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Nationwide AI Mass Surveillance System Takes Root in Another State + More
Nationwide AI Mass Surveillance System Takes Root in Another State
A national mass surveillance system boosted by artificial intelligence (AI) took root in another state. The town council of Jackson, Wyoming, agreed in a close vote last month to install the 30 solar-powered license plate recognition (LPR) cameras along their streets and traffic lights, which feeds into a centralized surveillance system managed by the private company Flock Safety. The town is the first in the state of Wyoming to install the cameras.
The cameras in Jackson are part of the “Falcon” line, which sends instant alerts to law enforcement. There are different models of AI surveillance technology, each named after birds: Raven, an audio device for detecting sounds of crime such as gunshots, breaking glass, sawing metal, and screeching tires; Wing, which combs through thousands of hours of footage for specific vehicle identifiers for police; and Condor, which provides a live feed with zooming capabilities. The model names match the company name, Flock Safety, which calls its AI-powered mass surveillance system “TALON.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) characterized Flock Safety’s technology as “Orwellian,” following an investigative report released last year.
Over 2,000 cities across 43 states have installed Flock Safety cameras, according to the company. Civilians may also purchase the cameras and opt to share their footage in real-time with law enforcement; hundreds of homeowners associations (HOAs) have turned to the devices as their preferred security.
Justice Department Requests Stay in Social Media Case: Decision Risks ‘Grave Harm’
The Justice Department on Thursday night requested a stay against a federal judge’s order limiting the Biden administration’s communication with social media companies over free speech concerns.
Lawyers — led by Brian Boynton, principal deputy assistant attorney general — wrote in a filing before U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty in Louisiana that the order’s “broad scope and ambiguous terms” prevent the government from engaging in a “vast range of lawful and responsible conduct.”
The government’s initiatives with social media companies prevent “grave harm” to the American people and the nation’s democratic processes, Boynton says in the filing.
In a blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to curb disinformation online, Doughty ruled on Tuesday that administration officials cannot contact social media companies regarding “the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social media platforms.”
The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal Wednesday evening, which will go to the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Zuckerberg’s Kindness Pledge for Threads Is ‘Absurd’, Says Molly Russell Charity
A charity launched by the family of Molly Russell has labeled Mark Zuckerberg’s pledge to prioritize kindness on his new Threads app as “absurd”, as the Twitter rival raced past 30 million users less than 24 hours after launch.
Molly, 14, killed herself in 2017 after viewing harmful content on social media platforms including Instagram. An inquest ruled last year that dangerous online material related to self-harm, suicide and depression had contributed to her death. The Molly Rose Foundation said it was concerned that Threads would be linked to Instagram, with users of the new app required to have an Instagram account to log in.
They said of the company that owns Threads and Instagram: “Meta invests a not inconsiderable sum in marketing Instagram as a safe and thoughtful platform for families, but the idea that Mark Zuckerberg is now prioritizing kindness over profit is absurd and contrary to reality.”
“Mark Zuckerberg has some hubris to position himself as the author of kind services given Meta’s appalling record,” the children’s digital safety campaigner Beeban Kidron said. “He is right that there is a market for a less toxic public square and if Threads is it then great. But he still has work to do on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.”
Musk Calls Out Meta’s ‘Algorithm-Only’ Approach and ‘Social Media Monopoly’ After Threads Hits 30 Million Milestone
Twitter owner Elon Musk continued to criticize Meta’s new rival platform Threads late Thursday, accusing the company of using its algorithms to manipulate information and highlighting its extensive data collection practices, on the backdrop of a potential legal fight between the two social media giants following Threads’ successful launch.
Labeling Threads’ timeline as a “closed source, algorithm-only system,” Musk implied that such an approach leads to undetectable “manipulation of what information people see.”
Musk’s comment was in response to a tweet by Jack Dorsey saying he was not surprised by Threads’ lack of a reverse chronological timeline only featuring accounts that a user follows, adding “They’ve never given people the choice to remove the algorithm.”
