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Fauci Now Says Americans Should Get to Choose if They Want to Take the COVID Vaccine + More
Fauci Now Says Americans Should Get to Choose if They Want to Take the COVID Vaccine
New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show COVID-19 cases are again rising in some parts of the country. Despite this, there is little talk of reinstating the various draconian measures the government used to enforce compliance from 2020 to 2022. Indeed, even Dr. Anthony Fauci is singing a different tune.
Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is now a professor at Georgetown University. But the man who was the architect of the government’s pandemic response still occasionally moonlights as a pundit on the television circuit, and in recent months, Fauci’s policy prescriptions have taken a stark turn.
While speaking to ABC’s Jonathan Karl on This Week earlier this fall, Fauci was asked who should be taking the new COVID booster. “I believe we should give the choice to people that are not in the high-risk groups, to have the vaccine available for them,” Fauci replied.
Choice is the keyword here. It’s a stark contrast to Fauci’s previous support of the White House’s vaccine mandate that required private companies to demand vaccination as a condition of employment.
It’s a stunning reversal. Fauci is now using words such as “choice” and “recommend” in relation to vaccines — even for high-risk people. Talking points about the efficacy of mandates have vanished (including mask mandates).
FDNY Veteran Says Heart Damage From Required COVID Vax Forced Early Retirement
An FDNY firefighter says he was forced to retire on half his salary after the city-mandated COVID-19 vaccine left him with permanent heart damage.
O’Brian Pastrana now wants a judge to award him a more lucrative disability pension, which would pay three-quarters of his final salary tax-free, according to court papers.
Pastrana, 37, got the jab in October 2021 because the city required it, and had an immediate allergic reaction, including swollen lips, chills and body aches. Despite three trips to the emergency room, he claims he was forced to get the second Pfizer shot a month later. “I thought I was going to die after that second dose,” Pastrana told The Post, adding he was again rushed to the ER after the second shot.
By February 2022, the married father of two was diagnosed with myocarditis, which results in potentially fatal inflammation of the cardiac muscle, and was nearly in heart failure, court records show. Pastrana was then told he could never be a firefighter again, and forced to retire in March after over a decade on the job.
33 States Accuse Meta of Having a Big ‘Open Secret’ — Millions of Underage Users
Meta knowingly has millions of users under the age of 13 on Instagram and “zealously” protects that information from being disclosed to the public, newly unredacted court documents show, per The New York Times.
An initial, redacted version of the complaint, which was filed in October, accused Meta of “intentionally” designing “its flagship social media platforms, especially Instagram, to be addictive to youth.” An unredacted version that was filed earlier this week by 33 states also accuses Meta of knowing about millions of under-13-year-olds using Instagram, in violation of its general age policy.
The complaint alleges that “Meta’s actual knowledge that millions of Instagram users are under the age of 13 is an open secret that is routinely documented, rigorously analyzed and confirmed,” The NYT reported. The company had reportedly closed “only a fraction” of those accounts.
The complaint also claims that Instagram actively “coveted and pursued” underage users and that Meta “routinely continued to collect” children’s personal information, including their email addresses and locations. Under U.S. law, it is illegal for companies to collect data on children under the age of 13, and each individual violation is subject to fines of up to $50,120. If proven that Meta knew about millions of underage accounts and did not take action to close them, they could be facing unprecedented fines.
New iPhone Update With ‘Name Drop’ Sparks Privacy Warning: ‘Help Keep Your Kids Safe’
Have you, or your kids, downloaded the latest iOS update for iPhone? Well, local police say you may want to change a new feature.
It’s called “NameDrop,” and it’s automatically enabled with the iOS 17 update pushed out to iPhone users over the past week or so.
The feature allows your contact information to be shared with anyone who places their phone next to yours. Shared information may include phone numbers, photos, email addresses and more.
Local police are urging parents to make sure the feature is disabled on their children’s phones.
Senator Presses Army Over Backpay, Religious Freedoms for Soldiers Discharged for COVID Vaccine Refusal
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., is pressing the U.S. Army for answers on behalf of former service members who were discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.
Nearly 2,000 service members were let go from the military after refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Amid recruitment troubles in 2023, the Army recently sent a letter to the discharged soldiers, telling them they have the option to correct their characterization of discharge and rejoin the branch. The Army has said the letters were part of a congressionally mandated process.
In a letter to Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth on Tuesday, Schmitt asked whether any soldiers would receive backpay if they decide to re-enlist if they would be reinstated to their rank held before discharge, and whether the religious freedoms of service members would be protected moving forward.
“These mandates certainly harmed our military’s readiness and tragically destroyed the careers of thousands of brave volunteers,” the Republican Senator wrote in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital. “These members have faced negative implications for veterans benefits and employment outside of the military. It is likely that most of those former members will never return to the military and serve our nation.”
According to Task and Purpose, thousands of troops unsuccessfully sought religious exemptions from the vaccination, including 8,945 soldiers, 10,800 airmen and guardians, 4,172 sailors, and 3,717 Marines.
Elon Musk’s Stand Against the Censorship Industrial Complex
Los Angeles Daily News reported:
Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter and vowed to restore freedom of speech on social media, a lot of people have been out to get him. We’ve been living through a war over the existence of freedom of speech in America. If you haven’t been keeping up with it, here’s a short summary: The U.S. government, including the intelligence agencies and the FBI, pressured and coerced social media platforms to censor and suppress the constitutionally protected free speech of Americans.
When Elon Musk bought Twitter, he exposed it. At the same time, lawsuits filed by people who were censored and suppressed exposed even more of it. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering one of these lawsuits and a decision is expected by June. It will probably be the most consequential First Amendment case in American history. That case was previously known as Missouri v. Biden, now called Murthy v. Missouri.
