Big Brother News Watch
The Pentagon Is Moving Toward Letting AI Weapons Autonomously Decide to Kill Humans + More
The Pentagon Is Moving Toward Letting AI Weapons Autonomously Decide to Kill Humans
The deployment of AI-controlled drones that can make autonomous decisions about whether to kill human targets is moving closer to reality, The New York Times reported.
Lethal autonomous weapons, that can select targets using AI, are being developed by countries including the U.S., China and Israel.
The use of the so-called “killer robots” would mark a disturbing development, say critics, handing life and death battlefield decisions to machines with no human input.
Several governments are lobbying the UN for a binding resolution restricting the use of AI killer drones, but the U.S. is among a group of nations — which also includes Russia, Australia and Israel — who are resisting any such move, favoring a non-binding resolution instead, The Times reported.
COVID Mask Update as California County Issues Mandate
A county in California has reinstated a face mask mandate until March 2024 in a bid to prevent the spread of diseases including COVID-19. Marin County’s health order requires anybody entering a hospital to wear a face mask, if they are vaccinated or not.
In a statement, Marin County officials said of their new restriction: “The intent of the order is to protect individuals in these high-risk healthcare settings and limit the spread of seasonal respiratory viruses including RSV, influenza, and COVID-19.”
According to the Marin County health website, there has been no significant recent spike in cases. Newsweek has contacted county officials via email for further information.
But other areas in California have gone the other way and Huntington Beach City Council banned wearing masks in the future after an 8-hour meeting in September.
Former Workers Sue LA City Over Vaccine Mandate
In August 2021, FOX 11 reported on the air that, the LA City Council unanimously approved an ordinance requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for all city employees except for those with medical or religious exemptions.
The Mayor at the time, Eric Garcetti, said that any city employee who refused to get vaccinated by December 18 of that year should be prepared to lose their job.
Terminated LAPD officer Michael McMahon and others have fought back for two years. At a news conference announcing the legal filing, McMahon said Former Mayor Garcetti and current Mayor Bass didn’t have the authority then and you do not have it now.
McMahon and 55 others are suing the former and current mayors and the city of LA over what they call, “a violent assault on the individual’s constitutional right to refuse a product that’s been given an Emergency-Use-Authorization or EUA like the COVID-19 vaccine was.” The suit was filed Friday.
N.J. Proposal Would Require Age Verification, Parental Permission for Social Media Use
An influential state lawmaker hopes to require age verification and parental consent for kids to join social media platforms, which would make New Jersey one of just a handful of states to impose the requirement.
Assemblymember Herb Conaway (D-Burlington) on Monday introduced the legislation, NJ A5750 (22R), which would require social media platforms to verify that users are at least 18 and require minors to get consent to join from a parent or guardian. It would also ban certain online messages between adults and children.
“It really has been horrific on the mental health and the physical health of our young people, particularly teenagers and particularly young girls,” Conaway, who chairs the Assembly Health Committee, said in a phone interview Tuesday.
Mass. Bill Would Curb Police Use of Facial Recognition Technology
Massachusetts lawmakers are considering restrictions on law enforcement’s ability to use facial recognition technology.
Civil rights activists have criticized the emerging technology for years, pointing to a growing body of research showing the software disproportionately misidentifies people of color. Several Massachusetts cities, including Boston and Springfield, have banned the use of the technology locally.
The Joint Committee on the Judiciary heard hours of testimony Tuesday on proposals to limit the technology’s use by police.
“Facial recognition technology is dangerous, both in its ability to facilitate government surveillance, and its track record of misidentifying people in criminal investigations,” State Sen. Cynthia Creem told the panel.
Sam Altman to Return as OpenAI CEO
OpenAI said late Tuesday that it had reached a deal in principle for Sam Altman to return as CEO, with a new board chaired by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor.
Why it matters: The move appears to resolve the roller-coaster drama that began Friday when OpenAI announced that its non-profit board had voted to remove Altman. Of note: The agreement includes a plan for an independent investigation into the events that led up to Altman’s original ouster, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Between the lines: At first blush, the outcome appears to be a total victory for Altman, but outgoing board members didn’t walk away from the negotiations empty-handed, according to a source familiar with their thinking.
Catch up quick: OpenAI’s non-profit board stunned the tech world Friday with the announcement that it had fired Altman for not being “consistently candid in his communications” and CTO Mira Murati would step in as interim CEO.
Italy’s Privacy Regulator Looks Into Online Data Gathering to Train AI
Italy’s data protection authority has kicked off a fact-finding investigation into the practice of gathering large amounts of personal data online for use in training artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, the regulator said on Wednesday.
