Big Brother News Watch
FBI Examines Snapchat’s Role in Fentanyl Poisoning Deaths + More
FBI Examines Snapchat’s Role in Fentanyl Poisoning Deaths
Federal agencies are questioning Snapchat’s role in the spread and sale of fentanyl-laced pills in the U.S. as part of a broader probe into the deadly counterfeit drugs crisis.
Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and attorneys with the U.S. Justice Department are zeroing in on fentanyl poisoning cases where the sales were arranged via Snapchat, according to people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity. The agents have interviewed parents of children who died and are working to access their social media accounts to trace the suppliers of the lethal drugs, according to the people.
In many cases, subpoenaed records from Snapchat show the teenagers thought they were buying prescription painkillers, but the pill they swallowed was pure fentanyl — a synthetic opioid 100 times more potent than morphine. An FBI spokesperson said the agency would neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation. The Justice Department declined to comment.
On Wednesday, the involvement of technology companies in the ongoing fentanyl crisis will be discussed on Capitol Hill at a House Energy and Commerce Committee roundtable. One of the listed speakers, Laura Marquez-Garrett, an attorney with the Social Media Victims Law Center, said Snapchat will be the focus.
New York Attorney General Probing Madison Square Garden’s Use of Facial Recognition Technology
The Wall Street Journal reported:
New York Attorney General Letitia James is asking Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp. MSGE for information related to its alleged use of facial recognition technology to prevent certain ticket holders from entering its venues.
The state attorney general’s office said Wednesday the company, which operates Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall in New York City, has reportedly used the technology to bar lawyers from firms who are suing the company over unrelated matters from seeing sporting events or concerts.
The company’s actions appear to have affected attorneys at more than 90 law firms, and may violate New York’s civil- and human rights laws, the office said.
In the letter, the attorney general’s office said it was looking into whether the facial recognition software at issue is reliable and has safeguards to prevent bias. It asked the company to explain what efforts it is making to ensure its facial-recognition technology won’t lead to discrimination. It gave the company until Feb. 13 to respond.
Social Media Is a Defective Product, Lawsuit Contends
A California court could soon decide whether social media firms need to pay — and change their ways — for the damage they’ve allegedly done to Americans’ mental health.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers plan to file a consolidated complaint in the Northern District of California next month, accusing the tech giants of making products that can cause eating disorders, anxiety and depression.
If the case is allowed to proceed, it will test a novel legal theory, that social media algorithms are defective products that encourage addictive behavior and are governed by existing product liability law. That could have far-reaching consequences for how software is developed and regulated, and how the next generation of users experiences social media.
It also could upstage members of Congress from both parties and President Joe Biden, who have called for regulation since former Facebook Product Manager Frances Haugen released documents revealing that Meta — Facebook and Instagram’s parent company — knew users of Instagram were suffering ill health effects, but have failed to act in the 15 months since.
SKADOW: Vaccine Mandates Deserve Justification
On Oct. 27, 2022, the University administration announced that the COVID-19 bivalent booster would be required for all students, but not faculty or staff, by the spring semester. The news took me by surprise.
Unlike Yale’s previous COVID-19 vaccine mandates, the bivalent booster requirement preceded any evidence supporting its clinical benefit. Moreover, while the benefits of boosting were unknown, the potential harms, including the elevated risk of myocarditis in young men, were clear. The University should rescind their bivalent booster requirement and provide a transparent and logical explanation of how mandate decisions are made.
In the months since Yale’s bivalent booster requirement was announced, the administration has attempted to retroactively cite a rationale for their decision. A recent email directs readers to a FAQ page to support the efficacy of the new bivalent vaccine. The page references two observational case-control studies published by the CDC in December (two months after Yale’s mandate was announced).
Neither study provides sufficient evidence to support that the updated booster provides additional protection to a young student population that has received at least three previous doses and many of whom contracted COVID-19 last semester.
Nationwide Ban on TikTok Inches Closer to Reality
The White House is facing mounting pressure from Congress to ban the widely popular TikTok app nationwide after Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Congressman Ken Buck (R-CO) introduced a piece of legislation on Wednesday to curb its use. A similar bill to ban TikTok in the U.S. was filed during the last Congressional session, but it was not considered in either chamber.
The No TikTok on the United States Devices Act would ban access to the app on all devices, but it may face pushback from a divided Congress in the coming weeks.
