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Study Shows Increase in Mandatory Flu Vaccinations for Hospital Staff + More
Study Shows Increase in Mandatory Flu Vaccinations for Hospital Staff
In just a few months, hospitals and health systems nationwide will start working to vaccinate as many staff as possible against the flu. And a new study suggests that more of those hospitals than ever before will require employees to get vaccinated or seek an exemption.
In all, the new study shows that 96% of the hospitals that serve America’s veterans, and 74% of hospitals serving the general public, now require staff to get vaccinated against influenza or seek an exemption.
Another 23% of non-Veterans Administration hospitals strongly encourage but don’t require flu vaccination. Whether or not they have a mandate, 81% of non-VA hospitals require unvaccinated workers to wear a mask around patients during flu season.
Published in JAMA Network Open, the study was done by a team from the University of Michigan and VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System that has surveyed hospitals on this topic since 2013.
Visualizing America’s Shift to a Cashless Society
A cashless society is one in which financial transactions are conducted primarily through digital means rather than physical cash, relying on technologies like credit cards and mobile payments.
While no country today has fully reached this concept, there are some (like China and South Korea) that have seen widespread adoption of mobile payment platforms and digital wallets.
To see whether the U.S. is also moving in this direction, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualized data from the Federal Reserve’s latest Diary of Consumer Payment Choice.
The key takeaway here is that the use of cash has fallen from 31% in 2016 to just 18% in 2022. It’s interesting to note that based on the Federal Reserve’s data, cash usage was already trending downwards before the pandemic, suggesting that the pandemic merely accelerated a trend that was already happening.
McCaughey: Time for the Truth About COVID Pandemic
A group of Dutch medical researchers is igniting a firestorm by calling for an investigation of the deaths caused by vaccine mandates and lockdowns imposed on the public during the COVID-19 pandemic. What’s wrong with that?
Everything, if you’re part of the global public health mafia and want to avoid questions about the mistakes you made and the lies you told. We all saw Dr. Anthony Fauci squirming when he was forced to admit to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee that the social distancing rules — like standing 6 feet apart — on which the lockdowns were based were pulled out of thin air.
The Dutch researchers want answers. They insist “every death needs to be acknowledged and accounted for,” including deaths caused by policy mistakes. The collateral damage from heavy-handed public health edicts. One conclusion is already crystal clear: Don’t entrust your life or health to the government.
The Dutch researchers’ stunning data show that for children the virus posed a minuscule 0.0003% risk of death, probably less risk than crossing the street to get to the playground.
U.S. Surgeon General Calls for Social Media Warning Labels to Protect Adolescents
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Monday called for a warning label to be added to social media apps as a reminder that those platforms have caused harm to young people, especially adolescents.
Murthy wrote in the New York Times on Monday that a warning label alone will not make social media safe for young people but that it can increase awareness and change behavior as shown in evidence from tobacco studies. The U.S. Congress would need to pass legislation requiring such a warning label.
For a long time, Murthy has been warning that social media can profoundly harm the mental health of youth, particularly adolescent girls. In an advisory last year, he called for safeguards from tech companies for children who are at critical stages of brain development.
A 2019 American Medical Association study showed that the risk of depression doubled for teenagers who were spending three hours a day on social media.
Leaked Documents Reveal Patient Safety Issues at Amazon’s One Medical
Since Amazon acquired the primary-care service One Medical, elderly patients have been routed to a call center — staffed partly by contractors with limited training — that failed on more than a dozen occasions to seek immediate attention for callers with urgent symptoms, according to internal documents seen by The Washington Post.
When one patient reported a “blood clot, pain and swelling,” call center staff scheduled an appointment rather than escalating the matter for medical evaluation, according to a note in an internal incident tracking spreadsheet dated Feb. 19.
Since Amazon formally acquired One Medical in February 2023 in a $3.9 billion deal, the company has alarmed patients and employees by eliminating free rides, shortening appointments and laying off staff. Now evidence of potentially life-threatening situations at the Tempe call center is raising fresh concern that Amazon’s frugal approach to health care may be imperiling patient safety.
