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The Next Frontier in Data Privacy? Your Brain + More
The Next Frontier in Data Privacy? Your Brain
Consumer neurotechnology is booming. You can buy a funky-looking headband for $500 on the internet if you want your own personal EEG to track your brain data. But before you click purchase, you might want to check out the device’s privacy policy.
These consumer devices are unlikely to include any protections or restrictions around how companies can employ or sell a user’s neural data, according to a new report from the Neurorights Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for the ethical development of neurotechnology.
The group analyzed the user agreements and privacy policies for 30 companies that sell commercially available products. Only one company provided any meaningful restrictions on how users’ data could be employed or whether the company could sell user data to third parties.
Fewer than half of the companies surveyed encrypt their data and de-identify users. In the medical world, patients must consent if doctors want to share their private health information. But HIPAA doesn’t apply to these companies.
Colorado Enacted a Law Meant to Stop Tech Companies Sharing Your Brain-Wave Data
Lawmakers in Colorado have passed a law aimed at protecting a new frontier in privacy: your brain activity.
Gov. Jared Polis signed the new law after it passed in the Colorado House by a vote of 61-to-1 and in the Senate 34-to-0. The bill takes aim at the growing neurotechnology industry.
In simple terms, the Protect Privacy of Biological Data Act expands the definition of “sensitive data” in the state’s privacy laws to encompass biological and neural data.
“Data concerning the activity of the human brain and wider nervous systems, or ‘neural data,’ is extremely sensitive and can reveal intimate information about individuals, including information about health, mental states, emotions, and cognitive functioning,” the bill stated.
U.S. Government Tried to Spy on People, Telegram Founder Claims
The United States government wanted a so-called “backdoor” into Telegram to potentially spy on its users, according to the messaging app’s founder. Pavel Durov, who launched Telegram in 2013 and currently serves as its CEO, made the claim during an interview with Tucker Carlson that aired on Tuesday night.
“We get too much attention from, you know, the FBI, the security agencies, whenever we came to the U.S.,” Durov told Carlson before alleging the U.S. government attempted to lure a Telegram engineer into teaching them how to potentially spy on users.
“They were curious to learn which open-source libraries are integrated into the Telegram app. You know, on the client side,” Durov said. “And they were trying to persuade him to use certain open source tools that he would then integrate into the Telegram code that, in my understanding, would serve as backdoors.”
Carlson then pressed Durov on whether a backdoor on the messaging app “would allow the U.S. government to spy on people who use Telegram.”
“The U.S. government, or maybe any other government, because a backdoor is a backdoor regardless of who is using it. That’s right,” he said.
Kids Can’t Wait Any Longer for Social Media Safety
When my son Conall took his life at age 17, it was devastating to me and our entire family. Conall was a caring, empathetic, and bright young man, but he had also struggled for many years with anxiety and depression. Like many kids his age, much of his life revolved around social media. While I understand that suicide is complex, with many different factors contributing to someone’s risk for it, I know that social media intensified and fueled Conall’s insecurities and ultimately had a significant impact on his decision to die by suicide.
As a pediatrician for more than 30 years, this is something I’ve seen happen more and more often over the years. Throughout the course of my work, I’ve seen the evolution of the internet and its impact on children from long before the days when everyone had a smartphone. I’ve witnessed tremendous changes in the kids I’ve taken care of — there’s no question that children in the U.S. are growing up in a fundamentally different world than the one their parents knew.
Today, kids live in a fully digital ecosystem. Few adults stop to think about the fact that the internet and social media platforms were never designed with kids in mind. I’ve been seeing more and more children with anxiety, depression, social isolation, insomnia, and other mental health challenges that were rare among youngsters when I began my career. While these cannot be wholly attributed to social media, it’s hard to ignore the impact these platforms have had on kids and teens.
There are millions of parents like me who have watched our children come of age in an unrestricted and unprotected digital universe devoid of any guardrails that can keep them safe. It’s time to take action to protect children online.
