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Big Brother News Watch
Buying Booze? Your Face — or Palm — Could Verify Your Age + More
Buying Booze? Your Face — or Palm — Could Verify Your Age
Move over, fake IDs: Biometric systems that can “read” a person’s face or palm image and determine if they’re too young for a beer are gaining traction at sports stadiums and liquor shops.
Why it matters: While these tools are handy for alcohol sellers — and can offer more privacy for consumers than handing over a driver’s license to a store clerk — they tap into fears about potential abuses of facial recognition systems.
Driving the news: Legislative proposals in New York and Washington state would let bars, restaurants and other purveyors of adult products verify a customer’s age through biometric data — like a finger or palm image, or a retinal or face scan.
The New York bill would require all biometric data to be encrypted and prohibit businesses from selling it to third parties.
“This is the new frontier of age verification,” state Sen. and bill sponsor James Skoufis told the New York Post. “It does advance the interests of convenience.”
Phishing Could Be the Most Dangerous Security Threat You Face This Year — Here’s How to Stay Safe
Phishing is a notorious type of email scam where criminals aim to trick victims into handing over personal information or financial details by using legitimate-looking emails that hide malicious links.
The scams, where criminals target victims using legitimate-looking emails hiding malicious links, often use realistic assets to spoof a real company, with similar branding and corporate images used to fool users into clicking on dodgy URLs.
Victims can be hooked by fake CEO messages, invoices from a fake accounting department, and even pretend IT department messages — phishing scams are wide-ranging and can be a serious threat to you and your business.
Mastodon Has a Child Abuse Material Problem, Like Every Other Major Web Platform
A new report suggests that the lax content moderation policies of Mastodon and other decentralized social media platforms have led to a proliferation of child sexual abuse material.
Stanford’s Internet Observatory published new research Monday that shows that such decentralized sites have serious shortcomings when it comes to “child safety infrastructure.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t make them all that different from a majority of platforms on the normal internet.
When we talk about the “decentralized” web, we’re of course talking about “federated” social media or “the Fediverse”— the loose constellation of platforms that eschew centralized ownership and governance for an interactive model that prioritizes user autonomy and privacy.
Despite the exciting promise of the Fediverse, there are obvious problems with its model. Security threats, for one thing, are an issue. The limited user friendliness of the ecosystem has also been a source of contention.
And, as the new Stanford study notes, the lack of centralized oversight means that there aren’t enough guardrails built into the ecosystem to defend against the proliferation of illegal and immoral content.
Indeed, researchers say that over a two-day period they encountered approximately 600 pieces of either known or suspected child sexual abuse material or CSAM, content on top Mastodon instances.
New Cryptocurrency Offers Users Tokens for Scanning Their Eyeballs
Members of the public are being invited to have their eyeballs scanned by a silver orb as part of cryptocurrency project that aims to use biometric verification to distinguish humans from AI systems.
People signing up to the Worldcoin scheme via an app this week will receive a “genesis grant” of 25 tokens, equivalent to about £40, after having their iris scanned by one of the bowling-ball-sized devices.
Once users scan their eyes, they will receive a World ID, which the scheme says will prove they are a “real and unique person,” while preserving their privacy, and a crypto wallet on their smartphone.
The project was launched by Sam Altman of the machine learning research firm OpenAI, and on Tuesday the London orb at Techspace Worship Street, near Old Street tube station, was busy with potential users.
Worldcoin promises those scanning their irises will have their privacy protected.
Lots of Sensitive Data Is Still Being Posted to ChatGPT
New data from Netskope has claimed employees are continuing to share sensitive company information with AI writers and chatbots like ChatGPT despite the clear risk of leaks or breaches.
The research covers some 1.7 million users across 70 global organizations, and found an average of 158 monthly incidents of source code being posted to ChatGPT per 10,000 users, making it the most significant company vulnerability ahead of other types of sensitive data.
While cases of regulated data (18 incidents/10,000 users/month) and intellectual property (four incidents/10,000 users/month) being posted to ChatGPT are much less common, it’s clear that many developers are simply not realizing the damage that can be caused by leaked source code.