DirecTV Boots Conservative Newsmax, Which Alleges ‘Censorship’
DirecTV said it dropped conservative television network Newsmax on Tuesday night after a dispute over so-called carriage fees — a move the broadcaster characterized as “censorship.”
Newsmax described DirecTV’s decision as a “censorship move” to silence the conservative network. The media outlet also pointed to DirecTV’s decision a year earlier to drop another conservative network from its lineup, One America News Network, or OAN.
In response to the dispute, 41 Republican lawmakers sent a letter to DirecTV warning that they might open hearings on the issue, according to a copy of the letter viewed by CBS MoneyWatch.
White House Engaged in ‘Vast Censorship Enterprise’ Against Conservatives, COVID Critics: Missouri AG
One of two state attorneys general filing a civil suit against the Biden administration claimed in a Fox Business exclusive he uncovered a “vast censorship enterprise” and produced purported evidence the White House’s social media team leadership tried to censor or suppress conservative voices and critics of its COVID policy — including a member of a prominent Democratic family.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who along with Louisiana Attorney General Jeffrey Landry, first filed suit last May. However, Bailey told “The Bottom Line” Tuesday the web of purported censorship continues to grow.
“I’m proud to have partnered with the Louisiana attorney general on this case because it’s the most important First Amendment case in a generation. We’ve uncovered a vast censorship enterprise, coercion and collusion between officials at the White House and across federal bureaucratic agencies and their cronies in Big Tech/social media to target and censor free speech in America.”
He underlined that the case is preeminently a First Amendment defense rather than any type of political attack.
North Korea Locks Down Pyongyang Due to ‘Respiratory Illness’
North Korean authorities have ordered a lockdown in the nation’s capital city Pyongyang because of the spread of an unspecified respiratory illness, according to a statement released by the Russian embassy in North Korea on Facebook.
The lockdown will last for five days, and could be extended another three days, according to the post, which called for a “special anti-epidemic period” and urged foreign diplomats to remain inside.
The notice also stated that individuals should take their temperature four times a day and report the results daily to a hospital in Pyongyang. If an individual has a high temperature, they should immediately report to the hospital.
While the notice does not mention any particular illness, such as COVID-19, it does say the city has seen a rise in patients with “recurrent influenza in winter and other respiratory diseases.”
Spain to Scrap Mandatory Masks on Public Transport on Feb. 7
Spain, one of the last countries in Europe to still require people to wear masks on public transport to prevent the spread of COVID-19, will likely lift the obligation on Feb. 7, Health Minister Carolina Darias said on Thursday.
She said the epidemiological situation in the country was stable and health emergency services had proposed lifting the restriction. Masks will remain mandatory in health facilities.
“I’ll bring the proposal to scrap the obligation to wear masks in public transportation to the cabinet meeting to be held on Feb. 7,” she told reporters.
Three years after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in Europe, masks are only mandatory on all, or some types of public transport, in Spain, Germany, Austria and Greece.
Mexico Issues Alert Over Social Media Tranquilizer Craze
Health authorities in Mexico issued an alert Wednesday over an internet “challenge” in which groups of students at three schools in Mexico have taken tranquilizers vying to see who can stay awake longer.
The Health Department called on the public to report any store selling clonazepam, a tranquilizer, without a prescription.
The alert came one week after eight students at a Mexico City middle school were treated after taking a “controlled medication.” Some were hospitalized.
The department warned about the social media challenge “the last one to fall asleep wins,” calling it dangerous.
San Diego Repeals Controversial COVID Vaccine Mandate for City Workers + More
San Diego Repeals Controversial COVID Vaccine Mandate for City Workers
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported:
San Diego has repealed a controversial COVID-19 vaccine mandate for city workers that had led to multiple lawsuits, the firings of 14 employees and resignations by more than 130 police officers.
City officials said drops in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in recent months prompted the repeal, which the City Council approved unanimously Tuesday.
The council simultaneously voted to lift the city’s COVID-19 state of emergency declaration next month, following a similar move by the state that Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in October. Both the city and state emergency declarations will expire on Feb. 28.
Because the council must approve the repeal of the vaccine mandate a second time at a subsequent meeting, it won’t officially expire until March 9 — 30 days after the second vote.
WEF Hears About Technology That Allows Your Thoughts to Be Monitored
The annual World Economic Forum (WEF) gathering has always been a testing ground for some bizarre ideas, which nonetheless serve a purpose: to introduce, and if possible normalize all kinds of mass surveillance and sometimes extremely privacy-invasive technologies.
