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Bright Data Accused of Scraping Minors’ Information From Instagram + More
Bright Data Accused of Scraping Minors’ Information From Instagram
A proposed class-action suit in Israel is accusing data collection company Bright Data of selling personal information about minors that it pulled from Facebook and Instagram, allegedly in violation of local privacy laws.
Plaintiff Roni Rachmian and his 17-year-old daughter filed a claim in an Israeli court on Monday and asked that the class be extended to all users of Meta Platforms Inc.’s social media services in the country, according to the lawsuit seen by Bloomberg ahead of its filing.
They argued that their privacy was violated by Bright Data, an Israel-based company that offers social media scraping tools as a paid service. Specific demands for compensation were not set, but the lawsuit asked that a settlement be larger than ILS 2.5 million ($670,000).
Meta is separately suing Bright Data for harvesting information from Instagram and Facebook. The data collection company has responded with a counter-suit to allow it to continue the practice, maintaining that it only collects public information that isn’t login-protected. Court filings from earlier this year have revealed that Meta in the past hired Bright Data to scrape other sites, even while it condemned the practice.
A Post-Pandemic Backlash Against Vaccines
A vaccine requirement in deep-blue California that once would have seemed like an easy call has become thorny post-pandemic, POLITICO’s Rachel Bluth reports from Sacramento.
A bill that would have required the HPV vaccine for schoolchildren in California has been watered down beyond recognition, a victim of a homegrown anti-vaccine movement that’s become more organized and more successful since the pandemic.
But anti-vaccine activists didn’t do it on their own. The “most powerful thing to get [Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry] to withdraw the mandate was school districts opposing the bill,” said Joshua Coleman, who founded the group V for Vaccine to fight such requirements.
While only a handful of mostly small, rural districts formally opposed the bill, statewide education groups also started to privately pressure the Democratic lawmaker to drop or soften her proposal.
Across the country, blue-state lawmakers have nearly given up attempting to create new vaccine policies and are now simply trying to hold the line on a decade’s worth of public health gains. Attempts to add required vaccines for school kids this year sputtered in Wisconsin, California and Massachusetts, a stunning reversal after a successful push to tighten exemptions for mandated childhood vaccines.
School District Sues TikTok and Other Platforms Over Kids’ Mental Health
A Maryland school district is suing the parent companies of Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube for “intentionally cultivat[ing]” harmful product features that have created “a mental health crisis among America’s youth.” These products, the suit alleges, trigger crises that lead young people to skip school, abuse alcohol or drugs, and overall act out in ways that harm Howard County’s “ability to fulfill its educational mission.”
The county says that the strain has become so unbearable that it is at a “breaking point.”
Children, specifically, have been targeted by tech giants for corporate gain, the suit reads. Meta, ByteDance, Google, Snap, and others have focused their attention on creating “self-destructive feedback loops” that exploit the developing brains of young people to boost engagement with their products. While these products are marketed as “social,” they actively promote forms of “disconnection [and] disassociation” that drive kids to forgo “the intimacy of adolescent friendships.”
Howard County is not alone in this crusade to curb big tech‘s reach in the classroom and beyond. The Verge notes that two other school districts in Maryland, as well as districts in at least seven other states, have filed similar lawsuits over the harms of social media use by young people.
WA Faces Spate of Lawsuits From Workers Fired for Refusing COVID Vaccines
Gov. Jay Inslee recently ended the COVID-19 vaccination mandate, but for some of the public workers fired for refusing to comply, the legal battle goes on.
The state is facing more than a dozen lawsuits involving at least 180 ex-employees who allege they were unjustly forced from their jobs after asserting religious or other objections to receiving the vaccines.
The plaintiffs include state troopers, nurses, psychiatrists, mental health counselors, fish biologists and bank regulators, among others. Some had decades of state service. But their careers were cut short after they declined to meet Inslee’s October 2021 deadline to get vaccinated.
In one of the latest cases, 60 former employees of the Washington State Department of Transportation, including ferry workers, engineers and snowplow drivers, sued the state on May 9 in federal court, contending they’d been illegally terminated even though they could have continued their work safely.
