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Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers Whistleblower, Dies at 92 + More
Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers Whistleblower, Dies at 92
Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who exposed the U.S. government’s lies about the Vietnam War by leaking the Pentagon Papers to some of the nation’s top newspapers, has died, his family said in a statement on Friday. He was 92.
Ellsberg’s demise came about four months after he announced on Twitter that he had been diagnosed with “inoperable pancreatic cancer.”
Ellsberg was working as an analyst for the RAND Corporation in 1969 when he and a colleague named Anthony Russo secretly photocopied a 7,000-page study privately commissioned by the Defense Department which revealed the U.S. government knew early on the Vietnam War could not be won.
Initially, Ellsberg and Russo offered the study to several members of Congress and government officials before deciding to leak it to the newspapers.
Meta Rolls Back Measures to Tackle COVID Misinformation
Meta Platforms said on Friday that a policy put in place to curb the spread of misinformation related to COVID-19 on Facebook and Instagram would no longer be in effect globally.
Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter came under immense pressure to tackle misinformation related to the pandemic, including false claims about vaccines, prompting them to take stringent measures.
Earlier in 2021, Facebook said it took down 1.3 billion fake accounts between October and December and removed more than 12 million pieces of content on COVID-19 and vaccines that global health experts flagged as misinformation.
Meta said on Friday that the rules would still stand in countries that still have a COVID-19 public health emergency declaration, and the company would continue to remove content that violates its coronavirus misinformation policies.
Elon Musk Expects Neuralink to Do Its First Implantation in Humans Later This Year
Elon Musk said on Friday that his brain-chip startup Neuralink expects to do its first human device implantation hopefully later this year.
The billionaire was speaking at the Paris VivaTech event. Last month, Neuralink received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for its first-in-human clinical trial, a critical milestone for the startup as it faces U.S. probes over its handling of animal experiments.
In a First, FTC Charges Genetic Testing Firm Over Failure to Protect Data
The Federal Trade Commission has charged a genetic testing company with failing to protect customers’ genetic data, marking the agency’s first case focused on the privacy and security of genetic information.
San Francisco-based 1Health.io, formerly known as Vitagene, sold DNA health test kits and test results to provide consumers with reports about their health, wellness, and ancestry as part of product packages costing as much as $259. The company claimed to apply an “ironclad” standard of cybersecurity to its handling of customer data in these sales.
According to the FTC’s complaint, the company failed to keep several core promises, including its claims that it would not store DNA results with a customer’s name or other identifying information; that consumers could delete their personal information at any time, wiping it from the company’s servers; and that it would destroy DNA saliva samples shortly after they were analyzed.
Moreover, the company did not have agreements in place with third parties requiring them to destroy DNA samples, raising questions about what might have happened to the samples, the FTC said.
Montgomery County Public Schools Joins Federal Social Media Lawsuit
Montgomery County Public Schools is joining hundreds of school systems around the country in a lawsuit against social media companies that are behind Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and other websites, arguing that social media has fueled a youth mental health crisis.
The school system — which is Maryland’s largest with over 160,000 students — joins roughly 500 districts already signed onto the suit, according to the Frantz Law Firm, which announced Montgomery’s involvement in a news release on Tuesday. Several Maryland districts, including Prince George’s, Cecil and Carroll County are also involved in the suit.
Legal action against the companies started in January with a lawsuit by Seattle Public Schools. The school systems involved allege that social media companies have fueled a mental and emotional health crisis that has caused “anxiety, depression, thoughts of self-harm, body dissatisfaction, disordered eating behaviors, and low self-esteem among children and students,” according to the news release from the law firm.
The suit seeks funding and staffing resources to mitigate some of the costs school districts are incurring to address the crisis.
Forget About the AI Apocalypse. The Real Dangers Are Already Here
Two weeks after members of Congress questioned OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the potential for artificial intelligence tools to spread misinformation, disrupt elections and displace jobs, he and others in the industry went public with a much more frightening possibility: an AI apocalypse.
