Big Brother News Watch
Police Seize on COVID Tech to Expand Global Surveillance + More
Police Seize on COVID Tech to Expand Global Surveillance
In the pandemic’s bewildering early days, millions worldwide believed government officials who said they needed confidential data for new tech tools that could help stop coronavirus’ spread. In return, governments got a firehose of individuals’ private health details, photographs that captured their facial measurements and their home addresses.
Now, from Beijing to Jerusalem to Hyderabad, India, and Perth, Australia, The Associated Press has found that authorities used these technologies and data to halt travel for activists and ordinary people, harass marginalized communities and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools.
In some cases, data was shared with spy agencies. The issue has taken on fresh urgency almost three years into the pandemic as China’s ultra-strict zero-COVID policies recently ignited the sharpest public rebuke of the country’s authoritarian leadership since the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
For more than a year, AP journalists interviewed sources and pored over thousands of documents to trace how technologies marketed to “flatten the curve” were put to other uses. Just as the balance between privacy and national security shifted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, COVID-19 has given officials justification to embed tracking tools in society that have lasted long after lockdowns.
Congress Moves to Ban TikTok From U.S. Government Devices
TikTok would be banned from most U.S. government devices under a government spending bill Congress unveiled early Tuesday, the latest push by American lawmakers against the Chinese-owned social media app.
The $1.7 trillion package includes requirements for the Biden administration to prohibit most uses of TikTok or any other app created by its owner, ByteDance Ltd. The requirements would apply to the executive branch — with exemptions for national security, law enforcement and research purposes — and don’t appear to cover Congress, where a handful of lawmakers maintain TikTok accounts.
TikTok is consumed by two-thirds of American teens and has become the second-most popular domain in the world. But there’s long been a bipartisan concern in Washington that Beijing would use legal and regulatory power to seize American user data or try to push pro-China narratives or misinformation.
Actor Tim Robbins Expresses Regret for His Support of COVID Authoritarianism
With multiple peer-reviewed studies showing the potential danger from autoimmune side effects associated with COVID mRNA vaccines (the more doses the higher the risk), along with numerous studies debunking the notion that lockdowns, mandates and masks are effective at stopping the spread of the virus, more and more public figures are beginning to speak out about their initial support of the authoritarian measures.
Actor Tim Robbins recently expressed his regret on Russell Brand’s podcast for blindly following government mandates and he admonished tyrannical attitudes that led lockdown supporters to call for the deaths of their political opponents. While hindsight is indeed 20/20, it should be noted that there were millions of people in the U.S. alone that saw the COVID hype for what it was and tried to warn others.
The fear-mongering by the government and mainstream media in the face of the COVID pandemic was effective in terrorizing at least half the American populace into compliance during the first year of the event. Many alternative media analysts and many doctors and virologists came out against the mandates early on, warning that the median Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of COVID was tiny (0.23% officially) and that the lockdowns were about control rather than public safety.
These people were demonized by the corporate media and threatened with punishment by the government. They faced censorship, potential joblessness and being denied access to healthcare. In some cases they were even labeled “terrorists” for refusing to comply.
Big Tech Bills Left Out of Sweeping Government Spending Bill
Bipartisan bills targeting the nation’s largest tech firms failed to make it into the $1.7 trillion government spending bill, squelching what supporters said was the best effort to pass the bills before House Republicans take control in the new year.
Supporters of efforts to revamp antitrust laws, as well as update kids’ online safety regulations, hoped to add such measures to the omnibus funding bill in a last-ditch effort to pass them this year, but a swath of tech bills were left out, according to text released early Tuesday.
Conscious Machines May Never Be Possible
In June 2022, a Google engineer named Blake Lemoine became convinced that the AI program he’d been working on — LaMDA — had developed not only intelligence but also consciousness. LaMDA is an example of a “large language model” that can engage in surprisingly fluent text-based conversations.