The watchdog is one of the most proactive of the 31 national data protection authorities in assessing AI platform compliance with Europe’s data privacy regime known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Earlier this year, it briefly banned popular chatbot ChatGPT from operating in Italy over a suspected breach of privacy rules.
On Wednesday, the Italian authority said the review was aimed at assessing whether online websites were setting out “adequate measures” to prevent AI platforms from collecting massive amounts of personal data for algorithms, also known as data scraping.
AI Is Supercharging Child Surveillance and the School-to-Prison Pipeline + More
AI Is Supercharging Child Surveillance and the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Controversial, data-driven technologies are showing up in public schools nationwide at alarming rates. AI-enabled systems such as facial recognition, predictive policing, geolocation tracking, student device monitoring and even aerial drones are commonplace in public schools.
For example, a recent national survey of educators found that over 88% of schools use student device monitoring, 33% use facial recognition and 38% share student data with law enforcement. Many of these tools are designed for military use and routinely used by authoritarian regimes to repress ethnic minorities — making their use in schools all the more frightening.
The harms of these technologies are not evenly shared. Research shows that these tools disproportionately affect Black youth, youth with disabilities, immigrant youth, LGBTQ youth and youth in low-income communities. For example, researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that schools with large surveillance infrastructure suspend students at higher rates, leading to worse academic outcomes for Black students.
Despite the prolific use of these technologies, there are still solutions to undo digital authoritarianism in America’s public schools.
The clearest solution is a ban on using federal funds for schools to purchase these technologies in the first place. Federal funding is a driving force behind the widespread adoption of these technologies. Eliminating federal funds as a revenue source for school districts to procure these systems will go a long way in addressing this challenge.
U.S. Senator Calls for the Public Release of AT&T ‘Hemisphere’ Surveillance Records
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden wants the public to know about the details surrounding the long-running Hemisphere phone surveillance program. Wyden has written U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland a letter (PDF), asking him to release additional information about the project that apparently gives law enforcement agencies access to trillions of domestic phone records.
In addition, he said that federal, state, local and Tribal law enforcement agencies have the ability to request “often-warrantless searches” from the project’s phone records that AT&T has been collecting since 1987.
The Hemisphere project first came to light in 2013 when The New York Times reported that the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) was paying AT&T to mine and keep records of its customers’ phone calls. Four billion new records are getting added to its database every day, and a federal or state law enforcement agency can request a query with a subpoena that they can issue themselves.
The project has been defunded and refunded by the government several times over the past decade and was even, at one point, receiving federal funding under the name “Data Analytical Services (DAS).” Usually, projects funded by federal agencies would be subject to a mandatory Privacy Impact Assessment conducted by the Department of Justice, which means their records would be made public.
“I have serious concerns about the legality of this surveillance program, and the materials provided by the DOJ contain troubling information that would justifiably outrage many Americans and other members of Congress,” Wyden wrote in his letter.
Healthcare Workers Opt Out of COVID Shots: CDC
Becker’s Hospital Review reported:
Many healthcare workers at hospitals and nursing homes are choosing not to stay up to date with their COVID-19 vaccinations now that mandates are no longer in effect, especially in certain parts of the country, according to a CDC study published Nov 10.
The finding is from a CDC analysis of approximately 7.7 million healthcare personnel working in 4,057 acute care hospitals and approximately 1.6 million healthcare personnel working at 13,794 nursing homes during the 2022–23 influenza season (October 1, 2022, to March 31, 2023).
The analysis findings show that up-to-date COVID-19 vaccination coverage was 17.2% overall among the hospital workers. Coverage was highest in the Pacific region (28.9%) and lowest in the Mountain region (9.1%). There were no substantial differences by staff member type.
People Who Stuck by U.K. COVID Rules Have Worst Mental Health, Says Survey
People who stuck by COVID lockdown rules the most strictly have the worst mental health today, research has found. Those who followed the restrictions most closely when the pandemic hit are the most likely to be suffering from stress, anxiety and depression, academics at Bangor University have found.
They identified that people with “communal” personalities — who are more caring, sensitive and aware of others’ needs — adhered the most rigorously to the lockdown protocols that Boris Johnson and senior medics and scientists recommended.
“The more individuals complied with health advice during lockdown, the worse their wellbeing post-lockdown,” concluded Dr Marley Willegers and colleagues.
The researchers based their findings on a study of how compliant with the rules 1,729 people in Wales were during the first U.K.-wide lockdown in March to September 2020 and measures of stress, anxiety and depression found among them from February to May this year.
If OpenAI’s Board Was Trying to Save Humanity From Sam Altman, It Failed. So It’s Time to Come Clean.
