Big Brother News Watch
We Cannot Escape the Tyranny of Technology + More
We Cannot Escape the Tyranny of Technology
Recent reports of large language models developing emergent capabilities beyond their programming parameters suggest that once artificial intelligence (AI) is fully integrated with real-time data sets, the temptation for it or its human masters to use it to control, manipulate and suppress people may become irresistible. Totalitarian governments have been early adopters of digital surveillance technologies because of the ability it gives them to entrench their power. Will democratic nations be able to withstand the temptation to follow?
In recent books like “We Have Been Harmonized” and “Surveillance State,” the authors describe how the Chinese Communist Party uses elaborate surveillance systems composed of more than 300 million facial recognition cameras, mobile phone applications, GPS services, internet gating mechanisms, and a range of human overseers to collect and analyze data on the movement, activities, thoughts and patterns of citizens.
Often packaged as ways to enhance societal safety and security, these technological tools are rapidly facilitating repressive forms of government that can be used to both entitle or punish citizens based on their adherence to authoritarian rules. The brutalization of classes of people such as Chinese Uyghurs is a clear example of the misuse of such power.
There is no hiding from the kind of ubiquitous digital surveillance that governments can impose, and there is little chance of defeating it once it is embedded throughout society. Even the most well-intentioned surveillance program may naturally lead to the next step — government intervention before opposition has a chance to occur — in the name of public safety.
Big Tech Coalition Pushes Online Age Verification and Digital ID
Now, we’re hearing that a Big Tech group called Digital Trust & Safety Partnership (DTSP) has come out in support of age verification in its response to the UN’s wide-ranging Global Digital Compact.
DTSP’s members — Google, Apple, Meta, TikTok, Microsoft (plus LinkedIn), Amazon (via Twitch), Reddit, Pinterest, Zoom, and Match Group, Bitly, Discord — have “rebranded” age verification as “age assurance” and reveal that they are willing to combat harmful online content — but that this could, to actually work, highly likely mean, “collection of new personal data such as facial imagery or government-issued ID.”
So that’s the carrot Big Tech wants for itself in return for playing ball with the UN and its initiative — which itself, opponents say, is a gateway to more censorship and that of perhaps the most dangerous kind: things like linking individuals’ digital ID to their bank accounts.
Peter Hotez Finds ‘Parallel Career’ Fighting Vaccine Misinformation
Peter Hotez has wanted to be a vaccine researcher for as long as he can remember. The COVID-19 pandemic presented a once-in-a-lifetime challenge for someone of his skill set, but he never saw himself becoming the target of anti-vaxxers and the face of anti-misinformation in the way that he has the past few years.
Put plainly, Hotez knows infectious diseases. So, when the pandemic started, he felt ready to be a source of expertise amid the widespread confusion and uncertainty. But with this territory came the task of combating misinformation that sprang up as well, crystallizing what Hotez now refers to as his “parallel career,” which began before COVID-19.
He still finds his efforts to combat misinformation to be “meaningful,” saying pushing back on the anti-vaccine movement is just as important as developing vaccines. Amid the pandemic, Hotez also helped to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, Corbevax, which was licensed and approved for use in India.
Hotez is also holding his ground on social media, particularly on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, regularly sharing his thoughts on infectious diseases and shutting down unverified claims. But he hopes that eventually, scientific authorities will take some of that weight off him.
Fauci Deputy Warned Him Against Vaccine Mandates: Email
Mandating COVID-19 vaccination was a mistake because of ethical and other concerns, a top government doctor warned Dr. Anthony Fauci after Dr. Fauci promoted mass vaccination.
“Coercing or forcing people to take a vaccine can have negative consequences from a biological, sociological, psychological, economical, and ethical standpoint and is not worth the cost even if the vaccine is 100% safe,” Dr. Matthew Memoli, director of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases clinical studies unit at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told Dr. Fauci in an email.
“A more prudent approach that considers these issues would be to focus our efforts on those at high risk of severe disease and death, such as the elderly and obese, and do not push vaccination on the young and healthy any further.”
The email was sent on July 30, 2021, after Dr. Fauci, then the director of the NIAID, claimed that communities would be safer if more people received one of the COVID-19 vaccines and that mass vaccination would lead to the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vaccinating people who have not been infected with COVID-19, he said, could affect the evolution of the virus that causes COVID-19 in unexpected ways.