The AI community was largely united in dismissing Lemoine’s beliefs. LaMDA, the consensus held, doesn’t feel anything, understand anything, have any conscious thoughts or any subjective experiences whatsoever. Programs like LaMDA are extremely impressive pattern-recognition systems, which, when trained on vast swathes of the internet, are able to predict what sequences of words might serve as appropriate responses to any given prompt. They do this very well, and they will keep improving. However, they are no more conscious than a pocket calculator.
The next LaMDA might not give itself away so easily. As the algorithms improve and are trained on ever deeper oceans of data, it may not be long before new generations of language models are able to persuade many people that a real artificial mind is at work. Would this be the moment to acknowledge machine consciousness?
Conscious machines are not coming in 2023. Indeed, they might not be possible at all. However, what the future may hold in store are machines that give the convincing impression of being conscious, even if we have no good reason to believe they actually are conscious. They will be like the Müller-Lyer optical illusion: Even when we know two lines are the same length, we cannot help seeing them as different.
Facial Recognition Wielded in India to Enforce COVID Policy
After a pair of Islamist bombings rocked the south-central Indian city of Hyderabad in 2013, officials rushed to install 5,000 CCTV cameras to bolster security. Now there are nearly 700,000 in and around the metropolis.
The most striking symbol of the city’s rise as a surveillance hotspot is the gleaming new Command and Control Center in the posh Banjara Hills neighborhood. The 20-story tower replaces a campus where swarms of officers already had access to 24-hour, real-time CCTV and cell phone tower data that geolocates reported crimes. The technology triggers any available camera in the area, pops up a mugshot database of criminals and can pair images with facial recognition software to scan CCTV footage for known criminals in the vicinity.
Police Commissioner C.V. Anand said the new command center, inaugurated in August, encourages using technologies across government departments, not just police. It cost $75 million, according to Mahender Reddy, director general of the Telangana State Police.
Facial recognition and artificial intelligence have exploded in India in recent years, becoming key law enforcement tools for monitoring big gatherings. Police aren’t just using technology to solve murders or catch armed robbers. Hyderabad was among the first local police forces in India to use a mobile application to dole out traffic fines and take pictures of people flaunting mask mandates.
EU Funds Test of Biometric Payments From Digital Wallets
The EU Commission will provide funds to a consortium whose job is to launch a payments pilot for the bloc’s digital ID wallet.
The NOBID (Nordic-Baltic eID Project) has been chosen to head a multi-national consortium comprising a number of companies such as Thales and iProov, who are expected to start the pilot focusing on payments — one of four EU digital identity pilots — in March 2023.
NOBID consists of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden, while, as previously announced, six states will make up the consortium — Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, and Norway.
They have been entrusted by the Commission to “pilot and shape” the future of digital payments and identity for the EU’s 27 member countries. The funding will come from the EU Commission’s DIGITAL Europa Program.
EU Accepts Amazon Commitments in Antitrust Agreement Affecting Data and Sellers
The European Union has struck a deal with Amazon that will resolve multiple antitrust investigations into the company and impose binding restrictions on the e-commerce giant’s business, in another major step by EU officials to rein in Big Tech.
The agreement includes several multi-year concessions offered by Amazon, including a commitment not to use third-party sellers’ data to benefit Amazon’s own marketplace listings, a practice that policymakers around the world have claimed is anti-competitive.
Violations of the commitments could lead to stiff fines against Amazon totaling as much as 10% of its annual global revenue, according to the European Commission.
Beijing Human Rights Activist Immobilized by COVID App
Wang Yu, hailed by the U.S. as an International Woman of Courage, has already been arrested, imprisoned and harassed by the Chinese Communist Party for her work as a human rights lawyer representing activists, Uyghur scholars and Falun Gong practitioners. This year, her movements within her home country also have been restricted by a color-coded app on her phone that’s supposed to protect people from COVID-19.