The bizarre soap opera that is OpenAI has entered its fifth day. As yet, there is no formal resolution, but as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on TV, the practical outcome is known: OpenAI employees will continue to build OpenAI’s products, and Sam Altman will continue to lead them.
It’s still not clear why the OpenAI board fired Altman. The stated reason — that he lied to them — has not held up under scrutiny. As Business Insider’s Kali Hays reported, when asked for specifics about Altman’s alleged dishonesty, one of the board members who ousted him gave two vague and flimsy examples, neither of which — even if fairly represented — seems like a firing offense.
But, as Business Insider’s Alistair Barr has argued, if the goal of the three remaining OpenAI Board members is to save humans from OpenAI’s product, it’s time for those board members to say so.
Personally, I don’t think the three remaining OpenAI board members have as much control over the future of AI and the fate of the universe as they may think. If it’s so easy to build a Cylon empire, then one of the dozens of other companies that are racing to advance AI will probably do it, even if OpenAI doesn’t.
The Startling Evidence on Learning Loss Is In + More
The Startling Evidence on Learning Loss Is In
In the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress sent $190 billion in aid to schools, stipulating that 20% of the funds had to be used for reversing learning setbacks. At the time, educators knew that the impact on how children learn would be significant, but the extent was not yet known.
The evidence is now in, and it is startling. The school closures that took 50 million children out of classrooms at the start of the pandemic may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education. It also set student progress in math and reading back by two decades and widened the achievement gap that separates poor and wealthy children.
These learning losses will remain unaddressed when the federal money runs out in 2024. Economists are predicting that this generation, with such a significant educational gap, will experience diminished lifetime earnings and become a significant drag on the economy. But education administrators and elected officials who should be mobilizing the country against this threat are not.
It will take a multidisciplinary approach, and at this point, all the solutions that will be needed long-term can’t be known; the work of getting kids back on solid ground is just beginning. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be immediate action.
The U.S. Army Is Having a Hard Time Recruiting. Now It’s Asking Soldiers Dismissed for Refusing the COVID Vaccine to Come Back.
The U.S. Army is having such a difficult time recruiting that it’s sending soldiers who were kicked out for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 instructions on how to rejoin.
The Army sent the letters to about 1,900 active-duty soldiers who were separated for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the military blog Task and Purpose. Bryce Dubee, an Army spokesperson, told the blog that the letters were sent “specifically as part of the COVID mandate recession process.”
The letter, which has been circulated on social media, says former soldiers who were separated for refusing to take the vaccine can request a correction of their military record and instructs those who wish to rejoin to contact a recruiter.
The new outreach to these soldiers comes amid a recruiting crisis for the U.S. military. In 2022, the Army fell short of its recruiting goal by about 15,000 soldiers, or 25%, Army Times reported.
In Rare Show of Force, Senators Enlist U.S. Marshals to Subpoena Tech CEOs
A Senate panel announced Monday it subpoenaed the CEOs of Elon Musk’s X, Discord and Snap to testify at a hearing on children’s online safety next month after “repeated refusals” by the tech companies to cooperate with its investigation into the matter.
In a rare show of force, the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee are seeking to force X’s Linda Yaccarino, Discord’s Jason Citron and Snap’s Evan Spiegel to appear at the Dec. 6 session, which the panel said in a press release would “allow Committee members to press CEOs from some of the world’s largest social media companies on their failures to protect children online.”
The committee announced that it also expects Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to appear voluntarily. Spokespeople for Snap, Discord and TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Meta declined to comment.
The rare move marks a major escalation by lawmakers probing how social media platforms may harm children’s mental health, an area of broad bipartisan interest on Capitol Hill.
U.S. Consumer Watchdog Hands Wall Street Rare Win With Big Tech Crackdown
The U.S. consumer watchdog, not usually known to side with Wall Street lenders, has handed them a rare win by cracking down on Big Tech companies that are increasingly encroaching on banking turf.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) last week proposed regulating payments and smartphone wallets provided by tech leaders like Apple (AAPL.O) and Google (GOOGL.O), arguing they now rival traditional bank services in scale and scope and should be subject to the same consumer safeguards.
The long-anticipated move by CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, who built his career targeting Big Tech over privacy and competition issues, gives a competitive boost to lenders grappling with an onslaught of new rules from capital hikes and caps on debit and credit card fees to tougher fair lending standards.
The CFPB rule would toughen up supervision, requiring Big Tech to comply with its rules on privacy protections, executives’ conduct and unfair and deceptive practices.