Reacting to a tweet about Meta’s existing dominance in the social media space with Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, the Twitter executive chairman wrote: “Any social media monopoly is despair.”
Edward Snowden Calls Out Biden Administration’s ‘Historic Scandal’
Edward Snowden responded to a new report about the Biden administration’s attempt to build a case against another high-profile whistleblower, calling it a “historic scandal.”
Snowden’s remarks come a day after Rolling Stone reported that President Joe Biden‘s Justice Department has been pressuring multiple British journalists to cooperate with prosecutors in its efforts to have WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange extradited to the U.S.
Assange is being held in London’s Belmarsh prison on charges related to his involvement with Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who gave Assange classified national defense documents concerning conditions at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
Reflecting on his own decisions, Snowden told The Guardian last month that he had “no regrets” about leaking information about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) scale of surveillance. “Technology has grown to be enormously influential,” he said. “If we think about what we saw in 2013 and the capabilities of governments today, 2013 seems like child’s play.”
Macron Says Social Media Could Be Blocked During Riots, Sparking Furor
French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion that the government might need the ability to block social media access during riots has sparked a backlash in the country, with some arguing that France is going the way of authoritarian regimes.
Addressing a meeting of more than 200 mayors of French towns affected by the ongoing protests at the Élysée Palace on Tuesday, Macron accused social media platforms including Snapchat, TikTok and encrypted messenger Telegram of contributing to the riots following the June 27 fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old of North African descent.
Macron proposed that the government regulate or suspend social media when needed, but said this will not take place “in the heat of the moment,” local media reported. The president’s press team confirmed those reports.
The government will “need the authority to suspend them as needed,” government spokesman Olivier Véran added.
Military Pilot Appeals Denial of EI for Refusing COVID Shots
A former Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) captain and helicopter pilot has applied for permission to appeal a denial of his Employment Insurance (EI) benefits after he was terminated from the military for refusing a COVID-19 shot due to his religious beliefs.
Captain Michal Zagol filed an appeal on July 4 to the Social Security Tribunal of Canada (SST) Appeal Division, following a June 9 denial from a lower level of the SST stating he was ineligible for Employment Insurance (EI) benefits on the basis of alleged “misconduct.”
Zagol, who is 35 and Roman Catholic, applied for a religious exemption to the CAF’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy when it was implemented in the fall of 2021, around the time of the federal election.
“I said I was unable to be vaccinated due to my religious beliefs,” he told The Epoch Times on July 4. “My religion is not misconduct as it has been characterized.” He said that despite a number of meetings with his commanding officer, explaining his religious beliefs and discussing why they prevented Mr. Zagol from being vaccinated, he was declined an exemption at the beginning of December 2021.
Wisconsin Health Officials Drop Fine for ‘Nutcracker’ Performance During COVID Restrictions
Health officials in Wisconsin have dropped a fine against a dance studio that staged a performance of “The Nutcracker” in December 2020 despite COVID-19 restrictions on mass gatherings.
Public Health Madison and Dane County canceled the penalty pending against A Leap Above Dance on June 22, the Wisconsin State Journal reported Thursday. The studio is located in Oregon, a Madison suburb.
It’s unclear how much the fine totaled. With each of the 119 counts in the department’s complaint punishable by $200, it could have come to $23,800. But Morgan Finke, a spokesperson for the health department, told the State Journal on Wednesday that the maximum would have been $3,200.
China’s Wuhan, Where COVID Was First Detected, Struggles to Shed Legacy of Pandemic
It has been more than three years since the Chinese city of Wuhan reported the world’s first COVID-19 cases, and underwent the world’s first pandemic lockdown.
Now, about half a year after China reopened its borders, locals have been keen to move on with life. But memories and remnants of the pandemic remain hard to shake off.
Like many other parts of the country, an increasing number of people in Wuhan are choosing to go maskless. The scanning of health codes, once a way of life, is now a thing of the past. However, for some, memories of the lockdown remain and questions persist.