And monitoring people’s brain activity, including via implants — surely, it doesn’t get much more invasive than that. Yet this was one of the technologies presented at an event in Davos this year by Duke University Professor Nita Farahany.
“Decoding complex thought,” is already possible, Farahany said during her “Ready for Brain Transparency?” talk at the WEF summit last week. And the tech now is also able to reveal the degree of stress somebody is experiencing, as well as what they are paying attention to. So, the goal is to know what/how a person is feeling, what they are thinking, and what draws their interest.
According to the professor, all the ingredients are here — all that’s needed is massive uptake, and eventually a shift from today’s devices that accomplish it — wearables — towards “implanted (brain) technology.”
Vaccine Passport Prohibition Bill Moves Forward in Its Second Year
On Tuesday afternoon, HB131, the vaccine passport prohibition bill, received a favorable recommendation from the House Business and Labor Committee with a 10 to 2 vote. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Walt Brooks, said in the committee hearing that during the COVID-19 pandemic, HIPAA laws were becoming blurred, and he would like to un-blur them.
“All of a sudden, those (HIPAA) laws became all gray and fuzzy, and no one cared anymore,” Brooks said. “This bill basically takes us back to that time, re-brightens those lines that what is protective health information is just that, your private protected health information.”
“The thing I am trying to address is before we had COVID, what was the standard of business, and how did we operate? And this goes and reminds us of the laws that are already in action. We did not ask anyone for their papers, and no one would even think of that,” Brooks said.
All public commenters agreed with Brooks’s views, as no one spoke against the bill, with most being business owners. Some said they don’t want to be asking customers for vaccine information, while others cited the U.S. and Utah constitutions with the legality of doing so.
Are Digital Wallets Safe? Here’s What to Know as the Battle Between Big Banks and Apple Pay Heats Up
In the face of inflation, rising interest rates and slowing economic growth, there’s more competition than ever for consumers’ cash — and even how their purchases are made. Now, several of the large banks behind Zelle are teaming up to create their own digital wallet in a bid to compete with Apple Pay and PayPal, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal.
The move is seen as an effort to slow Apple’s push into consumer financial services, marked by the recent introduction of Apple Pay Later, as well as an interest-bearing savings account administered by Goldman Sachs.
During the pandemic, shoppers showed a growing preference for cashless transactions and still do: Peer-to-peer payment apps — known as P2P — such as Zelle and PayPal’s Venmo, which let users store their banking information on their smartphone, have exploded in popularity.
But it is not without risk. Users are vulnerable to fraud or scams or can lose money if they accidentally send a payment to the wrong person, a Consumer Reports analysis found.
Florida Eyes Banning TikTok at State Universities
University officials in Florida are considering a possible ban on TikTok that could block students from using the popular application on 12 campuses across the state.
Members on the Board of Governors over state universities, meeting Tuesday in Miami, expressed support for creating a system-wide policy outlawing the app. The change could be introduced in the next two months with scrutiny mounting towards the Beijing-based company.
Several schools across the country have already blocked TikTok from their networks, including the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Oklahoma.
JP Morgan Under Senate Fire for Partnership With TikTok Parent ByteDance
JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon is under fire from a top Senator who is raising alarms about the biggest bank in the U.S. developing payments technology for TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance — a partnership first reported by Forbes.
“It is outrageous that JPMorgan Chase would elect to join ByteDance in a partnership geared toward broadening and deepening the company’s, and as a result, the CCP’s, access to countless volumes of user data,” Senator Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote to the JP Morgan Chairman this month
“Assisting online companies to build out real-time payments systems, centralize banking structures and streamline access to millions of users’ financial information is no doubt lucrative,” he said in the letter. “However, by partnering with ByteDance to develop a treasure trove of private data, including that of millions of Americans, JPMorgan Chase has effectively handed the combination to the vault to the CCP.”
Short of the passage of a national security deal by CFIUS or a blanket ban on TikTok in the U.S., lawmakers may go after companies and institutions instead — and JP Morgan is not the only one. ESPN is under pressure from a bipartisan duo in Congress to end a partnership with TikTok, and a House Republican this month introduced legislation that would yank federal funding to colleges in Texas that don’t ban TikTok on their campuses.
Apple Beefs Up Smartphone Services in ‘Silent War’ Against Google
Apple is taking steps to separate its mobile operating system from features offered by Google parent Alphabet, making advances around maps, search and advertising that have created a collision course between the Big Tech companies.