Report Highlights Civil Liberties Concerns With Facial Recognition Technology
Facial recognition technology (FRT) can allow investigators to scan billions of photos or videos quickly to identify a potential suspect or a victim. Now, a new watchdog report is revealing more about how often federal law enforcement agencies use the tool and the training for staff.
The new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says seven federal law enforcement agencies have used FRT. That includes U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Marshals Service. The findings say all seven started using the technology before training was put in place.
“We learned about 60,000 searches had been conducted before anyone in those agencies was required to take any type of training,” said Gretta Goodwin, a Director for GAO’s Justice and Law Enforcement Issues Team. “That’s a concern.”
“It is absolutely galling that we have these federal agencies playing with fire here with no policies and no training in a lot of circumstances,” said Nate Freed Wessler, Deputy Director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.
Airbnb Bans Creepy Surveillance Cameras Inside Rentals Starting April 30
Airbnb, like hotels and rival vacation rental site Vrbo, will no longer allow hosts to record guests while they’re inside the property. Airbnb previously allowed hosts to have disclosed cameras outside the property and in “common areas” inside, but Airbnb’s enforcement of the policy and the rules’ lack of specificity made camera use troubling for renters.
Airbnb announced today that as of April 30, it’s “banning the use of indoor security cameras in listings globally as part of efforts to simplify our policy on security cameras and other devices” and to prioritize privacy.
Cameras that are turned off but inside the property will also be banned, as are indoor recording devices. Airbnb’s updated policy defines cameras and recording devices as “any device that records or transmits video, images, or audio, such as a baby monitor, doorbell camera, or other camera.”
Rumble Makes Major Announcement in Effort to Combat Censorship, Ensure ‘Free and Open Internet’
Rumble, a popular video-sharing platform, announced Monday the launch of a new cloud service it says will champion the “free and open internet,” and ease companies’ fears of facing censorship or the threat of being deplatformed because of their values.
According to Rumble, its new service, called Rumble Cloud, is designed to help businesses become independent from traditional providers, including their “unfair pricing, vendor lock-in strategies, and censorship.”
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski told Fox that the importance of Rumble Cloud comes down to less about what the company will do and more about what it’s not going to do: engage in “viewpoint discrimination.”
West Virginia Lawmakers OK Bill Drawing Back One of the Country’s Strictest Child Vaccination Laws + More
West Virginia Lawmakers OK Bill Drawing Back One of the Country’s Strictest Child Vaccination Laws
West Virginia’s GOP-controlled state Legislature voted Saturday to allow some students who don’t attend traditional public schools to be exempt from state vaccination requirements that have long been held up as among the most strict in the country.
The bill was approved despite the objections of Republican Senate Health and Human Resources Chair Mike Maroney, a trained doctor, who called the bill “an embarrassment” and said he believed lawmakers were harming the state.
West Virginia, with some of the lowest life expectancy rates in the U.S. and a quarter of all children living in poverty, is one of only two states, along with California, that don’t permit nonmedical exemptions to vaccinations as a condition for school entry.
The new proposed vaccine law in West Virginia, which now heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Jim Justice, allows virtual public school students to be exempt and for private and parochial schools to institute their own policies either exempting students or not.
Exclusive: U.S. Must Move ‘Decisively’ to Avert ‘Extinction-Level’ Threat From AI, Government-Commissioned Report Says
The U.S. government must move “quickly and decisively” to avert substantial national security risks stemming from artificial intelligence (AI) which could, in the worst case, cause an “extinction-level threat to the human species,” says a report commissioned by the U.S. government published on Monday.
The three authors of the report worked on it for more than a year, speaking with more than 200 government employees, experts, and workers at frontier AI companies — like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic and Meta — as part of their research. Accounts from some of those conversations paint a disturbing picture, suggesting that many AI safety workers inside cutting-edge labs are concerned about perverse incentives driving decision-making by the executives who control their companies.
The finished document, titled “An Action Plan to Increase the Safety and Security of Advanced AI,” recommends a set of sweeping and unprecedented policy actions that, if enacted, would radically disrupt the AI industry. Congress should make it illegal, the report recommends, to train AI models using more than a certain level of computing power.
The report focuses on two separate categories of risk. Describing the first category, which it calls “weaponization risk,” the report states: “Such systems could potentially be used to design and even execute catastrophic biological, chemical, or cyber-attacks, or enable unprecedented weaponized applications in swarm robotics.”
