Big Brother News Watch
Only 43 of More Than 8,000 Discharged From U.S. Military for Refusing COVID Vaccine Have Rejoined + More
Only 43 of More Than 8,000 Discharged From U.S. Military for Refusing COVID Vaccine Have Rejoined
Only 43 of the more than 8,000 U.S. service members who were discharged from the military for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19 have sought to rejoin eight months after the vaccine mandate was officially repealed, according to data provided by the military branches.
Many Republicans argued that the vaccine mandate hurt military recruiting and retention efforts, which was part of the rationale for forcing the Defense Department to cancel the vaccine requirement. The military mandated the vaccine for only 15 months from August 2021 through January 2023, when it was rescinded by law as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. It marked perhaps the first time in U.S. military history that a vaccine requirement was reversed.
But since the repeal, only 19 soldiers have rejoined the Army, while 12 have returned to the Marines, according to service spokespeople. The numbers are even smaller for the Air Force and Navy, where only one and two have rejoined, respectively, the services said.
Pretty Soon, Your VR Headset Will Know Exactly What Your Bedroom Looks Like
Imagine a universe where Meta, and every third-party application it does business with, knows the placement and size of your furniture, whether you have a wheelchair or crib in your living room or the precise layout of your bedroom or bathroom. Analyzing this environment could reveal all sorts of things. Furnishings could indicate whether you are rich or poor, and artwork could give away your religion. A captured marijuana plant might suggest an interest in recreational drugs.
When critics suggest that the metaverse is a giant data grab, they often focus on the risks of sophisticated sensors that track and analyze body-based data. Far less attention has focused on how our new “mixed reality” future — prominently hyped at last week’s Meta Connect conference — may bring us closer to a “total surveillance state.”
The risks of this spatial information have not received as much attention as they deserve. Part of this is because few people understand this technology, and even if they do, it does not seem as scary as tech that is developed to monitor our eyes or surreptitiously record someone at a distance. Concepts like “point clouds,” “scene models,” “geometric meshes,” and “depth data” can be explained away as technical jargon. But allowing wearables to understand their surroundings and report back that information is a big deal.
We should anticipate that companies, governments, and bad actors will find ways to use this information to harm people. We have already seen how location data can be used by bounty hunters to harass people, target women seeking reproductive healthcare, and do an end-run around the Fourth Amendment. Now imagine a spatial data positioning system that is far more precise, down to the centimeter. Whether wearing a headset or interacting with AR holograms on a phone, the real-time location and real-world behaviors and interests of people can be monitored to a degree not currently imaginable.
California Misinfo Law Is Dead — Repeal Bill Also Strengthens Consumer Protections and Raises Doctors’ License Fees
With little fanfare, California Governor Gavin Newsom late last week signed into law a bill that repealed its controversial doctor misinformation statute just a year after it was signed.
Critics, including several physician plaintiffs who had sued the state, argued that it went against the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech, and a judge had granted a restraining order on its implementation.
The original intent of the bill was an effort to give the Medical Board of California specific language that granted them the power to discipline providers who were found to have conveyed misinformation about COVID vaccines and treatments, including statements they might make on social media or in other public forums such as public protests.
Meet the Four Men Being Held as Political Prisoners in Canada
The Freedom Convoy erupted in January of 2022 after tens of thousands of Canadians, sick of Trudeau’s authoritarian approach to COVID-19, took to the streets of Ottawa in a mass act of civil protest led by truck drivers. For this, the Trudeau administration labeled them as racists and fascists — and then invoked the Emergency Measures Act for the first time in Canada’s history, suspending the civil liberties of Canada’s citizenry.
“Freedom of expression, assembly and association are cornerstones of democracy, but Nazi symbolism, racist imagery and desecration of war memorials are not,” Trudeau infamously said of the largest peaceful protest in Canada’s history, before accusing a Jewish Member of Parliament of “standing with those who wave Nazi flags” for her support of the protest.
