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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.
Why Facial Recognition Software Is Stoking Privacy Fears + More
Why Facial Recognition Software Is Stoking Privacy Fears
Facial recognition technology unlocks our smartphones, speeds passengers through airports and finds missing children. But the technology’s increasing use by law enforcement agencies and big corporations has prompted concerns from civil liberties advocates, who worry about the loss of privacy and the chilling of dissent.
Big Tech has even sounded the alarm, with Amazon Inc. founder Jeff Bezos calling facial recognition “a perfect example of where regulation is needed.”
Facial recognition technology scans features on the human face and analyzes them — for instance, measuring the distances between the eyes, nose and mouth, and the shape of the cheeks, lips and ears. Each person’s features are combined to form a kind of digital “faceprint” that is unique to them.
The technology can identify a person by comparing images of their face with existing photographs published online or in government or police databases, such as mugshots or passport photos.
Social Media Giants Must Face Child Safety Lawsuits, Judge Rules
Meta, ByteDance, Alphabet, and Snap must proceed with a lawsuit alleging their social platforms have adverse mental health effects on children, a federal court ruled on Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected the social media giants’ motion to dismiss the dozens of lawsuits accusing the companies of running platforms “addictive” to kids.
School districts across the U.S. have filed suit against Meta, ByteDance, Alphabet, and Snap, alleging the companies cause physical and emotional harm to children. Meanwhile, 42 states sued Meta last month over claims Facebook and Instagram “profoundly altered the psychological and social realities of a generation of young Americans.” This order addresses the individual suits and “over 140 actions” taken against the companies.
Tuesday’s ruling states that the First Amendment and Section 230, which says online platforms shouldn’t be treated as the publishers of third-party content, don’t shield Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat from all liability in this case.
Judge Gonzalez Rogers notes many of the claims laid out by the plaintiffs don’t “constitute free speech or expression,” as they have to do with alleged “defects” on the platforms themselves. That includes having insufficient parental controls, no “robust” age verification systems, and a difficult account deletion process.
YouTube Boasts About Elevating ‘Quality’ Content, Collaborating With the WHO, and Suppressing ‘Misinformation’
YouTube (Google) is yet another in a series of tech behemoths that feel the need to declare their stance on content, including its effective algorithmic manipulation, just as U.S. primaries are ushering the country into another year of presidential elections.
Beating around that bush — Google representatives now talk about processes, procedures, and tools of censorship of health-related information that, unfortunately, can easily be “repurposed” to serve other, for example, political ends.
Much of the conversation rests on what Google wants to portray as its laurels from “the previous epidemic” — which too many people and creators see from a diametrically opposed point of view, as a dark time of nearly unbridled censorship and suppression of free speech.
A video now published by Yahoo Finance reveals not only that Google has a “chief clinical officer,” but also how that officer, Michael Howell, sees the role of this super-powerful tech corporation in determining what users are likely to see, see first, or see at all on a platform like YouTube.
Howell, naturally, sees nothing wrong with this and even, to all intents and purposes, brags that YouTube is working to make sure legacy media have an advantage over independent creators, and that the latter may easily face censorship.
Meta Calls for Legislation to Require Parental Approval for Teens’ App Downloads
Meta has called for legislation that would require app stores to get parental approval before their teens download any app. That would effectively put more onus on parents, as well as Google and Apple, to protect younger users from apps that have the potential to cause harm.
“Parents should approve their teen’s app downloads, and we support federal legislation that requires app stores to get parents’ approval whenever their teens under 16 download apps,” Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of safety, wrote. The company is proposing a plan that would see app stores notifying parents when their teen wants to download an app, in a similar way to how they are alerted when a kid wants to make an in-app purchase. The parent would then approve or deny the request.
Meta says its approach would let parents verify their teen’s age when they set up a phone, rather than requiring everyone to verify their age multiple times across various apps. The company suggests legislation is needed to make sure all apps that teens use are held to the same standard.