The second category is what the report calls the “loss of control” risk, or the possibility that advanced AI systems may outmaneuver their creators. There is, the report says, “reason to believe that they may be uncontrollable if they are developed using current techniques, and could behave adversarially to human beings by default.”
Dozens of Top Scientists Sign Effort to Prevent AI Bioweapons
Dario Amodei, chief executive of the high-profile A.I. start-up Anthropic, told Congress last year that new A.I. technology could soon help unskilled but malevolent people create large-scale biological attacks, such as the release of viruses or toxic substances that cause widespread disease and death.
Senators from both parties were alarmed, while A.I. researchers in industry and academia debated how serious the threat might be.
Now, over 90 biologists and other scientists who specialize in A.I. technologies used to design new proteins — the microscopic mechanisms that drive all creations in biology — have signed an agreement that seeks to ensure that their A.I.-aided research will move forward without exposing the world to serious harm.
The agreement does not seek to suppress the development or distribution of A.I. technologies. Instead, the biologists aim to regulate the use of equipment needed to manufacture new genetic material.
SCOTUS Is Hearing 2 Cases About Political Censorship on Social Media That Could Change How the Internet Works Forever
The Supreme Court of the United States has had its hands full this session, hearing important arguments about redistricting and gerrymandering in South Carolina, whether domestic-violence-related restrictions on the ownership of firearms are a violation of the Second Amendment, and deciding that former President Donald Trump is eligible to be on the ballot again this year.
But a pair of laws being quietly considered by the highest court in the land could — depending on how SCOTUS rules — change the way the internet works forever, legal experts told Business Insider.
Two legal experts told BI that a victory for the states in these cases would be a massive blow to the First Amendment because the amendment grants the privilege of free speech to companies and individuals and prevents the government from forcing them to speak — or not speak — in a certain way. Should the laws take effect, the government would be allowed to infringe on the social media companies’ right to free speech by compelling platforms to host certain content.
“If the states win, then I expect that we are going to very quickly have a very different sort of internet experience,” Justin (Gus) Hurwitz, academic director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition, told BI.
Hurwitz said companies will likely do two things immediately: “The first is they will, at least on a temporary basis, stop hosting content, comments, user-generated speech, discussion forums, and things like that.”
‘New Text, Same Problems’: Inside the Fight Over Child Online Safety Laws
Sharp divisions between advocates for children’s safety online have emerged as a historic bill has gathered enough votes to pass in the U.S. Senate. Amendments to the bill have appeased some former detractors who now support the legislation; its fiercest critics, however, have become even more entrenched in their demands for changes.
The Kids Online Safety act (Kosa), introduced more than two years ago, reached 60 backers in the Senate in mid-February. A number of human rights groups still vehemently oppose the legislation, underscoring ongoing divisions among experts, lawmakers and advocates over how to keep young people safe online.
Sponsored by the Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal and the Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn, Kosa would be the biggest change to American tech legislation in decades. The bill would require platforms like Instagram and TikTok to mitigate online dangers via design changes or opt-outs of algorithm-based recommendations, among other measures. Enforcement would demand much more fundamental modifications to social networks than current regulations require.
Johns Hopkins Needs to Drop Its COVID Vaccine Mandate
One of my proudest accomplishments is earning my doctorate in political science from Johns Hopkins University. My oldest son applied to colleges this year, he loves and excels in mathematics, and Hopkins would have been a perfect school for him to consider. But I did not mention the school to him as a possibility, we did not visit Homewood, and he did not apply.
Why did I not encourage my son to apply to Johns Hopkins? The reason is the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Given that nearly all colleges by now have dropped their mandate, Hopkins is an outlier in mandating a shot that does not prevent infections and has side effects. It is past time for Hopkins to drop its COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
If the vaccines were as harmless as water, then perhaps people would not protest so much. But a recent global study published in the journal Vaccine identified “safety signals for myocarditis, pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis.” As a parent, I want an evidence-based explanation of why getting this shot for my children is safer than not getting it. The Hopkins website does not offer an explanation, nor does it address the situation of students who have had a prior infection.
