle brain changes in those affected.
John Moorlach: Newsom’s Approach to COVID Is a Blueprint of What Not to Do Next Time
The Orange County Register reported:
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the last time the state of California had to deal with an epidemic of this nature was 1918. The Spanish Flu struck young adults. The coronavirus was deadly for seniors.
Since there was no one in Sacramento leadership remaining who had lived through the health crisis of a century ago, the Capitol had a bunch of amateurs at the helm. And that was the flaw in how this chapter in California’s history was handled. It lacked competent and trustworthy leadership.
Gov. Gavin Newsom acted arrogantly and incompetently, treating Californians like immature children who needed to be ordered to lead their lives in a certain way.
Then came the overreaction of Newsom imposing his draconian lockdown. Face masking and social distancing are courtesies that concerned people observe when asked to do so. But mandating these two requirements is not what one does in a democratic society. Nor is shutting down businesses and determining which are essential and which are not.
The country of Sweden had the appropriate protocols — let adults be adults. Newsom did not. Placing fines and penalties on individuals who walked outside was authoritarianism at its worst.
Exclusive: Musk’s SpaceX Is Building Spy Satellite Network for U.S. Intelligence Agency, Sources Say
SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said, demonstrating deepening ties between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk‘s space company and national security agencies.
The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites, the sources said.
The plans show the extent of SpaceX’s involvement in U.S. intelligence and military projects and illustrate a deeper Pentagon investment into vast, low-Earth orbiting satellite systems aimed at supporting ground forces.
If successful, the sources said the program would significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe.
Government Has No Business Bullying Social Media Platforms on Speech + More
Government Has No Business Bullying Social Media Platforms on Speech
Legal briefs are usually dry as dust, so delighted laughter is an unusual response to reading one. You can, however, bet dollars to doughnuts that the Supreme Court justices allowed themselves judicious private chuckles when they read one particular amicus (friend of the court) brief in the case concerning which they will hear oral arguments on Monday.
At issue is government behavior that is no laughing matter: secret pressure to suppress speech, and deny access to speech by, Americans, thereby violating the First Amendment. The brief is from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which devotes much time to reminding academics of the First Amendment’s existence.
FIRE notes that some people supporting FIRE’s side of the argument are “oblivious to the irony” of their doing so: Their “head-spinning inconsistencies” involve favoring state governments’ behavior that is similar to the federal government’s behavior that they are deploring. The fundamental facts in Monday’s case are not in dispute. The high-stakes argument concerns the legal significance of how those facts are characterized.
Biden administration officials from the White House, FBI, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal entities persistently contacted social media platforms in attempts to influence the platforms’ dissemination of various posts expressing views the government disliked or that it mincingly deemed “problematic.” Many were concerned with the pandemic and involved supposed “disinformation” (about lockdowns, masks, vaccines, etc.) that turned out to be not merely debatable but true.
Supreme Court Tosses Rulings on Public Officials’ Social Media Blockings
The Supreme Court clarified when public officials can block critical constituents from their personal profiles without violating their constitutional protections in a unanimous decision Friday.
After hearing appeals of two conflicting rulings — one filed against school board members in Southern California and another filed against the city manager of Port Huron, Mich. — the justices provided no definitive resolution to the disputes and instead sent both cases back to lower courts to apply the new legal test.
In a unanimous decision authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court said state officials cannot block constituents on their personal pages when they have “actual authority to speak on behalf of the State on a particular matter” and “purported to exercise that authority in the relevant posts.”
“For social media activity to constitute state action, an official must not only have state authority — he must also purport to use it,” Barrett wrote.
U.S. Government Mandates Facial Recognition for Migrants Lacking Passports to Board Domestic Flights
The U.S. government has started requiring migrants without passports to submit to facial recognition technology to take domestic flights under a change that prompted confusion this week among immigrants and advocacy groups in Texas.
It is not clear exactly when the change took effect, but several migrants with flights out of South Texas on Tuesday told advocacy groups that they thought they were being turned away. The migrants included people who had used the government’s online appointment system to pursue their immigration cases. Advocates were also concerned about migrants who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally before being processed by Border Patrol agents and released to pursue their immigration cases.