Under current proposals, Meta argues that parents would need to navigate different signup methods and provide “potentially sensitive identification information” for themselves and their teens “to apps with inconsistent security and privacy practices.” Indeed, experts say that such age verification practices threaten the privacy of all users.
TikTok Continues to Dominate the World’s Most Downloaded Apps
In a digital age where most people interact with the world through digital apps residing on smartphones, it’s helpful to break down the global addiction.
According to a treemap from Truman Du, TikTok took the crown in 2022, beating out notable contenders from social media giants, Visual Capitalist reports.
With a staggering 672 million downloads in just one year and its revenue doubling to an eye-watering $9.4 billion speaks volumes of its commercial success from the foreign app — a feat made even more remarkable considering the geopolitical hurdles it faces; being a rare Chinese export that has captivated international markets. Yet, despite its unprecedented global appeal, it remains barred in significant markets like India and has even faced temporary bans in places like Pakistan — a testament to its disruptive impact in the tightly contested digital arena.
Meanwhile, the other contenders in the top five most-downloaded apps of 2022 are dominated by the social media juggernauts of Meta, with Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp showing that old guards still hold significant sway in the digital domain. This dominance of social media platforms reflects a society ever-hungry for connectivity and digital interaction, a craving only intensified by the isolating clutches of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Baltimore City Council Discusses Proposed Facial Recognition Technology Bill
Just about everywhere you go, there’s a camera that’s recognizing your face. New legislation is being proposed to limit the use of facial recognition technology in Baltimore City.
City Council Bill 23-0379, which was introduced in May, outlines regulations for the use of facial recognition technology. Baltimore’s moratorium on facial recognition expired last year.
Under the proposed bill, any person in possession of facial recognition data would be required to permanently destroy it within three years of the date it was obtained, or within 30 days of receiving a signed request to destroy the data from the individual or a legal representative.
The bill also mandates that anyone who collects facial recognition data can not distribute the data without consent, a valid warrant or subpoena — unless the data is being used to prevent fraud. However, collecting facial recognition data would be allowed in situations where a written notice of the collection is posted at the entrance to an area.
Generative AI Will Create a ‘Tsunami of Disinformation’ During the 2024 Election
With the 2024 U.S. presidential election just under a year away, AI experts are sounding a warning about the potential for a massive upswing in disinformation and misinformation campaigns using newly available generative AI technologies.
“There’s going to be a tsunami of disinformation in the upcoming election,” Darrell West, senior fellow at the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institute, told Yahoo Finance.
Generative AI technologies exploded in popularity with the launch of ChatGPT in Nov. 2022.
Since then, major tech companies ranging from Microsoft (MSFT), which invested billions in ChatGPT creator OpenAI, and Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Meta (META), and Adobe (ADBE) have debuted or announced they’re working on their own AI platforms.
Forward Health Launches CarePods, a Self-Contained, AI-Powered Doctor’s Office
Adrian Aoun, CEO and co-founder of Forward Health, aims to scale healthcare. It started in 2017 with the launch of tech-forward doctor’s offices that eschewed traditional medical staffing for technology solutions like body scanners, smart sensors, and algorithms that can diagnose ailments. Now, in 2023, he’s still on the same mission and rolled up all the learnings and technology found in the doctor’s office into a self-contained, standalone medical station called the CarePod.
The CarePod pitch is easy to understand. Why spend hours in a doctor’s office to get your throat swabbed for strep throat? Walk into the CarePod, soon to be located in malls and office buildings, and answer some questions to determine the appropriate test. CarePod users can get their blood drawn, throat swabbed, and blood pressure read — most of the frontline clinical work performed in primary care offices, all without a doctor or nurse. Custom AI powers the diagnosis, and behind the scenes, doctors write the appropriate prescription, which is available nearly immediately.
The cost? It’s $99 a month, which gives users access to all of the CarePods tests and features. As Aoun told me, this solution enables healthcare to scale like never before.
Norway’s Privacy Battle With Meta Is Just Getting Started
Norway is doubling down in its long-running fight against Meta over users’ data. The country’s privacy watchdog, Datatilsynet, says it is already investigating the company’s new ad-free subscription model, less than a week after the service was launched across Europe.