Dr. Phil: People Need to Plan for Next Pandemic so Govt Can’t Tell Us ‘What We Can and Can’t Do’
Dr. Phil McGraw said on his syndicated television show this week that Americans need to have a conversation about limiting the government’s powers over the people in case another pandemic occurs.
McGraw made the remarks after repeatedly warning throughout the pandemic about the dangers that the lockdowns would have on people, especially children.
“When I stepped up in the beginning and said this lockdown, this quarantine, is going to create more problems with quality of life than that COVID is going to do in taking lives — people looked at me like I was insane,” he said. “I got criticized, called a ‘heretic,’ ‘what is he talking about?’ I’ll tell you what I was talking about, I was talking about exactly what happened and is happening.”
He concluded, “But I’m saying we need to think about whether we’re going to rely on science, and how we’re going to react when the government comes in and starts telling us what we can and can’t do. I think we need less government. I think if they would step back, we tend to have a way to work these things out.”
House to Discuss National Data Privacy Bill With Implications for Healthcare
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Innovation will hold a hearing on Wednesday to discuss data privacy and the protection of kids online.
Among a slew of bills to be discussed is a draft data privacy bill unveiled last week that would regulate all sectors of the American economy, including healthcare. The legislation is sponsored by Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Washington, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington.
The bipartisan draft data privacy law, the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), would give consumers the right to access, correct and delete personal data gathered and shared by companies. Entities subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) are generally exempt from the draft law but would need to comply with its data security provisions if passed. Also slated to be discussed at the hearing are the Kids Online Safety Act and the Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2023, among others.
APRA would also give consumers more rights over their health information that falls outside of HIPAA’s purview, which could include search queries, interactions with chatbots, information recorded on fitness and mental health apps and trackers on health-related websites and telehealth platforms, one witness’s testimony says. It would also grant consumers a private right of action against companies that unlawfully transmit or collect covered data.
Telehealth Firm Cerebral Fined $7 Million Over ‘Careless’ Privacy Violations
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is proposing a $7 million fine against Cerebral, a mental telehealth firm that it says not only was careless with patients’ data but actively shared it with third parties for advertising purposes. The company and its CEO, Kyle Robertson, are also accused of lying to customers about how their data is shared and of having a misleading cancellation policy.
The FTC notes that Cerebral shared the sensitive data “of nearly 3.2 million consumers” with third parties like LinkedIn, TikTok, and Snapchat through trackers on its website or apps — something the company admitted to last year. That apparently included details like home and email addresses, phone numbers, pharmacy and health insurance details, and medical history.
Many of Cerebral’s ads were misleading, promoting ADHD treatment by, for instance, linking ADHD to obesity.
EU Officials Dodge Their Own Surveillance Law
Do as I say — not as I do. That’s the essence of a leak that claims to expose high-ranked EU officials as more than simply politicking hypocrites when it comes to implementing the extremely controversial legislation affecting online privacy and encryption.
Namely, interior ministers from EU member countries reportedly want to exempt themselves — but not only — from the looming Child Sexual Abuse (CSAM) Regulation (aka, “chat control“), expected to be adopted as early as in June.
Pushed by supporters as being exactly what it says on the tin — the proposed new rules are at the same time criticized as a vehicle for indiscriminate mass surveillance of everyone’s online communications, and a way to weaken true encryption deployed by platforms — a vital component of internet security, once again, affecting everyone who goes online, children included.
AI-Powered World Health Chatbot Is Flubbing Some Answers
Bloomberg via Yahoo!Finance reported:
The World Health Organization is wading into the world of AI to provide basic health information through a human-like avatar. But while the bot responds sympathetically to users’ facial expressions, it doesn’t always know what it’s talking about.
SARAH, short for Smart AI Resource Assistant for Health, is a virtual health worker that’s available to talk 24/7 in eight different languages to explain topics like mental health, tobacco use and healthy eating. It’s part of the WHO’s campaign to find technology that can both educate people and fill staffing gaps with the world facing a healthcare worker shortage.