The health codes have become ubiquitous in China as the country has struggled to contain the novel coronavirus, pushing the public to a breaking point that erupted in protests late last month. The government announced last week it would discontinue the national health code, but cities and provinces have their own versions, which have been more dominant. In Beijing last week, restaurants, offices, hotels and gyms were still requiring local codes to enter.
Even after lockdowns end, some dissidents and activists predict the health codes will remain in place in some form.
Wang’s experience shows that the codes can become another tool of social control in China. “To some extent, it’s become an electronic handcuff,” said Wang Quanzhang, another human rights lawyer who is not related to Wang Yu. He said he and another passenger ran into similar travel issues in January while flying from Wuhan to Beijing. Wang Quanzhang said he eventually resolved the issue after calling a local Wuhan government hotline, complaining to airport staff and posting on Weibo.
Appeals Court Says U.S. Cannot Mandate Federal Contractor COVID Vaccines + More
Appeals Court Says U.S. Cannot Mandate Federal Contractor COVID Vaccines
A U.S. appeals court on Monday said the White House could not require federal contractors to ensure that their workers are vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of government contracts.
A panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to uphold a lower court decision that blocked President Joe Biden‘s September 2021 contractor vaccine executive order after Louisiana, Indiana and Mississippi brought suit to seek invalidation of the mandate.
The court said Biden wanted it “to ratify an exercise of proprietary authority that would permit him to unilaterally impose a healthcare decision on one-fifth of all employees in the United States. We decline to do so.”
Rep. Kevin McCarthy Vows to ‘Change the Course of the FBI’ Following ‘Twitter Files’ Bombshell
As bombshell revelations from the “Twitter files” continue to come to light, concerns grow over the FBI utilizing private companies as a “political arm,” as well as its role in censoring the “truth” from Americans.
During his appearance on “Mornings with Maria” Monday, House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told FOX Business that House Republicans plan to hold individuals accountable as they dig deeper into the FBI’s “collusion” with social media.
“We’re going to do more than just subpoena them. We’re going to change the course of where the FBI is today,” the California lawmaker said. “Every day we learn something more,” he continued. Much has been revealed about the government’s relationship with Big Tech since Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover in October.
During the sixth and latest installment of the “Twitter files,” Substack writer Matt Taibbi revealed that Twitter employees had near-constant communication with FBI agents from 2020 to 2022.
FTC Fines Fortnite Maker Epic Games $520 Million Over Children’s Privacy and Item Shop Charges
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Monday morning it will charge Epic Games with a $520 million settlement over charges related to children’s privacy. Epic Games, which makes popular all-ages games like “Fortnite” and “Fall Guys,” allegedly violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by deploying “design tricks, known as dark patterns, to dupe millions of players into making unintentional purchases,” the FTC said in a press release.
The $520 million payment is divided into two settlements: The COPPA fine amounts to $275 million, which is the largest-ever penalty for violating an FTC rule. The FTC also fined Epic $245 million to refund customers for what it calls “dark patterns and billing practices.” Epic says it will pay both of these fines, the latter of which will be the FTC’s largest-ever refund amount in a gaming case.
In addition to making it too easy for children to make online purchases, the FTC also took issue with Epic’s live text and voice communication features, which were set to be turned on by default. The FTC claims that children were exposed to harassment and abuse because of these features, especially since Epic had no way of making sure that children and adults would not be matched together in online play. According to the FTC’s press release, children have been exposed to bullying, threats, harassment and “psychologically traumatizing issues such as suicide” while playing the game.
Alleged Lack of Transparency Renews Fears Over Vaccine Passports in Orange County
The controversy over vaccine passports has resurfaced in Orange County, California, as a new potential contract with the firm that was paid $4 million to develop a digital vaccination tracking program recently appeared on multiple Board of Supervisors public meeting agendas — but was then removed.
According to county documents, County Health Officer Dr. Clayton Chau submitted on Nov. 21 a written request to the board’s clerk to move an item under the subject “Contract for Disease Control and Preventative Health Technology Enabled Solution” from the Nov. 29 meeting agenda to the Dec. 6 meeting agenda. Then, he asked that the item be deleted from that agenda the next day.