Meta started rolling out its new model last week, giving Facebook and Instagram users who live in the European Union, Norway, Iceland, Lichtenstein, and Switzerland the option to opt out of seeing ads in exchange for €9.99 ($10.50) a month.
Meta has said that subscribers’ personal information will not be used for ads on Facebook and Instagram. But Line Coll, director of Norway’s data protection regulator, argues the new model is not a win for privacy. Subscribers might not see ads anymore, she adds. “But Meta will still track you, they will still collect the data. From a data protection perspective, that blows my mind.”
New York’s Governor Is Now ‘Collecting Data’ From ‘Surveillance Efforts’ on Social Media to Monitor ‘Hate Speech’ + More
New York’s Hunger Games Governor Is Now ‘Collecting Data’ From ‘Surveillance Efforts’ on Social Media to Monitor ‘Hate Speech’
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) threw off some serious Hunger Games vibes Monday, announcing that the state of New York has been “collecting data” from social media platforms in order to combat “hate speech” following an alleged rise in antisemitic attacks.
The announcement came after Hochul met with the state’s Jewish leaders, local law enforcement and federal authorities.
“We’re very focused on the data we’re collecting from surveillance efforts — what’s being said on social media platforms. And we have launched an effort to be able to counter some of the negativity and reach out to people when we see hate speech being spoken about on online platforms,” she said, adding that New Yorkers “should not feel they have to hide any indications of what their religious beliefs are.”
Some definitions of ‘hate speech’ and ‘incitement to violence,’ plus a list of who’s judging speech to be hateful, would be nice.
Free Speech Has Never Been Easier, or More at Risk
I’ll take a leap and say that speech has probably never been freer in the world than it is today. Multiple venues, especially social media, allow people’s perspectives to take flight fluently, globally and frequently. Pick your format — print, audio, video, images — and you can easily put ideas in front of an audience. Huge audiences, potentially.
The culture of free speech is also under steady and ever more sophisticated assaults, perhaps because its ubiquity is threatening to any person or institution that holds an opposing viewpoint. The very thing that makes speech so free right now — ease of motion — is, perhaps, what also makes it more threatening.
If speech feels threatening, the solution isn’t to bottle it up. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis advised almost a century ago, “The remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
But we are awash in efforts to enforce or encourage silence in our current, chaotic era. Everything from education and public health to political opinion, religion and art have offered fodder for attempted censorship.
Supreme Court Delivers Blow to Vaccine Skeptics
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected to hear an appeal relating to COVID-19 vaccine requirements in the workplace, dealing a blow to vaccine skeptics across the nation.
On Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court orders list showed that it was denying to hear any further arguments in the case Katie Sczesny, et al. v. Murphy, Gov. of New Jersey, et al. The case focused on four New Jersey nurses who filed a lawsuit against New Jersey’s COVID-19 vaccine requirements in the workplace, citing religious freedom and health concerns.
The Supreme Court did not provide any further explanation for its refusal to hear the case, but the decision allows a ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to stand. The lower court ruled that the vaccine mandate challenged by the nurses did not violate their Constitutional freedoms and allowed an executive order from New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy to stay in place.
The decision by the Supreme Court on Tuesday comes as some Americans have continued to question the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine and past requirements for workers to be inoculated during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Deepfakes Could Supercharge Healthcare’s Misinformation Problem
For all the promise that artificial intelligence holds for healthcare, one of the industry’s big fears is its potential to churn out more convincing misinformation.
Why it matters: AI experts are warning that tech used to create sophisticated false images, audio and video known as deepfakes is getting so good it could soon become almost impossible to distinguish fact from fiction.
The big picture: This technology is becoming better and more ubiquitous sooner than experts expected at a time when health information is being politicized and social media‘s already weak guardrails have been whittled down.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Wants to Build AI ‘Superintelligence’
OpenAI plans to secure further financial backing from its biggest investor Microsoft as the ChatGPT maker’s chief executive Sam Altman pushes ahead with his vision to create artificial general intelligence — computer software as intelligent as humans.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Altman said his company’s partnership with Microsoft’s chief executive Satya Nadella was “working really well” and that he expected “to raise a lot more over time” from the tech giant among other investors, to keep up with the punishing costs of building more sophisticated AI models.