The Transportation Security Administration told The Associated Press on Thursday that migrants without proper photo identification who want to board flights must submit to facial recognition technology to verify their identity using Department of Homeland Security records.
‘Excess Mortality Skyrocketed’: Tucker Carlson and Dr. Pierre Kory Unpack ‘Criminal’ COVID Response
As the global pandemic unfolded, government-funded experimental vaccines were hastily developed for a virus that primarily killed the old and fat (and those with other obvious comorbidities), and an aggressive, global campaign to coerce billions into injecting them ensued.
Then there were the lockdowns — with some countries (New Zealand, for example) building internment camps for those who tested positive for COVID-19, and others such as China welding entire apartment buildings shut to trap people inside.
It was an egregious and unnecessary response to a virus that, while highly virulent, was survivable by the vast majority of the general population. Oh, and the vaccines, which governments are still pushing, didn’t work as advertised to the point where health officials changed the definition of “vaccine” multiple times.
Tucker Carlson recently sat down with Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care specialist and vocal critic of vaccines. The two had a wide-ranging discussion, which included vaccine safety and efficacy, excess mortality, demographic impacts of the virus, big pharma, and the professional price Kory has paid for speaking out.
Bill Banning Vaccine Mandates Advances in SC Senate
A bill prohibiting businesses from mandating a newly created vaccine advanced in the South Carolina Senate Thursday. However, several key figures, including the state’s health agency and the governor, have expressed serious concerns about the measure.
“There are a number of issues that we believe where this bill would cause harm to the people of South Carolina and would, in fact, cause unnecessary death amongst people of South Carolina during a public health crisis because it would prevent us from taking actions that could save lives,” said Simmer.
Under the proposal, public and private employers would be barred from mandating vaccines unless they have been licensed by the FDA within the past decade. Simmer emphasized that this could affect flu vaccines or other shots receiving yearly updates. Additionally, the bill relaxes restrictions on visitors to isolated individuals and reduces penalties for violating quarantine orders.
In response to Simmer’s concerns, supporters of the bill made several amendments. “We want the department to be able to have the ability to purchase, distribute, and administer novel vaccines, we just don’t want people to be mandated to have to take them and we don’t want people taking them without informed consent,” said Sen. Richard Cash (R-Anderson).
Big Tech Won’t Be Able to Track Kids’ Data in Maryland Under New Bill
Maryland’s legislature unanimously endorsed a bill Thursday aimed at bolstering children’s online security, putting the state on track to become the second in the nation that strictly limits what data technology companies may gather on minors.
Dubbed the Maryland Kids Code, the legislation seeks to answer horror stories about social media addiction and emotional appeals over children’s worsening well-being. The rules bar companies from spying on minors and using their data to push targeted ads or manipulate their behavior online for profit by serving up content designed to keep them scrolling endlessly.
Its passage will probably set the state up for a legal test over the First Amendment, similar to what is playing out in California and other states that have tried to restrict how companies collect and use children’s data.
China Lashes Out at U.S. ‘Free Speech’ Rights as TikTok Row Deepens
After a bill to potentially ban popular video-sharing platform TikTok passed in the U.S. House by an overwhelming margin, Chinese officials have penned a lengthy article excoriating Washington over its “double standards” on First Amendment rights.
“This report, by presenting numerous facts, aims to expose what ‘free speech‘ is according to the United States, what the U.S. actually does, and what its real purpose is,” reads the 3,600-word piece released Thursday by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
China’s most successful tech export, TikTok boasts nearly 2 billion users worldwide, including some 150 million active users in the U.S.
Scrap Coercive ‘Privacy Fee,’ MEPs Urge Meta’s Nick Clegg in Open Letter
Meta is facing a call from lawmakers in the European Union to scrap its controversial “consent or pay” tactic on Facebook and Instagram.
Currently, the company demands a per-account fee of €9.99/month on web or €12.99/month on mobile for users in the region wanting to avoid its tracking. No other choice is offered — meaning users wanting to continue accessing the two mainstream social networks for free are forced to accept a total loss of their privacy.