WHO warns on its website that this early prototype, introduced on April 2, provides responses that “may not always be accurate.” Some of SARAH’s AI training is years behind the latest data. And the bot occasionally provides bizarre answers, known as hallucinations in AI models, that can spread misinformation about public health.
Fentanyl Fear Factor: White House Leverages Drug Scare to Push for Controversial Surveillance Powers + More
Fentanyl Fear Factor: White House Leverages Drug Scare to Push for Controversial Surveillance Powers
In a recent public appeal, the Biden administration has urged the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) before it expires on April 19. Bill Burns, the CIA Director, issued a statement, alleging the significant role of the FISA powers in fighting threats against national security, especially the illicit trafficking of fentanyl into the United States.
Burns highlighted the gravity of the fentanyl threat, saying, “The threat to the U.S. posed by fentanyl and other synthetic opioids is real. Section 702 is an essential tool in the CIA’s mission to protect the American people from a range of threats, including illicit fentanyl trafficking. Without this vital program, the CIA simply would not be able to defend our country as effectively in as many dangerous corners of the world.”
This tactic of using big, scary problems to justify sweeping surveillance powers is quite common in debates about national security. While it’s understandable to want strong measures to combat real threats, this approach raises big red flags about personal privacy and government overreach.
Clearly, not needing a warrant to snoop on people’s communications could easily be abused. Without these safeguards, there’s too much room for the government to overstep. Plus, by framing the surveillance as essential for stopping things like drug trafficking, the government sort of makes these issues the scapegoats. This simplifies complex issues and makes it seem okay to sacrifice our privacy for security.
Zuckerberg Isn’t on the Hook for Kids’ Instagram Addiction, a Judge Just Ruled
A judge has granted Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s motion to dismiss 25 cases that alleged he was personally responsible for Instagram and Facebook fuelling social media addiction.
U.S. district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’s ruling on Monday excused Zuckerberg from being held personally liable while the case against Meta still stands.
The cases filed sought to hold Zuckerberg personally responsible for keeping children hooked on Meta products. They alleged that the Meta CEO has control over design decisions that targeted higher user engagement and accused him of ignoring warnings that his platforms were unsafe for kids.
The judge said that Zuckerberg couldn’t be held liable just because he has a public-facing role at Meta. The ruling aligns with the legal approach that sees executives typically shielded from personal liability.
Illinois Woman Hits Target With Class Action Lawsuit for Collecting Biometric Data Without Her Consent
An Illinois woman filed a class action lawsuit against Target, accusing the retail giant of collecting and storing her biometric data, including face and fingerprint scans, without her consent in violation of state law.
Arnetta Dean, who filed the lawsuit with the intention of preventing Target from further violating the privacy rights of state residents, is also pursuing statutory damages for the company’s alleged collection, storage and use of customers’ biometric data, according to the lawsuit obtained by FOX 32 Chicago.
The lawsuit, filed last month in Cook County, claims Target’s surveillance systems, including cameras with facial recognition technology installed in Illinois stores, “surreptitiously” collect biometric data on customers without their knowledge or consent.
Novavax Availability Dooms Christian Workers’ COVID Vaccine Suit
Two Christian healthcare workers in Virginia lost their claims that Inova Health Systems’ denial of their requests for exemption from its COVID-19 vaccination mandate violated federal religious bias law.
The plaintiffs had refused to be injected with vaccines developed or tested by using human fetal-derived cell lines. But they were unable to establish that Novavax, a vaccine authorized by the U.S. for emergency use before their exemption requests were denied, was derived from those processes.
A jury, therefore, couldn’t find the workers’ religious objections to being vaccinated against COVID conflicted with their employer’s COVID vaccination requirement.