Microsoft earlier this year invested $10 billion in OpenAI as part of a “multiyear” agreement that valued the San Francisco-based company at $29 billion, according to people familiar with the talks.
U.S. Privacy Groups Urge Senate Not to Ram Through NSA Spying Powers
Some of the United States’ largest civil liberties groups are urging Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer not to pursue a short-term extension of the Section 702 surveillance program slated to sunset on December 31.
The more than 20 groups — the Brennan Center for Justice, American Civil Liberties Union, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice among them — oppose plans that would allow the program to continue temporarily by amending “must-pass” legislation, such as the bill needed now to avert a government shutdown by Friday, or the National Defense Authorization Act, annual legislation set to dictate $886 billion in national security spending across the Pentagon and U.S. Department of Energy in 2024.
As WIRED has previously reported, surveillance under the 702 program may technically continue for another six months, regardless of whether Congress reauthorizes it by the end of December. The program was last certified by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April 2023 for a full year. “Transition procedures” codified in the statute permit surveillance orders to “continue in effect” until they expire.
The 702 program is controversial for its collection of communications of “US persons.” The program legally targets roughly a quarter million foreigners each year, gathering the content of their text messages, emails, and phone calls, but collaterally intercepts an unknown but presumably large amount of American communications as well. This interception takes place with the compelled cooperation of U.S. telecommunications companies that handle internet traffic at stages along global networks.
U.K. Government Proposals Would Allow It to Mass Surveil All Users of an Internet Service Within Specific Timeframe
The U.K. government has presented draft amendments to the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) — otherwise known as “Snoopers Charter,” a highly controversial piece of legislation allowing for wide-scale spying by intelligence agencies.
The plan now is to specify that the authorities have the right to carry out mass surveillance of an internet service within a specific timeframe — and do so “dragnet-style,” by spying on all users of that service during a given time.
The first comparison that springs to mind is that this is a purely digital version of another very controversial mass surveillance practice known as “geofencing,” which involves obtaining data from service providers on all persons who happen to be within a physical perimeter.
The amendments were introduced in the British parliament on November 8, and separate from the bill on amendments itself, the U.K. Home Office has released “explanatory notes” that are not in fact a part of the proposed legislation.
Nepal Becomes Latest Country to Ban TikTok, Citing Disruption of ‘Social Harmony’
Nepal became the latest country to ban video-sharing platform TikTok, saying that the popular app was disrupting “social harmony.”
Foreign Minister Narayan Prakash Saud said TikTok would be banned immediately following a Cabinet meeting on Monday, The Associated Press reported. He also said that the government has asked social media platforms to register and open a liaison office in the country, pay taxes and follow the country’s laws and regulations, the AP noted.
“The government has decided to ban TikTok as it was necessary to regulate the use of the social media platform that was disrupting social harmony, goodwill and flow of indecent materials,” Saud said.
TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has faced intense scrutiny over the past year due to cybersecurity concerns that the Chinese Communist Party could potentially access data from TikTok. Several countries have already banned the platform of government phones, including Britain, New Zealand and the United States. Several states in the U.S. have also banned TikTok from government devices due to cybersecurity concerns.
A COVID Vaccine Reckoning Is Coming for the DOJ Over Federal Mandates + More
A COVID Vaccine Reckoning Is Coming for the DOJ Over Federal Mandates
The Justice Department has just posted a new jobs ad — it’s looking for eight new attorneys to defend the federal government in vaccine injury cases.
Presumably, the hiring spree is in anticipation of a surge of COVID vaccine lawsuits, as people who were forced by government mandates to take the jab and suffered serious side effects as a result, try to extract compensation from a system that is stacked against them.