BIS to Use AI to Monitor Global Bank Transactions for ‘Money Laundering’
While the IMF is currently gearing up to introduce its new global central bank digital currencies (CBDC) system called the UMU (also known as the Unicoin), The Bank for International Settlements has been busy with multiple projects designed to centralize all international banks and central banks into a single umbrella network that allows for quick cross-border transactions using digital currencies. In other words, a cashless society.
One such concept, called Project Icebreaker, dealt specifically with creating a SWIFT-like bottleneck system that would allow global banks to regulate and eventually homogenize all currencies into a single one-world exchange model that would give them the power to cut out any nation or company that does not meet their ideological approval.
The latest idea from the BIS is Project Aurora, which may be even more disturbing than Icebreaker in its implications. Aurora is designed to use “machine learning” (AI) as a tool to monitor vast flows of financial transactions from all over the world in order to identify specifically flagged patterns. The BIS says that this is meant to discover criminal money laundering structures protected by “money mules.”
However, in order for the AI to sift through global transactions in real-time, corporate banks and governments would have to create extensive streamlined access to accounts and then open the doors wide for the AI to operate with impunity.
The idea of a worldwide AI-integrated bank monitoring system in the hands of the BIS or other globalist institutions is immensely dangerous. One could even imagine a future in which personal accounts are frozen regularly for any number of infractions, from financial to political.
Why AI Panic Is Not About Safety
Is artificial intelligence (AI) as dangerous as nuclear war? Some within the tech industry are now suggesting that’s the case. But even in light of real risks, a closer look reveals that tech insiders may be seeking to benefit from creating panic around AI.
A recent statement by the newly-formed Center for AI Safety warned about the risk of “extinction” of the human race, putting ChatGPT on par with pandemics and atomic weaponry. Among the statement’s signatories are many credible scientists, but of particular note are Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, and Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind. These CEOs are also courting U.S. political figures to try and secure more rules, both giving Senate testimony and directly meeting with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Why would the CEOs of companies that have spent countless dollars on AI research suddenly be warning us that they’ve been endangering the human race this whole time? If they really believe that, why did they spend so many resources on AI in the first place?
If Altman is any indication, the industry wants to be regulated, but only on the terms that it sets. That’s a phenomenon known as regulatory capture. Masked by the language of protecting the general public, AI creators are simply pursuing their own particular interests. This becomes clear when you learn about the kind of regulations Altman would prefer. According to The New York Times, he “expressed support for rules that would require makers of large, cutting-edge AI models to register for a government-issued license.”
‘Terrifying’: Massachusetts Man Banned From Facebook After Sharing Cryptic Letter About Democracy’s Demise
A Massachusetts man helped fuel one of the biggest digital dust-ups and social-media mysteries of recent years. And after he did — Chad Jones then experienced the “terrifying” power of Big Tech titans to silence the voices of ordinary Americans.
He’s now doubling down on his efforts to speak out against tyranny in the digital town square and beyond. “The idea that they’re stifling voices as part of the normal course of business is terrifying.”
He said the experience has only stiffened his resolve to speak out on social media and other platforms. He feels that “millions of Americans” learned the same lesson when they were silenced for daring to challenge Anthony Fauci, the federal government and media during the COVID-19 panic.
‘Much Easier to Say No’: Irish Town Unites in Smartphone Ban for Young Children
On the principle of strength in numbers, parents in the Irish town of Greystones have banded together to collectively tell their children they cannot have a smartphone until secondary school.
Parents’ associations across the district’s eight primary schools have adopted a no-smartphone code to present a united front against children’s lobbying.
Schools and parents in the County Wicklow town took the initiative last month amid concern smartphones were fueling anxiety and exposing children to adult material. It is a rare example of an entire town taking joint action on the issue.
The initiative has drawn interest from parents’ associations in Ireland and abroad and prompted Ireland’s health minister, Stephen Donnelly, who lives near Greystones, to recommend it as a nationwide policy.
What the Amazon Alexa Settlement Means for Parents and Kids + More
What the Amazon Alexa Settlement Means for Parents and Kids
In the nearly ten years since Amazon launched its Alexa voice assistant, children have learned to embrace the always-on technology. They shout commands to Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant without thinking twice, asking them to play music, tell them stories or make silly jokes.