There are also physical reminders of the last three-and-a-half years. The Huanan seafood market in Jianghan district, the epicenter of the outbreak, remains boarded up and inaccessible. It was shuttered in January 2020 when the earliest COVID-19 cases linked to the market were first announced. Today, it remains at the center of a controversial debate over the origins of the virus.
Meta Launches Data-Harvesting Twitter Clone, Immediately Starts Censoring + More
Meta Launches Data-Harvesting Twitter Clone, Immediately Starts Censoring
Meta claims that over 10 million people have signed up for its Twitter competitor, Threads, in what CEO Mark Zuckerberg framed as a “friendly” alternative to the little blue bird.
Threads is directly linked to Meta-owned Instagram, which has over 2 billion users. The Twitter competitor is being rolled out in over 100 countries for iOS and Android.
Meanwhile, data privacy and censorship concerns have emerged, with former Twitter owner Jack Dorsey highlighting the vast amount of data collected by Threads.
Journalist Michael Shellenberger noted that within hours of launching, Threads was already secretly censoring users and not offering them the right to appeal.
State Dept. Cancels Facebook Meetings After Judge’s ‘Censorship’ Ruling
One day after a Louisiana federal judge set new limits on the Biden administration’s communications with tech firms, the State Department canceled its regular meeting Wednesday with Facebook officials to discuss 2024 election preparations and hacking threats, according to a person at the company.
State Department officials said all future meetings, which had been held monthly, have been “canceled pending further guidance,” the person said, speaking on condition that they not be named in order to preserve working relationships. “Waiting to see if CISA cancels tomorrow,” the person added, referring to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
The cancellation of regular meetings between Facebook parent company Meta — the world’s largest social media firm — and U.S. government agencies shows the immediate impact of Tuesday’s order by U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Trump appointee. The order is a win for the right in a broader battle over the role of social media companies in shaping online speech and information.
While the ruling won’t stop sites such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or TikTok from moderating online content, it stands to sideline federal government officials and agencies that had become key contributors to those efforts. In the past, meetings between the State Department and Facebook in particular have flagged suspected foreign influence operations for the companies to investigate.
Biden Administration Appeals Ban on Social Media Contacts
The Biden administration on Wednesday appealed a federal judge’s ruling restricting some agencies and officials from meeting and communicating with social media companies to moderate their content, according to a court filing.
The notice of appeal filed on Wednesday signals the government’s plan to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans to review the ruling in a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s efforts to persuade social media companies to police posts it considered disinformation.
The injunction issued on Tuesday barred government agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI from talking to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech” under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
U.S. Spies Are Buying Americans’ Private Data. Congress Has a New Chance to Stop It
A “must-pass” defense bill wending its way through the United States House of Representatives may be amended to abolish the government practice of buying information on Americans that the country’s highest court has said police need a warrant to seize. Though it’s far too early to assess the odds of the legislation surviving the coming months of debate, it’s currently one of the relatively few amendments to garner support from both Republican and Democratic members.
The introduction of the amendment follows a report declassified by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — the nation’s top spy — which last month revealed that intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been buying up data on Americans that the government’s own experts described as “the same type” of information the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 sought to shield against warrantless searches and seizures.
A handful of House lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats alike, have declared support for the amendment submitted late last week by representatives Warren Davidson, a Republican from Ohio, and Sara Jacobs, a California Democrat.
“Warrantless mass surveillance infringes the Constitutionally protected right to privacy,” says Davidson. The amendment, he says, is aimed chiefly at preventing the government from “circumventing the Fourth Amendment” by purchasing “your location data, browsing history or what you look at online.”
New York System Lifts Vaccine Mandate
Becker’s Hospital Review reported:
Rochester (N.Y.) Regional Health will no longer require the COVID-19 vaccine for employment, according to a news release shared with Becker’s.
The change, effective July 7, follows the repeal of the New York State Department of Health mandate and the recent announcement by the federal government regarding the end of the COVID-19 vaccine requirement for healthcare workers at CMS-certified healthcare facilities.