The two Silicon Valley giants have been rivals in the smartphone market since Google acquired and popularized the Android operating system in the 2000s.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs called Android “a stolen product” that mimicked Apple’s iOS mobile software, then declared “thermonuclear war” on Google, ousting the search company’s then-CEO Eric Schmidt from the Apple board of directors in 2009. While the rivalry has been less noisy since then, two former Apple engineers said the iPhone maker has held a “grudge” against Google.
One of these people said Apple is still engaged in a “silent war” against its arch-rival. It is doing so by developing features that could allow the iPhone maker to further separate its products from services offered by Google. Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
Teens Carry a Threat to Mental Health in Their Pockets + More
Teens Carry a Threat to Mental Health in Their Pockets
Unlike the profanity or racy lyrics that were supposedly corrupting young minds when I was a child, today’s fears over social media have a much stronger basis in reality.
The Seattle Public Schools jumped deep into the middle of this debate a few weeks ago when the district sued social media giants Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and others, arguing the companies were contributing to the youth mental health crisis. The Kent school district followed suit shortly after.
In an interview last week, San Diego State University psychology professor Jean Twenge, the author of “iGen,” which focused on Gen Z and the impact of social media on young people, said there is much reason for concern.
She said beginning in the early 2010s, we began to see some alarming trends in mental health for teen girls, in particular. Hospital admissions for self-harm in 10- to 14-year-old girls tripled over the following decade and suicide rates among that age group doubled. Twenge’s research showed major depressive episodes among 12- to 17-year-old girls increased by 52% as well. There was not a correlating increase in other age groups.
Learning to Lie: AI Tools Adept at Creating Disinformation
Artificial intelligence is writing fiction, making images inspired by Van Gogh and fighting wildfires. Now it’s competing in another endeavor once limited to humans — creating propaganda and disinformation.
Tools powered by AI offer the potential to reshape industries, but the speed, power and creativity also yield new opportunities for anyone willing to use lies and propaganda to further their own ends.
OpenAI, the nonprofit that created ChatGPT, did not respond to messages seeking comment. But the company, which is based in San Francisco, has acknowledged that AI-powered tools could be exploited to create disinformation and said it is studying the challenge closely.
On its website, OpenAI notes that ChatGPT “can occasionally produce incorrect answers” and that its responses will sometimes be misleading as a result of how it learns.
U.S. Officially Sues Google, Claiming It Has a Digital Ad Monopoly
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed suit against Google over alleged antitrust issues, claiming the search giant has monopoly control of the digital ad market. The DOJ is joined by eight states in its complaint, including New York, California, Colorado and more. This action was tipped as early as late 2021 and has clearly been in the works for quite a while.
The DOJ bases its argument around perceived ill intent by Google in architecting the digital ad market in a way that unfairly favors its own products.
For its part, Google has frequently reiterated that the digital ad market is healthy and competitive, citing strong competitors including Meta, Amazon and Microsoft, to name a few. The company is also likely to point to growing competition from platforms including TikTok and Instacart, which have cut into the significant market share owned by Alphabet and Meta for most of recent history.
Service Members Forced to Pay Back Signing Bonuses After Being Fired Over COVID Vax: ‘Kick in the Face’
U.S. service members who were fired for refusing to comply with the Pentagon’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate are now being forced to pay back their original recruitment bonuses, which they tell Fox News Digital is a “kick in the face” after years of dedicating their lives to protecting the country.
One former Army soldier who was fired for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine last May told Fox News Digital that he would have to pay back his original signing bonus upon his termination from the military because he did not complete the commitment in his contract.
“The Department of Defense continues to fall short on reestablishing trust for wrongdoings, and this is yet another example of that,” another service member told Fox News Digital, who said the recoupment of signing bonuses is the “icing on the cake” of the Pentagon’s recent treatment of troops.
Lawmakers are pressuring the Pentagon to do more and provide back pay for the roughly 8,400 U.S. troops fired after refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine. However, the Pentagon has said back pay for troops fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine is not an issue the DOD is “pursuing.”
Mississippi Doctor Against Vaccine Mandate Runs for Governor
A Mississippi doctor who leads a group of physicians opposed to COVID-19 vaccine mandates has filed paperwork to challenge Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves in the state’s Republican primary.