Trudeau appeared to be referencing a single swastika flag in a protest of over 10,000 souls — the masked waver of which was never identified. The Canadian government also became convinced that a veteran named Jeremy MacKenzie was using the Freedom Convoy to lead a violent overthrow of the Trudeau government. After the Convoy, MacKenzie was charged with assault, pointing a firearm, using a restricted weapon in a careless manner, and mischief. Yet none of the charges against him were related to the Convoy, and most have since been dropped.
Four men caught in the government’s dragnet have not been as lucky. In February 2022, Anthony Olienick, Chris Carbert, Christopher Lysak, and Jerry Morin were arrested in separate locations throughout Alberta on allegations that they had conspired to murder Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers in Coutts, Alberta, a second protest site, as part of MacKenzie’s group. And though three of the men had no criminal records, they were all denied bail and have been languishing in prison for nearly 600 days. (Crown Prosecutor Steven Johnston declined a request via email for an interview. The RCMP did not reply to a request for comment.)
Up to 200,000 People to Be Monitored for COVID This Winter to Track Infection Rates
Up to 200,000 people will be monitored for COVID-19 this winter in a scaled-down version of the three-year infection survey for the virus.
The new study will run from November 2023 to March 2024, with as many as 32,000 lateral flow tests being used every week.
Scientists will be able to identify any changes in the rate of people infected with COVID-19 being admitted to hospital and assess the potential for increased demand on the NHS.
It is being co-ordinated by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
Britain’s COVID Response Inquiry Enters Second Phase With Political Decisions in the Spotlight
Britain’s inquiry into the response to the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the nation entered its second phase Tuesday, with political decision-making around major developments, such as the timing of lockdowns, set to take center stage.
Much criticism preceded the start of the so-called Module 2, the second of four planned phases of the inquiry, as it was set to hear in person only from one bereaved family member. Representatives of the bereaved have said that the lack of more live testimonies is “deeply concerning.”
This stage of the inquiry will focus on the British government’s actions during the crisis between Jan. 2020, when it first became evident that the virus was spreading around the world, and June 2022, when the inquiry was set up. The first phase, which concluded in July, looked at the country’s preparedness for the pandemic.
Tech Giants Slam ‘Draconian’ New Sri Lanka Online Safety Bill
Just a few days after politicians in the U.K. signed off on the highly-debated Online Safety Bill, a homonymous proposed law is now sparking discussions over five thousand miles away.
Despite coming as a means to halt online harm and fake news, tech giants have deemed the new Sri Lanka Online Safety Bill as a “draconian system to stifle dissent.” Other experts have been warning of new executive powers and vague provisions too, which are thought to ultimately lead to increased online censorship, and free speech and privacy abuses.
Sri Lanka Online Safety Bill aims to create a legal framework to reduce online harm (especially for children) by halting the spread of harmful content and fake news online.
Among the concerns surrounding the bill, there are vague definitions of harmful content which could lead to censorship of legitimate material combined with a lack of safeguards for citizens’ freedom of expression.
Meta Says Its AI Trains on Your Instagram Posts + More
Meta Says Its AI Trains on Your Instagram Posts
Meta admitted late last week that it has used mountains of public Facebook posts to train its AI models, per Reuters. Why it matters: As the AI boom continues, content creators are challenging tech companies’ use of their material in the development of advanced AI tools — and in Facebook’s case, “content creators” means a few billion people.
Details: After Meta unveiled its new AI assistants last week, its president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, told Reuters that the “vast majority” of the training data used to develop them came from publicly available posts, including on Facebook and Instagram.
The big picture: A massive legal battle is brewing between owners of copyrighted content, like books and professional media products, and AI companies that may have intentionally or inadvertently used their works to train their programs.
Meta has always claimed a variety of rights in the content its users post, so legally it’s in a different situation than companies that are using copyrighted texts. The company tells users “You own all of the content and information” you post. But if you make a post public, as many do by default, it becomes available for all sorts of purposes that you can’t control.
The Supreme Court Will Decide if State Laws Limiting Social Media Platforms Violate the Constitution
The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether state laws that seek to regulate Facebook, TikTok, X and other social media platforms violate the Constitution.