Biden Launches Permanent ‘Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy’ + More
Biden Launches Permanent ‘Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy’
The Biden-Harris administration has made historic progress on our nation’s ability to manage COVID-19 so that it no longer meaningfully disrupts the way we live our lives. Under President Biden’s leadership, the Administration has taken significant steps to ensure all individuals have continued access to lifesaving protections such as vaccines, treatments and tests, and that the nation is well prepared to manage the risks of COVID-19 or other causes of potential pandemics in the future.
As part of the President’s commitment to ensure that our country is more prepared for a pandemic than we were when he took office, the Administration is standing up the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR).
This will be a permanent office in the Executive Office of the President charged with leading, coordinating and implementing actions related to preparedness for, and response to, known and unknown biological threats or pathogens that could lead to a pandemic or to significant public health-related disruptions in the U.S.
OPPR will take over the duties of the current COVID-19 Response Team and Mpox Team at the White House and will continue to coordinate and develop policies and priorities related to pandemic preparedness and response.
Marc Andreessen Says AI Will Function as a Lifelong ‘Partner’ for Kids With Full Insight Into Everything They’ve Done and Want — and He Thinks That’s a Good Thing
Billionaire tech investor Marc Andreessen — who has long been bullish on the tech — thinks AI is a lifelong “ally” for the children of tomorrow as they both grow up together.
Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast on July 19, Andreessen shared how he had introduced his 8-year-old son to the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT as an educational tool.
“The AI that my 8-year-old is gonna have by the time he’s 20, it’s gonna have had 12 years of experience with him, and so it will have grown up with him. It will know everything he’s ever done.” Andreessen said. “It’ll know what he wants.”
The cofounder of namesake VC firm Andreessen Horowitz talked about how AI can serve as a lifelong “ally” for his son and future generations. “They’ll have basically a partner whose goal in life will be to make them as happy and satisfied and successful as possible.”
‘The Perfect Crime’: Tech Companies Are Manipulating Our Elections and Indoctrinating Our Children — How We Can Stop Them
Big Tech companies are deliberately manipulating the outcomes of our elections and the thinking and beliefs of our children. And they are having an enormous impact.
If you doubt that, consider this latest snippet of data from my lab, the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology.
Consider this: The GOP currently has a slim 10-seat majority in the House of Representatives. Without Google’s interference in 2022, it would likely now have a majority of between 27 and 59 seats.
The 2022 midterm elections that gave the Democrats a two-vote majority in the U.S. Senate had quite a bit of help from Google, and, to a lesser extent, from a couple of other major tech companies.
If Google had not interfered in the 2022 midterm elections, the GOP would likely have ended up with a Senate majority of up to eight seats.
The Big Tech companies that exploded into existence over the past 20 years — as some of their prominent insiders have stated — have undermined our democracy, indoctrinated our children, and increasingly turned our freedom into an illusion.
Tristan Harris, a former “design ethicist” at Google, says that he was a member of a team at the company, whose job it was to influence “a billion people’s attention and thoughts every day.” Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist and one of the early investors in Google and Facebook, claims that Big Tech content has “morphed into continuous behavior modification on a mass basis.”
Another early investor in these companies, the prominent author and venture capitalist Roger McNamee, has said that he now regrets having financed them, and asserts that they constitute “a menace to public health and to democracy.”
House Judiciary ‘Considering’ Thursday Vote to Hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Contempt
The House Judiciary Committee is expecting to hold a vote as soon as Thursday to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress, Fox News Digital has confirmed.
Fox Business was the first to report last week that House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, (R-OH), was strongly considering holding Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress this month.
Sources with direct knowledge of the situation said the move could happen as early as this week and Meta — the parent company of Facebook — has not provided any internal communications regarding the company’s censorship efforts.
On Monday, Punchbowl News also reported that the House Judiciary Committee was considering a vote on the matter this week in what’s considered a “huge escalation of Republicans’ war on Big Tech.”
CBDCs as a Weapon to Debank the Banked
In March 2022, President Biden signed an Executive Order directing government agencies to urgently research and develop a potential U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC) “in a manner that protects Americans’ interests.” It also encouraged the Federal Reserve Bank to continue doing so. And it isn’t just the Biden administration in the U.S. working in such a direction.
As of the time of writing, CBDCTracker.org lists three countries or regions with retail CBDCs already “launched” (Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria), another five in “pilot” stage and another twenty in “proof of concept” stage. Many more have at least researched wholesale CBDCs. (“Wholesale” CBDCs are intended for commercial and central bank use and the like, while “retail” CBDCs are intended for the rest of us).