The Journal of Medical Ethics published an article co-authored by Marty Makary, a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins. The article provides three reasons that universities should end COVID-19 vaccine mandates for college students: Many young people by now have been infected by COVID-19, the vaccines lack sustained transmission reduction, and the age of peak risk for myocarditis is young adults aged 16-17 years. The authors argue that universities may be keeping mandates because of status quo bias, in other words, because it is hard to change a policy once it is in place, even if it has no rational basis.
‘911’ Actor’s Lawsuit Over COVID Vaccine Firing Heads to Trial in Major Test for Studios
The Hollywood Reporter reported:
20th Television must face a religious discrimination trial for firing Rockmond Dunbar, an original castmember on 911, after he refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine, marking the second ruling to clear the way for trial a lawsuit against a studio over terminations triggered by vaccine mandates amid the pandemic.
U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee found on Friday that 20th may have discriminated against Dunbar for declining to provide him a religious exemption to the vaccine as a follower of the Church of Universal Wisdom. The trial will assess whether he had a sincerely held religious belief within the meaning of civil rights laws that conflicted with the vaccine mandate and if reasonable accommodations could have been offered, allowing him to continue acting on the series without endangering others or causing undue hardship to the studio.
If 20th is found to have engaged in religious discrimination in the trial, the decision could threaten how studios approach exemptions to vaccine mandates if they are reimplemented in the future. Dunbar claimed that his request for an exemption was denied after Disney determined that he was not a true believer in the Church of Universal Wisdom.
An exemption request from General Hospital’s Ingo Rademacher, who was fired from the series after refusing the vaccine, was similarly rejected after Disney, which owns ABC, questioned the sincerity of his belief in a book called The Revelation of Ramala. It appears that Disney vetted exemption applications on a case-by-case basis, investigating whether the religions constituted true religious institutions and whether applicants actually followed the beliefs.
Veterans Affairs Kept COVID Vaccine Mandate in Place Without Evidence
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reviewed no data when deciding in 2023 to keep its COVID-19 vaccine mandate in place.
VA Secretary Denis McDonough said on May 1, 2023, that the end of many other federal mandates “will not impact current policies at the Department of Veterans Affairs.”
He said the mandate was remaining for VA healthcare personnel “to ensure the safety of veterans and our colleagues.”
Mr. McDonough did not cite any studies or other data. A VA spokesperson declined to provide any data that was reviewed when deciding not to rescind the mandate. The Epoch Times submitted a Freedom of Information Act for “all documents outlining which data was relied upon when establishing the mandate when deciding to keep the mandate in place.”
The agency searched for such data and did not find any. The VA’s mandate remains in place to this day.
Top Democrat, Republican Intel Senators Blast TikTok: ‘The Most Powerful Propaganda Tool Ever’
Top Democrat and Republican senators warned over the weekend that TikTok, the social media app allegedly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, is “the most powerful propaganda tool” that officials have ever seen.
The remarks from Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) and Ranking Member Marco Rubio (R-FL) on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” come as the U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on a bill this week that would force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to divest its ownership in the company or it will be banned in the U.S.
Warner slammed President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign for joining TikTok, saying it sent “a pretty darn mixed message.” Warner warned that TikTok poses a threat to the U.S. by collecting Americans’ data and manipulating what they see to turn them against each other.
Rubio said people get so hooked on TikTok because its algorithm has a powerful “recommender engine, which is one of the best in the world.”
As the Change Healthcare Outage Drags On, Fears Grow That Patient Data Could Spill Online
U.S. healthcare system to a halt for the second week in a row.
Hospitals have been unable to check insurance benefits of in-patient stays, handle the prior authorizations needed for patient procedures and surgeries or process billing that pays for medical services. Pharmacies have struggled to determine how much to charge patients for prescriptions without access to their health insurance records, forcing some to pay for costly medications out of pocket with cash, with others unable to afford the costs.
Since Change Healthcare shut down its network suddenly on February 21 in an effort to contain the digital intruders, some smaller healthcare providers and pharmacies are warning of crashing cash reserves as they struggle to pay their bills and staff without the steady flow of reimbursements from insurance giants.
As the near-term impact of the ongoing outages on patients and providers becomes clearer, questions remain about the security of millions of people’s highly sensitive medical information handled by Change Healthcare.
TSA Facial Recognition Is Being Rolled Out at More U.S. Airports + More
TSA Facial Recognition Is Being Rolled Out at More U.S. Airports
More airlines and airports are testing facial recognition technology that automates this process in a bid to decrease the time spent at ID checks and keep up with the growing demand for air travel in the US. Last week, United Airlines joined Delta Air Lines in testing facial recognition technology on PreCheck travelers in conjunction with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) through an initiative called TSA PreCheck Touchless Identity Solution.