Altman, whose company is behind the viral chatbot tool ChatGPT, joined Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Microsoft’s CTO Kevin Scott and dozens of other AI researchers and business leaders in signing a one-sentence letter last month stating: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
Some AI industry experts say that focusing attention on far-off scenarios may distract from the more immediate harms that a new generation of powerful AI tools can cause to people and communities, including spreading misinformation, perpetuating biases and enabling discrimination in various services.
“Motives seemed to be mixed,” Gary Marcus, an AI researcher and New York University professor emeritus who testified before lawmakers alongside Altman last month, told CNN. Some of the execs are likely “genuinely worried about what they have unleashed,” he said, but others may be trying to focus attention on “abstract possibilities to detract from the more immediate possibilities.”
Amazon’s $1.7 Billion iRobot Acquisition Greenlighted by U.K. Antitrust Regulator
The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has given the go-ahead to Amazon’s proposed billion-dollar iRobot acquisition, concluding that the deal “would not lead to competition concerns in the U.K.”
Amazon first revealed plans to buy robot vacuum maker iRobot for $1.7 billion last August, though the megabucks deal was always likely to draw scrutiny from regulators. The European Commission (EC) will decide by July 6 whether to clear the deal (with or without remedies) or launch a full-scale investigation, while the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the U.S. is also currently mulling an official investigation into the deal.
The FTC did recently greenlight Amazon’s $3.9 billion One Medical acquisition, though it is reportedly pushing to stop Microsoft’s planned $68.7 billion Activision acquisition.
Major Louisville Hospital System Ends COVID Vaccine Mandate for Employees
Louisville Courier Journal reported:
Norton Healthcare has ended its COVID-19 vaccination mandate for all employees, a spokesperson with the company said.
Maggie Roetker, Norton’s director of public relations, said workers were notified Wednesday. The new policy is effective immediately.
Roetker said the update on vaccine mandates goes along with new regulations enacted by accrediting agency DNV along with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, two federal agencies.
Treat Big Tech Like Big Tobacco to Protect Our Kids + More
Treat Big Tech Like Big Tobacco to Protect Our Kids
Just like Big Tobacco targeted young kids knowing their products were harmful, Big Tech is doing the same thing with another product line. When are we going to wake up? The time to act is NOW!
When the surgeon general warned that smoking could cause physical health problems, it ushered in momentous change across America. That change resulted in the tobacco industry being required to fund a massive education campaign.
Now, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is warning that social media can cause mental health problems and other risks for children. Feelings of isolation and depression fueled by social media platforms further exacerbated the isolation and depression stemming from COVID-19. The extent to which children are trafficked and preyed upon, depicted in sexually abusive ways, and exposed to depravity on these platforms is sickening.
Given this deteriorating digital environment, will the surgeon general’s warning again usher in momentous change? It’s time to urge Big Tech to fund a national education campaign like Big Tobacco.
University of Delaware Agrees to Settle Class-Action Suit Over COVID Campus Shutdown
The University of Delaware has agreed to pay $6.3 million to settle a lawsuit over its campus shutdown in 2020 and the halting of in-person classes because of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to court papers that were filed this month and signed by the plaintiffs and university president Dennis Assanis, some 21,000 current and former students could receive cash reimbursements. While agreeing to settle the case, the university continues to deny all allegations of wrongdoing.
Court records indicate that the university reached an agreement in principle in late April, less than a month after a federal judge ruled that the case could proceed as a class action on behalf of thousands of students who were enrolled and paid tuition in the spring semester of 2020, when the campus was shut down.
Under the settlement, which is awaiting final court approval, the university will pay $6.3 million into an escrow account overseen by a settlement administrator. Of that amount, plaintiffs’ attorneys will receive $2.1 million in fees and up to $250,000 in reimbursement for expenses. The five students who were named plaintiffs in the lawsuit are entitled to payments of $5,000 each as class representatives.
Google, One of AI’s Biggest Backers, Warns Own Staff About Chatbots
Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) is cautioning employees about how they use chatbots, including its own Bard, at the same time as it markets the program around the world, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The Google parent has advised employees not to enter its confidential materials into AI chatbots, the people said and the company confirmed, citing long-standing policy on safeguarding information.