The justices will review laws enacted by Republican-dominated legislatures and signed by Republican governors in Florida and Texas. While the details vary, both laws aim to prevent social media companies from censoring users based on their viewpoints.
The court’s announcement, three days before the start of its new term, comes as the justices continue to grapple with how laws written at the dawn of the digital age, or earlier, apply to the online world.
The new social media cases follow conflicting rulings by two appeals courts, one of which upheld the Texas law, while the other struck down Florida’s statute. By a 5-4 vote, the justices kept the Texas law on hold while litigation over it continues.
Google Faced With an AI Privacy Challenge: Do I Have the Right to Be Forgotten?
The Federal Court of Appeal in the USA has just ruled that Google is not covered by exemption for journalistic or artistic work. In a 2-1 court ruling, Google which drives more than 75% of internet searches in Canada, which opens the door for people to demand that their names in any articles are made unsearchable known as the right to be forgotten.
Valerie Lawton, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, said it is pleased the court agreed with its position that Google’s search engine service is subject to federal privacy law. “This brings welcome clarification to this area of the law.”
More importantly, it signals the imperative for International Human Rights Laws to align to protect our privacy as we enter a world that is increasingly like the Minority Report, where everything one does is known and never forgotten.
Sounds Orwellian like and as Dr. Zuboff, in her seminal book, Surveillance Capitalism wrote, the technology giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, now OpenAI valued at close to $90B, have far too much control on shaping our society and our world.
Canada to Create Registry of Podcasters in Potential Censorship Initiative
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is taking Canada down a dangerous path of censorship to regulate streaming services and social media platforms. The next regulation phase comes as some podcasters will soon have to register with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
The Online Streaming Act, formerly Bill C-11, goes into effect on Nov. 28, meaning any online streaming service that operates in Canada and generates revenue of more than $10 million in a given year will have to register with CRTC.
So what’s with the government creating a database of prominent podcasters?
One potential reason could be for the Liberal government to censor unapproved government narratives quickly. Having a registry of podcasters and the type of content they create makes it much easier for those in the government’s censorship department.
Parents in Pakistan Could Face Prison Time for Not Vaccinating Their Kids Against Polio
Authorities in one Pakistan province are turning to a controversial new tactic in the decades-long initiative to wipe out polio: prison.
Last month, the government in Sindh introduced a bill that would imprison parents for up to one month if they fail to get their children immunized against polio or eight other common diseases.
Experts at the World Health Organization and elsewhere worry the unusual strategy could further undermine trust in the polio vaccines, particularly in a country where many believe false conspiracies about them and where dozens of vaccinators have been shot and killed.
WHO’s polio director in the Eastern Mediterranean warned the new law could backfire. “Coercion is counterproductive,” said Dr. Hamid Jafari.
New York Bans Facial Recognition in Schools After Report Finds Risks Outweigh Potential Benefits + More
New York Bans Facial Recognition in Schools After Report Finds Risks Outweigh Potential Benefits
New York State banned the use of facial recognition technology in schools Wednesday, following a report that concluded the risks to student privacy and civil rights outweigh potential security benefits. Education Commissioner Betty Rosa’s order leaves decisions on digital fingerprinting and other biometric technology up to local districts.
The state has had a moratorium on facial recognition since parents filed a court challenge to its adoption by an upstate district.
The ban was praised by the New York Civil Liberties Union, which sued the state Education Department on behalf of two Lockport parents in 2020.
“Schools should be safe places to learn and grow, not spaces where they are constantly scanned and monitored, with their most sensitive information at risk,” said Stefanie Coyle, deputy director of the NYCLU’s Education Policy Center.
A Key U.S. Government Surveillance Tool Should Face New Limits, a Divided Privacy Oversight Board Says
The FBI and other government agencies should be required to get court approval before reviewing the communications of U.S. citizens collected through a secretive foreign surveillance program, a sharply divided privacy oversight board recommended on Thursday.
The recommendation came in a report from a three-member Democratic majority of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, an independent agency within the executive branch, and was made despite the opposition of Biden administration officials who warn that such a requirement could snarl fast-moving terrorism and espionage investigations and weaken national security as a result.