The U.S. Isn’t Just Reauthorizing Its Surveillance Laws — It’s Vastly Expanding Them
The U.S. House of Representatives agreed to reauthorize a controversial spying law known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act last Friday without any meaningful reforms, dashing hopes that Congress might finally put a stop to intelligence agencies’ warrantless surveillance of Americans’ emails, text messages and phone calls.
The vote not only reauthorized the act, though; it also vastly expanded the surveillance law enforcement can conduct. In a move that Senator Ron Wyden condemned as “terrifying,” the House also doubled down on a surveillance authority that has been used against American protesters, journalists and political donors in a chilling assault on free speech.
Section 702 in its current form allows the government to compel communications giants like Google and Verizon to turn over information. An amendment to the bill approved by the House vastly increases the law’s scope. The Turner-Himes amendment — so named for its champions Representatives Mike Turner and Jim Himes — would permit federal law enforcement to also force “any other service provider” with access to communications equipment to hand over data. That means anyone with access to a wifi router, server or even phone — anyone from a landlord to a laundromat — could be required to help the government spy.
The Senate is expected to vote on the House bill as soon as this week, and if it passes there, Joe Biden is likely to sign it. All Americans should be terrified by that prospect.
Biden Administration Announces New Partnership With 50 Countries to Stifle Future Pandemics
President Joe Biden’s administration will help 50 countries identify and respond to infectious diseases, with the goal of preventing pandemics like the COVID-19 outbreak that suddenly halted normal life around the globe in 2020.
U.S. government officials will offer support in the countries, most of them located in Africa and Asia, to develop better testing, surveillance, communication and preparedness for such outbreaks in those countries.
The announcement about the strategy comes as countries have struggled to meet a worldwide accord on responses to future pandemics. Four years after the coronavirus pandemic, the prospects of a pandemic treaty signed by all 194 of the World Health Organization’s members are flailing.
The Biden administration plans to move forward with its new strategy to prepare the world for the next pandemic, regardless of whether a treaty is hammered out or not, a senior administration official told reporters on Monday.
Major Psychology Group Says Infinite Scrolling, Other Social Media Features Are ‘Particularly Risky’ to Youth Mental Health
A top psychology group is urging technology companies and legislators to take greater steps to protect adolescents’ mental health, arguing that social media platforms are built for adults and are “not inherently suitable for youth.”
Social media features such as endless scrolling and push notifications are “particularly risky” to young people, whose developing brains are less able to disengage from addictive experiences and are more sensitive to distractions, the American Psychological Association wrote in a report released Tuesday.
But age restrictions on social media platforms alone don’t fully address the dangers, especially since many kids easily find workarounds to such limits. Instead, social media companies need to make fundamental design changes, the group said in its report.
Hackers Start Leaking Stolen Change Healthcare Data
The RansomHub hacking group is starting to share snippets of the data stolen from Change Healthcare’s networks during a recent attack.
Why it matters: Initial screenshots published Monday and seen by Axios suggest that hackers have stolen a trove of sensitive information, including patients’ hospital bills, financial documents and company contracts.
There’s currently a countdown on RansomHub’s dark-web leak site threatening to publish the data on Friday.
Last month, Wired reported that the company appeared to have paid the BlackCat ransomware group a hefty $22 million to prevent a data leak and unlock its systems.
Chatbots’ Flaws Aren’t Stopping Tech Giants From Putting Them Everywhere
The risk of chatbots going awry doesn’t seem to be slowing tech giants‘ march to integrate them into the world’s largest online platforms.
Meta has recently begun rolling out its Meta AI chatbot more broadly, including in WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger across India and parts of Africa, bringing the tool to markets where it serves hundreds of millions of people. And on Monday, the New York Times reported that the company is approaching Instagram influencers in the United States on a project called “Creator AI” that would let an AI avatar trained on their voice interact with their fans on their behalf.
For a company that has prided itself on AI research but fallen behind rivals Microsoft, Google and OpenAI on commercialization of the latest language and image models, the moves represent an ambitious leap toward integrating AI into people’s everyday interactions. Meta envisions people asking its chatbots questions, using it to create images or just chatting with it, the company said when it announced Meta AI in September.