Dr. John Witcher is the only Republican other than Reeves who has entered the gubernatorial primary so far. He’s best known for founding Mississippi Against Mandates, a group of doctors opposed to requiring COVID-19 vaccines.
Witcher has said he was fired from a Mississippi hospital in 2021 after switching patients’ COVID-19 medication to ivermectin, an anti-parasite drug that is not authorized by the FDA for use against the novel coronavirus and which research shows doesn’t work.
Chicken Fried Data: Chick-Fil-A Hit With Class-Action Privacy Lawsuit Over Video Data Collection
While Chick-fil-A was serving you sandwiches, it was also serving up data to Facebook’s parent company Meta. According to a new lawsuit filed Sunday, the fast food chain did that in a way that violated one of the only federal privacy laws in the United States.
Like hundreds of millions of other websites, evergreenhills.com has an embedded Meta pixel, a tracker that sends the social media company data about who’s visiting the site. Companies like Chick-fil-A use that information to retarget people with ads and measure how well ad campaigns are working. The plaintiffs allege that Chick-fil-A broke a law called the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which says you can’t share personally identifiable information about people’s video viewership without their consent.
Contrary to popular belief, there are basically no privacy laws in the United States, especially at the federal level. The few state laws related to data privacy, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act, give you some rights after the data is collected, but they generally require companies to get your consent. But when there’s video involved, you step into a legal gray area.
TSA Seizes Passport of Turning Point USA Journalist Returning From Davos
Morgonn McMichael is a full-time journalist and Ambassador with Turning Point USA in Tempe, Arizona. She traveled to Davos, Switzerland to cover the World Economic Forum (WEF), but on her return trip, she learned that her name had been added to a TSA list that resulted in her being detained and searched at five different security checkpoints, including her destination at Phoenix International Airport.
There will undoubtedly be more details on her story, but she has clearly been targeted by some Technocrat within the government who wants to send a message to all journalists who would dare to be critical of the WEF’s narrative. This is one of the most egregious violations of First Amendment rights in recent times.
EU Technocrat Threatens Musk With ‘Sanctions’ Unless He Stamps Out Free Speech on Twitter
The battle over Twitter is often made to appear complex and chaotic, but it can all be boiled down to a simple dichotomy — it’s about the people who demand censorship in favor of the establishment narrative vs. the people who want free speech and fair rules applied to everyone equally. Everything else is noise and distraction.
Complications arise when we try to define free speech when it comes to social media. Private companies are not subject to many legal boundaries related to free speech rights. This is an argument that the political left and government representatives made constantly during the massive purge of conservative and liberty-oriented accounts by Big Tech companies since 2016. And, as we saw with Twitter previous to Elon Musk‘s takeover, governments took full advantage of this legal loophole in order to silence people using social media websites as middlemen.
The ongoing release of the Twitter Files proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that collusion between Big Tech and governments for the sake of censorship is a reality. In America, at least, this is a constitutional no-no. The fact that politicians and agencies like the FBI were actively seeking out and targeting ideological opponents and having them silenced on Twitter is a direct violation of the 1st Amendment and these people should be subject to prosecution (the FBI even shelled out at least $3 million to Twitter for services rendered).
The reality that Twitter was acting as an enforcement agent for government censorship around the world tells us exactly why so many establishment officials have been up in arms over Musk’s purchase of the platform. Until now, every single major Big Tech company has been operating in lock-step with the establishment narrative. People couldn’t even talk about Hunter Biden’s laptop, let alone talk about the inconvenient facts surrounding “climate change” or the COVID mandates and vaccines.
This is a dynamic that elitists would still like to keep in place, and they are looking to use international trade rules as a means to pressure Musk into conforming. EU Commissioner for Values and Transparency Věra Jourová makes a statement from the frozen doorstep of Davos arguing that Twitter is subject to EU rules for preventing “harm to society.”
China Is the World’s Biggest Face Recognition Dealer
Early last year, the government of Bangladesh began weighing an offer from an unnamed Chinese company to build a smart city on the Bay of Bengal with infrastructure enhanced by artificial intelligence. Construction of the high-tech metropolis has yet to begin, but if it proceeds it may include face recognition software that can use public cameras to identify missing persons or track criminals in a crowd — capabilities already standard in many Chinese cities.
The project is among those that make China the world leader in exporting face recognition, according to a study by academics at Harvard and MIT published last week by the Brookings Institution, a prominent think tank.