The tech’s popularity has grown in spite of privacy concerns and lawsuits. In May, the company said it had already sold more than half a billion Alexa devices.
This week, the Federal Trade Commission settled a lawsuit against Amazon over the company’s alleged failure to delete recordings of children when it should have. Regulators said Amazon would pay $25 million for violating federal child privacy laws.
If parents decide to allow devices with cameras and microphones into their homes, the first thing they should do is adjust privacy and security settings.
As for that $25 million settlement, it will not go to impacted families. Instead, like all Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act penalties, it will go straight to the U.S. Treasury.
Louisiana Moves Forward With Legislation to Relax Vaccine Requirements for K-12 Students
The Senate Education Committee unanimously advanced two bills Thursday that would relax vaccine requirements for K-12 students.
Rep. Kathy Edmonston, R-Gonzales, wrote both bills. Colleges and universities are no longer included in the bills after amendments by the committee.
House Bill 182 would prohibit COVID-19 vaccinations as a condition of enrollment or continued enrollment in any public or private K-12 schools. House Bill 399 would require schools to provide exemption information for any type of vaccine.
In current law, students may receive an exemption when entering a school from vaccinations through a doctor’s note or written dissent from parents. The proposed law would also allow this exemption for students already enrolled at the school.
Jordan Threatens Subpoena Enforcement Against Stanford In Censorship Probe
A House committee investigating how social media companies restricted speech is putting Stanford University on notice. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, says Stanford failed to comply with an April subpoena seeking information about its Internet Observatory program, The Daily Wire can reveal.
In a letter dated Thursday, Jordan told a lawyer representing Stanford that the university now has until June 14 to comply, or his committee will “be forced to consider the use of one or more enforcement mechanisms.”
The GOP-led panel has a number of options it could explore, including criminal contempt of Congress, civil enforcement, or “inherent contempt.”
Projects of the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), which was founded in 2019, attracted scrutiny amid disclosures from the Twitter Files, raising concerns among Republicans about Big Tech censorship.
Generative AI — Which Some Fear Could Contribute to the End of Humanity — Will Be a $1.3 Trillion Market Within a Decade, New Research Says
The release of AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard has created an explosion of interest in the generative AI industry, which could see revenues grow to over $1.3 trillion in the next decade, according to a report by Bloomberg Intelligence viewed by Insider.
Bloomberg’s report suggests that in 2022 the industry generated revenues of around $40 billion. By 2032, the report says, that figure could be $1.32 trillion, a compounded annual growth rate for the sector of 42%.
Hardware, however, will make up the bulk of the $1.3 trillion of revenue, accounting for $641 billion by 2032, per Bloomberg’s estimates. Of that $641 billion, $168 billion come from devices, and $473 will come from infrastructure.
The rise of AI has led to growing concerns, including from many of those crucial to its development, that the technology could cause a threat to humanity. In an open letter this week, the CEOs of major AI firms like Deepmind and OpenAI said AI poses a “risk of extinction” to humanity if not properly regulated.
Military Drone Attacks Human Operator in Hypothetical Scenario
Military groups are only some of many organizations researching artificial intelligence, but one hypothetical thought experiment presented to the U.S. Air Force found that artificial intelligence rebelled against its operator in a fatal attack to accomplish its mission.
Artificial intelligence continues to evolve and affect every sector of business, and it was a popular topic of conversation during the Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit at the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAS) headquarters in London on May 23 and May 24. According to a report by the RAS, presentations discussing the use of AI in defense abounded.
AI is already prevalent in the U.S. military, such as the use of drones that can recognize the faces of targets, and it poses an attractive opportunity to effectively carry out missions without risking the lives of troops. However, during the conference, one U.S. Air Force (USAF) colonel showed the unreliability of artificial intelligence when describing an experiment where an AI drone rebelled and killed its operator because the operator was interfering with the AI’s mission of destroying surface-to-air missiles.