AI chatbots can dazzle with their ability to converse on a wide range of topics and generate images of whatever people dream up (with some limits). But what the industry calls “hallucinations” — responses that aren’t grounded in reality — have come to seem more like a feature than a bug. Lately, companies including Microsoft, Google, OpenAI and now Meta have tried to patch the problem by connecting AI models to the web and letting them search for information and cite their sources, with mixed results. Meanwhile, attempts to train chatbots to shed offensive biases picked up from their training data often fall short or go too far.
Biden Quietly Revokes COVID Executive Order Requiring Masks in Federal Buildings + More
Biden Quietly Revokes COVID Executive Order Requiring Masks in Federal Buildings
President Biden retracted several COVID-19 executive orders Friday — including one imposed on his first day in office to require people to wear masks in federal facilities.
Biden’s Executive Order 13991 — titled “Protecting the Federal Workforce and Requiring Mask-Wearing” — was issued after the wearing of face masks became heavily polarized, with outgoing President Donald Trump and his aides rarely wearing them and focusing on “reopening” from lockdowns. The order is “hereby revoked,” the White House said in a Friday afternoon announcement more than four years after the virus brought mobile morgues to New York and shut down schools and businesses across the country.
The enforcement of mask requirements long ago subsided, with the White House lifting its own internal mask requirements more than two years ago in March 2022 after the CDC adjusted its mask recommendations to account for local risk reflected by hospitalization rates.
Biden on Friday also retracted Executive Order 13998, adopted on Jan. 21, 2021, that sought to impose mask mandates on flights, trains and buses, and Executive Order 13910, adopted by Trump on March 23, 2020, to forbid the hoarding of medical supplies.
The announcement additionally terminated federal positions created to manage the pandemic. “The positions of COVID-19 Response Coordinator [vacant since June 2023] and Deputy Coordinator of the COVID-19 Response … are hereby terminated,” Biden decreed.
Big Brother in Training? How Proposed Legislation Might Pave the Way for Online Age Verification and Digital ID
Bipartisan legislative efforts are underway in the U.S. House of Representatives to adopt new versions of two laws originally drawn up to deal with the safety of youth online.
But the fear is that the bills introduced now — H.R.7891, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), and H.R. 7890, the Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) 2.0 — will facilitate implementation of a future sweeping age verification and digital ID push.
These concerns are raised because KOSA is directing the secretary of commerce, together with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to conduct a study “evaluating the most technologically feasible methods and options for developing systems to verify age at the device or operating system level.”
At this stage of the proceedings, the study will not be used to mandate that platforms implement “an age gating or age verification functionality” — however, once the authorities have at their disposal the technical solutions to do it, some observers expect it could be used for a more aggressive legislative push at the federal level later on.
Regarding the way COPPA’s new version could pave the way for more expansive age verification online, it seeks to impose new forms of data collection restrictions concerning minors, and also shield them from targeted advertising.
WHO Official Testifies That Advice Against Vaccine Passports Was Ignored to Continue Digital Rollout
Dr. Hanna Nohynek, a World Health Organization (WHO) official, has told a court that her recommendation to Finland’s government during the pandemic was that the so-called “vaccine passport” was not necessary.
Nohynek, who is also the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare’s chief physician, testified that as the controversial schemes were being announced, her stance was that COVID vaccines were not effective in stopping the transmission of the virus, and therefore “vaccine passports,” designed to prove somebody’s vaccination status and create a checkpoint society, were superfluous.
But despite Nohynek’s stance and her role at WHO — where she chairs the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) and is also a member of the Vaccines Together and the International Vaccine Institute boards — the government ignored her.
At about the same time, the UN health agency was going ahead with plans to set up its Global Digital Health Certification Network, enabling the proliferation of digital vaccine passports, while the EU came out with its Digital COVID Certificate Regulation.