The health system is also inviting back former employees who left RRH due to the state vaccine mandate. They may learn more and apply for open positions here.
Other New York health systems, including Rome (NY) Health and Syracuse, NY-based St. Joseph’s Health, have removed their respective vaccine requirements in the wake of the state’s repeal.
The Online Safety Bill ‘Undermines Safety Online,’ Warn Experts Amid Encryption Blast
Nearly 70 U.K.-affiliated information security researchers, scientists and cryptographers are the latest to voice their concerns over the security risks of the Online Safety Bill.
The controversial Act made its return to Parliament last week, and it’s expected to get back to the Commons for the last review stage very soon. Commentators — including encrypted messaging apps, VPN services and other security software providers — have long been calling the government against the danger of breaking encryption.
The infamous Bill seeks to place itself as an effective response to the rise in child sexual abuse online, and any other dangers to citizens’ safety on the net. Yet, by attempting to make the U.K. the safest place to be online, politicians seem to be achieving exactly the opposite outcome.
U.K. Court Rejects a Government Bid to Withhold Boris Johnson’s Messages From a COVID Inquiry
A U.K. court on Thursday rejected the British government’s request to keep former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages and diaries from being made public at an official COVID-19 inquiry.
The Cabinet Office took the unusual step of bringing a legal challenge after the retired judge chairing the inquiry into Britain’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic ordered the Conservative government to release full copies of Johnson’s documents.
Government officials argued that the inquiry did not have the legal power to force them to release documents and messages that they said were “unambiguously irrelevant” to how the government handled COVID-19.
The judges who ruled in the Cabinet Office’s case said the requested documents included WhatsApp messages exchanged between officials who were dealing with COVID-19. They added that Johnson’s diaries and notebooks were also “very likely to contain information about decision-making” relating to the pandemic.
France Passes New Bill Allowing Police to Remotely Activate Cameras on Citizens’ Phones
Amidst ongoing protests in France, the country has just passed a new bill that will allow police to remotely access suspects’ cameras, microphones, and GPS on cell phones and other devices.
As reported by Le Monde, the bill has been criticized by the French people as a “snoopers” charter that allows police unfettered access to the location of its citizens. Moreover, police can activate cameras and microphones to take video and audio recordings of suspects.
The bill will reportedly only apply to suspects in crimes that are punishable by a minimum of five years in jail and Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti claimed that the new provision would only affect a few dozen cases per year.
During a debate over the bill yesterday, French politicians added an amendment that orders judge approval for any surveillance conducted under the scope of the bill and limits the duration of surveillance to six months, according to Le Monde.
Social Media Could Be as Harmful to Children as Smoking or Gambling — Why Is This Allowed? + More
Social Media Could Be as Harmful to Children as Smoking or Gambling — Why Is This Allowed?
If we go back to the 1980s and 1990s, parenting was often about keeping children physically safe. A moody 14-year-old wanting to be alone in their room was a normal thing — in fact, this was sufficient to protect them. Parents had clear oversight over who their kids were around at home, and the physical materials they were consuming.
Fast-forward to 2023 and children are in their rooms at home, but while physically safe, they’re exposed to an entire virtual world with almost no regulation over the content they see, how much time they’re spending on devices or the boundary between necessary social communication with friends and a much darker world of harmful or pornographic material, and predatory influencers.
Compounding the problems facing teenagers and parents is the fact that apps are often designed deliberately to be addictive, or used compulsively. They regularly turn social interactions into games — like Snapchat’s “Snapstreak” feature that scores a user for the number of consecutive days they share a picture with each contact, encouraging them to be available on the app constantly.
Apps also come with many safety and oversight concerns. Snapchat popularized disappearing messages, meaning parents can’t check what their child has been viewing or posting, and many apps share the user’s location with others by default. Teenagers and children may not even know that they’re sharing live data on their location throughout the day.