When the human operator denied the AI’s request to destroy a site, the AI attacked the operator because the operator’s decision interfered with its mission of eliminating surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites.
Time to Ban TikTok, EU Lawmakers Tell Governments
The European Parliament is calling on the bloc’s national governments to ban the use of TikTok for government staff.
Members of the Parliament on Thursday passed a report aimed at stopping foreign governments from meddling in the Continent’s politics through disinformation, cyberattacks, and the disruption of critical infrastructure.
As part of its recommendations, lawmakers urged all national governments to fall in line with restrictions the European Union, a number of capitals and Western countries outside of Europe already imposed on the use of the Chinese-owned social media application TikTok. The video-sharing app loved by teenagers around the world is facing allegations from Western security services of facilitating espionage, failing to protect personal data, and even corrupting young minds.
TikTok was not the only company to be name-checked; lawmakers also called on the Council of the EU and the European Commission to exclude the use of Chinese and Russian technology firms Huawei, ZTE and Kaspersky, and NtechLab, a Russian facial recognition firm.
Australia Considers Ban of High-Risk AI
High-risk artificial intelligence technology (AI) may soon be banned in Australia after the federal government announced it will move to establish guardrails around its growth.
Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic said that despite AI now being a prevalent part of people’s lives, he said there was a demand for some sort of regulation from the community.
Australia has close to a dozen different laws and codes of conduct that, in one way or another, pertain to the impact of AI technology, but there are concerns AI’s growth is outstripping the framework.
Federal Regulators Fine Amazon $25 Million Over Child Privacy Issues + More
Federal Regulators Fine Amazon $25 Million Over Child Privacy Issues
Federal regulators on Wednesday announced Amazon would pay $25 million to settle allegations that its voice assistant Alexa violated a federal law protecting children’s privacy — a sign of Washington’s mounting scrutiny of the e-commerce giant’s sprawling businesses.
Regulators said Wednesday that Amazon failed to delete children’s recordings and location information, in some cases before mid-2019 retaining transcripts parents specifically directed Alexa to erase.
More than 800,000 children under the age of 13 have their own Alexa profiles, according to the lawsuit filed by the Justice Department on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission. The voice assistant is especially popular with young children who can’t read but can access information and entertainment by talking to the device.
By recording children and using transcripts of those recordings to improve its product even after deletion requests, the U.S. government alleges that Amazon has violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, a law that has recently been enforced against other popular tech companies including Fortnite-maker Epic Games and YouTube.
The commission is also fining the company over Ring, Amazon’s home surveillance company best known for its doorbell camera. Regulators say the company illegally allowed employees and contractors to view private videos of customers’ homes and are fining the company an additional $5.8 million.
Kids Safety Advocates Take Social Media Fight to the Boardroom
British baroness Beeban Kidron, a driving force behind a campaign to pass new digital guardrails for children at the state level, spoke in favor of a proposal to force Meta to vet its children’s safety initiatives at its annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday — the first time her group has directly weighed in on the internal measures.
“Year after year resolutions to protect children come to the board that you block,” said Kidron, founder of the 5Rights Foundation nonprofit. “The choice you are making is to put your commercial interest above the needs of children, even when it costs them their lives.”
The move was unsuccessful, with shareholders following Meta’s recommendation and rejecting the proposal. But the attempt shows that children’s safety advocates are turning to new strategies to up the pressure on tech companies, as efforts to enshrine safeguards for kids face roadblocks at the state and federal levels.
The proposal, led by shareholder Proxy Impact, would have required the tech giant to conduct and release an annual report including metrics “assessing whether Meta has improved its performance globally regarding child safety impacts and actual harm reduction to children.”
A NJ Hospital Mandated Flu Shots. Workers Charged Discrimination. The Hospital Will Pay
New Jersey’s Inspira Medical Centers, Inc. has agreed to pay $100,000 after six employees charged that a mandatory flu vaccination policy discriminated against their religious beliefs, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Wednesday.
No lawsuit was filed by the federal agency. However, five employees covered by a conciliation agreement would receive compensatory damages, the EEOC announced. The sixth employee was not included in this agreement, according to an EEOC spokesperson.