In an open letter, members of the European Parliament accuse Meta of manipulating users by offering a “false choice” between paying for an ad-free subscription or consenting to ongoing tracking and profiling through its surveillance-based ad targeting. The letter is addressed to Nick Clegg, the company’s president of global affairs — himself a former Brussels-based lawmaker — and has been signed by 36 MEPs, with representation spanning progressive, left-leaning and center/center-left political parties.
Anti-Vaxxers Won COVID War; SC Bill Would Help Them Kill Childhood Vaccinations + More
Anti-Vaxxers Won COVID War; SC Bill Would Help Them Kill Childhood Vaccinations
The Post and Courier reported:
In December, the CDC began tracking a significant measles outbreak; by last week, it had grown to 45 cases in 17 jurisdictions, with the largest cluster in Florida, where the state’s surgeon general told parents they didn’t have to follow the standard procedure of keeping their unvaccinated children out of school if they didn’t want to.
And the National Conference of State Legislatures reports that rates of routine vaccinations for kindergartners declined during the pandemic nationwide. In many cases, the reasons had more to do with logistics than vaccine hesitancy, but the rates still hadn’t recovered by the 2022-23 school year. After kindergarten coverage held steady nationally for a decade at 95% for standard vaccines; it dipped to 93% last year. That might not sound like a big deal, but it reflects an increase of 250,000 unvaccinated kids and a significant increase in the chance that a given community will have insufficient herd immunity to prevent an outbreak.
It’s against this backdrop that a S.C. Senate Medical Affairs subcommittee meets this morning to double down on a two-year law the Legislature passed in 2022 to prohibit government and even private businesses from requiring their employees or customers to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
As the S.C. Daily Gazette reports, S.975 would extend those restrictions indefinitely and expand them: Employers couldn’t require employees to get any “novel vaccine” — one that hasn’t been fully approved by the FDA or that was approved within the previous 10 years. Violators would face a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison for the first offense and up to $5,000 and five years for the third offense. At the same time, the bill would reduce the penalty for people who violate quarantine orders when they’re carrying a highly infectious disease.
A Bug in an Irish Government Website That Exposed COVID Vaccination Records Took 2 Years to Publicly Disclose
Two years ago, the Irish government fixed a vulnerability in its national COVID-19 vaccination portal that exposed the vaccination records of around a million residents. But details of the vulnerability weren’t revealed until this week after attempts to coordinate public disclosure with the government agency stalled and ended.
Security researcher Aaron Costello said he discovered the vulnerability in the COVID-19 vaccination portal run by the Irish Health Service Executive (HSE) in December 2021, a year after mass vaccinations against COVID-19 began in Ireland.
In a blog post shared with TechCrunch ahead of its publication, Costello said the vulnerability in the vaccination portal — built on Salesforce’s health cloud — meant that any member of the public registering with the HSE vaccination portal could have accessed the health information of another registered user.
Costello said the vaccine administration records of over a million Irish residents were accessible to anyone else, including full names, vaccination details (including reasons for administering or refusals to take vaccines), and the type of vaccination, among other types of data. He also found internal HSE documents were accessible to any user through the portal.
Countries Closing in on Digital Currencies but U.S. Lagging, Study Shows
A total of 134 countries representing 98% of the global economy are now exploring digital versions of their currencies, with over half in advanced development, pilot or launch stages, a closely followed study on Thursday showed.
The research by the U.S.-based Atlantic Council think tank highlighted that all G20 countries with the exception of Argentina are now in one of those far-along phases although, notably, the United States is falling increasingly behind.
“The biggest headline here is that the divergence between the world’s largest central banks over CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currency) is growing,” the Atlantic Council’s Josh Lipsky said pointing to how much further ahead China, Europe and Japan were.
Supporters say digital currencies will allow new functionality and provide an alternative to physical cash, which seems in terminal decline. But they have also fueled protests in a number of countries over the potential for government snooping.
The risk of the U.S. lagging behind was “a more fractured international payments system” Lipsky added, saying Washington could also lose some of its global finance clout if other countries press on and set the new standards around CBDCs.