The item included approving a $3.4 million contract with Composite Apps, the company behind the vaccination verification app Othena, from Jan. 2, 2023, through Dec. 31, 2024. The item does not appear to be listed on the Dec. 20 meeting agenda.
Nicole Pearson, an attorney who is involved in a lawsuit against the county over its COVID-19 response policies, has accused the board of trying to hide plans to proceed with a vaccine passport program despite widespread community opposition.
Cyberbullying Affects Almost Half of American Teens. Parents May Be Unaware.
A new survey about teens and social media shows that nearly half of teens say they have been cyberbullied. In a separate survey administered to a parent of each teen, the adults ranked cyberbullying as sixth out of eight concerns about social media. Their top concern was their child being exposed to explicit content.
The survey results, released by Pew this week, aren’t surprising to Devorah Heitner, author of “Screenwise: Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World.” “There’s just so much online aggression — aggression because of online disinhibition and the ways that we forget there’s another human being on the other end of the screen.”
Parents might be more aware of the fact that pornography is widely available online than of the explicit harassment that some kids are facing, she said, which could account for the fact that only 29% said they were extremely or very concerned about their child being harassed or bullied.
The teen survey found that 46% of kids ages 13 to 17 had experienced at least one of six cyberbullying behaviors, while 28% have experienced multiple types.
Musk’s Poll Results: Elon Should Step Down as Twitter CEO
Twitter users voted decisively in a poll for Elon Musk to step down as chief executive of the social media platform, a backlash against the billionaire less than two months after he took over in what has been a chaotic and controversial reign.
Musk said on Sunday he would abide by the results of the poll, but did not give details on when he would step down if results said he should. He had said that there is no successor yet.
About 57.5% votes were for “Yes”, while 42.5% were against the idea of Musk stepping down as the head of Twitter, according to the poll the billionaire launched on Sunday evening. Over 17.5 million people voted.
Youngkin Joins GOP Governors in Banning TikTok on State Devices, Wireless Networks
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has become the latest in a series of Republican governors in banning TikTok on state government devices and wireless networks.
Youngkin issued an executive order on Friday to ban applications owned by the Chinese internet companies ByteDance Limited or Tencent Holdings Limited — like TikTok and WeChat — on those devices and networks. The order also requires businesses that contract with the state government to prohibit the use of those apps on state-owned devices and information technology infrastructure.
GOP governors in at least seven other states have issued similar orders recently, including in Utah, Maryland and Texas. A TikTok spokesperson told The Hill after Alabama, North Dakota and Iowa banned it on state devices that it is “disappointed” that many states are “jumping on the bandwagon.”
Up to 254,000 Medicare Beneficiaries Are Getting New ID Cards Due to Data Breach at Subcontractor. What They Need to Know
Up to 254,000 Medicare beneficiaries’ personal information may have been compromised in an online ransomware attack at a government subcontractor, officials warned this week.
Letters are being sent to the beneficiaries who were impacted by the potential data breach, said the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Those affected — who represent less than 0.4% of Medicare’s 64.5 million beneficiaries — will also receive a replacement Medicare card with a new identification number in the next few weeks.
The personal information that could have been compromised includes name, address, date of birth, phone number, Social Security number, Medicare beneficiary identifier, banking information (including routing and account numbers) and Medicare entitlement, enrollment and premium information.
China’s COVID Case ‘Explosion’ Not Due to Relaxed Rules, WHO Says, as 1st Deaths Reported Since Easing
China is facing its biggest public health challenge since the start of the coronavirus pandemic more than three years ago. Nine days after the government abruptly abandoned its draconian “zero-COVID” policy, halting mandatory mass testing and forcible quarantines, COVID-19 is once again spreading like wildfire across the vast country.