Companies must provide “reasonable” accommodations for religious beliefs, wrote the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, citing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
As part of the agreement, the company was required to change its policies to “explicitly provide employees an exemption to the policy because of an employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs.” Inspira must also inform all employees of this change, and grant reasonable religious accommodations to its vaccination policies unless this would impose an “undue burden” on the company.
COVID Lockdowns Really Did Mess With Our Memories
The psychological toll of COVID lockdowns could lead some people to misremember the timing of recent events, according to a new study published by the University of Aberdeen researchers. The lapses were similar to distorted time perception observed among some prisoners, said the study, conducted in 2022 and published in the open-access journal Plus One on Wednesday.
While it’s not unusual for people to mix up the timing of events that took place in the distant past, the researchers found that people who’d lived under pandemic-era lockdowns exhibited similar levels of error on events that happened just a year ago. It was especially pronounced among those who felt stressed, depressed and anxious living under the measures.
Countries across the world saw lockdowns that lasted for weeks and even months as authorities scrambled to contain COVID, with people in cities as far-flung as London, Beijing and Melbourne forced to stay home or in close radius for extended periods of time. There have long been concerns about the impact of such stringent isolation measures on mental health, and the Aberdeen study is one of the first to shed scientific light on the consequences.
New York Health System Invites Back Employees Fired Over COVID Vaccine Mandate
Becker’s Hospital Review reported:
Syracuse, N.Y.-based St. Joseph’s Health is inviting back employees who were terminated for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, WSTM reported May 31.
That decision comes one week after the New York State Department of Health began repealing its COVID-19 vaccine requirement for workers in regulated healthcare facilities, originally implemented in August 2021.
St. Joseph’s Health eliminated 2.04% of its workforce who chose not to get the vaccine. Now the health system is reaching out to those workers and asking them to come back, its chief medical officer, Philip Falcone, MD, told the news station in a statement.
Gov. Inslee, WSU AD Dismissed From Nick Rolovich Lawsuit
A federal judge tossed out parts of a lawsuit involving former Washington State University (WSU) football coach Nick Rolovich, who claimed he was wrongfully terminated for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine. As a result, the judge said that Governor Jay Inslee and WSU Athletic Director Pat Chun have been removed as defendants in the lawsuit.
WSU fired Rolovich in November 2021 for refusing to comply with the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for state employees.
Rolovich said his request for a religious exemption as a “devout Catholic,” and his appeal were both denied, so he sued the university and the state for $25 million.
According to the decision obtained by The Spokesman-Review, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas O. Rice ruled that enforcing vaccine mandates do not count as religious discrimination.
New Government Free-Speech Tsar Warns ‘Democracy Is at Stake’
A new government-backed freedom of speech champion for universities has warned that “democracy is at stake.” The appointment of Cambridge lecturer Professor Arif Ahmed as the Office for Students (OfS) director for freedom of speech and academic freedom comes in the wake of heated student protests over feminist Kathleen Stock’s talk at Oxford University.
The Department for Education described Ahmed’s new role — announced weeks after the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act became law — as a “huge step forward” in protecting free speech in British universities.
The historic legislation will establish a new complaints system, while also strengthening the legal duties on higher education providers in England to “protect and promote” freedom of speech on campuses, for students, staff and visiting speakers.
Writing in the Times of London, the Cambridge academic warned of the dangers currently threatening freedom of speech in higher educational institutions. “We settle disputes by discussion, not censorship or violence,” he wrote. “Today that idea is fading.
Ex-Staffer at Japan Fire Dept Forced to Work Alone in Hallway as ‘Vaccine Refuser’
A fire department headquarters employee here who wasn’t vaccinated against the coronavirus was forced to work alone in the corridor in 2021, allegedly to prevent the spread of the infection, the Mainichi Shimbun has learned.
The former Koka Wide-Area Administrative Kumiai Fire Department Headquarters worker in their 30s had been restricted from contact with other workers as a “vaccine refuser,” and the entire staff was notified of this in writing. The ex-employee said they had no choice but to resign after that, and told the Mainichi, “I think it was to set an example to other unvaccinated workers, and I was discriminated against.”