The report comes as a White House push to secure the reauthorization of the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is encountering major bipartisan opposition in Congress and during a spate of revelations that FBI employees have periodically mishandled access to a repository of intelligence gathered under the law, violations that have spurred outrage from civil liberties advocates.
In a recommendation Thursday that critics say would impose a significant hurdle and mark a dramatic break from the status quo, three members of the board said executive branch agencies, with limited exceptions, should have to get permission from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to read the results of their database queries on U.S. citizens.
DNA Drives Help Identify Missing People. It’s a Privacy Nightmare
Earlier this month, state police in Connecticut held a “DNA drive” in an effort to help identify human remains found in the state. Family members of missing people were invited to submit DNA samples to a government repository used to solve these types of cases, a commercial genetic database, or both if they chose to.
Public agencies in other states have held similar donation drives, billed as a way to solve missing persons cases and get answers for families. But the drives also raise concerns about how donors’ genetic information could be used.
Privacy and civil liberties experts warn that commercial DNA databases are used for purposes beyond identifying missing people and that family members may not realize the risks of contributing to them. In fact, one drive planned in Massachusetts this summer was postponed because of concerns raised by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Google Is Opening Up Its Generative AI Search Experience to Teenagers
Google is opening up its generative AI search experience to teenagers, the company announced on Thursday. The company is also introducing a new feature to add context to the content that users see, along with an update to help train the search experience’s AI model to better detect false or offensive queries.
The AI-powered search experience, also known as SGE (Search Generative Experience), introduces a conversational mode to Google Search where you can ask Google questions about a topic in a conversational manner.
Starting this week, teens ages 13-17 in the United States who are signed into a Google Account will be able to sign up for Search Labs to access the AI search experience through the Google app or Chrome desktop.
Here Are the Last 79 Colleges Still Mandating COVID Vaccines
No College Mandates, an advocacy group that argues against the COVID-19 vaccine for higher education, counts 79 colleges and universities that require their students to be vaccinated this fall semester.
“There are 79 colleges in the U.S. still mandating COVID vaccines when there should be zero just like the rest of the world. Do Not Comply!” No College Mandates posted on X.
The advocacy group said “COVID injections for one of the lowest risk populations” is “insanity.” They added higher education has “zero efficacy and safety data for the newly approved COVID injections. It is incomprehensible that this remains a reality.”
Will Amazon and Walmart Replace Our Hospitals?
The U.S. remains a bastion for healthcare innovation. We grow organs in labs, surgeons use augmented reality, and the Biden administration launched the Cancer Moonshot to reduce the death rate by 50%. So why are Americans getting sicker?
Today, the expected life span is the shortest it’s been in almost two decades. While our fractured health system was under the spotlight during the pandemic, we saw high rates of heart disease, obesity, and diabetes lead to more deaths than other industrialized nations.
An inscrutable maze, healthcare in America welds together the private and public, payors and policymakers, and a morass of regulation. But as consumers, we don’t need to understand the substrate of our system to know it’s broken. We feel the strain when trying to simply book a doctor’s appointment. And if we find a doctor, the average wait is 26 days. That’s unacceptable.
As healthcare reels, technology giants enter. Amazon has been shouldering its way into healthcare for years. The retail giant acquired primary-care practice One Medical for $3.9 billion, and recently, unveiled its virtual clinics, offering around-the-clock access to providers. Amazon‘s chief medical officer touted that “by creating a healthcare experience that is transparent and simple, we hope to make healthcare more accessible for all.”
Propelled during the lockdowns, virtual care became the modern-day “house call.”
Musk Ousts X Team Curbing Election Disinformation
Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter) said overnight that a global team working on curbing disinformation during elections had been dismissed — a mere two days after being singled out by the EU’s digital chief as the online platform with the most falsehoods.
Responding to reports about cuts, the tech mogul said on X, “Oh you mean the ‘Election Integrity’ Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone.”