The chatbots, Bard and ChatGPT, are human-sounding programs that use so-called generative artificial intelligence to hold conversations with users and answer myriad prompts. Human reviewers may read the chats, and researchers found that similar AI could reproduce the data it absorbed during training, creating a leak risk.
The concerns show how Google wishes to avoid business harm from the software it launched in competition with ChatGPT. At stake, in Google’s race against ChatGPT’s backers, OpenAI and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) are billions of dollars of investment and still untold advertising and cloud revenue from new AI programs.
A growing number of businesses around the world have set up guardrails on AI chatbots, among them Samsung (005930.KS), Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), the companies told Reuters. Apple (AAPL.O), which did not return requests for comment, reportedly has as well.
Ted Cruz: Congress ‘Doesn’t Know What the Hell It’s Doing’ With AI Regulation
Congress “doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing” when it comes to regulating artificial intelligence, Sen. Ted Cruz said on Thursday.
When asked about AI regulation in an interview with POLITICO Editor-in-Chief Matt Kaminski during POLITICO’s Global Tech Day, Cruz said lawmakers should proceed cautiously and listen to experts — since most lawmakers don’t understand the technology.
The debate over how or whether to regulate artificial intelligence technology, like ChatGPT, has taken Washington by storm as of late with its potential to lead to dramatic innovations in research but also eventually replace workers.
However, lawmakers are struggling to balance between setting rules for the road for the nascent tech while also ensuring they don’t over-regulate it and stifle U.S. leadership and innovation in the space.
If Beijing succeeds in its goal to lead the world on AI, “that would be profoundly dangerous to the United States from a national defense perspective, but also certainly from an economic perspective,” Cruz said.
TikTok May Have a Path Forward in the U.S. Without a Sale or Ban
U.S. lawmakers just put forth a bipartisan bill that would regulate how companies including TikTok share U.S. data, and it could address some of the major security concerns surrounding the app.
The legislation, led by Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, and Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming, would restrict foreign-owned companies from accessing U.S. data from abroad or sending data to “unfriendly foreign nations,” CNN first reported. It’s an updated version of a bill that was previously introduced.
The bill would also regulate all exports of personal data — not just those deemed “sensitive” based on national security concerns — by data brokers and other companies like TikTok to “restricted foreign” governments and parent companies in those regions, among other entities.
Europe Is Leading the Race to Regulate AI. Here’s What You Need to Know
The European Union took a major step Wednesday toward setting rules — the first in the world — on how companies can use artificial intelligence. It’s a bold move that Brussels hopes will pave the way for global standards for a technology used in everything from chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT to surgical procedures and fraud detection at banks.
“We have made history today,” Brando Benifei, a member of the European Parliament working on the EU AI Act, told journalists. Lawmakers have agreed a draft version of the Act, which will now be negotiated with the Council of the European Union and EU member states before becoming law.
At the Yale CEO Summit this week, more than 40% of business leaders — including Walmart chief Doug McMillion and Coca-Cola (KO) CEO James Quincy — said AI had the potential to destroy humanity five to 10 years from now.
Against that backdrop, the EU AI Act seeks to “promote the uptake of human-centric and trustworthy artificial intelligence and to ensure a high level of protection of health, safety, fundamental rights, democracy and rule of law and the environment from harmful effects.”
Campaigners Urge London Food Banks to End Use of Face Scans
Privacy advocates are urging food banks to stop using facial recognition software, claiming it poses a serious risk to users’ “privacy, dignity and security.”
Several food banks in London are asking users to submit face scans to allow them to choose food from shops. The Face Donate app-based system also has the potential to track purchases.
Silkie Carlo, the director of the Big Brother Watch campaign group, is urging the charity to halt the system, arguing it is wrong to ask people to “trade-sensitive biometric data for food.”