The recruitment drive comes on the heels of a little-noticed lawsuit filed in Louisiana last month by six vaccine-injured plaintiffs against the federal government. The suit aims to overturn the legal immunity that pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and Moderna enjoy on their COVID shots.
Meanwhile, almost 13,000 Americans who claim the COVID vaccine caused them or their dead loved ones adverse reactions — such as the life-threatening heart ailment myocarditis or the debilitating immune disorder Guillain-Barre syndrome — remain in limbo after doing what they were told was “the right thing”: heeding government mandates to submit to the jab.
Vaccine Freedom Bill Signed by Texas Governor Gregg Abbott
Texas Governor Gregg Abbott today signed into law a bill that bans vaccine mandates by private employers as a condition of employment.
“Senate Bill 7 prohibits private employers from requiring employees to get a COVID vaccination — and employers that violate this law are subject to a $50,000 fine as well as a lawsuit and injunctive relief from the Texas Attorney General,” said Governor Abbott.
“This law adds to the law that I already signed that prohibits state and local governments from imposing COVID mandates. It’s long past time to put COVID behind us and restore individual freedom to all Texans. I thank Senator Middleton, Representative Leach, and all other members of the Texas Legislature who stood with this issue every step of the way.”
Abbott signed a similar law earlier this year, prohibiting state government from mandating COVID vaccinations.
Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to New Jersey Vaccine Mandate
Four New Jersey nurses failed to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to take up their challenge to a now-rescinded state mandate requiring healthcare workers to get COVID-19 vaccine booster shots.
The justices declined Monday to examine a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decision dismissing as moot the nurses’ appeal of a district court’s finding that they didn’t show that the vaccination requirement violated their constitutional rights.
The lower court denied the plaintiffs’ bid to block Gov. Philip Murphy (D)’s executive order, ruling that the state demonstrated a legitimate interest in curbing the spread of the deadly virus.
NYPD Bomb Squad Members Sue NYC for $75 Million, Claim COVID Vax Mandate Ended Careers
Five members of the NYPD — including three members of the Bomb Squad — are suing the city for $75 million, claiming their careers were ended by the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
The officers, all with decades of experience, said they’ve lost out on a “full pension, with annual interest, and health benefits” after they were fired in 2022 for refusing to get the jab.
The mandate was blasted by workers who said it was unfair, and it’s been the subject of numerous lawsuits. About 1,780 workers were fired for refusing to get vaccinated.
The alleged injustice became a slap in the face in March 2022, when Adams created an “elite” exemption for athletes such as unvaccinated superstar NBA player Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets — and when it became clear that the vaccine didn’t stop the transmission of the virus, the men said in court papers.
Saskatchewan Nurse Faces Disciplinary Hearing for Social Media Posts Rejecting COVID Mandates
In a new verdict concerning medical freedom and free speech, another Canadian nurse could face de-certification. Delegate Leah McInnes, a Saskatchewan nurse, had a grievance filed against her by a colleague on September 26, 2021, after her social media posts spoke out against the compulsion for COVID-19 vaccines. Despite advocating their usage, she expressed strong resistance to the imposition of medical measures.
Between August and October 2021, McInnes publicly criticized the government’s pandemic strategy via social media, triggering an investigation by Saskatchewan’s College of Registered Nurses (CRNS) into her nonworking hours advocacy. She was accused by the governing body of propagating “misinformation” through expressing differing opinions, such as her promise to campaign for the removal of “unjustly excessive mandates” and the violation of individuals’ medical record privacy.
Meta and Snap Must Detail Child Protection Measures by Dec. 1, EU Says
Facebook owner Meta Platforms (META.O) and social media company Snap (SNAP.N) have been given a Dec. 1 deadline by the EU to give more information on how they protect children from illegal and harmful content, the European Commission said on Friday.
The request for information on the measures the companies have taken to improve the protection of minors comes a day after a similar message by the European Union to Alphabet‘s (GOOGL.O) YouTube and TikTok.
The Commission last month also sent companies including Meta, X and TikTok urgent orders to detail measures taken to counter the spread of content related to terrorism, violent content and hate speech on their platforms.