We’re Already Living in the Post-Truth Era
For years, experts have worried that artificial intelligence will produce a new disinformation crisis on the internet. Image-, audio-, and video-generating tools allow people to rapidly create high-quality fakes to spread on social media, potentially tricking people into believing fiction is a fact.
But as my colleague Charlie Warzel writes, the mere existence of this technology has a corrosive effect on reality: It doesn’t take a shocking, specific incident for AI to plant doubt into countless hearts and minds.
“It’s never been easier to collect evidence that sustains a particular worldview and build a made-up world around cognitive biases on any political or pop-culture issue,” Charlie writes. “It’s in this environment that these new tech tools become something more than reality blurrers: They’re chaos agents, offering new avenues for confirmation bias, whether or not they’re actually used.”
To Protect Kids Online Today, Let’s Rethink This 1990s Law
In late January, Congress hosted Big Tech chief executives on Capitol Hill for a hearing on their collective failure to protect children online. Senators expressed outrage, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg was forced to apologize, but there was no consensus on what action should be taken.
That’s no surprise. Ever since the Supreme Court shot down crucial provisions of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) — Congress’s 1996 attempt to prohibit the knowing transmission of obscene content to minors — legislators on both left and right have been reluctant to pass laws to protect children in our increasingly digital world. Often, they offer the same concerns about regulations’ chilling effect on free speech that the Supreme Court cited in its 1997 Reno v. ACLU decision.
They’re mistaken in doing so. The court’s precedent isn’t as insurmountable as legislators today seem to think it is. In fact, in Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s concurring opinion in Reno, she offered a road map for future lawmakers, writing that one day, technology might make it legally possible for parts of the internet to be partitioned into “adult zones” inaccessible to minors, “much like a bouncer checks a person’s driver’s license before admitting him to a nightclub.”
Nearly three decades later, it’s time to revisit her vision. The problem the CDA was designed to address is exponentially worse today. In 1997, just 35% of households had a computer. Today, 91% of 14-year-olds have a smartphone — giving them unfettered access to the worst of the internet, which has become more toxic, violent and addictive.
Class Action Lawsuits Pile Up Over UnitedHealth Data Breach
UnitedHealth Group (UNH.N) has already been hit with at least six class action lawsuits accusing it of failing to protect millions of people’s personal data from last month’s hack of Change Healthcare, its payment processing unit, with more lawsuits likely to come.
In a motion filed late on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., plaintiffs’ lawyers asked a federal judicial panel to consolidate the six cases in federal court in Nashville, Tennessee, where Change is headquartered and said they expected more cases to be filed.
Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a U.S. health privacy law, companies have 60 days after discovering a data breach to notify affected individuals that their personal information has been compromised.
For breaches affecting more than 500 people, the company must notify federal regulators and prominent media. UnitedHealth has so far not given such a notice.
All of the lawsuits claim that Change failed to safeguard patients’ personal information, putting them at risk of identity theft and privacy violations. Some also allege that patients have been unable to fill prescriptions because their insurance claims cannot be processed, putting their health at risk.
Generative AI’s Privacy Problem
Privacy is the next battleground for the AI debate, even as conflicts over copyright, accuracy and bias continue.
Why it matters: Critics say large language models are collecting and often disclosing personal information gathered from around the web, often without the permission of those involved.
The big picture: Many businesses have grown wary of execs and employees using proprietary information to query ChatGPT and other AI bots — either banning such apps or opting for paid versions that keep business information private.
Driving the news: Several lawsuits seeking class-action status have been filed in recent months alleging Google, OpenAI and others have violated federal and state privacy laws in training and operating their AI services.
What Will the EU’s Proposed Act to Regulate AI Mean for Consumers?
The European Union’s proposed AI law was endorsed by the European parliament on Wednesday and is a milestone in regulating the technology. The vote is an important step towards introducing the legislation.
It is now expected to be rubber-stamped by a council of ministers, becoming law within weeks. However, the act will come into force in stages, with a cascade of deadlines for compliance over the next three years.
The bill matters outside the EU because Brussels is an influential tech regulator, as shown by GDPR’s impact on the management of people’s data. The AI act could do the same.