U.S. Intelligence Has Amassed ‘Sensitive and Intimate’ Data on ‘Nearly Everyone’ + More
U.S. Intelligence Has Amassed ‘Sensitive and Intimate’ Data on ‘Nearly Everyone’
When it comes to data privacy in our present, hyper-connected age, many of your worst fears and biggest anxieties are probably correct. Yes, smartphones and our manifold other devices collect an incredible array of information on our habits, choices, and movements at all times.
Yes, all of this information is compiled by companies to sell for profit. Yes, the U.S. government is among the many clients buying up that data. And yes, it represents a significant and persistent threat to your civil liberties and safety, as confirmed in a newly released report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) — the top dog among all of our nation’s spy agencies.
The declassified document made public on Friday, was completed in January 2022, following 90 days of assessment. It was commissioned by Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence in the Biden Administration, at the behest of Oregon Senator Ron Wyden. Haines agreed to look into the issue of how U.S. intelligence uses commercially available data during her confirmation hearing, and now the result of that inquiry is fully on display.
The newly released report affirms a mounting bevy of evidence that government agencies — from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Pentagon — are compiling vast stores of for-sale data.
Taken altogether, the information that the government is easily able to purchase from data brokers rivals anything that’s been available to intelligence agencies in the past — even through warrants, wiretaps, and Fourth Amendment due process.
Suicide Hotlines Promise Anonymity. Dozens of Their Websites Send Sensitive Data to Facebook
Websites for mental health crisis resources across the country — which promise anonymity for visitors, many of whom are at a desperate moment in their lives — have been quietly sending sensitive visitor data to Facebook, The Markup has found.
Dozens of websites tied to the national mental health crisis 988 hotline, which launched last summer, transmit the data through a tool called the Meta Pixel, according to testing conducted by The Markup. That data often included signals to Facebook when visitors attempted to dial for mental health emergencies by tapping on dedicated call buttons on the websites.
In some cases, filling out contact forms on the sites transmitted hashed but easily unscrambled names and email addresses to Facebook.
The Markup’s testing revealed that more than 30 crisis center websites employed the Meta Pixel, formerly called the Facebook Pixel. The pixel, a short snippet of code included on a webpage that enables advertising on Facebook, is a free and widely used tool. A 2020 Markup investigation found that 30% of the web’s most popular sites use it.
Rep. Kiley Slams HHS for ‘Forcing’ Mask Mandates on 2-Year-Olds During the COVID Pandemic
Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., harangued Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra Tuesday on why the government forced 2-year-olds to wear masks without evidence of public health benefits.
During a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing Tuesday, titled “Examining the Policies and Priorities of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS),” Kiley shared his concerns over why young children were required to wear masks during the coronavirus pandemic and demanded to know if “forcing 2-year-olds to wear masks save[d] lives?”
When Becerra did not say if there were any public health benefits to the child mask mandate, Kiley turned up the heat and accused him of avoiding the question. The Republican congressman also asked why HHS policy did not align with “the international norm” that did not require young kids to wear masks. Becerra again did not directly answer the question.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, HHS policy required children as young as 2 to wear masks, even when outdoors. While most states no longer enforce COVID-19 health mandates, the HHS website, last updated in February 2023, still states that masking helps prevent the spread of COVID among “children under 2 who cannot wear masks.”
Texas Bans Kids From Social Media Without Parental Consent
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill Tuesday banning kids under 18 from joining a wide variety of social media sites without parental consent.
The bill, HB 18, requires social media companies to receive explicit consent from a minor’s parent or guardian before they’d be allowed to create their own accounts starting in September of next year. It also forces these companies to prevent children from seeing “harmful” content — like content related to eating disorders, substance abuse, or “grooming” — by creating new filtering systems.
Texas’ definition of a “digital service” is extremely broad. Under the law, parental consent would be necessary for kids trying to access nearly any site that collects identifying information, like an email address. There are some exceptions, including sites that primarily deliver educational or news content and email services. The Texas attorney general could sue companies found to have violated this law.
The law’s requirements to filter loosely defined “harmful material” and provide parents with control over their child’s accounts mirror language in some federal legislation that has spooked civil and digital rights groups.