A report by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) released just this month summarizes the results of a survey of 86 central banks and concludes that “there could be 15 retail and nine wholesale CBDCs publicly circulating in 2030.”
When you read statements from high-level officials of the BIS, central banks and governments, you get the impression that CBDCs are an exciting development in the evolution of money. The BIS, for example, calls them “a new tool in the financial inclusion toolkit.” An op-ed co-authored by BIS General Manager Agustín Carstens and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands frames them in the title as “CBDCs for the people.” An IMF working paper asserts that CBDCs can “bank large unbanked populations” in developing countries.
But when a CBDC was thrust upon the Nigerian people, adoption rates were abysmal at best (below 0.5% even a year after its launch) and Nigerians took to the streets to demand access to cash.
CBDCs are widely unpopular in the U.S. as well. A CATO Institute national survey published just in May found that only 16% of Americans support the idea and over twice as many (34%) oppose it. Seventy-eight percent responded that if a CBDC were offered, they would be unlikely to use it altogether.
NYC Subway Using AI to Track Fare Evasion + More
NYC Subway Using AI to Track Fare Evasion
Surveillance software that uses artificial intelligence to spot people evading fares has been quietly rolled out to some of New York City’s subway stations and is poised to be introduced to more by the end of the year, according to public documents and government contracts obtained by NBC News.
The system, which the city and its transit authority haven’t previously acknowledged by name, uses third-party software that its maker has touted as a way to engage law enforcement to help crack down on fare evasion.
The system was in use in seven subway stations in May, according to a report on fare evasion published online by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which oversees New York City’s public transportation. The MTA expects that by the end of the year, the system will expand by “approximately two dozen more stations, with more to follow,” the report says. The report also found that the MTA lost $690 million to fare evasion in 2022.
Tim Minton, the MTA’s communications director, said the videos are stored on the MTA’s servers and are kept “for a limited period.” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office announced last year that the city’s transit systems had more than 10,000 surveillance cameras.
The use of the software adds to what some privacy advocates see as a growing surveillance apparatus developing in New York City.
Teens Are Using Social Media to Diagnose Themselves With ADHD, Autism and More. Parents Are Alarmed
Some people browse TikTok and Instagram for recipes, memes and colorful takes on the news. Erin Coleman says her 14-year-old daughter uses these apps to search for videos about mental health diagnoses.
Over time, the teen started to self-identify with the creators, according to her mother, and became convinced she had the same diagnoses, including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, autism, mysophobia (an extreme fear of dirt and germs) and agoraphobia (a fear of leaving the house).
After undergoing testing for mental health and medical conditions, her daughter was diagnosed not with the long list of conditions she’d speculated about but with severe anxiety. “Even now, she doesn’t always think [the specialists] are correct,” Coleman said.
Social media platforms, including TikTok and Instagram, have come under mounting scrutiny in recent years for their potential to lead younger users to harmful content and exacerbate what experts have called a national mental health crisis among teens. But Coleman is one of nearly two dozen parents who told CNN that they are grappling with a different but related issue: teens using social media to diagnose themselves with mental health conditions.
The New CDC Director Has a Plan to Fix the Agency’s Trust Problem
When Dr. Mandy Cohen walked into the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta less than two weeks ago, she knew trust in America’s top health agency was broken.
Attacks on the agency’s scientific data and sometimes confusing public policy guidance were coming from Washington lawmakers, social media and people across the country.
In her first media interview as the new CDC director, Cohen said she is refocusing the agency on rebuilding faith with more transparency and improved communication and by “bringing the best evidence that we possibly can” to the public.
Howie Carr: COVID Panic Infected Freedom of Choice
Where do I go to get my reputation back? Back in May 2021, I was canceled from YouTube, and not for the first time. “Our team has reviewed your content and, unfortunately, we think it violates our medical misinformation policy.”
The charge: I had discussed “The Non-Existent Flu Season” with a Colorado ophthalmologist and online commentator, Dr. Brian Joondeph. The reason we discussed it on my radio show was simple. Because just as the Panic was ginned up and hundreds of thousands of Americans were being reported as victims, suddenly, virtually no one was dying from influenza.