“Many other countries will be watching what happens in the EU following the adoption of the AI Act. The EU approach will likely only be copied if it is shown to work,” Guillaume Couneson, a partner at the law firm Linklaters, added.
Italy Regulator Fines TikTok $11 Million Over Content Checks
Italy’s competition watchdog has fined three units of social media giant TikTok 10 million euros ($10.94 million) in total for inadequate checks on content potentially harmful to young or vulnerable users, it said on Thursday.
TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, and other social media companies including Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms (META.O), are under pressure from regulators around the globe to protect underage users.
“TikTok has not taken adequate measures to prevent the spreading of such content, and has not fully complied with the guidelines it has adopted, reassuring customers that the platform is a ‘safe’ space,” the watchdog said.
In the United States, where it has about 170 million users, the social media app faces a ban unless its Chinese owners sell within about six months, under the terms of a draft bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday.
U.S. Airport Nasal Swabbing Expanding to Chicago and Miami + More
U.S. Airport Nasal Swabbing Expanding to Chicago and Miami
The nation’s top public health agency is expanding a program that tests international travelers for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program asks arriving international passengers to volunteer to have their noses swabbed and answer questions about their travel. The program operates at six airports and on Tuesday, the CDC said it was adding two more — Chicago’s O’Hare and Miami.
“Miami and Chicago enable us to collect samples coming from areas of the world where global surveillance is not as strong as it used to be,” said the CDC’s Allison Taylor Walker. “What we really need is a good view of what’s happening in the world so we’re prepared for the next thing.”
The program began in 2021 and has been credited with detecting coronavirus variants faster than other systems. The genomic testing of traveler’s nasal swabs has mainly been focused on COVID-19, but testing also is being done for two other respiratory viruses — flu and RSV.
Participants are not notified of their results. But they are given a COVID-19 home test kit to take with them, CDC officials say. Samples have come from more than 475,000 air travelers coming off flights from more than 135 countries, officials said.
FTC Can Reopen Meta Privacy Case Despite $5 Billion Fine, Court Rules
Meta (META.O) cannot stop the U.S. Federal Trade Commission from reopening a probe into its Facebook unit’s privacy practices for now, a U.S. appeals court ruled, despite Meta’s objections that it already paid a $5 billion fine and agreed to a range of safeguards.
The FTC wants to tighten an existing 2020 Facebook privacy settlement to ban profiting from minors’ data and expand curbs on facial recognition technology. The agency has accused Meta of misleading parents about protections for children.
The decision late on Tuesday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was a setback for Meta, which had asked the court to freeze the FTC case while it pursues a separate lawsuit challenging the FTC’s inquiry on constitutional grounds.
Meta and other social media companies are separately fighting hundreds of U.S. lawsuits accusing them of addicting children to their platforms. The FTC is also suing Meta for allegedly monopolizing the personal social network market. Meta has denied the allegations.
Latest Draft WHO Amendments to International Health Regulations Still Contain References to Power Over ‘Misinformation,’ Vaccine Passports
The UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) has been toiling away in relative obscurity for decades, but it was the pandemic that really brought it to the fore.
Is WHO a benevolent international promoter of health and safety and in particular when it comes to the most vulnerable categories of population worldwide? Or is it yet another globalist group bent on a serious “power grab” — robbing national authorities of agency in this particularly sensitive sector?
Some actions, such as a number of provisions contained in the effort to amend the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR), have given pause even to those who may not bill themselves as being against globalization. That’s because WHO attempted to wade in on issues like misinformation, disinformation, vaccine passports, and all this in the context of expanding its own related powers.
Now, observers say that the latest draft of these amendments seems to have toned things down a little, but continues to provide for WHO’s expanded powers along the said lines. Under the amendments, anyone who refuses to be examined or vaccinated can be denied entry into a county.
Your Car Might Be Secretly Recording Your Driving Habits and Sending the Data to Your Insurance Company: Report
The driving data of millions of Americans is being shared with insurance companies by automakers and data brokers, leading to increased insurance premiums for some drivers.