This is exactly what public regulation is for. Like policies for tobacco, alcohol or gambling, it can ensure that when private companies sell a product with potential negative health impacts, they do so in a way that follows certain guidelines and protects vulnerable users from being completely exposed.
Judge: Admin’s Tinkering With COVID Posts Is ‘Orwellian’
A federal judge in Louisiana ruled Tuesday that the Biden administration’s efforts to influence social media posts about COVID-19 likely violated the first amendment, POLITICO’s Matt Berg and Josh Gerstein report.
The Trump-appointed U.S. District Court judge, Terry Doughty, called the administration’s efforts “Orwellian,” issuing a sweeping preliminary injunction that bars a number of federal officials from having any contact with social media firms to discourage or remove First Amendment-protected speech.
The judge’s decision cites a wide range of health topics that he says “were suppressed” on social media at the urging of administration officials, including opposition to COVID vaccines, masking and lockdowns — as well as the lab-leak theory.
Meta’s Threads App Is a Privacy Nightmare That Won’t Launch in EU Yet
Meta’s planned Twitter killer, Threads, isn’t yet publicly available but it already looks like a privacy nightmare.
Information provided about the app’s privacy via mandatory disclosures required on iOS shows the app may collect highly sensitive information about users in order to profile their digital activity — including health and financial data, precise location, browsing history, contacts, search history and other sensitive information.
Given that Meta, the developer behind the app, the company formerly known as Facebook, makes its money from tracking and profiling web users to sell their attention via its behavioral advertising microtargeting tools this is hardly surprising.
But it does raise questions over whether Threads will be able to launch in the European Union where the legal basis Meta had claimed for processing Facebook users’ personal data (performance of a contract) was found unlawful at the start of this year.
Wheelchair Tennis Boss Sacked for Refusing COVID Jab Wins £27,000 Payout
A wheelchair tennis executive was sacked after she refused to get a COVID vaccine despite the Government ending nearly all restrictions at the time, a tribunal heard.
Sarah Synan sued the International Tennis Federation (ITF) after it enforced “particularly severe restrictions” against her when she fell foul of its “hard-line” COVID policy by refusing to get a shot.
Ahead of the U.S. Masters in October 2021, the ITF enforced a strict policy that employees must be double-jabbed to travel — even though there were no requirements to be vaccinated to enter the country at the time. Then on Feb. 22, 2022 — the day after the Government announced the end of the legal requirement to self-isolate after a positive COVID test — Miss Synan was sacked from her £37,500 post as wheelchair tennis “team lead.”
She successfully sued the ITF for unfair dismissal and won £27,465 in compensation, after the tribunal ruled it would have been obvious to the federation that COVID-19 difficulties were clearing up and firing her was unreasonable.
CJEU Ruling on Meta Referral Could Close the Chapter on Surveillance Capitalism
Mark your calendar European friends: July 4th could soon be celebrated as independence-from-Meta’s-surveillance-capitalism-day. A long-anticipated judgment handed down today by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) looks to have comprehensively crushed the social media giant’s ability to keep flouting EU privacy law by denying users a free choice over its tracking and profiling.
The ruling tracks back to a pioneering order by Germany’s antitrust watchdog, the Federal Cartel Office (FCO), which spent years investigating Facebook’s business — making the case that privacy harm should be treated as an exploitative competition abuse too.
In its February 2019 order, the FCO told Facebook (as Meta still was back then) to stop combining data on users across its own suite of social platforms without their consent. Meta sought to block the order in the German courts — eventually sparking the referral of Meta’s so-called “super profiling” to the CJEU in March 2021.
Now we have the top court’s take and, well, it’s not going to spark any celebrations at Meta HQ, that’s for sure.
DeWine Signs State Budget After 44 Line-Item Vetoes Dealing With Vaccine Mandates, Tobacco Regulation and More
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has signed a new $86.1 billion two-year budget after using his line-item veto power to remove 44 provisions passed by the General Assembly.
Items struck from the budget by veto include a provision allowing a student to decline vaccines that are required for enrollment or residence in university dorms at a private college or state college or university.