One recurring theme on my show back then was the fact that to keep the Panic going, the Democrats were not telling the truth about COVID death statistics. Remember the motorcyclist killed in an Orlando traffic accident — COVID, or so the “experts” claimed. Two people shot to death in Colorado — you guessed it, COVID.
AI Companies Voluntarily Commit to Better Safety and Transparency but Can Ignore Pledges if They Want
Today, the Biden administration announced that it had secured voluntary commitments from leading AI firms to manage the risks posed by artificial intelligence.
The seven companies, Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI, all agreed to improve the safety, security, and transparency of their systems, including allowing reviews of their models by third-party experts. The seven companies immediately agreed to several specific points of concern surrounding the rollout of AI.
First, the companies committed to internal and external security testing of their AI systems before they are released to the public, as well as sharing information with relevant industry players, governments, academia, and the public to help manage AI risks.
The companies also agreed to measures to improve public trust in their systems, including developing a way to ensure that people know when they are seeing AI-generated content, such as watermarking or other measures. The companies will also prioritize research into the societal risks AI models pose, including racial and other forms of bias that can lead to discrimination, as well as “protecting privacy.”
‘I Warned You Guys in 1984 … and You Didn’t Listen’ — Director James Cameron Highlights Fears of AI Takeover
Director James Cameron claims he tried to warn people about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence (AI) in his 1984 movie “The Terminator” but that his concerns fell on deaf ears.
In a CTV News interview, the “Titanic” and “Avatar” director said he saw this problem coming a long time ago and is surprised that people are just now beginning to notice the dangers lurking ahead.
Cameron added that he “absolutely” shares the general consensus among various AI experts that rapidly advancing technology needs to be regulated to ensure it does not pose a threat to humanity.
As Katabella Roberts reports at The Epoch Times, Cameron also said he believes it is also important to ensure that the individuals and companies working on advanced AI technology are doing so for the right reasons, otherwise, there could be deadly consequences.
Amazon to Build $120 Million Facility in Florida to Prep Kuiper Internet Satellites for Launch
Amazon will invest $120 million to build a satellite processing facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as the company prepares to launch the first satellites for its Project Kuiper internet network, the tech giant announced Friday.
Project Kuiper is Amazon’s plan to build a network of 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit, to provide high-speed internet access anywhere in the world.
The 100,000-square-foot processing facility will serve as one of the final steps before the satellites reach orbit, preparing them for launches on the rockets of the United Launch Alliance and Jeff Bezos’ separately owned Blue Origin.
Amazon Agrees to $25 Million Settlement Over Alexa Unlawfully Storing Children’s Voice Recordings, Location Data + More
Amazon Agrees to $25 Million Settlement Over Alexa Unlawfully Storing Children’s Voice Recordings, Location Data
Amazon has agreed to a $25 million settlement with the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission regarding allegations the company violated federal children’s privacy laws through its Alexa personal assistant platform.
In addition to the civil penalty, Amazon.com Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiary Amazon.com Services LLC (collectively Amazon), have agreed to a permanent injunction as part of that settlement to resolve alleged violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA Rule) and the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act) relating to Amazon’s voice assistant, the DOJ and FTC said Wednesday.
The government had alleged that Amazon Alexa unlawfully stores children’s voice recordings and information about children’s locations — and sometimes even flouts requests from parents to have that data deleted.
Other alleged violations include making deceptive representations that Alexa app users could delete their or their children’s voice recordings, including audio files and transcripts and their geolocation information, when in fact Amazon on some occasions failed to delete all such information at users’ request. The complaint also alleges that Amazon engaged in unfair privacy practices with respect to Alexa users’ geolocation information and voice recordings, including — in some instances — failing to honor users’ deletion requests and failing to notify consumers that it had not done so.
Amazon’s Palm Payment Tech Is Coming to Every Whole Foods in the U.S.
Amazon‘s palm payment technology will be a common sight at every U.S. Whole Foods store by the end of the year. The tech giant will roll out Amazon One across over 500 Whole Foods stores by the end of 2023, it said in a blog post. Amazon One is already in about 200 Whole Foods locations, Amazon said.
“This means Whole Foods Market customers who choose to use Amazon One will no longer need their wallet or even a phone to pay—they can simply hover their palm over an Amazon One device,” Amazon said in the post. Customers who link their Amazon One account with their Prime details will also get discounts when they use the payment method, the company said.