What Happened: Internet-connected vehicles, including the Chevrolet Bolt, are capable of tracking driving patterns such as hard braking and rapid accelerations. This data is then sent to LexisNexis, a data broker that collaborates with insurance companies to create personalized coverage, reported The New York Times.
Kenn Dahl, a Chevrolet Bolt owner discovered a 258-page report on his driving habits after questioning a 21% increase in his insurance costs. Other owners shared similar experiences of increased insurance costs, with insurance companies advising them to review their LexisNexis reports.
Why It Matters: This revelation adds to the ongoing debate on data privacy and security in the automotive industry. In April, it was reported that Tesla employees had open access to owners’ built-in cameras, raising concerns about privacy.
U.S. House Passes Bill to Force ByteDance to Divest TikTok or Face Ban
The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill on Wednesday that would give TikTok‘s Chinese owner ByteDance about six months to divest the U.S. assets of the short-video app used by about 170 million Americans or face a ban.
The bill passed 352-65, with bipartisan support, but it faces a more uncertain path in the Senate where some favor a different approach to regulating foreign-owned apps that could pose security concerns. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has not indicated how he plans to proceed.
Shortly after passage, a bipartisan pair of senators, Democrat Mark Warner and Republican Marco Rubio, issued a joint statement saying they were encouraged by the bipartisan support for the bill and that they “look forward to working together to get this bill passed through the Senate and signed into law.”
Billionaire Musk Joins Trump to Denounce TikTok Ban as ‘Censorship and Government Control’
Billionaire Elon Musk slammed a potential federal ban on social media app TikTok Tuesday morning, claiming a congressional bill that could restrict access to the app amounts to “censorship and government control,” making Musk — who owns rival social media platform X — the latest to criticize the bill, joining former President Donald Trump.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Musk claimed the bill “is not just about TikTok,” claiming that if it were targeted at the app and its Chinese parent company ByteDance, it “would only cite ‘foreign control’ as the issue, but it does not.”
Musk reposted a tweet from Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. — a primary opponent of a potential ban — who claimed the ban amounts to a Trojan horse, citing a provision of the bill that punishes internet hosting services that “distribute, maintain, or update … a foreign adversary controlled application” in the U.S.
If approved by the House and Senate and signed into law, the bill would give ByteDance six months to sell the app, or else TikTok would be banned in the U.S., though the measure has faced backlash from TikTok users and a group of politicians.
Anti-Lockdown and Vaccine Mandate Skeptic Martin Kulldorff Announces He Was ‘Fired’ by Harvard
Epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard University since 2003, announced on social media Monday that he was “fired” by the university. “I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard,” Kulldorff wrote in a lengthy essay in the City Journal, also posting the news on his X account. “The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired.”
Kulldorff was a prominent opponent of vaccine mandates and school closures during the COVID-era debate about the regulation of schools and businesses. He, along with Professor Sunetra Gupta at Oxford University and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya, released the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020, which “argu[ed] for age-based focused protection instead of universal lockdowns, with specific suggestions for how better to protect the elderly, while letting children and young adults live close to normal lives.”
“The declaration made clear that no scientific consensus existed for school closures and many other lockdown measures. In response, though, the attacks intensified — and even grew slanderous,” Kulldorff wrote, recounting criticism against him and other professors for refusing to say that lockdown measures were a scientifically guided measure.
Kulldorff wrote that “[b[odily autonomy” was an argument against COVID vaccine mandates, calling those measures “unscientific and unethical” and restating his support for natural immunity from COVID and other diseases.
European Parliament Approves Landmark Artificial Intelligence Act
The European Parliament approved on Wednesday a landmark political agreement on artificial intelligence.
The world’s first major set of regulatory rules to govern artificial intelligence, the AI Act provides a legal framework for the development and use of artificial intelligence within Europe, calling for greater transparency as well as setting parameters for high-risk AI.
European Union officials had struck a provisional deal in December following 37 hours of debates. The bill divides up the technology into risk categories and highlights what is prohibited when it comes to AI, key requirements for using high-risk AI and penalties. Ultimately, the AI Act aims to balance innovation with fundamental rights.