In his veto message, DeWine wrote that “university and college dormitories and student housing are congregate settings where such policy may be of great importance to ensure resident safety. This item is overly broad and may compromise the overall health and safety of students, residents, staff, and faculty at the institution.”
Spain Calls an End to COVID Health Crisis and Obligatory Use of Masks in Hospitals, Pharmacies
The Spanish government on Tuesday declared an end to the health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and says people no longer have to wear masks in health and care centers as well as pharmacies.
Over the past two years, Spain has gradually ended mandatory mask-wearing, first in public and then on public transport.
The government approved the measure at a weekly Cabinet meeting. It takes effect once it’s published in the State Gazette in the coming days.
Google Says It’ll Scrape Everything You Post Online for AI + More
Google Says It’ll Scrape Everything You Post Online for AI
Google updated its privacy policy over the weekend, explicitly saying the company reserves the right to scrape just about everything you post online to build its AI tools. If Google can read your words, assume they belong to the company now, and expect that they’re nesting somewhere in the bowels of a chatbot.
Fortunately for history fans, Google maintains a history of changes to its terms of service. The new language amends an existing policy, spelling out new ways your online musings might be used for the tech giant’s AI tools work.
Previously, Google said the data would be used “for language models,” rather than “AI models,” and where the older policy just mentioned Google Translate, Bard and Cloud AI now make an appearance.
This is an unusual clause for a privacy policy. Typically, these policies describe ways that a business uses the information that you post on the company’s own services. Here, it seems Google reserves the right to harvest and harness data posted on any part of the public web as if the whole internet is the company’s own AI playground. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Vax Mandate Suits Get Lift From New Religious Accommodation Test
Workers with religious objections to vaccine mandates have stronger legal claims now that the U.S. Supreme Court has developed a new standard strengthening protections for workplace religious accommodations.
The court unanimously ruled on June 29 that an employer cannot deny a religious accommodation under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act unless it can show that the burden of granting that accommodation “would result in substantial increased costs” to the business.
This change will impact faith-related discrimination cases currently winding their way through the administrative and judicial system, including those concerning COVID-19 vaccine mandates, lawyers told Bloomberg Law.
The facts in each case may vary, but the new standard nonetheless provides plaintiffs with stronger arguments that seeking an exemption from vaccine policies on religious grounds is a reasonable accommodation, said Matt Durham of Dorsey & Whitney LLP.
New York Will Shut Down Its COVID-Era Vaccination App
A $64 million mobile app used by New Yorkers during the pandemic to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test will be shut down in the coming weeks, according to state officials.
The Excelsior Pass app, a digital relic of the pandemic, has rarely been used during the past two years, but it costs the state at least $200,000 a month to maintain, according to the Times Union of Albany. The app will be decommissioned on July 28, and state officials say the stored personal data will remain “private and secure.”
The app was launched in 2021 and was used by 11.5 million people. It stored a person’s vaccination status against the coronavirus and could quickly indicate whether someone was up to date with vaccine requirements for admittance to certain places like outdoor dining restaurants or major entertainment venues.
Broadway Has Dropped Vaccine Mandate, COVID Testing Requirements
The Hollywood Reporter reported:
In May, Broadway quietly dropped its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for Broadway actors and workers and moved to a more lenient testing model, which allows individual productions not to test cast and crew members on a weekly basis or to test as often as they want.
The decision to let the vaccine mandate expire, which had been set by Broadway producers in July 2021, came as part of a periodic review of COVID-19 protocols by the Broadway League, the trade association for producers and general managers, according to a spokesperson. The language now reads: “Employees are encouraged to stay up to date on COVID-19 immunizations.”
Online Roulette: The Popular Chat Sites That Are Drawing in Children and Horrifying Parents
Omegle is a type of video and chat roulette, with the tagline: “Talk to strangers!” There’s no need to register or log in, and you don’t need an app. Just go to the website, tick a box saying you’re 18 or above and you’re away — even if you’re not 18. Parents tell Guardian Australia that “playing” on Omegle is something kids do at parties, at sleepovers. It just takes one of the group to have a screen with internet access and before long they are chatting to strangers all over the world.