A Massive Vaccine Database Leak Exposes IDs of Millions of Indians
On the evening of June 11, a journalist from the Kerala-based news portal The Fourth reported that a Telegram bot in a channel called “hak4learn” was offering access to the private data of millions of Indians.
All a user had to do was put in a phone number or Aadhaar (India’s national ID) number, and it would return details including their name, passport number, and date of birth. The data appears to have come from India’s CoWIN vaccination tracking app, which has more than 1 billion registered users.
“The scale of the data breach is what makes it hard to guess the repercussions,” says Srikanth Lakshmanan, a researcher who runs the digital payments collective Cashless Consumer. “Conservative estimates mean at least personal data of several hundred million users was exposed.”
The CIA Is Begging Congress to Please Keep Spying on U.S. Citizens Legal
High-level officials from the CIA, FBI, and NSA are testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, asking Congress to continue allowing the agency to spy on the communications of U.S. citizens.
They are urging Congress to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — one of the nation’s most hotly contested government surveillance programs. Intelligence agencies have long cited the powerful 2008 FISA provision as an invaluable tool to effectively combat global terrorism, but critics, including an increasing number of lawmakers from both parties, say those same agencies have morphed the provision into an unchecked, warrantless domestic spying tool. The provision is set to expire at the end of this year.
Federal agents urged lawmakers to reauthorize 702 without adding new reforms that could potentially slow down or impair operators’ access to intelligence. The officials danced around advocates’ concerns of civil liberty violations and instead chose to focus on a wide array of purported national security threats they say could become reality without the “model piece of legislation.”
Multiple intelligence agents speaking Tuesday invoked the specter of September 11th and warned lawmakers new safeguards limiting agents’ ability to rapidly access and share intelligence on Americans could risk a repeat scenario.
“I will only support the reauthorization of section 702 If there are significant, significant reforms,” Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin said. “And that means, first and foremost, addressing the warrantless surveillance of Americans in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
Forget ChatGPT: Facial Recognition Emerges as AI Rulebook’s Make-or-Break Issue
The battle brewing over artificial intelligence in Brussels is about facial recognition.
On Tuesday, the European Parliament’s plenary passed its version of the Artificial Intelligence Act after two years of wrangling. The text — backed by a coalition of Socialists and Democrats, center-right Christian Democrats of the EPP, liberals from Renew, and Greens — passed by a large margin, with 499 lawmakers giving it their final approval, 28 voting against and 93 abstaining. Yet until the very end, one issue threatened to scupper the deal: The Parliament’s text, as presented, would ban facial recognition.
The Parliament wants to crack down on the use of facial recognition in public places, an area considered one of artificial intelligence’s riskiest uses.
AIs powering facial-recognition cameras (and tools designed to identify individuals relying on other biometric indicators) are dogged by biases, sometimes struggling to tell non-white people apart, for instance. Politicians also support the ban as a way to differentiate between Europe’s approach to AI and that of authoritarian countries.
NJ Drops COVID Vaccine Mandate for Healthcare Workers
Melissa Alfieri-Collins never received a COVID-19 vaccine. The registered nurse declined to be vaccinated after the pandemic hit, granted a religious exemption from Jersey Shore University Medical Center, where she worked in the oncology unit.
But in October 2021, when Neptune Hospital said unvaccinated workers had to be regularly tested, she quit, believing the policy was unfair. Alfieri-Collins wants to be a nurse again — especially as the state grapples with a severe nursing shortage — but not if she’s forced to be immunized against the coronavirus.
“I have thousands of nurses that would be ready and willing to enter back into the workforce, but are simply just not willing to be vaccinated against COVID at this point,” said Alfieri-Collins, who advocates on behalf of about 5,000 nurses as part of the New Jersey Coalition for Vaccination Choice.