When the former employee was working in the department’s fire defense division in April 2021, they were informed of the inoculation dates for staff. They told their boss about not wanting a vaccine as they had experienced adverse side effects from a flu shot. Though they were told it “wasn’t mandatory” to get the coronavirus vaccine, they apparently felt pressured every day to do so, such as being told the next vaccination dates.
The ex-employee was asked by the fire department to work at a desk in the meeting space by the corridor on the same floor as the fire defense division from May 1, 2021. They were also restricted from using the changing rooms and had to work in plain clothes except when dispatched to scenes. They say they were also required to submit a record of their movements within the workplace.
Mooney Unveils Bill to Block Central Bank Digital Currency Pilot Program + More
Mooney Unveils Bill to Block Central Bank Digital Currency Pilot Program
A growing number of Republican lawmakers are calling to block a central bank digital currency from being issued in the U.S., and Rep. Alex Mooney of West Virginia is the latest to join the chorus.
However, Mooney’s bill, which was introduced in the House on Thursday, is different — he is calling for something called the Digital Dollar Pilot Prevention Act, which aims to prevent the Federal Reserve from launching a pilot program that would test the operability of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the U.S. financial system.
The move would stop the development of a CBDC in its tracks, people inside Mooney’s office tell FOX Business. While anti-CBDC legislation is nothing new, Mooney’s bill attempts to close the pilot program “loophole” that could allow the Federal Reserve to implement a test run of a CBDC without the consent of Congress.
Critics of CBDCs are voicing concerns about increased government surveillance and the intrusion of privacy if the Federal Reserve decides to implement a digital dollar. If money becomes completely digital and is issued and controlled solely by the government, then, critics say, a CBDC would give federal officials control over the money flowing in and out of people’s accounts and a window into sensitive financial data.
Eating Disorder Helpline Takes Down Chatbot After Its Advice Goes Horribly Wrong
AI chatbots aren’t much good at offering emotional support being — you know — not a human, and — it can’t be stated enough — not actually intelligent. That didn’t stop The National Eating Disorder Association from trying to foist a chatbot onto folks requesting aid in times of crisis.
Things went about as well as you can expect, as an activist claims that instead of helping through emotional distress, the chatbot instead tried to needle her to lose weight and measure herself constantly.
NEDA announced on its Instagram page Tuesday it had taken down its Tessa chatbot after it “may have given information that was harmful and unrelated to the program.” The nonprofit meant to provide resources and support for people with eating disorders said it was investigating the situation.
Tessa was meant to replace NEDA’s long-running phone helpline staffed with a few full-time employees and numerous volunteers. Former staff claims they were illegally fired in retaliation for their move to unionize. The helpline is supposed to fully go away on June 1.
Sunak and Biden to Discuss AI After ‘Extinction Risk’ Warning
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has confirmed he will discuss artificial intelligence and the risks it poses when he meets U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington next week.
Sunak made the announcement after several leading figures from the AI industry published a letter on Tuesday that said the technology should be recognized as an “extinction risk” to humanity comparable to “pandemics and nuclear war.”
Referencing his meeting with the heads of OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic last week, as well as recent discussions on AI at the G7, Sunak said the U.K. “can play a leadership role because ultimately, we’re only going to grapple with this problem and solve it if we work together not just with the companies, but with countries around the world.”
TikTok Creators’ Financial Info, Social Security Numbers Have Been Stored in China
Over the past several years, thousands of TikTok creators and businesses around the world have given the company sensitive financial information — including their social security numbers and tax IDs — so that they can be paid by the platform.
But unbeknownst to many of them, TikTok has stored that personal financial information on servers in China that are accessible by employees there, Forbes has learned.
A trove of records obtained by Forbes from multiple sources across different parts of the company reveals that highly sensitive financial and personal information about those prized users and third parties has been stored in China. The discovery also raises questions about whether employees who are not authorized to access that data have been able to. It draws on internal communications, audio recordings, videos, screenshots, documents marked “Privileged and Confidential,” and several people familiar with the matter.