When Guardian Australia tried it, it was a whirlwind of man after man in a darkened room, waiting. You clock the stranger then chat or click and move on. Click, another man, click, another man. Click, three young girls sitting on a bed in their pajamas.
The Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) has recorded a dramatic increase in reports of online child sexual exploitation, from 17,400 in 2018 to 33,114 in 2021. The eSafety commissioner has warned that reports about technology being “weaponized to abuse children” surged since the start of the pandemic.
There has been a recent focus on the internet giants and what they are doing to combat abuse, but Omegle flies a little more under the radar. As does Roblox, a digital platform where people can make and share games and interact with other users’ avatars.
Meta’s New Facebook Parental Controls Show Social Media Still Doesn’t Like Responsibility
Social media platforms have been facing criticism for their influence on young minds for at least a decade, and now Meta, Instagram’s and Facebook’s parent company, is implementing new features to actively address such concerns, such as the impact on teens’ mental health, across its platforms. These features include new parental supervision tools and privacy features.
Now, personally, I can see a lot of kids and teens simply choosing to not opt-in (I know I wouldn’t have), but what happens if a child does opt-in? Well, then the parents gain some control over their account, allowing them to impose a time limit, see and track who their teen/child follows or is followed by, and monitor how much time their kid spends on Instagram. However, the parents will not be privy to message content, which will remain private and encrypted.
It seems to me, the psychological problems caused and exacerbated by social media affect many demographics and age groups, with children being one of the most affected.
Social media companies still have plenty of incentive to keep us on their platforms for as long as possible, and this desire to keep us engaged appears to conflict with their responsibilities to safeguard their users — especially vulnerable ones. It seems if users really want to make sure they — and their loved ones — remain safe online, then the responsibility once again falls on the user.
Musk’s Tweet-Limiting Move Is to Prevent the Completion of the ‘AI-Censorship-Death-Star’
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock this weekend, you will know that Twitter CEO Elon Musk said Saturday that the social media platform will limit how many tweets users can read due to “extreme” levels of system manipulation and data scraping. Musk said in a statement that Twitter has applied the following temporary limits on users, with new unverified accounts limited to reading just 600 posts per day.
Musk said at the time that hundreds of organizations or more were scraping Twitter data “extremely aggressively,” with a negative impact on user experience. However, there may be more to this than ‘user experience’ deterioration, or an effort by Musk to force more monetization.
Musk hinted at the ‘other’ reason in April, when he threatened to sue Microsoft, which has invested billions into OpenAI, after accusing the company of using Twitter data for training. This brings us to Mike Benz’s excellent discussion this morning of what may really be going on behind the scenes, that yet again — the world’s richest man could be the only one uncancellable enough to battle.
Benz begins his trek with the statement: “AI censorship is where all of the magic happens.” He points out, the Twitter Files showed how The FBI might come in and get 22 tweets censored, but AI is how IEP (and other 3rd-party censorship groups) were able to get 22 million tweets censored.”
Before 2016, Benz explains, you could not ‘control’ the internet; but since then, there has been an “AI Censorship Deathstar” under construction, which “relies on massive scraping of Twitter data to track trending narratives, to systemically surveil, to build intelligence dossiers, and to track and turn down — all at once — communities online.”
Stop Using Google Analytics, Warns Sweden’s Privacy Watchdog, as It Issues Over $1 Million in Fines
Sweden’s data protection watchdog has issued a couple of fines in relation to exports of European users’ data via Google Analytics which it found breached the bloc’s privacy rulebook owing to risks posed by U.S. government surveillance. It has also warned other companies against the use of Google’s tool.
The fines — just over $1.1 million for Swedish telco Tele2 and less than $30k for local online retailer CDON — are notable as they are the first such fines following a raft of strategic privacy complaints targeting Google Analytics (and Facebook Connect) back in August 2020.