Seventeen companies would be affected including Apple, Google, PayPal (PYPL.O) and Block’s (SQ.N) CashApp, which together facilitated roughly $1.7 trillion worth of payments in 2021, the CFPB said. The value of all non-cash payments — excluding wire transfers primarily used for large transfers — was $128.51 trillion in 2021, Federal Reserve data shows.
TSA, Border Agents and Airlines Are Asking for Your Photo. Here’s What to Know.
Grappling with children and luggage, the hours of travel sometimes weighing heavier than the bags, flyers are inching closer to their destination when the government or an airline asks for just a bit more data before they continue on their way: a photo.
The use of such biometric data — unique physical characteristics, such as fingerprints or, in this case, a facial image — is becoming ever more prevalent at airports and has taken off at stops like the Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
But are you required to surrender this personal data? And what happens to it? Who is using facial recognition at the airport? The government, for starters.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Transportation Security Administration use biometric facial matching technology, and Delta Air Lines and Spirit Airlines are also in the game at DTW, Wayne County Airport Authority spokesman Randy Wimbley confirmed.
There is also CLEAR, the technology company known for its biometric screening process at airports. DTW has the technology at eight international gates in the Evans Terminal and at concourses in the McNamara Terminal, according to the airport website. And that’s just at DTW. Across the world, others are also using this technology at airports.
What Your Car Knows About You and Could Be Telling the World
You probably know that your smartphone and laptop store a lot of your personal data, such as your photos, messages, passwords and browsing history. But did you know that your car does the same thing?
Your car can collect and share a lot of information about you, such as where you go, what you say and how you feel. According to Mozilla research, most cars sold in the U.S. today are “privacy nightmares on wheels” that collect huge amounts of personal information.
This data is gathered by sensors, microphones, cameras and the phones and devices you connect to your car, as well as by car apps, company websites, dealerships and vehicle telematics. And if you don’t wipe your car’s data before selling or trading it in, you could be putting your privacy and security at risk.
Microsoft Emerges as the Winner in OpenAI Chaos
Just after 2 a.m. Pacific time on Monday morning, several OpenAI staffers — including its chief technology officer, Mira Murati — posted in unison on X: “OpenAI is nothing without its people.” Sam Altman, who was dramatically removed as the company’s chief executive on Friday, reposted many of them.
By then, Altman already had a new job. Satya Nadella — CEO of Microsoft, a major investor and partner of OpenAI — announced late on Sunday night that Altman and his cofounder Greg Brockman would be joining the tech giant to head a new “advanced AI research team.”
Nadella’s statement seemed to suggest that others from the startup would be joining Microsoft.
By hiring Altman and Brockman amid the chaos at the top of OpenAI, Microsoft has managed to acquire one of the most successful management teams in artificial intelligence without having to buy the company — whose pre-chaos valuation was $86 billion.
NHS England Gives Key Role in Handling Patient Data to U.S. Spy Tech Firm Palantir
The NHS is to hand a key role in handling patient data and share of a £480m contract to the U.S. spy technology firm Palantir this week, the Guardian can reveal.
It is preparing to make an announcement on Tuesday that is likely to spark fierce debate about the safety of patient data, public trust in the NHS and Palantir’s suitability to be involved in the FDP. The construction of the platform is the biggest IT contract the NHS has ever awarded.
Palantir is best known for its work with intelligence and military agencies in the U.S., U.K. and elsewhere, such as the CIA. The firm gained a foothold in the NHS in March 2020 when, at the government’s invitation, it began analyzing huge amounts of health service data to help with the official response to the unfolding COVID pandemic.
Report: DOJ Asked Court to Hide Surveillance of Congressional Investigators + More
Report: DOJ Asked Court to Hide Surveillance of Congressional Investigators
The former congressional investigator Jason Foster has exposed a five year secret surveillance operation conducted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on members of congress and their staff. According to Foster, who now heads the Empower Oversight whistleblower center, the DOJ managed to obtain a federal court’s approval for this covert spying, largely centered on personal communication data of the targets.
Just The News reports that in his role as the chief investigative counsel for Senator Chuck Grassley on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Foster worked vigilantly to discern wrongdoings within the government. However, his communications were closely monitored as part of a federal leaks investigation, the evidence which has been recently unveiled to him by Google’s lawyers.
Foster divulged that the data pertaining to his personal conversations was procured by the government in 2017, a fact that should have been disclosed to him by 2018 under the initial court order. However, due to the DOJ’s petitions to the court to keep this surveillance confidential, Foster had been oblivious to the surveillance until recent months, nearly six years after his personal data was subpoenaed.
In a bid to conduct a thorough examination of the conspiracy, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has petitioned both parties to initiate investigations. Additionally, Jordan has also requested that the country’s tech giants surrender any evidence pointing towards the DOJ’s surveillance tactics on congress members or their teams.