Now the 46-year-old Holmdel resident and her colleagues can get back to work. On Monday, Gov. Phil Murphy signed an executive order lifting the COVID-19 vaccination requirements for healthcare workers in New Jersey, effective immediately. The state’s pivot comes after the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced last week that it will rescind its rule requiring most employees of certified healthcare providers to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Blaming the Unvaccinated During the COVID Pandemic: The Roles of Political Ideology and Risk Perceptions in the USA
The Journal of Medical Ethics reported:
Individuals unvaccinated against COVID-19 (C19) experienced prejudice and blame for the pandemic. Because people vastly overestimate C19 risks, we examined whether these negative judgments could be partially understood as a form of scapegoating (i.e., blaming a group unfairly for an undesirable outcome) and whether political ideology (previously shown to shape risk perceptions in the USA) moderates scapegoating of the unvaccinated.
We grounded our analyses in scapegoating literature and risk perception during C19. We obtained support for our speculations through two vignette-based studies conducted in the USA in early 2022. We varied the risk profiles (age, prior infection, comorbidities) and vaccination statuses of vignette characters (eg, vaccinated, vaccinated without recent boosters, unvaccinated, unvaccinated-recovered) while keeping all other information constant.
We examine whether negative sentiments towards the C19 unvaccinated can be considered a form of scapegoating (vs a protective response against social deviants). To be clear, we make no attempt to identify a threshold after which any social threat becomes sufficiently dangerous to justify the punishment or ostracism of those who do not comply with widely endorsed mitigation measures.
However, because perceptions of what is harmful can vary and, if erroneous, can lead to suboptimal actions, we call attention to how negative judgments can be misdirected. Specifically, because C19 represents a highly uncertain situation, and there is evidence that people overestimate C19 risks, the ill will directed against the unvaccinated could lead to unjustified blaming of people who are not as much of a threat to public health as many believed.
Walensky Faces COVID Panel for Final Time as CDC Director
Rochelle Walensky, the outgoing director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Tuesday in a retrospective discussion touching on the federal government’s failures and successes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In what may likely be her final appearance before Congress before she leaves at the end of this month, Walensky was greeted with a somewhat more cordial line of questioning from Republican lawmakers on the committee, who sought to place more blame on the White House than on the CDC director for the policy failures they perceived during the pandemic.
Committee chair Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) focused much of his criticisms on President Biden, suggesting in his opening remarks that the White House had attempted to block Walensky from testifying on Tuesday. He also blasted the definitive remarks Biden made during the pandemic, such as when he said, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations” in 2021.
One of the main points of contention that GOP members of the panel brought against Walensky directly was a concern that Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), had undue access and influence over CDC’s guidance regarding school reopenings and closings.
‘Very Little Thought’ Given to ‘Damaging’ Impact Lockdown: COVID Inquiry
The COVID-19 Inquiry, the U.K.’s probe into the handling of the pandemic has officially begun its public hearings and has heard from its lead lawyer that the “potentially massive impact” of lockdowns was not considered. On Tuesday, the first full hearings started into the inquiry, which will be split into six areas, looking first into the U.K.’s handling of the coronavirus.
The aims of the COVID Inquiry will be to “examine, consider, and report on preparations and the response” to the pandemic in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.”
The inquiry’s lead counsel, Hugo Keith KC said there was very “little thought” given to lockdowns. “Very little thought was given to how, if it proved to be necessary, something as complex, difficult and damaging as a national lockdown could be put in place at all.
“Equally, there appears to have been a failure to think through the potentially massive impact on education and on the economy in trying to control a runaway virus in this way.”
Zuckerberg Admits That Censoring True Information for Establishment Undermined Trust + More
Zuckerberg Admits That Censoring True Information for the Establishment Undermined Trust
In an interview with the Lex Fridman Podcast, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, dived into the convoluted waters of content censorship and its consequences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Establishment Pressures: In the early days of the pandemic, Zuckerberg recalls how the “establishment” was scrambling and gave platforms, like Meta, mixed signals. He elaborated, “Just take some of the stuff around COVID earlier on in the pandemic, where there were real health implications, but there hadn’t been time to fully vet a bunch of the scientific assumptions, and, unfortunately, I think a lot of the establishment on that kind of waffled on a bunch of facts.”