Vice President Vera Jourová this week warned that EU-supported research showed that X had become the platform with the largest ratio of posts containing misinformation or disinformation. The company under Musk left the European Commission’s anti-disinformation charter in late May after failing its first test.
X must comply with the EU’s content rules, the Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires large tech platforms with over 45 million EU users to mitigate the risks of disinformation campaigns. Failure to follow the rulebook could lead to sweeping fines of up to 6 percent of companies’ global annual revenue.
Norway Seeks to Extend Ban on Meta’s Consentless Tracking Ads Across the EU
Norway’s data protection authority has asked a European Union regulator to take a binding decision on whether its emergency sanction on Facebook and Instagram tracking and profiling users for ad targeting without their consent should be made permanent and applied across the EU single market, not just locally.
The move could lead to a blanket ban on Meta running tracking ads without consent across the EU single market if the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) agrees the action is merited. Meta may also switch to asking users for their permission to run “personalized ads” before any Board action, as it has claimed it intends to.
Elon Musk’s COVID Vaccine Comment Goes Viral + More
Elon Musk’s COVID Vaccine Comment Goes Viral
A tweet by Elon Musk about the COVID-19 vaccine has gone viral after he posted about “disinformation.” The Tesla CEO took to X, formerly Twitter, which he also owns, to share a montage of news headlines that said the various vaccines for the virus were “100% effective.”
“Have you heard dis information?” Musk captioned the tweet on Tuesday. But political journalist Ed Krassenstein questioned the billionaire. “I think efficacy changes are a result of new strains and the vaccine immunity wearing off. It’s stupid anyone ever claimed it was 100% effective. No vaccine is 100% foolproof,” Krassenstein replied.
Then Musk’s tweet to Krassenstein’s comment went viral racking up 3.2 million views. “My concern was more the outrageous demand that people *must* take the vaccine and multiple boosters to do anything at all. That was messed up,” Musk wrote.
“We cannot ascribe everything to the vaccine, but, by the same token, we cannot ascribe nothing,” Musk tweeted. “Myocarditis is a known side-effect. The only question is whether it is rare or common.”
LAUSD Ends COVID Vaccine Mandate for Staff. Displaced Workers Can Apply for Openings
Two years ago, the L.A. Unified School District set a high bar for COVID safety, telling employees: Get vaccinated or lose your job. That vaccine mandate — which achieved a 99% compliance rate among teachers — ended Tuesday following a 6-1 vote by the Board of Education.
The nation’s second-largest school system — widely viewed as a national pacesetter in strong COVID-19 safety measures early in the pandemic emergency — had been among the last public school systems to continue a mandate. LAUSD, however, has been under pressure to change course because of ongoing litigation. Officials stressed that their actions were based on evolving science. And no one made any apologies.
The district on Tuesday did not provide the number of employees who declined to be vaccinated or lost jobs. Hundreds of unvaccinated teachers were initially accommodated by allowing them to transfer to online academies that were set up after most students returned to in-person instruction in the fall of 2021.
Officials said unvaccinated former employees would not automatically reclaim jobs but could be considered for open positions.
Creepy ChatGPT ‘Voice Conversation’ Mimics a Human With a Convincing Personality and Knows Almost Everything
Alexa and Siri are about to get really jealous. The voice technology smart speakers are being taken on by a full-fledged humanoid AI robot being rolled out on the ChatGPT app for Plus paying customers.
Starting this week, a new feature will be available on the iOS and Google Play ChatGPT apps that could potentially eliminate the need for keyboards. Let’s dive in and see exactly what is going to be at our fingertips.
What new development is coming to ChatGPT? The new development, Voice Conversation, allows you to have a direct conversation with ChatGPT. I’m not talking about the typed-out conversations that you can already have with the platform. I’m talking about real conversations like you would have with a friend on the phone.
You will be able to ask this feature anything you would normally type, except this time you can use your voice. The craziest part about it? It sounds nearly indistinguishable from a real human being. It’s almost like having a robot friend on your phone, and it’s more advanced than Alexa and Siri.