But the World Health Organization says the strict policy of the last three years had stopped working anyway. “The explosion of cases in China is not due to the lifting of COVID restrictions,” said the WHO’s head of emergency programs, Dr. Mike Ryan. “The explosion of cases in China had started long before any easing of the zero-COVID policy.” If so, no one had told the Chinese public.
For three years, Chinese officials had drilled the message into people’s minds that COVID-19 was a killer. As of nine days ago, the official message suddenly changed, telling people that, unless they’re really sick, they should just stay at home and get better.
‘What Was It for?’: The Mental Toll of China’s Three Years in COVID Lockdowns
After China’s abrupt scaling back of its zero-COVID restrictions, many ordinary Chinese people are struggling to cope with the mental trauma from three years of frequent lockdowns and are demanding answers for the heavy price they have paid.
On Friday, one of the top shared posts on Sina Weibo — China’s Twitter-like platform — was an article citing medical experts as saying depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by the population would probably take between 10 and 20 years to recover from.
Lu Lin, a fellow at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said at a forum on Friday that as many as 20% of health workers, patients and members of the public may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and nearly one-third of those quarantined at home have displayed symptoms of depression, anxiety and insomnia. Other experts called for emergency services to support the community’s mental health.
Many are cynical about the policy reversal. “Yesterday they said the virus was lethal and today they say the virus is milder than flu. What can you do?” said a post. Many questioned whether the heavy human price over the past three years had been worth it.
Senate Passes Defense Bill Rescinding COVID Vaccine Mandate + More
Senate Passes Defense Bill Rescinding COVID Vaccine Mandate
A bill to rescind the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for members of the U.S. military and provide nearly $858 billion for national defense passed the Senate on Thursday and now goes to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.
The Senate passed the defense policy bill by a vote of 83-11. The measure also received broad bipartisan support in the House last week.
To win GOP support for the 4,408-page bill, Democrats agreed to Republican demands to scrap the requirement for service members to get a COVID-19 vaccination. The bill directs Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to rescind his August 2021 memorandum imposing the mandate.
Va. Students With Disabilities Win Legal Right to Request Masking in Class
Parents of students with disabilities in Virginia public schools have won the right to require that their children’s peers and teachers wear masks after the state government agreed to a settlement with several families who had filed a lawsuit challenging a statewide mask-optional policy.
The parents of 12 immunocompromised students with disabilities filed suit in February over an executive order issued by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and subsequent state law, both of which forbid school districts from requiring mask-wearing as a coronavirus mitigation measure.
The parents, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, alleged that the imposition of mask-optional guidelines violated national disability law by making it impossible for their children to attend school safely to receive their federally guaranteed free and appropriate public education.
More Than a Third of Parents Oppose Vaccine Requirements in Schools, KFF Survey Finds
More than a third of U.S. parents say that vaccinating children against measles, mumps and rubella should be an individual choice and not a requirement to attend public school, even if that may create health risks, according to survey data published Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
That’s a notable increase from pre-pandemic times. A similar poll from the Pew Research Center found that 23% of parents opposed vaccine requirements in schools in 2019, but that’s now jumped to 35% in the KFF survey.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia require children attending public school to be vaccinated against certain diseases, including measles and rubella. Exemptions are allowed in only some circumstances.
Former UVA Employees Sue, Claim They Were Fired for Not Having COVID Vaccine
A class-action lawsuit has been filed against the University of Virginia Health System for discriminatory COVID-19 policies and practices regarding religious groups and beliefs.
On Dec. 13, the Founding Freedoms Law Center joined with the law firm of CrossCastle, PLLC filed the lawsuit in federal court, according to the law center. We’re told the lawsuit names six former employees and is filed on behalf of several hundred former employees and applicants to whom UVA Health systematically refused religious accommodations.
The complaint outlines examples of the accused first amendment violations and includes a written list of what is referred to as UVA’s favored religions, according to Founding Freedoms.