Looking Back: The Meta CEO expressed concern about the establishment pushing platforms to enforce and censor information, which, upon reflection, “ended up being more debatable or true.”
Credibility at Stake: The hasty calls for censorship based on unsteady data played a role in shaking the foundations of trust in the scientific community. “It really undermines trust,” Zuckerberg pointed out.
White House Mandates Masks, Distancing for Unvaccinated — Despite Emergency’s End
The White House ended the national emergency over the COVID-19 pandemic weeks ago but is still mandating masking and social distancing for the unvaccinated at its events, according to a report.
Earlier this week, the White House Office of Legislative Affairs sent an invitation to members of Congress to attend “College Athlete Day,” a celebration honoring the NCAA men’s and women’s national championship teams.
The invite notes that while lawmakers will not have to take a COVID test, they will have to mask up and be socially distant if they are unvaccinated, according to Fox News, which obtained one of the emails.
‘I Have Kids That Legitimately Cannot Read’: Inside a Kansas School That Was Devastated by COVID Lockdown
Exiting from the pandemic, the assumption might be that Bekah Noel’s students should be among the least scathed. The tiny, 900-student school system in Columbus pivoted to remote learning briefly in March 2020 before going back in person that fall, initially without masks. While some U.S. students spent a year or more learning online, pandemic school in rural Kansas was as normal as it got.
But the upheaval still took a toll. Students and teachers got sick, social distancing made it hard to teach kids in small groups, and the pace of teaching ground to a crawl. Three years later, Noel has more third graders than ever who are reading below grade level. That’s the true elephant in the room.
“I have kids,” Noel said midway through the year, “that legitimately cannot read.”
Across the country, federal data show, the disruptions wrought by the pandemic were accompanied by widespread learning setbacks, even in states that saw students return quickly to in-person learning. Among those showing the largest learning losses are this year’s crop of third graders, who were in kindergarten when the pandemic hit, a foundational year for learning to read.
Novak Djokovic Wins French Open, Becomes All-Time Leader in Grand Slam Titles Despite COVID Vaccine Mandates Keeping Him out of Two Tournaments
Novak Djokovic won the French Open on Sunday defeating Casper Ruud in straight sets in the final match. For Djokovic, he now owns 23 career Grand Slam titles, one more than Rafael Nadal for most among men’s tennis players. Of course, Djokovic made headlines with his refusal to receive the COVID vaccine.
Thanks to his vaccine stance, Australia and the United States denied him entry into their countries in 2022. Because of that, Djokovic did not compete in either the Australian Open or U.S. Open last year.
Despite being left out of those two tournaments, he managed to break Nadal’s record to become the winningest men’s player in Grand Slam history.
How the Government Justifies Its Social-Media Censorship
The Wall Street Journal reported:
The organization I lead, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, represents plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden, a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s campaign to censor speech on social media. For years, officials at the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies have pressured tech companies to suppress “misinformation.”
Much of the targeted speech doesn’t deserve that Orwellian label. Some of the speech is truthful, and some are simply opinions that dissent from the government’s viewpoint. Yet even actual misinformation — with a few exceptions such as commercial fraud and defamation — is fully protected by the First Amendment. The government makes no claim that the speech it seeks to suppress is unprotected.
So how does it defend its actions? On May 3, the Justice Department filed a 297-page argument that reveals how so many officials could suppress speech with so little fear of violating the Constitution. The root of the problem is judicial negligence.
The court thereby gives the government leverage to extort censorship from dominant social-media platforms. The White House and members of Congress have explicitly threatened to reconsider Section 230’s privileges if social-media platforms don’t escalate their censorship in line with government expectations. Against this background threat, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and other agencies can get companies to suppress vast amounts of speech.