Senators Demand Documents From Meta on Social Media Harm to Children
A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators has written to Meta Platforms (META.O) CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding documents about its research into the harm to children from its social media platforms. A whistleblower’s release of documents in 2021 showed Meta knew Instagram, which began as a photo-sharing app, was addictive and worsened body image issues for some teen girls.
“Members of Congress have repeatedly asked Meta for information on its awareness of threats to young people on its platforms and the measures that it has taken, only to be stonewalled and provided non-responsive or misleading information,” the senators wrote in a letter.
The letter follows a hearing with a new whistleblower last week and after a newly unsealed complaint filed by the Massachusetts Attorney General, the senators said.
Newly unsealed disclosures suggest Meta executives’ direct knowledge of the harm related to its products and concealment from Congress and the public, supporting former executive Arturo Béjar’s testimony to a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, according to the senators.
Several Popular AI Products Flagged as Unsafe for Kids by Common Sense Media
An independent review of popular AI tools has found that many — including Snapchat’s My AI, DALLE, and Stable Diffusion, may not be safe for kids. The new reviews come from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit advocacy group for families that’s best known for providing media ratings for parents who want to evaluate the apps, games, podcasts, TV shows, movies, and books their children are consuming.
Earlier this year, the company said it would soon add ratings for AI products to its resources for families. Today, those ratings have gone live, offering so-called “nutrition labels” for AI products, like chatbots, image generators, and more.
The company first announced in July that it aimed to build a rating system to assess AI products across a number of dimensions, including whether or not the technology takes advantage of responsible AI practices as well as its suitability for children. The move was triggered by a survey of parents to gauge their interest in such a service. 82% of parents said they wanted help in evaluating whether or not new AI products, like ChatGPT, were safe for their kids to use. Only 40% said they knew of any reliable resources that would help them to make those determinations.
That led to today’s launch of Common Sense Media’s first AI product ratings. The products it assesses are ratings across several AI principles, including trust, kids’ safety, privacy, transparency, accountability, learning, fairness, social connections, and benefits to people and society.
Google’s Bard Expands Chatbot Access to Teens as ChatGPT Usage Surges
The Hollywood Reporter reported:
Usage of AI chatbots appears to be increasing, as Google’s AI chatbot, Bard will be available to teens in most countries starting Thursday, and ChatGPT was forced to temporarily pause new signups due to demand.
In a blog post Wednesday, Google outlined the potential uses among teens, highlighting prompts such as how to write a class president speech and science fair project ideas. Bard will also allow teens to type or upload a math equation and then provide step-by-step instructions on how to solve it.
The tech giant says it has also consulted with child safety and development experts on the usage of the chatbot among teens, who are available to use it as young as age 13 in the U.S. Among the safeguards, Bard will introduce a “double-check” feature that verifies answers with content across the internet, as well as safety features that prevent illegal or unsafe content from appearing in the answers.
Parents Are Suing Roblox for Exposing Children to Inappropriate Content. What You Need to Know.
Following in the footsteps of civil groups taking a legal stance against social media and tech giants, a group of families have filed a class action lawsuit against gaming platform Roblox.
The lawsuit accuses the Roblox Corporation of “negligent misrepresentation and false advertising” of the platform, marketing the mini-game hub as a platform for children while simultaneously showing underage users inappropriate or explicit content and allowing them to engage in inappropriate encounters.
The group also accuses the company of misleading parents into spending thousands of dollars on the site due to obscured prices and children’s ability to make in-game purchases using fictional “Robux.”
‘Experts’ Were Confident That They Knew What to Do About COVID. They Were Wrong About so Much.
The Orange County Register reported:
“Experts” were confident that they knew what America should do about COVID. They were wrong about so much. Officials pushed masks, including useless cloth ones. Dr. Anthony Fauci said, “Don’t wear masks” — then, “Do wear them.” Some states closed playgrounds and banned motorboats and Jet Skis. Towns in New York banned using leaf-blowers. California pointlessly closed beaches and gave people citations for “watching the sunset.” The list goes on.
Sen. Rand Paul’s new book, “Deception,” argues that government experts didn’t just make mistakes; they were purposely deceitful. A few weeks ago, this column reported how Paul was correct in accusing Fauci of funding virus research in Wuhan and lying about it.
He points out that Fauci, in private, told fellow bureaucrats that masking is pointless. Fauci wrote in one email: “The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.”
Another mistake: the virus is 500 times more likely to kill people ages 65 and up than kill kids. But our government told parents: mask your children. Some states kept kids out of schools for two years.