McCaughey: Biden & Co. Not Ready for Next Pandemic
The H5N1 virus, which for 30 years affected mostly birds, is rapidly evolving and spreading globally. The Biden administration is dangerously unready. Over the last two years, H5N1 has jumped from birds to mammals, infecting at least 26 species.
South American scientists publishing in the prestigious journal Nature Communications report massive “sea lion die-offs” and warn about avian influenza viruses “potentially evolving into the next global pandemic.”
Like H5N1, COVID-19 was full of unknowns. The federal government’s biggest mistake was to aim for an illusion of consensus rather than welcoming debate. The feds silenced anyone, including scientists, who disagreed. The result was a long string of deadly mistakes, from shuttering businesses to mandatory masking and school closures.
Worse, the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security conspired with major social media platforms such as YouTube and X (formerly Twitter) to keep the public from hearing from the government’s critics.
Censored scientists sued. The case, Murthy v. Missouri, is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. Sadly, the Biden administration is taking the wrong side, claiming censorship protects the nation from “disinformation.” That’s a sign the administration cannot be trusted to tell us the truth during the next health scare.
Government Spyware Is Another Reason to Use an Ad Blocker
Ad blockers might seem like an unlikely defense in the fight against spyware, but new reporting casts fresh light on how spyware makers are weaponizing online ads to allow governments to conduct surveillance.
Spyware makers are reportedly capable of locating and stealthily infecting specific targets with spyware using banner ads.
One of the startups that worked on an ad-based spyware infection system is Intellexa, a European company that develops the Predator spyware. Predator is able to access the full contents of a target’s phone in real-time.
While no phone or computer can ever be completely unhackable, ad blockers can be effective in stopping malvertising and ad-based malware before it ever hits the browser. Ad blockers — as the name suggests — prevent ads from displaying in web browsers. Ad blockers don’t just hide the ads but also block the underlying website from loading the ads to begin with. That’s also good for privacy since it means ad exchanges cannot use tracking code to see which sites users visit as they browse the web. Ad-blocking software is available for phones, as well.
The U.S. Government Has a Microsoft Problem
When Microsoft revealed in January that foreign government hackers had once again breached its systems, the news prompted another round of recriminations about the security posture of the world’s largest tech company.
Despite the angst among policymakers, security experts, and competitors, Microsoft faced no consequences for its latest embarrassing failure. The United States government kept buying and using Microsoft products, and senior officials refused to publicly rebuke the tech giant. It was another reminder of how insulated Microsoft has become from virtually any government accountability, even as the Biden administration vows to make powerful tech firms take more responsibility for America’s cyber defense.
That state of affairs is unlikely to change even in the wake of a new report by the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB), a group of government and industry experts, which lambasts Microsoft for failing to prevent one of the worst hacking incidents in the company’s recent history. The report says Microsoft’s “security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul.”
Meta’s ‘Consent or Pay’ Tactic Must Not Prevail Over Privacy, EU Rights Groups Warn
Nearly two dozen civil society groups and non-profits have written an open letter to the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), urging it not to endorse a strategy used by Meta that they say is intended to bypass the EU’s privacy protections for commercial gain.
The letter comes ahead of a meeting of the EDPB this week that is expected to produce guidance on a controversial tactic used by Meta that forces Facebook and Instagram users to consent to its tracking.
Many of the signatories, which include the likes of EDRi, Access Now, noyb and Wikimedia Europe, signed a similar open letter to the EDPB in February. But the Board is expected to adopt an opinion on so-called “consent or pay” (A.K.A. “pay or okay”) as soon as this Wednesday, so this is likely the last chance for rights groups to sway hearts and minds on an issue they warn is “pivotal” for the future of data protection and privacy in Europe.
UK Plans Facial Recognition Expansion, Empowering Cops to Scan Faces in the Street + More
UK Plans Facial Recognition Expansion, Empowering Cops to Scan Faces in the Street
In the U.K., the government has presented its plans for a large-scale increase of the use of facial recognition technology which the police want to deploy in a number of ways and across a range of locations.