Republicans Hone Tough Questions for CDC’s Walensky as Democrats Dissent
The congressional panel investigating the U.S. government’s coronavirus response is set to hold its highest-profile hearing next week, with Republicans preparing a barrage of questions about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decisions, even as Democrats bristle at the panel’s focus and call for a new direction.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky is scheduled Tuesday to sit for questions from some of the agency’s fiercest critics in Congress, such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), in what is likely to be her final appearance on Capitol Hill as head of the nation’s premier public health agency ahead of her resignation this month.
The panel’s GOP leaders in recent weeks held hearings addressing school closures, vaccine mandates and other pandemic-era policies that they contend were poorly executed, and lawmakers said takeaways from those hearings will shape their questions to Walensky.
AI’s Hidden Toll on Our Brains
Experts warn that distinguishing what’s real from what’s not will impose a significant mental and cognitive burden on people in the AI era.
Why it matters: Misinformation has already fueled significant social problems, ranging from polarization to vaccine skepticism. AI-generated content risks intensifying those issues and making it more difficult for people to make sense of the world around them.
Driving the news: Experts are raising alarms about the mental health risks and the emotional burden of navigating an information ecosystem driven by AI that’s likely to feature even more misinformation, identity theft and fraud.
But, but, but: Similar concerns about misinformation and the difficulty of telling fact from fiction emerged with the advent of the web in the ’90s and again with the rise of social media.
Ohio Senate GOP Wants to Ban Collegiate Vaccine Mandates in the State Budget
In a revival of pandemic-era vaccine brawls, the Ohio Senate GOP proposed a plan that would essentially strip colleges of their ability to require vaccination as a term of enrollment.
Senators included the idea in their latest draft of the two-year state budget, released this week. The bill would technically still allow colleges to impose vaccine mandates but would force them to grant exemptions for students’ religious convictions or “reasons of conscience” — a catchall term.
Those reasons for declining a vaccine are to be “determined solely by the student,” according to the analysis of the bill from the Legislative Service Commission.
GOP lawmakers in the previous General Assembly introduced an array of bills aimed at outlawing vaccination mandates in public spaces or from employers and governments. Some passed one of the two chambers, though almost all of them failed to become law.
EU and WHO Planning for Introduction Digital Vaccine Passports
The European Union and World Health Organization met in Geneva last week to discuss how to combat any future pandemics, after the COVID-19 debacle.
Almost every corner of the world came to a standstill in 2020 when COVID-19 forced the majority of countries into nationwide lockdowns, restricting people to the number of times they could go outside and interact with others. However, once the vaccination was rolled out, restrictions were eased and people could mix with so many people from another household once again, but beneath the surface, it wasn’t as simple as that.
This is because people were required to have a COVID-19 vaccine passport to show they had been jabbed and this also applied to going on holidays abroad and getting into certain pubs and restaurants, which caused forms of controversy.
These didn’t last long and soon enough people and businesses grew tired of how time-consuming it was to scan barcodes for every person that entered the premises, however, some may have to get used to this once again if another pandemic breaks out.
Canadians’ Trust in Government and Science Waned Since COVID: Federal Report
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused Canadians to have an “increased distrust of government and science,” according to a report by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).
The report, based on questionnaires with 2,088 Canadians and 16 focus groups nationwide, noted that less than one quarter (22%) of those surveyed said they were more likely to trust federal agencies since the pandemic.
“In the discussion around how their trust in information sources had been affected by their pandemic experience, there were few who indicated their trust in any source had increased and many who indicated having lost trust,” said the PHAC report, titled “The Impact of the Pandemic Experience on Future Vaccine-Related Intentions And Behavior.”
OpenAI, DeepMind Will Open Up Models to U.K. Government
Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic have agreed to open up their AI models to the U.K. government for research and safety purposes, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced at London Tech Week on Monday.
The priority access will be granted in order “to help build better evaluations and help us better understand the opportunities and risks of these systems,” Sunak said.
The announcement came in a speech that championed the promise of AI to transform areas such as education and healthcare and heralded the U.K.’s potential as an “island of innovation.”
The lynchpin of these plans is a global summit on AI safety that will be held in the U.K. in the fall, first reported by POLITICO. Sunak likened the summit to an AI-version of UN COP climate change conferences.