Elon Musk Defends Banning of Journalists: ‘You Dox, You Get Suspended’
Twitter CEO Elon Musk defended his decision to ban several prominent technology reporters from the platform on Thursday night, claiming they violated Twitter’s policies on “doxxing.”
“You dox, you get suspended,” Musk said on a Twitter Spaces conversation with journalists. “End of story.” Doxxing is the act of sharing information like addresses, phone numbers and emails online in an attempt to allow others to harass the individuals.
The billionaire abruptly suspended the accounts of reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other outlets on Thursday night who had covered Musk’s recent dispute with Jack Sweeney, the creator of @elonjet. Sweeney, who created the Twitter account that tracked the movements of Musk’s private jet, had his account suspended on Wednesday, despite previous assurances from Musk that he would not be banned.
“Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else,” Musk said in a tweet on Thursday night, later adding “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”
Twitter Censorship Contributed to Destructive Pandemic Policies and Is Criminal, Says Former White House COVID Adviser
The recently revealed censorship that has plagued Twitter in recent years is “criminal,” according to former White House COVID adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, as it allowed “lies to be imposed on the public” during a pandemic that wrought untold damage worldwide.
“When correct science policy is blocked, people die, and people died from the censorship,” Atlas, a special coronavirus adviser during the Trump administration and contributor to The Epoch Times, said in an interview.
Atlas was speaking days after Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, released troves of internal files showing how the previous Twitter team built a blacklist to limit disfavored tweets’ visibility without the knowledge of those using the platform. Among those flagged was Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, whose tweet criticizing pandemic lockdowns shortly after joining the platform last August got him on the “trends blacklist” preventing the amplification of his tweets.
But such revelations, Atlas said, are “only the tip of the iceberg. This seems to be criminal behavior, and I think it needs to be investigated in the courts.”
California to End Mandatory Pay for Workers With COVID
California will stop making companies pay employees who can’t work because they caught the coronavirus while on the job.
For the past two years, California workplace regulators have tried to slow the spread of the coronavirus by requiring infected workers to stay home while also guaranteeing them they would still be paid.
But Thursday, the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board voted to end that rule in 2023 — in part because the rule has become harder to enforce. Only people who caught the virus while at work are eligible to keep getting paid. But the coronavirus is now so widespread that it’s much harder to tell where someone got sick.
Millions of IP Cameras Around the World Are Unprotected
Over 3.5 million active Chinese-manufactured IP cameras are only protected by a vendor’s default password, or lacking protection altogether, putting users at risk of snooping, experts have warned.
New research from CyberNews found over 458,000 devices protected only by default credentials operational in the U.S. alone, alongside almost 250,000 in the United Kingdom, with countries such as Mexico, China, the Korean Republic, India, Brazil and Russia also appearing on the list.
At least 21,000 cameras worldwide lack any authentication whatsoever, raising questions about invasions of privacy, and the impact IP cameras are having on the global uptick in cyber warfare.
All devices connected to the internet are in danger of being accessed by unknown and potentially malicious third parties. In the case of security cameras, threat actors can access the live feed, record sensitive personal data and use the camera as a vulnerable endpoint on a network.
Inventor of the World Wide Web Wants Us to Reclaim Our Data From Tech Giants
The internet has come a long way since Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989. Now, in an era of growing concern over privacy, he believes it’s time for us to reclaim our personal data.
Through their startup Inrupt, Berners-Lee and CEO John Bruce have created the “Solid Pod” — or Personal Online Data Store. It allows people to keep their data in one central place and control which people and applications can access it, rather than having it stored by apps or sites all over the web.
Users can get a Pod from a handful of providers, hosted by web services such as Amazon (AMZN), or run their own server, if they have the technical know-how. The main attraction to self-hosting is control and privacy, says Berners-Lee.
Not only is user data safe from corporations and governments, but it’s also less likely to be stolen by hackers, Bruce says.
Corporate Coalition Pushes Government to Create Digital ID Infrastructure
A group of private companies has published a digital ID blueprint encouraging state governments to implement policies involved in creating a digital ID system.