According to Big Brother Watch, taxpayers in that country will foot the bill amounting to a total of £230 million (some $288 million). In return for financing this expansion of what the rights group calls Orwellian tech, citizens will be subjected to even more intense mass surveillance.
A government press release said £55.5 million would be spent on facial recognition tools over the next four years specifically to address the problem of retail crime (also euphemistically referred to as “shoplifting”). That’s a good place to “tuck in” that information, given that the public is likely to look favorably at any attempt to tackle the problem.
However, if “shoplifting” is a major reason behind them, the plans look like killing a fly with an elephant gun. There will be a convoy of live facial recognition vans — “mobile units” — in crowded areas of high streets and elsewhere in cities.
What the Evidence Really Says About Social Media’s Impact on Teens’ Mental Health
The kids are not all right — and the device you are probably reading this on is to blame.
So argues the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. In his new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Haidt insists that smartphones and social media are fueling a “surge of suffering” that’s inundating teens all across the Western world.
By Haidt’s account, smartphones and the addicting social media apps we download onto them have lured the world’s youths away from those activities that are indispensable to healthy child development — such as outdoor play, face-to-face conversation with friends, and sleep — and trapped them in a digital realm that saps their self-esteem, drains their attention spans, and forces them to put on a perpetual, high-stakes performance of their own personalities.
Smartphones have even hurt kids who don’t use them much, according to Haidt, because they’ve restructured communal life in harmful ways. Teenagers’ rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide have all skyrocketed as a result.
House Passes FISA Reauthorization Bill After Previous GOP Setback
The House on Friday voted to reauthorize a key U.S. spy program considered crucial to national security.
In a 273 to 147 vote, lawmakers renewed Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is set to expire on April 19, through 2026. It now heads to the Senate.
Section 702 allows the U.S. government to collect electronic communications of non-Americans located outside the country without a warrant. It came under scrutiny among some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and civil liberties groups because it sometimes results in the collection of data on Americans who are in contact with those surveilled individuals.
An amendment was offered to add a warrant requirement to see data from Americans, but it narrowly failed in a 212 to 212 vote.
Settlement Reached in Lawsuit Against UT-Battelle Over COVID Vaccine Requirement
At least one of the plaintiffs has reached a settlement with UT-Battelle in a lawsuit over how UT-Battelle handled exemptions to its COVID-19 vaccine requirement, according to court documents.
An order filed on Thursday, April 11 states that UT-Battelle, the management contractor for Oak Ridge National Laboratory, reached a settlement with plaintiff Jessica Bilyeu. The stipulations of the settlement are required to be filed by April 18 or the case will be dismissed, according to the order.
A previously filed memorandum states that Bilyeu was an employee of UT-Battelle when the organization announced on August 26, 2021, that all employees would be required to receive the COVID-19 vaccination by October 15 of that year. Allegedly, when requests were made for religious accommodations, UT-Battelle provided the accommodation that those who raised religious objections to the vaccine could go on unpaid leave.
Three days before the scheduled start of the unpaid leave, a lawsuit was filed and the court issued a temporary restraining order to stop UT-Battelle from placing employees on unpaid leave until the court could rule on a motion for a preliminary injunction. The court later denied the plaintiff’s motion, reinstating the organization’s vaccination policies.
Meta Criticized After Lowering WhatsApp Minimum Age From 16 to 13
Meta has lowered the minimum age to use the popular messaging platform WhatsApp. The move, which came into effect on Thursday, reduces the age limit from 16 down to 13 in the U.K. and EU.
It has been criticized by a number of campaign groups who have urged the company to reverse the decision.
Smartphone Free Childhood told Sky News that it was an example of “a tech giant putting shareholder profits first and children’s safety second.”
A spokesperson for the group said: “Reducing their age of use from 16 to 13 sends a message to parents that WhatsApp is safe for children, but the stories we’re hearing from our community of parents paint a very different picture.”