The report finds that Chinese companies lead the world in exporting face recognition, accounting for 201 export deals involving the technology, followed by U.S. firms with 128 deals. China also has a lead in AI generally, with 250 out of a total of 1,636 export deals involving some form of AI to 136 importing countries. The second biggest exporter was the U.S., with 215 AI deals.
The fact that the U.S. is the world’s second-largest exporter of face recognition technology risks undermining the idea — promoted by the U.S. government — that American technology naturally embodies values of freedom and democracy.
French Privacy Chief Warns Against Using Facial Recognition for 2024 Olympics
The French data protection authority’s president Marie-Laure Denis warned Tuesday against using facial recognition as part of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics security toolkit.
The French government is seeking to ramp up France’s arsenal of surveillance powers to ensure the safety of the millions of tourists expected for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. The plans include AI-powered cameras for the first time — but not facial recognition.
Civil liberties NGOs such as La Quadrature du Net and the Human Rights League are currently campaigning against experimental AI-powered surveillance cameras. Denis however tried to assuage concerns.
Jarring Photos Show Difference Between China’s COVID Lockdown and Today
Monday marked the three-year anniversary of when the Chinese city of Wuhan was placed under a lockdown to combat the spread of COVID-19 in early 2020, weeks before other nations throughout the world would start to impose their own measures.
Though major Chinese cities like Shanghai and Beijing may have outpaced the city in terms of name recognition throughout the world years ago, Wuhan gained international attention on January 23, 2020, when it was placed under a 76-day lockdown to curb a COVID-19 outbreak.
Photos of Wuhan at the time showed a reality likely unfamiliar to many in the world up until that point: medical staff covered head to toe in hazmat suits and other protective gear, face mask-wearing civilians queuing to have their temperatures checked, crowds of people waiting for medical treatment in hospitals and the sick laid out on stretchers.
Pictures of the city in the present day, three years after the fact, seem to show at least a slight return to normalcy for residents who began to experience life in a pandemic before much of the rest of the world.
Cashless Society: Big Banks Prepare to Launch Digital Wallet to Compete With Apple Pay and PayPal + More
Cashless Society: Big Banks Prepare to Launch Digital Wallet to Compete With Apple Pay and PayPal
Major U.S. banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan and others, will push into the digital wallet space in the second half of this year to take on Apple Pay and PayPal.
Early Warning Services LLC (EWS), the bank-owned company that operates the money-transfer service Zelle, will be managing the new digital wallet, according to WSJ. The wallet has yet to be named but will be separate from Zelle and allow shoppers to pay at merchants’ online checkouts with linked debit and credit cards.
The move towards electronic and contactless payments has been gradual but could soon be thrown into hyperdrive if enough consumers adopt EWS’ new wallet. It was during the coronavirus pandemic that the government, Federal Reserve and corporations urged people to avoid unnecessary physical transactions that increased the push toward a cashless society.
The dystopic view is that a cashless society could mean governments and corporations will have even more control over our wallets — and that’s frightening.
Supreme Court Puts off Considering State Laws Curbing Internet Platforms
The Supreme Court asked the Biden administration on Monday for its views on whether the Constitution allows Florida and Texas to prevent large social media companies from removing posts based on the views they express.
The practical effect of the move was to put off a decision on whether to hear two major First Amendment challenges to the states’ laws for at least several months. If the court ends up granting review, as seems likely, it will hear arguments no earlier than October and will probably not issue a decision until next year.
The laws were challenged by two trade groups, NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which said the First Amendment prohibits the government from telling private companies whether and how to disseminate speech.
The Texas law differs in its details, Judge Andrew S. Oldham wrote in a decision upholding it. “To generalize just a bit,” he wrote, the Florida law “prohibits all censorship of some speakers,” while the Texas law “prohibits some censorship of all speakers” when based on the views they express.
Microsoft Investing Billions in ChatGPT Maker
Microsoft is investing billions of dollars into OpenAI, the company behind the popular ChatGPT language generation tool, as part of a third phase of a partnership between the two tech companies, Microsoft announced Monday.
Microsoft did not detail the exact amount it is investing in OpenAI with the latest phase, describing it as a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment.” Semafor previously reported the company was in talks to invest $10 billion into the artificial intelligence company.
The investment adds to the ones Microsoft made in OpenAI in 2019 and 2021 and extends the partnership between the companies as ChatGPT becomes increasingly popular.