The blueprint was published by the Better Identity Coalition, a group of 27 U.S. companies, including Mastercard, Equifax, AT&T and more. The group either wants to stop the worry about ID fraud or to profit from preventing ID fraud by pushing to normalize digital IDs.
The coalition is encouraging states to make their department of motor vehicles the core of developing and maintaining digital ID systems because these departments are central to each state’s identification systems.
Top Justice Department Official Calls on Social Media Companies to Do More as Teens Die From Fentanyl + More
Top Justice Department Official Calls on Social Media Companies to Do More as Teens Die From Fentanyl
Landen Hausman, a high school sophomore, died in January after buying fentanyl-laced Percocet through a dealer on social media. His family found him collapsed on the bathroom floor and tried to revive him with CPR, but it was too late. “He basically bought two of these counterfeit Percocet pills,” his father Marc Hausman said. “He took one. One killed him. We found the other one [in his bedroom].”
Sadly, Landen’s story is all too common. Last year, more than 100,000 Americans died from fentanyl — more deaths than there were of Americans killed in the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Deaths among teens have more than tripled since 2019.
The Drug Enforcement Administration says it is investigating more than 120 cases that involve social media. The agency has issued a warning about emoji code language dealers use to target young buyers.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who oversees the DEA, says fentanyl is the agency’s top priority. Monaco also said the Justice Department is pushing social media companies to crack down on dealers, calling the crisis “a national security issue, “a public safety issue” and “a public health issue.”
Tech Industry Group Sues to Block California Children’s Safety Law
The tech industry group NetChoice on Wednesday sued to block a landmark California law that requires tech companies to adopt new policies to protect children and their privacy online, in the latest legal salvo over the future of social media regulation.
NetChoice argues in its lawsuit that the law violates the First Amendment, arguing that tech companies have the right under the Constitution to make “editorial decisions” about what content they publish or remove. The industry group said that the law, which is set to go into effect in 2024, would force companies to “serve as roving censors of speech on the Internet” and result in “over-moderation” of content online.
California’s law is the latest battleground in the state’s efforts to control the actions of tech companies after years of inaction in Washington. Wednesday’s lawsuit highlights how the industry is equally hostile to legislation from Democrats as it is from Republicans, even though the challenged laws address different tech concerns.
Senate Votes to Ban TikTok Use on Government Devices
The Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved legislation that would ban the use of TikTok on government phones and devices as part of the push to combat security concerns related to the Chinese-owned social media company.
The “No TikTok on Government Devices Act,” introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), was passed via unanimous consent late Wednesday, meaning that no member objected to the bill. The proposal would “prohibit certain individuals from downloading or using TikTok on any device issued by the United States or a government corporation.”
The move comes as state governments, especially those led by Republicans, have taken steps to limit the use of the app on state-owned devices. Thirteen states overall have taken action against TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-owned entity. Eleven of those actions have taken place since the beginning of the month.
The bill would still need to be passed by the House and signed by President Biden to become law.
Elon Musk Should Take a Clear Stand Against Twitter Censorship by Proxy
From the outside, Twitter’s content moderation decisions looked haphazard at best. From the inside, they look worse, especially because government officials played an unseemly and arguably unconstitutional role in shaping those decisions.
The internal communications that Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has been gradually revealing to a select few journalists show that the company’s former executives arbitrarily applied the platform’s vague rules and surreptitiously suppressed content from disfavored accounts. The “Twitter Files” also confirms that the company had a cozy relationship with federal agencies, allowing them to indirectly censor speech they deemed dangerous.
Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” is trying to signal that things will be different under his ownership. He faces a daunting challenge as he attempts to implement lighter moderation policies without abandoning all content restrictions, lest Twitter becomes a “free-for-all hellscape” that alienates users and advertisers.
One part of that mission should be relatively straightforward. Musk could make it clear that neither government bureaucrats nor elected officials have any business dictating what Twitter’s rules should be or how they should be enforced.