Amazon-Powered AI Cameras Used to Detect Emotions of Unwitting UK Train Passengers
Thousands of people catching trains in the United Kingdom likely had their faces scanned by Amazon software as part of widespread artificial intelligence trials, new documents reveal. The image recognition system was used to predict travelers’ age, gender, and potential emotions — with the suggestion that the data could be used in advertising systems in the future.
During the past two years, eight train stations around the U.K. — including large stations such as London’s Euston and Waterloo, Manchester Piccadilly, and other smaller stations — have tested AI surveillance technology with CCTV cameras with the aim of alerting staff to safety incidents and potentially reducing certain types of crime.
The scope of the AI trials, elements of which have previously been reported, was revealed in a cache of documents obtained in response to a freedom of information request by civil liberties group Big Brother Watch. “The rollout and normalization of AI surveillance in these public spaces, without much consultation and conversation, is quite a concerning step,” says Jake Hurfurt, the head of research and investigations at the group.
Stanford’s Top Disinformation Research Group Collapses Under Pressure
The Stanford Internet Observatory, which published some of the most influential analyses of the spread of false information on social media during elections, has shed most of its staff and may shut down amid political and legal attacks that have cast a pall on efforts to study online misinformation.
Just three staffers remain at the Observatory, and they will either leave or find roles at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, which is absorbing what remains of the program, according to eight people familiar with the developments, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The collapse of the Observatory is the latest and largest in a series of setbacks for the community of researchers who try to detect propaganda and explain how false narratives are manufactured, gather momentum and become accepted by various groups.
It follows Harvard’s dismissal of misinformation expert Joan Donovan, who in a December whistleblower complaint alleged that the university’s close and lucrative ties with Facebook parent Meta led the university to clamp down on her work, which was highly critical of the social media giant’s practices.
Saudi Arabia Looking to China for a Lifeline for Its Futuristic City Could Mean Trouble for the U.S.
Saudi Arabia’s dreams of a futuristic city are turning into a financial nightmare, and one of its solutions could spell trouble for the U.S.
Neom’s planned features are eye-popping, to say the least. There’s the world’s longest infinity pool, a year-round ski resort, and a mixed-reality theme park. And The Line — a city built between two massive, mirrored skyscrapers — looks straight out of a sci-fi movie. But all these fancy things don’t come cheap. Some estimates for Neom have ballooned up to $1.5 trillion. And while the Kingdom was initially confident foreign investment would help foot the bill, that hasn’t been the case.
Now Saudi Arabia is turning to another country with economic headaches: China. The Kingdom hopes China will invest billions in the project, which could deepen ties between the two countries. That’s a troubling potential future for the U.S., Business Insider’s Tom Porter writes.
While Neom is being pitched as a “smart city” that collects data on residents, experts previously told BI it could really be part of a massive surveillance program powered by Chinese technology.
U.S. Dept of Commerce to Digitize the Identities of All Americans Receiving ‘Public Benefits’ + More
U.S. Dept of Commerce to Digitize the Identities of All Americans Receiving ‘Public Benefits’
Federal ‘Guidelines’ have already been secretly adopted for a Digital ID program that will start off as ‘voluntary’ but only the most gullible Americans would believe that’s anything but temporary.
In the globalist drive toward the creation of a national digital ID for all Americans is well under way, and the first group of citizens to be coerced into accepting a digital ID will be those receiving public benefits of one type or another.
Government healthcare benefits, Veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and of course low-income welfare programs of every type will all be fair game for digital IDs, and the U.S. government is already far down the road to adopting a strategy of digitizing all government-dependent citizens.
Do you remember ever voting on this? I don’t. And where is Congress? Why aren’t they involved in more than just a periphery role in something as big and important as the creation of a national digital identification process? Instead, it looks like the digitalization of America, and the world, is going to be crammed down our throats. It will be up to us to resist.
Beware, Your Home Is Spying on You — and Amazon Alexa Is the Most Data-Hungry
In an ever-growing digital world, our houses, as well as our phones, keep getting smarter and smarter. More than 780 million people worldwide are expected to be part of this revolution by 2028. There’s a catch, though; our privacy seems to be the price we pay for more convenience.