United and Delta passengers with TSA PreCheck can consent to the technology at seven U.S. airports: Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW), Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), LaGuardia Airport (LGA), and John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) with Delta Air Lines, and at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and O’Hare International Airport (ORD) with United Airlines. Clear, the $189-a-year membership that allows enrolled travelers to cut to the front of airport security lines, has also begun using facial recognition technology at its checkpoints.
Biometric technology is replacing the need for passports at the world’s most modern airports.
The TSA explains on its site that the information is converted to an “anonymized format” before being encrypted and transferred over to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science & Technology Directorate (S&T) for a “temporary analysis,” with the DHS deleting the data within 180 days.
Want to Hit Facebook Where It Really Hurts? Outlaw Its Harvesting of Our Data
The Sydney Morning Herald reported:
“Deprecate” seemed an odd word to use, didn’t it? “We’ll be deprecating Facebook news” declared Meta this week, as a way of announcing it would close its dedicated news tab in April.
The practical meaning of this is that Facebook will not renew its contracts with news organizations whereby it pays for the news content that appears on the site. That’s obviously significant news for anyone who cares about journalism, but even so, I found myself stuck on the verb. So I looked it up.
Here, there’s an overlap with the word’s traditional meaning of belittling or disapproving of something. Turns out it’s the perfect word for Facebook to use because at the center of its decision is one blunt calculation: that as far as Facebook content goes, news just isn’t that valuable.
And so, in one country after another — the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France, Australia — where it has been forced to pay for this content, it has now concluded the price isn’t worth paying. Facebook is quite literally belittling the worth of news.
‘General Hospital’ Actor Fired Over Vaccine Mandate Returns to Show: ‘Just Feels Really Good’
More than two years after being removed from the ABC soap opera “General Hospital” following a dispute over the COVID-19 vaccine, actor Steve Burton has returned to the show.
Burton appeared on Monday’s episode of “General Hospital,” roughly one month after the actor teased his return in an Instagram video apparently filmed on the show’s set.
Burton, who joined the show in 1992 as Jason Morgan, had first revealed to fans in November 2021 that the producers “let [him] go because of the vaccine mandate.” He explained at the time that he had applied for medical and religious exemptions, but was denied.
Shortly before Burton left “General Hospital,” the show parted ways with Ingo Rademacher, who had played Jasper “Jax” Jacks on the soap opera since 1996, for refusing to comply with the show’s vaccine mandate. Rademacher later sued ABC over the mandate, but a Los Angeles judge sided with ABC in the case in June 2023.
Meta Urged by U.S. States to Combat Facebook, Instagram Account Hijackings
Forty U.S. states and Washington, D.C. called on Meta Platforms (META.O) to crack down on scammers who hijack Facebook and Instagram accounts, to address a “dramatic” surge in account takeovers.
In a letter to Meta’s chief lawyer, states led by New York Attorney General Letitia James said fraudsters are “winning the war and running rampant on Meta,” after the company in November 2022 announced thousands of job cuts focused on security and privacy.
The states said New York has since 2019 received a 1,000% increase in complaints about scammers who access accounts and change passwords, enabling them to read private messages and pose as actual users to deceive contacts and the public. The states urged Meta to spend more money to prevent account takeovers, including through increased staffing, and to work more closely with people whose accounts are hacked.
In October, 41 states and Washington, D.C. sued Meta, claiming the company designed its platforms to addict children, damaging their mental health.
Senate Passes Bill to Compensate Americans Exposed to Radiation by the Government
The Senate passed legislation Thursday that would compensate Americans exposed to radiation by the government by renewing a law initially passed more than three decades ago.
The bill by Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., would expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include more people who believe that exposure caused their illnesses. While some Republicans have balked at the cost — an estimated $50 billion, according to Hawley’s office — the senators have argued that the government is at fault and should step up.
Hawley stood outside the Senate before the vote with advocates for the legislation, several of whom have been diagnosed with cancers or who have family members who have been diagnosed. He said it’s “hard to look them in the eye” and say they were poisoned by their government, “but we’re not going to be there for you.”