USCG Admiral: Military Vaccine Mandate Rollback Not Enough for Discharged Service Members
The latest government funding bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, is expected to pass both chambers of Congress this week and head to the president to sign into law.
Florida Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio and others’ efforts to rollback COVID-19 vaccine requirements for U.S. military service members were included in the legislation, seeking to end the vaccine mandate and audit the process of discharges for lack of vaccination from the requirement’s start in August 2021.
While the rollback cleared the vote in the U.S. House, it has not yet been approved in the Senate, though a vote is expected by Friday. Advocates for the proposal, including a retired admiral, say it should also reinstate service members who were discharged over vaccination status. The portion of the legislation containing the removal of the vaccine requirement, called the Defending Religious Accommodations Act, was announced on Dec. 5.
Sen. Scott, retired Coast Guard Rear Admiral Peter Brown and other advocates for removing the mandate said the rollback would allow service members to opt out of the vaccination with exemptions for sincerely held religious beliefs. Brown said he first got involved in this political fight after he heard of seven cadets at the Coast Guard Academy who were disenrolled and discharged over their lack of COVID vaccination.
Mask Mandate Is Back at This New York College
Purchase College, part of the State University of New York system, mandated masking indoors as respiratory viruses have been spreading rapidly in the state and around the country.
The college, in suburban Westchester County, raised its alert level for COVID transmission to orange, triggering the change. Other educational systems in the area, including the New York City school district, began encouraging masks indoors this week without requiring them. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene recommends masking in public indoor settings and crowded outdoor settings.
Senate’s Year-End Children’s Privacy Push Faces Uphill Climb
Senate lawmakers are mounting an end-of-year push to pass new children’s online privacy and safety protections, but the campaign is rapidly running out of time amid a packed legislative schedule. And it’s facing resistance in the House.
A bipartisan group of senators in recent weeks has ramped up efforts to get two bills over the finish line during the lame duck: one to expand federal privacy protections for children and another to create safeguards for their online activity.
Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) have separately been pushing for the omnibus package to include the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would create a “duty” for tech companies to prevent harm to children online and require added parental controls.
But the push faces steep odds in the House, where lawmakers have been working for months on competing legislation to expand privacy protections for all Americans.
State Attorneys General Tell Twitter to Preserve Censorship Evidence
Missouri’s Attorney General Eric Schmitt who, together with Louisiana’s Attorney General Jeff Landry, filed a lawsuit alleging collusion between the federal government and social media companies to censor certain speech, sent a letter to Twitter asking for the preservation of evidence related to communications between the company and federal government officials on content moderation and misinformation.
Schmitt, who was elected to the Senate in November, referenced the internal documents, dubbed “Twitter Files,” that are being released by CEO Elon Musk via journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger.
After the release of the first batch of the Twitter Files, it was revealed that then-deputy legal counsel Jim Baker was vetting the documents being released to Taibbi and other journalists. Baker was fired immediately.
On Monday, Schmitt announced: “We sent a letter to Twitter asking the platform to look into whether any key documents were deleted.”
Ontario Superior Court Upholds Vaccine Passport, Appeal Expected
An Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruling on Dec. 13 held that vaccine passports were constitutional. The Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) said it is considering an appeal.
JCCF represented eight clients who argued their Charter freedoms were violated by vaccine passports. One of the clients was Sarah Lamb, who experienced long-term neurological side effects after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, said JCCF in a release following the ruling. She lost sensation from her waist down but was denied a vaccine exemption.
“All Ontarians should be free to enjoy the rights that our democracy has to offer. However, the exemptions to the vaccine passport regime were incredibly limited and unfairly narrow, and none of the Applicants were eligible for an exemption under the vaccine passport regime,” said Jorge Pineda, one of the lawyers for the applicants, in the release.
Exemptions were limited to those who are verifiably allergic to vaccine ingredients or who developed heart conditions of myocarditis or pericarditis after their first dose.