A new study conducted by Surfshark, one of the best VPN providers on the market, found that an average of 1 in 10 smart home apps uses your data for tracking. Unsurprisingly, Big Tech firms Amazon and Google top the list for the most data-hungry gadgets.
As Privacy Counsel at Surfshark, Goda Sukackaite explains, data collection isn’t the only issue here. A home is the private space par excellence, where intimate aspects of our lives take place. “If mismanaged, [data collection] could lead to data theft, security breaches, and the unsanctioned, uncontrolled dissemination of personal information to third parties,” said Sukackaite. “Users must be made aware and given the means to reclaim their digital privacy.”
Indiana and Mississippi Are Sued Over Online Age Verification Digital ID Laws
A group associated with big (and smaller) tech companies has filed a lawsuit claiming First Amendment violations against the state of Mississippi.
This comes after long years of these companies scoffing at First Amendment speech protections, as they censored their users’ speech and/or deplatformed them.
NetChoice correctly observes that forcing people (for the sake of providing parental consent) to essentially unmask themselves through age verification (“age assurance”) exposes sensitive personal data, undermines their constitutional rights, and poses a threat to the online security of all internet users.
The filing against Mississippi also asserts that it is up to parents — rather than what NetChoice calls “Big Government” — to, in different ways, assure that their children are using sites and online services in an age-appropriate manner.
EU’s New AI Rules Ignite Battle Over Data Transparency
A new set of laws governing the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the European Union will force companies to be more transparent about the data used to train their systems, prying open one of the industry’s most closely guarded secrets.
In the 18 months since Microsoft-backed (MSFT.O) OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT to the public, there has been a surge of public engagement and investment in generative AI, a set of applications that can be used to rapidly produce text, images, and audio content.
One of the more contentious sections of the Act states that organizations deploying general-purpose AI models, such as ChatGPT, will have to provide “detailed summaries” of the content used to train them. The newly established AI Office said it plans to release a template for organizations to follow in early 2025, following a consultation with stakeholders.
While the details have yet to be hammered out, AI companies are highly resistant to revealing what their models have been trained on, describing the information as a trade secret that would give competitors an unfair advantage were it made public.
How a New Jersey Man Was Wrongly Arrested Through Facial Recognition Tech Now in Use in Ontario
A New Jersey man who was wrongly jailed after being misidentified through facial recognition software has a message for two Ontario police agencies now using the same technology.
“There’s clear evidence that it doesn’t work,” Nijeer Parks said.
Parks, now 36, spent 10 days behind bars for a January 2019 theft and assault on a police officer that he didn’t commit. He said he was released after he provided evidence he was in another city, making a money transfer at the time of the offense. Prosecutors dropped the case the following November, according to an internal police report.
Investigators identified Parks as a suspect using facial recognition technology, according to police documents provided as part of a lawsuit filed by Parks’s lawyer against several defendants, including police and the mayor of Woodbridge, N.J. The lawsuit names French tech firm Idemia as the developer of the software.
Los Angeles City Council Votes to End COVID Vaccination Policy for City Employees + More
Los Angeles City Council Votes to End COVID Vaccination Policy for City Employees
Los Angeles city employees who left or were fired because of noncompliance to the city’s 2021 vaccination policy can now reapply for their positions.
The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to establish a pathway back to employment to assist some 86 employees who were affected.
The council also voted Tuesday to lift the city’s policy requiring municipal employees to be vaccinated for COVID-19.
Council members unanimously approved an ordinance to end the vaccination policy for all current and future city workers retroactive to June 2, as recommended by the city’s Executive Employee Relations Committee.
Mobile Driver’s Licenses Are Coming to New York State Starting June 11
New York has become the next state to introduce a mobile ID program, giving residents the option to digitize their driver’s license or non-driver ID.
Beginning today, the New York Mobile ID app is available from Apple’s App Store and Google Play. The app can be used for identity verification at airports. A physical license, permit, or non-driver ID is required to activate a mobile ID; you’ll need to take a photo of the front and back with your phone during the enrollment process.