End the Persecution of Unvaccinated New Yorkers, Like Me
You wouldn’t know it from the lack of headlines, but COVID vaccine mandates were struck down in court again last week, this time for New York state health workers. The common-sense decision was based on the well-established fact that the vaccines don’t stop infection or transmission. But does anyone even care about facts, here in the land of COVID-emergency-forever?
Unlike almost anywhere else in the country, unvaccinated parents here are still denied entry to their children’s public schools, and unvaccinated 2020 heroes are still fired, prohibited from working as educators, healthcare workers, firefighters or any of the other essential jobs they fulfilled during the height of the pandemic.
This scandalous injustice persists despite a state-court ruling in October that also declared the city’s vaccine mandates arbitrary and capricious. The ruling cited CDC guidelines and the state Constitution, which says: “No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws of this state or any subdivision thereof.” Mayor Eric Adams filed an appeal the very next day.
As an unvaccinated New Yorker, I experienced the consequences of this groupthink firsthand. For months I was barred from cafes, theaters and museums with my children. Most painfully, I was kept from my daughter’s school spring concert and made to stand outside in the schoolyard and watch through an open back door.
GOP Rep. Andy Biggs Reintroduces Multiple Bills to ‘Address COVID Overreach’
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) reintroduced multiple bills to “address COVID overreach on Americans.” Biggs shared an update in a press release on Monday.
“Now with a Republican majority in the House, we have a better opportunity to pass legislation that reverses COVID vaccine and mask mandate policies set by fanatics who seek to maintain control over Americans,” Biggs said.
“These power-hungry individuals are rejecting science. COVID cases and deaths remain low. Normal life has returned,” he added. “Most importantly, individuals should be making their own COVID and healthcare choices — not tyrannical government officials. All types of COVID-related mandates have got to go and these pieces of legislation help us get there.”
VP Harris Required People to Sign ‘Attestation of Vaccination’ Paper to Attend Her Florida Speech: Reports
Vice President Kamala Harris required all attendees of her event on Sunday in Tallahassee, Florida to sign a form confirming whether they have been vaccinated or not, according to reports.
The form was titled, “Attestation of Vaccination,” and it required guests to indicate whether they are unvaccinated, partially vaccinated or vaccinated.
Those who declined to indicate either were required to provide proof that they completed a COVID-19 test within three days of the event and received a negative result, wear a mask and socially distance themselves from others.
Navajo Nation Rescinds Mask Mandate on Vast Reservation
The Navajo Nation has rescinded a mask mandate that’s been in effect since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, officials announced Friday, fulfilling a pledge that new tribal President Buu Nygren made while campaigning for the office.
The mandate was one of the longest-standing anywhere in the U.S. and applied broadly to businesses, government offices and tourist destinations on the vast reservation, which extends into New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. The tribe at one point had one of the highest coronavirus infection rates in the country and among the strictest measures to help prevent the spread of the virus.
Nygren and Navajo Nation Council Delegate Otto Tso, who temporarily is overseeing the tribe’s legislative branch, jointly announced the lifting of the mask mandate on social media Friday evening.
‘Ready, Willing and Able’: COVID Vaccine Policies at Ontario Hospitals Are Keeping Some Health Workers From Filling Dire Staff Shortages
About 160 veteran nurses, personal support workers and healthcare technicians, along with their families, gathered in a church hall in Port Perry, Ont., in person or by video conference, on a snowy afternoon this past Saturday.
These distressed individuals have a message for patients waiting for healthcare in the province: we want to work on the front lines but are being shut out. “I am ready, willing and able to work,” Lori Turnbull told CTV National News. But nobody will hire her.
All of the health workers in this unusual audience were terminated after declining to get two COVID-19 vaccinations in 2021, as required by all 140 of Ontario’s public hospitals and some nursing and retirement homes.
Despite Ontario dropping its health sector mandate in March, the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) continues to recommend the continuation of mandatory vaccination policies among the province’s 140 public hospitals.
Rentokil Pilots Facial Recognition System as Way to Exterminate Rats
The world’s largest pest control group is piloting the use of facial recognition software as a way to exterminate rats in people’s homes.
Rentokil said it had been developing the technology alongside Vodafone for 18 months.
The surveillance technology, which is already being tested in real homes, tracks the rodents’ habits and streams real-time analysis using artificial intelligence.
In developing the technology, Rentokil watched rats in a controlled environment, with cameras monitoring their behavior patterns. Machine learning using an AI system allows it to build recognition capabilities.