The palm-scanning technology has received criticism from privacy advocates. They say that Amazon is collecting biometric data that could be misused. Amazon says that customers have to opt-in to using One, and the data from those who do is “securely collected.”
Amazon One is part of a variety of data-collecting initiatives that Amazon has. They range from healthcare ventures to iRobot, the company behind the Roomba vacuum, and many of them raise privacy concerns, Insider has reported.
Apple Warning It Could Shut FaceTime, iMessage in U.K. Over Gov’t Surveillance Policy Adds to Growing Tech Industry Discontent
The list of mainstream Internet services that could shut down in the U.K. over security risks attached to government policymaking just got longer: The BBC is reporting Apple has threatened to shutter local access to its end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) comms services, FaceTime and iMessage, if ministers don’t rethink a plan to further beef up existing (intrusive) surveillance powers.
In recent months we’ve heard similar warnings from Meta-owned WhatsApp, Signal Messenger and Wikipedia in relation to other components of the U.K.’s digital policy they view as harmful to their users’ interests — so it’s by no means the first warning that Brits could miss out on access to mainstream web services if ministers don’t rethink their approach to tech policy.
In the case of Apple’s latest warning, its target is government plans to further expand digital surveillance powers available to state intelligence agencies. Last month the Home Office announced a consultation on changes to a regime of notices that can be issued to comms providers to retain or intercept user data under the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act (IPA).
AirTag and Tile Stalking Remain a Thorny Problem
Personal tracking devices like AirTag and Tile were designed to help avoid mishaps such as lost keys, but they’re raising alarms about privacy and security.
Why it matters: Mounting accounts of the devices’ misuse have prompted Apple and Google to try helping users identify and thwart tracking without consent — as states pass legislation outlawing this intrusion.
Driving the news: Legislatures in Indiana and Kentucky passed laws earlier this year to prohibit non-consensual AirTag tracking. Similar legislation was under consideration in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Tile announced earlier this year it would impose a $1 million fine for criminal use of trackers, alongside law enforcement.
Trump COVID Shot Ad Boosted Vaccination in Red Counties — Study Authors Advocate for Using ‘Messengers Whose Voices Might Carry Special Weight’
A strategic public service announcement (PSA) with counter-stereotypical vaccine messaging using real Fox News clips led to an uptake in COVID-19 vaccination in red counties, according to a large-scale randomized controlled trial.
Across 1,014 counties, an estimated 104,036 people were vaccinated who otherwise wouldn’t have been had they not seen the PSA, for an average of 103 additional vaccines per treated county (P=0.097), reported Timothy J. Ryan, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues in Science Advances.
Ryan’s team created a 27-second PSA using footage of former President Donald Trump endorsing the COVID vaccine on Fox News. They then placed tactical ads on YouTube in counties lagging in vaccine uptake. The PSA was viewed 11.6 million times among 6 million unique viewers. On the Fox News YouTube channel alone, the PSA played 200,000 times before clips of Fox News personalities.
83 Republicans Vote Against Amendment to Reinstate Pilots Fired for Refusing COVID Vaccine
House lawmakers on Thursday rejected an amendment that would have required airlines to reinstate pilots who were fired or stepped down because of vaccine mandates.
The amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill, introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and offered on the floor by Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., failed 141-298 after 83 Republicans voted with Democrats against it. Only one House Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, voted for the measure.
Nearly all major U.S. airlines implemented vaccine mandates during the coronavirus pandemic in accordance with President Biden‘s 2021 executive order requiring federal contractors to get the shots. The policies were controversial and prompted legal challenges from pilots, including an unsuccessful attempt by the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) to block the mandate from taking effect.
King County Council to Consider Rehiring Employees Fired Over Vaccine Mandate
The King County Council is considering a proposal “fast-tracking” the re-hiring of employees who were fired for declining the COVID-19 vaccine.
The proposal is part of a push to fill hundreds of vacant positions across departments like King County Metro, the sheriff’s office and the parks department.
The proposal, sponsored by Council Member Reagan Dunn could potentially help fill those roles by prioritizing the rehiring of employees impacted by those mandates.
The county’s vaccine mandate expired on Feb. 6 after nearly two years. King County’s vaccine mandate was in place since mid-2021. All county and city employees, contractors and volunteers were required to show proof they received the initial COVID-19 vaccination series.