But there are inherent privacy concerns that surround digital IDs: they can potentially be tracked and leave a more detailed trail of where you’ve been (and for what purpose) than traditional physical IDs. Storing all of that data with a contracted third-party vendor comes with its own set of risks, and privacy advocates have called for safeguards like strong encryption and giving residents tight control over what data is shared where.
In January, the New York Civil Liberties Union wrote a letter asking the DMV to pause any potential pilot of a mobile ID program and calling for more transparency, saying that the department’s efforts have largely been out of public view and warrant greater scrutiny.
“The perceived need for any program should be debated in public forums and include plans for technical and legal safeguards, including comprehensive privacy protections,” the group said. “Digitizing any identification system requires particular scrutiny and immense care, based on the harms we have seen across the country and beyond.”
Mastercard’s Biometric Checkout Program Arrives in Europe
Mastercard is rolling out its biometric retail payments for the first time in Europe. The company will be piloting its Biometric Checkout Program in Poland in collaboration with local fintech company PayEye which will provide its iris and face biometric technology.
From June 10th, shoppers will be able to pay by scanning their irises in five stores across Poland owned by bookstore chain Empik. Another partner in the scheme is Planet Pay.
The stores will be equipped with PayEye’s eyePOS terminals. The process requires precise calibration to avoid the risk of accidentally looking at the terminal and paying, the company says in a release. The eyePOS 3 terminal, which uses a fusion of facial and iris biometrics, received its Payment Card Industry (PCI) certification last year.
The global payments giant says it chose Poland as its first European country to pilot the program because of its receptiveness to new technologies. According to their survey, four out of five Polish people say that they use or have used biometric technology while among the 18–25-year-olds category, almost all are familiar with using biometrics.
U.S. Health Dept Says UnitedHealth Can Notify Patients of Data Breach
U.S. healthcare providers can ask UnitedHealth Group (UNH.N) to notify people whose data was exposed during a hack on the company’s Change Healthcare unit in February, according to an update on the health department’s website.
The news comes as a relief for U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers that had urged the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to shift the notification responsibility to UnitedHealth and its unit.
U.S. law states data breaches must be reported to individual patients within 60 days of discovery.
Earlier in May, the healthcare conglomerate’s CEO Andrew Witty told a Congressional committee that hackers potentially stole a third of Americans’ data in the Feb. 21 cyber attack that led to disruptions in processing medical claims. The company is still trying to fix the processing snags.
NIH Scrambled After ZeroHedge Report on Fauci Beagle Experiments, Scrubbed Database, Then Fed WaPo Disinformation
Last week, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene took a detour from grilling Anthony Fauci over COVID-19, to confront him with photos of beagles who had been subjected to animal testing experiments widely reported to be funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the National Institutes of Health (NIH), following a 2021 investigation series by the group White Coat Waste Project.
“We should be recommending you to be prosecuted,” Greene told Fauci. “We should be writing a criminal referral because you should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. You belong in prison,” she continued, adding “That man does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be revoked and he belongs in prison.”
This opened up a can of worms which includes a response from White Coat Waste, and triggered the Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler to do a deep dive into ‘Beaglegage’ in an effort to debunk Greene.
Only to discover that the NIH appears to have lied about funding the experiment, which involved beagles between 6 and 8 months old obtained from the kennels of the Pasteur Institute of Tunis. In the study, the beagles were sedated and then exposed to hundreds of sand flies that had been deprived of food for 24 hours. This exposure took place as part of research into zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis (ZVL), a disease carried by sand flies that can affect dogs and humans.
When the story broke in 2021, the NIH scrubbed it from its database and then fed WaPo disinformation.
AI-Powered Apple Overtakes Microsoft as World’s Most Valuable Company
Apple once again became the world’s most valuable company on Wednesday, dethroning Microsoft from the top spot, as the iPhone maker pushed ahead in a race to dominate artificial intelligence technology.
Its shares (AAPL.O) jumped nearly 4% to a record $215.04, giving it a market valuation of $3.29 trillion. Microsoft’s (MSFT.O) market capitalization stood at $3.24 trillion, falling behind Apple for the first time in five months.