While it is difficult to prove definitively that the waste caused residents’ illnesses, the advocates argue that there is more than enough evidence that it has sickened people in the area.
Potential TikTok Ban Clears Congressional Hurdle As Some Republicans Voice Opposition
A controversial bill that could completely ban the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok from being downloaded in the U.S. is headed to the House floor after a Congressional committee voted unanimously on Thursday to advance the legislation.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a bipartisan vote of 50-0, Fox Business reported. The measure, titled the ‘‘Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” would require ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to divest the social media app or face an outright ban in the U.S. It would also create a process for the executive branch of the federal government to ban apps in the future that are deemed a “national security” risk.
While the bill is supported by numerous GOP congressmen, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), some Republican lawmakers and former President Donald Trump have voiced their opposition to a total ban on TikTok.
COVID Lockdowns Had High Health, Economic Costs: Swedish Study
Imposing restrictive lockdown measures during the COVID-19 pandemic led to higher excess mortality in such nations while also damaging their economies, according to a recent Swedish study.
Published in the Economic Affairs journal on Feb. 11, the study — which looked at the health and economic effects of COVID-19 lockdowns in Sweden — found that its less restrictive COVID-19 policies led to lower excess mortality compared to many European nations that imposed stronger lockdown rules. Sweden also suffered a lower negative impact on gross domestic product (GDP) growth during the pandemic period.
Many policymakers made two key mistakes, researchers concluded. “First, they introduced lockdowns that were too stringent and had negligible positive health effects despite the evidence available at the time pointing toward the limited benefits of such broad measures.
“Second, they responded to the downturn in economic activity with fiscal and monetary policies that were excessively expansionary.”
How Tech Giants Must Change to Comply With Europe’s New Regulations
Six of the largest tech companies will be forced to make changes to their products and services this week as Europe’s new sweeping tech regulation largely goes into effect.
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act dictates how platforms minimize self-preferencing and allow for inter-operability, meaning how they prioritize their services over rivals and how services operate between ones run by other companies, among other measures. Companies that fail to comply will face hefty fines.
Five of the six companies designated as “gatekeepers” are U.S.-based: Amazon, Apple, Facebook’s parent company Meta, Google’s parent company Alphabet, and Microsoft. The other is Chinese-based ByteDance, which owns TikTok. The gatekeepers are designated by having annual turnover equal to or more than 7.5 billion euros in each of the past three years and at least 45 million monthly active EU users.
The change comes after years of global momentum to hold massive tech firms accountable for actions that may have led to their dominance in the market. But this week marks a key milestone as the significant regulations that curtail practices the platforms have used for years go into effect.
Arbitrator Rules in Favor of Ontario Nurses Fired for Refusing COVID Vaccines + More
Arbitrator Rules in Favor of Ontario Nurses Fired for Refusing COVID Vaccines
An arbitrator has ruled that nine Ontario nurses, who were fired because they didn’t get two COVID-19 vaccinations, should be reinstated because their termination was “unreasonable.”
“Nurses intent on remaining unvaccinated are a small minority everywhere but their employee rights may not be ignored,” wrote James Hayes, in his decision published March 1.
While he wrote that the initial vaccine mandate was “well-motivated, driven as it was by genuine safety concerns,” Hayes decided that the nurses “should have been placed on unpaid leaves of absence,” which would have allowed them to return to their jobs if there were changes to the policy or changes in their vaccination status.
The terminations meant the RNs had a “misconduct” for lack of compliance making it difficult for them to get a new nursing job and because they were fired they would not be able to collect unemployment insurance or other support payments.
Jordan Peterson to Testify to Congress on Government Collusion With Banks
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson will testify on Capitol Hill this week for a House hearing on allegations of government collusion with banks to snoop on the private financial information of U.S. citizens, The Daily Wire has learned.
The Thursday hearing will be held by the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which is chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). Jordan announced in January of this year that his committee obtained documents that show the federal government flagged monetary transactions using terms associated with former President Donald Trump for financial institutions.
In addition to being a DailyWire+ host, Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist, best-selling author, and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto.
Ever since February of 2022, when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to freeze money to members of the “Freedom Convoy” who protested restrictive COVID-19 measures and vaccine mandates, Peterson has raised concerns about government abuse of the financial system.
Concerns about federal law enforcement targeting political and religious expression protected by the Constitution as well as protecting civil liberties are certain to be topics of discussion during the hearing on Thursday.