Shameless Biden Will Double Down in His Fight to Censor Americans
President Joe Biden is pitching himself as democracy’s savior: “I will always defend, protect and fight for our democracy.” He’s been saying it for four years. It’s a blatant lie. He’s the king of censorship, silencing his critics like a despot and even trying to defend his censorship regime before the U.S. Supreme Court.
He and his staff have masterminded a vast censorship scheme, coercing media platforms such as X (Twitter), Instagram, Facebook and YouTube to take down views that challenge the administration on everything from vaccine safety and gas prices to Biden family mischief.
This month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Biden White House to stop threatening and coercing social media executives to do what the federal government is constitutionally barred from doing on its own: censoring the public. Undeterred, Team Biden has gone to the Supreme Court to fight this limit on censorship.
The evidence shows Biden threatened the social media platforms with punitive regulations, such as repealing liability immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and enforcing antitrust rules if the companies didn’t do his bidding.
Kids and Teens Are Inundated With Phone Prompts Day and Night
A new report about kids and their smartphone use may offer other parents a warning: Children like fourteen-year-old Armita Mojazza of White Plains, New York, are inundated with hundreds of pings and prompts on their phones all day and all night — even when they should be paying attention in class or getting a good night’s rest.
New research Common Sense Media released Tuesday finds about half of 11- to 17-year-olds get at least 237 notifications on their phones every day. About 25% of them pop up during the school day, and 5% show up at night. In some cases, they get nearly 5,000 notifications in 24 hours. The pop-ups are almost always linked to alerts from friends on social media.
Dr. Benjamin Maxwell, the interim director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego, said he is “immensely concerned” by the findings.
Such a “highly stimulating environment” may affect kids’ “cognitive ability, attention span and memory during a time when their brains are still developing,” Maxwell said. “What are the long-term consequences? I don’t think we know.” Maxwell was not involved with the Common Sense report.
CIA Creating AI Tool to Sort Through Public Information: Report
The CIA is planning to unleash an artificial intelligence tool to give analysts better access to sort through vast amounts of public information, according to a Bloomberg report.
Randy Nixon, director of the CIA’s Open-Source Enterprise division, told the outlet that the ChatGPT-style tool will likely be used by all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies, like the National Security Agency (NSA), FBI, and various military agencies to find clues through primary information sources.
Mass gathering of information from U.S. agencies comes as China has pledged to become the global leader in artificial intelligence by 2030, which has raised concerns over its use of AI in several surveillance systems to track civilians within the nation and worldwide.
FBI Director Christopher Wray accused China in July of stealing “more of our personal and corporate data than every nation big or small, combined,” warning that the Chinese government poses a “double” threat regarding AI, according to The Register.
Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that NSA Research Director Gil Herrera said the intelligence community needs to “find a way to take benefit of these large models without violating privacy.”
The Government’s New Attack on Amazon Could Completely Restructure the Giant
The U.S. government is launching its most consequential attack on the dominance of Big Tech in Americans’ daily lives: a sweeping antitrust lawsuit targeting retail giant Amazon Inc.
The legal challenge, filed in a federal court in Washington State Tuesday, will be a defining cornerstone of the Biden administration’s pledge to curb the power of the nation’s largest tech companies, including Google, Facebook and Apple, which have been accused of running modern monopolies that don’t fit within the confines of antiquated antitrust laws.
The suit could have far-reaching implications for the way Americans shop, run their households, sell products, and run small and large businesses.
J&J, IBM Face Class-Action Lawsuit Over Patient Data Breach
As if the talc product liability lawsuits weren’t enough headache for Johnson & Johnson, the New Jersey pharma is now facing another lawsuit from patients, this time about a recent data breach.
J&J and IBM were hit with a proposed class action over a recent data breach at J&J’s patient assistance program, Janssen CarePath, which is managed by IBM.
A Florida resident alleged that the companies failed to properly protect personal identity and health information up to industry standards or as required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, according to a complaint filed with the federal court in the Southern District of New York.
Besides a class-action designation and a jury trial, the lawsuit is seeking an award of damages, among several other demands for J&J and IBM to purge existing personal information and improve their data security.