The First Amendment makes clear that the government is prohibited from “abridging the freedom of speech,” but what has been exposed is a carefully crafted workaround. The U.S. government organized and funded third-party groups to do “research” on everything that everyone was saying on the internet and how widely that speech was disseminated. The government then “flagged” certain content and individuals and pressured social media companies to remove them.
It was mass surveillance and mass censorship.
U.S. Joins 17 Other Countries in Agreement to Keep AI Safe
Eighteen countries including the U.S. released an international agreement Sunday focused on keeping artificial intelligence safe during development and deployment and calling on AI companies that create and use AI systems to make them “secure by design” against bad actor — the latest intergovernmental initiative tackling AI development and safety.
The AI safety guidelines were jointly released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre.
The non-binding 20-page agreement says AI companies need to keep customers and the general public safe from the misuse of AI systems as they are developed, deployed and maintained.
Germany, Italy, Norway, Australia, Chile, Nigeria and Singapore are among the countries that are part of the agreement. Google, Microsoft and OpenAI are among the organizations that contributed to developing the guidelines.
California’s Privacy Watchdog Eyes AI Rules With Opt-Out and Access Rights
California’s Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) is preparing for its next trick: Putting guardrails on AI.
The state privacy regulator, which has an important role in setting rules of the road for digital giants given how much of Big Tech (and Big AI) is headquartered on its sun-kissed soil, has today published draft regulations for how people’s data can be used for what it refers to as automated decisionmaking technology (ADMT*). Aka AI.
The draft represents “by far the most comprehensive and detailed set of rules in the ‘AI space’”, Ashkan Soltani, the CPPA’s exec director, told TechCrunch. The approach takes inspiration from existing rules in the European Union, where the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has given individuals rights over automated decisions with a legal or significant impact on them since coming into force back in May 2018 — but aims to build on it with more specific provisions that may be harder for tech giants to wiggle away from.
The core of the planned regime — which the Agency intends to work on finalizing next year, after a consultation process — includes opt-out rights, pre-use notice requirements and access rights which would enable state residents to obtain meaningful information on how their data is being used for automation and AI tech.
China’s COVID Trauma Returns as Hazmat Workers Disinfect Streets
Public health workers wearing full protective gear have appeared on the streets of northern China, according to footage on social media, evoking memories of the country’s stringent anti-virus measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The hazmat-clad personnel were seen spraying disinfectant in public spaces in Sanhe, in China’s northern Hebei Province roughly 50 miles east of the capital Beijing, according to the poster of the images and video footage. It remains unclear whether this was a local government initiative or a central government directive.
The re-emergence of the gear, however, has raised speculation about the potential return of pandemic-era restrictions amid a surge of respiratory illnesses, notably among children, which has strained hospitals in the region. The outbreak is being closely watched by the World Health Organization, the agency said last week.
The public’s memory of the workers included their strict enforcement of anti-virus policies, such as involuntary quarantine at home, the forced removal of suspected cases from their homes, and — in a number of high-profile incidents — the killing of pets or stray animals.
The surge in infections has been attributed by Chinese health authorities to a confluence of typically mild mycoplasma pneumonia, adenovirus and other seasonal illnesses. This surge is exacerbated by children’s reduced exposure to these illnesses during lockdown, creating an “immunity gap,” the state-backed Global Times newspaper cited respiratory expert Wang Guangfa as saying.
‘We Will Coup Whoever We Want!’: The Unbearable Hubris of Musk and the Billionaire Tech Bros
Unlike their forebears, contemporary billionaires do not hope to build the biggest house in town, but the biggest colony on the moon, underground lair in New Zealand, or virtual reality server in the cloud. In contrast, however avaricious, the titans of past gilded eras still saw themselves as human members of civil society. Contemporary billionaires appear to understand civics and civilians as impediments to their progress, necessary victims of the externalities of their companies’ growth, and sad artifacts of the civilization they will leave behind in their inexorable colonization of the next dimension.
Indeed, there is an imperiousness to the way the new billionaire class disregards people and places for which it is hard to find historical precedent. Mark Zuckerberg had to go all the way back to Augustus Caesar for a role model, and his admiration for the emperor borders on obsession. He models his haircut on Augustus; his wife joked that three people went on their honeymoon to Rome: Mark, Augustus and herself; he named his second daughter August; and he used to end Facebook meetings by proclaiming “Domination!”
Elon Musk not only owns X and Tesla but also SpaceX, StarLink, the Boring Company, Solar City, NeuraLink, xAI, and someday, he hopes, another finance company like PayPal (which he co-founded with Thiel but then sold to eBay). Similarly, Jeff Bezos doesn’t just control Amazon — the world’s biggest ever retailer if that even does justice to the monolith — but the Washington Post, IMDb, MGM, Twitch, Zoox, Kiva, Whole Foods, Ring, Ivona, One Medical, Blue Origin and, of course, Amazon Web Services, which owns at least one-third of the cloud computing market.
Included in Bill Gates’s 20 billion dollars’ worth of Microsoft stock and assets are Microsoft Azure (his 23% of the cloud), LinkedIn, Skype and GitHub. He also, incidentally, owns 109,000 hectares (270,000 acres) of U.S. farmland.
This is unprecedentedly broad, or what could be called “horizontal” power. It is success across such a wide spectrum that has given today’s tech billionaires false confidence in the extent of their own expertise. Gates, who regularly dispensed advice on vaccines and public health in television interviews, eventually issued a report in which he graded each country’s pandemic response as if he were a school teacher who knew better than every nation’s Department of Health (no one got an A).
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.