U.S. Sanctions Top Spyware Maker Over Claims It Targeted Thousands of Americans
The U.S. government has sanctioned Intellexa Consortium, the company that developed and sold the notorious Predator spyware.
Commercial malware is usually sold to government agencies around the world, who use it to target political opponents, journalists, human rights activists, and dissidents, the Treasury Department reported.
In late May 2023, researchers analyzed a sample of the malware and discovered that it can record audio from phone calls and VoIP apps, and steal data from chat apps such as WhatsApp or Telegram. Although not confirmed, the researchers believe the malware also allows for geolocation tracking, access to camera apps, and tricking the user into thinking the device is powered off (for easier use during the “off” time).
The researchers also said that the list of features is not conclusive and that Predator could be capable of a lot more. The Department of Treasury sanctioned the group mostly because, as it said in the press release, Predator was used to target U.S. government officials, journalists, and activists.
This Agency Is Tasked With Keeping AI Safe. Its Office Is Crumbling.
At the National Institute of Standards and Technology — the government lab overseeing the most anticipated technology on the planet — black mold has forced some workers out of their offices. Researchers sleep in their labs to protect their work during frequent blackouts. Some employees have to carry hard drives to other buildings; flaky internet won’t allow for the sending of large files.
And a leaky roof forces others to break out plastic sheeting. “If we knew rain was coming, we’d tarp up the microscope,” said James Fekete, who served as chief of NIST’s applied chemicals and materials division until 2018. “It leaked enough that we were prepared.”
Interviews with more than a dozen current and former NIST employees, Biden administration officials, congressional aides and tech company executives, along with reports commissioned by the government, detail a massive resources gap between NIST and the tech firms it is tasked with evaluating — a discrepancy some say risks undermining the White House’s ambitious plans to set guardrails for the burgeoning technology. Many of the people spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Even as it races to set up the new U.S. AI Safety Institute, the crisis at the degrading lab is becoming more acute. On Sunday, lawmakers released a new spending plan that would cut NIST’s overall budget by more than 10 percent, to $1.46 billion. While lawmakers propose to invest $10 million in the new AI institute, that’s a fraction of the tens of billions of dollars tech giants like Google and Microsoft are pouring into the race to develop artificial intelligence. It pales in comparison to Britain, which has invested more than $125 million into its AI safety efforts.
Insurance Giant Fidelity Hit by Data Breach — Thousands of Customers May Have Had Data Stolen
Sensitive information belonging to tens of thousands of Fidelity Investments Life Insurance customers was stolen, reportedly thanks to a supply chain attack that happened in 2023.
The insurance giant has filed a data breach notification with the Maine attorney general’s office in which it stated that 28,268 of its customers had their private data leaked after a data breach at Infosys McCamish Systems LLC — a U.S. subsidiary of Indian tech services giant Infosys.
The breach, which happened in November 2023, resulted in the theft of people’s names, Social Security numbers, states of residence, bank accounts and routing numbers, or credit/debit card numbers in combination with access code, password, and PIN for the account, and dates of birth.
This database is a real treasure trove for every hacker out there, as it provides enough information to mount incredibly believable phishing attacks, identity theft, impersonation, wire fraud, and a whole slew of similar scams.
Top AI Photo Generators Produce Misleading Election-Related Images, Study Finds
Leading artificial intelligence image generators can be manipulated into creating misleading election-related images, according to a report released Wednesday by tech watchdog the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
The findings suggest that despite pledges from leading AI firms to address risks related to potential political misinformation ahead of elections in the United States and dozens of other countries this year, some companies still have work to do to ensure their AI tools cannot be manipulated to create misleading images.
CCDH researchers tested AI image generators Midjourney, Stability AI’s DreamStudio, OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus and Microsoft Image Creator. They found that each tool could be prompted to create misleading images related to either U.S. presidential candidates or voting security.
Worldcoin Hit With Temporary Ban in Spain Over Privacy Concerns
Spain’s data protection authority has ordered Worldcoin to temporarily stop collecting and processing personal data from the market. It must also stop processing any data it previously collected there.
The controversial, Sam Altman-founded eyeball-scanning blockchain crypto project started operations in the market last July, as part of a global rollout.
The Spanish authority is using “urgency procedure” powers contained in the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the temporary data processing cessation order — which means the order can have a maximum duration of three months (so until mid-June).