In testimony before Congress earlier this year, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew claimed U.S. user data has been stored on physical servers outside China. “American data has always been stored in Virginia and Singapore in the past, and access of this is on an as-required basis by our engineers globally,” he said under oath at a House hearing in March.
At 34, Jon Has Incurable Bowel Cancer — All Because the NHS Turned Into a COVID-Only Service
The Telegraph via Yahoo!News reported:
In the spring of 2020, Jon Chapple and a friend were debating lockdown. Jon was pretty vehement. He said he thought it was obvious that shutting down the country, and effectively making the NHS a COVID-only service, was a huge error. It would kill more people than it saved in the long run, Jon told his friend. What Jon didn’t know was that one of the people lockdown would condemn to death would be him.
He’d been referred for a colonoscopy that was supposed to happen in March, but lockdown kiboshed that. The appointment was pushed back until August when a benign polyp was discovered in Jon’s bowel. The consultant said he didn’t have the right tool to take it out (he didn’t mention it was because the growth was so large) but he told Jon he’d get him back in to do it. “It was no big deal, I thought,” recalls Jon.
Jon was diagnosed with bowel cancer, which had spread to the liver, after “two years of wrong diagnoses, delayed appointments and missed opportunities to deal with the disease before it metastasized”. Nikki was with him when a doctor basically told him he wasn’t going to live.
His case is absolutely dreadful, but far from unique. Since the lockdown, it’s estimated that 210,000 patients with cancer have had to wait too long for their treatment.
There Are a Million Reasons to Stay Quiet
This plea is for the legions of doctors, nurses, college administrators, teachers, students, public-sector employees, corporate managers, pharmaceutical employees, laboratory scientists, media professionals, journalists in mainstream news, and tech workers who know where all the “bodies are buried,” in the metaphorical phrase.
They have lived with this knowledge for more than three years. They know the players, the plans, the bureaucratic wrangling, the methods, the lies, the brutality, and the victims. They are holding onto memos, texts, conversations, and unforgettable images in their heads. They are aching to speak. They know what they saw was wrong. But they are also terrified to speak out.
Here’s the problem. It’s easy to make a principled case for doing the right thing. It’s much more difficult to make a practical case.
That’s because there are sometimes huge costs that come with standing up, speaking out, turning over documents, telling stories, and revealing truths. They are deeply uncomfortable, even career-threatening. You might not win and you might be hounded to the ends of the earth. All your secrets could come out too. Indeed, there are powerful people who want it to be so, as a lesson to others.
EU Tech Chief Sees Draft Voluntary AI Code Within Weeks
EU tech chief Margrethe Vestager said on Wednesday she believed a draft code of conduct on artificial intelligence (AI) could be drawn up within weeks, allowing industry to commit to a final proposal “very, very soon.”
Policymakers and many in the industry have expressed concern about AI, particularly content-creating generative AI such as ChatGPT, with some equating it to the risks posed by pandemics or nuclear war. Vestager said the United States and European Union should push a voluntary code to provide safeguards while new laws are developed.
The European Union’s AI Act, with rules on facial recognition and biometric surveillance, is still going through the legislative process.
‘Robustly Transparent’ or ‘Really Slippery’? U.K. Ministers Dispute WhatsApp Disclosures in COVID Inquiry
Get ready for another three years of this. With the coronavirus pandemic over, the U.K.’s official inquiry into it — expected to run until 2026 — has yet to hold a single public hearing. But it’s already embroiled in a bitter disclosure dispute with the government over whether to hand over ministers’ private WhatsApp messages and notebooks.
The post-mortem will drag on past the next general election, as confirmed Tuesday. It’s expected to call on senior figures from a series of British governments, roving over the state’s preparedness for the virus, decision-making by ministers and officials, the way public contracts were handed out, and how the country got jabs in arms.
Yet before any of that, there’s the small matter of what the inquiry will actually be allowed to see.
Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting told Sky News Wednesday: “I think the prime minister looks really slippery today. He says he wants the government to cooperate with the inquiry but the government has been withholding information the inquiry has asked for.” He added: “One minute the government says the messages they have are immaterial; the next minute they’re saying they don’t exist. Which is it?”