Apple shares had added more than 7% in the previous session, a day after it unveiled a range of AI-enabled features and software enhancements for its devices, a move that several analysts said would power iPhone sales.
Hundreds of Snowflake Customers May Have Been Hit by Breach That Stole ‘Significant’ Data
The number of organizations who have had their sensitive data stolen following the recent Snowflake breach is likely in the hundreds, new research has claimed.
A report from Mandiant, which is currently investigating the breach, says the two companies have notified 165 organizations — but as the attack is ongoing, the total number of victims will probably rise further.
Snowflake is a major cloud storage firm with almost 10,000 corporate customers. News of a security incident at the company first started emerging in late May 2024, when Ticketmaster reported losing sensitive information on more than 500 million people.
Sage Steele Sues CAA Over Alleged Conflict of Interest in Free Speech Standoff With ESPN
The Hollywood Reporter reported:
After suing ESPN for allegedly suspending her in retaliation for comments she made on a podcast regarding the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, former ESPN host Sage Steele has filed a lawsuit against CAA and her agents over their handling of the standoff.
Steele, in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, accuses the agency of breach of fiduciary duty for failing to properly advocate for her. She points to statements from her agent Matthew Kramer, CAA’s co-head of sports media, in which he neglected to demand that Steele not be required to apologize for criticizing Disney’s vaccination policy and lied to the ex-ESPN anchor about having the “head of CAA legal” review her contract regarding the mandate, instead sending the document to a junior attorney.
AI Tools Are Secretly Training on Real Images of Children + More
AI Tools Are Secretly Training on Real Images of Children
Over 170 images and personal details of children from Brazil have been scraped by an open-source dataset without their knowledge or consent, and used to train AI, claims a new report from Human Rights Watch released Monday.
The images have been scraped from content posted as recently as 2023 and as far back as the mid-1990s, according to the report, long before any internet user might anticipate that their content might be used to train AI. Human Rights Watch claims that the personal details of these children, alongside URL links to their photographs, were included in LAION-5B, a dataset that has been a popular source of training data for AI startups.
“Their privacy is violated in the first instance when their photo is scraped and swept into these datasets. And then these AI tools are trained on this data and therefore can create realistic imagery of children,” says Hye Jung Han, children’s rights and technology researcher at Human Rights Watch and the researcher who found these images. “The technology is developed in such a way that any child who has any photo or video of themselves online is now at risk because any malicious actor could take that photo, and then use these tools to manipulate them however they want.”
Social Media Giants Avoid School Districts’ Addiction Claims
Meta Platforms Inc. and other social media companies won the dismissal of novel claims in hundreds of lawsuits brought by school districts seeking to recover costs for addressing the negative impacts of students’ social media use.
A California state judge sided Friday with Meta, Snap Inc., TikTok Inc. and Google LLC in throwing out the districts’ allegations that social media has increased the cost of education because it makes students more distracted and disruptive, driving up the need for classroom discipline, employee training and communication with parents.
The cases are among hundreds in state and federal courts alleging that social media platforms are designed to be addictive and dangerous for youths.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl wrote that there must be limits on liability — otherwise any company could be held responsible when “emotional harm” it inflicts on individuals then causes those individuals to “act out.”
New York Passes Legislation to Ban ‘Addictive’ Social Media Algorithms for Kids
New York’s Legislature passed a bill on Friday that would ban social media platforms from using “addictive” recommendation algorithms for child users.
It’s expected that Gov. Kathy Hochul will sign the bill into law. On Friday, she posted on X celebrating the bill’s passage. The bill could fundamentally change how children use social media in the state.
The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act will prohibit social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram from serving content to users under the age of 18 based on recommendation algorithms, meaning that, instead, social media companies will have to provide reverse-chronological feeds for child users.
Evan Greer, the director of nonprofit digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future, said that commercial age-verification methods, which would likely be required to enforce the law, further threaten the privacy of social media users and could pose a danger to civil liberties and anonymity online.
California COVID Vaccine Mandate Lawsuit Sees New Life
A California lawsuit suing the state over a COVID-era vaccine mandate received new life on Friday after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court’s dismissal of the lawsuit.
The lawsuit targeted Los Angeles schools that imposed a vaccine mandate on its workers. Attorneys for the schools had argued that the lawsuit was moot given the end of the mandate in 2023. The Ninth Circuit disagreed, ruling 2-1 that the workers could move forward with the case.
Critically, the court recognized the plaintiffs “plausibly alleged” that the vaccine for COVID-19 “does not effectively ‘prevent the spread'” of the disease, rather it merely mitigates symptoms for those who contract it. Therefore, the court said, there is an argument to be made that there is no legal basis for forcing workers to take the vaccine against their will.
The ruling comes roughly a year after California reversed course on a vaccine mandate for students. That move came as part of a wider rollback of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s expansive COVID-19 restrictions. California was the first state to issue a statewide stay-at-home order during the pandemic.
Canada, UK Launched Joint Probe Into 23andMe Data Breach, Says Canada
The Canadian and British privacy authorities have launched a joint probe into a data breach at genetics testing company 23andme last year, Canada’s privacy commissioner said in a statement on Monday.
Last October, 23andMe told some customers of a breach into the “DNA Relatives” feature that allowed them to compare ancestry information with users worldwide.
Supreme Court to Consider Meta Bid to End Cambridge Analytica Privacy Scandal Lawsuit
The Supreme Court will consider a request by Meta to shut down a class action lawsuit against the company filed by investors relating to the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, the court said Monday.
The lawsuit centers on allegations from investors that the Facebook parent company failed to disclose how Facebook users’ personal information would be misused by the firm Cambridge Analytica, which supported former President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Separate from the case, Meta has already paid a $5.1 billion fine to federal regulators and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users based on the same Cambridge Analytica data breach.
Google Cuts Part of Team That Vets Police Requests for User Data
Google cut a group of workers from the team responsible for making sure government requests for its users’ private information are legitimate and legal, raising concerns among workers and privacy experts that the company is weakening its ability to protect customer data.
Google has intimate data on the billions of people who use its products, including emails, passwords, financial information, web browsing history and physical locations, and police around the world are increasingly asking the tech company to provide that data to aid with investigations.
The cuts represent a significant reduction in the company’s ability to vet and respond to search warrants and other requests, and have already led to delays in fulfilling court orders, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Proposed EU Chat Control Law Wants Permission to Scan Your WhatsApp Messages
The EU is currently considering a new plan to scan citizens’ encrypted communications, in yet another chapter of its fight against online child sexual abuse material (CSAM). After harsh criticism, legislators have abandoned the idea of allowing law enforcement to access text messages and audio — shared photos, videos, and URLs are now the target. Yet, experts still warn that citizens’ privacy is at risk.
Belgium, which heads the Council of Europe until June 30, proposed the new text as a compromise on what was nicknamed Chat Control law last May, and it’s now under review.
There’s a catch, though. People must consent to the shared material being scanned before being encrypted. Choosing to reject the scanning will lead to users being prevented from using this functionality at all. The tech world isn’t buying it, in fact, Romain Digneaux, Senior Public Policy Associate at Proton, describes it to TechRadar as “a blatant attempt to pull the wool over our eyes.”
“It will potentially subject all EU citizens to mass surveillance, undermining their fundamental rights while doing nothing to address the spread of CSAM online, nor any of the criticism from the European Data Protection Supervisor and countless experts.”
Religious Discrimination Suit Over Vaccine Mandate Can Advance
A Missouri woman’s religious discrimination lawsuit claiming she was illegally fired for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine can move forward, a district court ruled Thursday.
Judge Henry Edward Autrey denied Centene Management Co. LLC’s motion to dismiss Andrea Carlson’s lawsuit, ruling she sufficiently stated a claim of discrimination against the company. Carlson’s amended complaint satisfied the requirements to survive the initial dismissal stage, Autrey ruled.
Carlson alleges Centene violated both the Civil Rights Act and the Missouri Human Rights Act when it fired her in 2021 for failing to fulfill the company’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement.