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Big Brother News Watch
Biden’s DOJ Is Still Fighting to Reimpose Mask Mandates on Airline Flights + More
U.S. Asks Court to Reverse Order Banning Airplane Mask Mandate to Combat COVID
The Justice Department on Tuesday asked an appeals court panel to reverse an April 2022 ruling that declared unlawful a government order requiring masks on airplanes, buses, trains, ridesharing services and at airports and other transportation hubs.
A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on the government’s appeal of a ruling by a U.S. district court judge in Florida that found the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lacked legal authority to issue a nationwide travel mask mandate to combat COVID-19.
The CDC issued the sweeping mask mandate in January 2021, days after Joe Biden became president.
Much of the arguments in the appeal focus on the CDC’s decision to put in place the requirements immediately rather than give the public a chance to comment on the mandate.
Michael Knowles Uncovers WEF’s Sinister Threat to Free Speech
The World Economic Forum has an innocuous name for a sinister new initiative designed to give radical globalist bureaucrats control over what people can say and see on social media, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles warned in an illuminating tweet thread Wednesday.
Called “Safety by Design,” the new scheme seeks to regulate social media by having prohibitions against “harmful” content built into the technology behind their platforms. But it looks like yet another bid by the Left to control speech it doesn’t like by deeming it dangerous, Knowles said.
“If you thought the Twitter Files were as bad as it gets for the ‘Trust & Safety’ of Big Tech merging with government, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Knowles tweeted.
Warning Issued Over ‘Dragon’s Breath’ Viral Video Trend
Indonesia is warning people against consuming liquid nitrogen after more than 20 children were harmed eating a street snack known as “dragon’s breath” that’s at the center of a dangerous new viral video trend.
The children suffered burns to their skin, severe stomach pains and food poisoning after consuming the colorful candies, according to Indonesia’s Ministry of Health, which is urging parents, teachers and local health authorities to be vigilant.
The candies are dipped in liquid nitrogen to create a vapor effect when eaten. They are popular with children, dozens of whom have uploaded clips to the short-form video app TikTok showing them blowing the fumes out of their mouths, noses and ears. One video showing the preparation of the snack by a street vendor has been viewed close to 10 million times.
Around 25 children have been hurt consuming the candies, including two who were hospitalized, said the ministry’s director general Maxi Rein Rondonuwu. No deaths have been reported.
Microsoft, Amazon and Other Tech Companies Have Laid off More Than 60,000 Employees in the Last Year
Microsoft said Wednesday that it’s letting go of 10,000 employees, which will reduce the company’s headcount by less than 5%. Amazon also began a fresh round of job cuts that are expected to eliminate more than 18,000 employees and become the largest workforce reduction in the e-retailer’s 28-year history.
Google parent company Alphabet had largely avoided layoffs until January when it cut 15% of employees from Verily, its health sciences division. Google itself has not undertaken any significant layoffs as of Jan. 18, but employees are increasingly growing worried that the ax may soon fall.
Facebook parent Meta announced its most significant round of layoffs ever in November. The company said it plans to eliminate 13% of its staff, which amounts to more than 11,000 employees.
Shortly after closing his $44 billion purchase of Twitter in late October, new owner Elon Musk cut around 3,700 Twitter employees, according to internal communications viewed by CNBC. That’s about half the staff. Since then, significantly more employees have quit after Musk changed some policies around working from home and wrote that he expected all employees to commit to a “hardcore” work environment.
Instagram Just Got an Update That Gives You More Control Over What You See in Your Feed
Instagram on Thursday launched a new set of features that helps you manage what you see in your feed and silence notifications.
The changes on Instagram, which include the option to hide posts containing any keywords users choose (such as “fitness” or “diets”), appear to seek to address concerns raised by policymakers about the platform’s impact on teens in the wake of internal documents shared by former Meta employee Frances Haugen.
The new settings include Quiet mode, which allows users to set a customized schedule to silence Instagram notifications and auto-respond to direct messages (DMs). The app will automatically prompt teens to enable quiet mode when they spend a “specific amount of time” browsing the app at night.
Instagram announced parental controls in 2021, but the platform is now taking steps to allow further control over user feeds — and to give parents more insight into their children’s Instagram habits.
TikTok Must Follow Coming EU Rules or Face Ban, Official Says
A top European Union official urged TikTok to comply with upcoming content rules or face a possible ban, a sharp change in tone from Brussels.
EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said it’s “not acceptable” that users of the platform can access “harmful and sometimes even life-threatening content” within seconds. He issued the statement after he held a video call with TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew on Thursday.
“With younger audiences comes greater responsibility,” Breton wrote. He also raised concerns that some employees of the Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd. spied on journalists and that the company is transferring personal data outside of Europe.
Under the Digital Services Act, which companies must comply with by Sept. 1, large internet platforms will have to face a long list of content moderation rules or face fines of as much as 6% of their annual revenue or be banned in EU countries.
An AI Rival to ChatGPT Passed a University-Level Law and Economics Exam, and Did Better Than Many Humans, Professor Says
An AI which received funding from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried passed a university-level law and economics exam, according to a professor at Virginia’s George Mason University.
The AI, named Claude, was designed by AI safety and research firm Anthropic and was used by Alex Tabarrok to take a law and economics exam.
Claude received a “marginal pass” on a recent law and economics exam at George Mason University in Virginia, Tabarrok, an economics professor at the college wrote on the influential Marginal Revolution University blog, which he runs with fellow economist Tyler Cowen.
Tabarrok said the exam was graded blind and that he considered Claude “a competitor” and “improvement” to OpenAI’s GPT3, the tech underlying viral sensation ChatGPT.
Ireland’s WhatsApp Penalty Highlights EU Privacy Turmoil
Ireland fined WhatsApp for breaching strict European Union privacy rules in a case that has exposed divisions among EU watchdogs over how to regulate its parent company, Meta.
The chat app was ordered to pay 5.5 million euros ($5.9 million) Thursday by the Data Protection Commission for forcing users to allow personal data to be used to provide “service improvements and security” — but only after some of its European counterparts balked at its initial decision to let the company off.
In a related decision earlier this month that played out in a similar manner, the Irish watchdog hit Meta Platforms Inc. with $390 million in fines for forcing Facebook and Instagram users to agree to personalized ads based on their online activity.
In its final decision on the WhatsApp case, the commission also ordered the company to bring its data processing operations into compliance with EU privacy rules within six months.
Here Come the Robot Doctors + More
Here Come the Robot Doctors
ChatGPT, the generative AI juggernaut, is getting a lot smarter when it comes to healthcare. Why it matters: A lot of clinical diagnoses and decisions could someday be made by machines, rather than by human doctors.
Driving the news: ChatGPT recently passed all three parts of the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination, although just barely, as part of a recent research experiment. As the researchers note, second-year medical students often spend hundreds of hours preparing for Part 1, while Part 3 usually is taken by medical school graduates.
The big surprise was that ChatGPT could perform so well without ever having been trained on a medical dataset. One caveat is that researchers excluded a set of “indeterminate” answers, as it appears that ChatGPT was programmed to avoid providing what could be construed as medical advice.
Between the lines: Generative AI remains in the early innings, so for now it’ll augment medical work rather than replace it. The bottom line: Plenty of people rely on “Dr. Google” for their medical information needs. In the future, they may turn to “Dr. ChatGPT.”
Pentagon: No Back Pay to Troops Discharged for Refusing COVID Vaccine
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The Pentagon on Tuesday shut down speculation it’s considering back pay for service members it discharged for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine, distancing itself from an already politically hazardous issue that has become even more prejudicial for the military with Republican control of Congress.
“Right now, we are not pursuing, as a matter of policy, back pay for those who refused the vaccine,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a spokesman for the Defense Department, told reporters in response to one of several questions about the issue. He spoke a week after the Pentagon formally rescinded the policy that required all troops to receive the shots with very few exemptions, in line with new legislation signed into law on Dec. 23 that forced the change.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in announcing the congressionally mandated repeal was unapologetic for the policy, saying in a memo on Jan. 10 that he is “deeply proud for the Department’s work to combat the coronavirus disease,” which he said “will leave a lasting legacy in the many lives we saved.”
He cited the orders from Congress that he change the policy, said no further service members would be discharged for refusing the vaccine, and announced that any troops under existing investigation or judicial process would be cleared.
Gov. Ron DeSantis Proposes Permanent Ban on COVID Mandates in Florida
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is proposing legislation to permanently ban COVID-19 health measures aimed at mitigating the virus in the state.
The legislation would prohibit vaccine and mask requirements in schools, masking requirements at businesses and so-called vaccine passports showing proof of vaccination. It would also bar employers from hiring or firing employees based on whether they have been vaccinated, and would prohibit the firing or de-licensing of medical professionals who might disagree on COVID protocols.
“When the world lost its mind, Florida was a refuge of sanity, serving strongly as freedom’s linchpin,” DeSantis said in a press release. “These measures will ensure Florida remains this way and will provide landmark protections for free speech for medical practitioners.”
Freedom of Thought Is a Human Right
In his 2019 Stanford address, Tim Cook warned about the threat to our “freedom to be human” from technology that looks to get inside our heads and rearrange the furniture. His “freedom to be human” is, essentially, our fundamental right to freedom of thought — an absolute right that has been mostly overlooked until now. The importance of Tim Cook’s speech was the recognition that Silicon Valley itself could never have come into existence in the current climate. Technology that undermines freedom of thought ultimately undermines innovation, and that is not good for anyone.
This will be the year we take back control of our minds and regain our freedom to think for ourselves. From persuasive design to behavioral micro-targeting through emotion recognition technology, predictive policing and neuropolitics, in the past decade the goal of much new and emerging technology has been about curating what Shoshana Zuboff calls “human futures,” exploiting our data to judge and control what we think and feel and ultimately how we behave.
However, we are now at a tipping point, and in 2023 we will start to see shifts in both the regulatory landscape and in the direction of tech innovation that reinforce and protect our right to freedom of thought in the digital age.
Elko County Health Board to Consider Banning COVID, Flu Vaccines
Las Vegas Review-Journal reported:
The Elko County Board of Health is scheduled to meet Wednesday to discuss and consider placing a moratorium on COVID-19 and flu vaccines in the county.
The board also will consider discontinuing local advertising for COVID-19 and flu vaccines, pending “further investigation and results of the Florida Supreme Court case to investigate the wrongdoing related to COVID-19 vaccines,” the agenda says.
Jon Karr, an Elko County Board of Health commissioner, does not see the agenda items moving forward, as the commissioners do not have the right to issue a moratorium or control advertising in the county.
China’s Economy, Population Trends Highlight Continued COVID Disruptions
U.S. News & World Report reported:
China is experiencing lasting problems with its economy and its first population decline in decades as COVID-19 proves to be an enduring issue with widespread repercussions. The country’s economy grew just 3% in 2022 — the slowest rate it has reported in nearly four decades.
The country’s “zero-COVID” policy that involved frequent lockdowns rattled the economy and prompted outrage among residents. China eased the policy in early December. While the relaxed measures were welcome for many, the massive COVID-19 surge that followed drove people off the streets and out of offices and shops.
The trend comes as China reported a decline in its population for 2022. The National Bureau of Statistics reported Tuesday that the country’s population rang in at 1.41 billion people in 2022 — 850,000 fewer people than in 2021. It’s a massive change for a country that previously implemented a one-child policy to control its population growth.
Websites Selling Abortion Pills Are Sharing Sensitive Data With Google
Online pharmacies that sell abortion pills are sharing sensitive data with Google and other third parties, which may allow law enforcement to prosecute those who use the medications to end their pregnancies, a ProPublica analysis has found.
Using a tool created by the Markup, a nonprofit tech-journalism newsroom, ProPublica ran checks on 11 online pharmacies that sell abortion medication to reveal the web tracking technology they use. Late last year and in early January, ProPublica found web trackers on the sites of at least nine online pharmacies that provide pills by mail: Abortion Ease, BestAbortionPill.com, PrivacyPillRX, PillsOnlineRX, Secure Abortion Pills, AbortionRx, Generic Abortion Pills, Abortion Privacy and Online Abortion Pill Rx.
These third-party trackers, including a Google Analytics tool and advertising technologies, collect a host of details about users and feed them to tech behemoth Google, its parent company, Alphabet, and other third parties, such as the online chat provider LiveChat.
Businesses and Schools Are Facing Pressure to Drop TikTok, Too
TikTok skeptics have notched a series of wins in their push to get the app blocked from government devices in recent weeks, with roughly two dozen states instituting bans. Critics of the platform now are eyeing new targets in their political crackdown: businesses that partner with TikTok and schools that allow its use on campus.
Meanwhile, federal and state officials are increasingly pushing to limit student and staff access in schools, in part to comply with state restrictions on public institutions.
In Washington, a group of House Republicans led by Rep. Brian Babin(R-Tex.) last week introduced a bill to block federal funding to universities unless they ban the use of TikTok on its devices. Around the country, some schools are moving ahead with their own restrictions.
The University of Texas at Austin, Auburn University in Alabama and the University of Oklahoma have all blocked students and faculty from accessing the app on the school’s WiFi network, among others. The University of Georgia has banned the use of the app on devices it owns.
Brian Stelter Talks ‘Disinformation’ at World Economic Forum
Former CNN anchor Brian Stelter hosted a panel on the “clear and present danger of disinformation” during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday.
The former primetime host recently landed a fellowship at Harvard University. His panel event at the World Economic Forum, which supports the notion that private and public actors should routinely cooperate for desired political and social ends, asked prominent lawmakers and members of the media about the possibility of controlling purported misinformation online.
European Commission Vice President Vera Jourová described a “very broad exercise” in monitoring disinformation within the European Union and said that 90% of the requests for removals on Facebook come from government agencies.
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) said there is a “healthy concern” in the United States that European censorship goes “too far.”
Stelter countered that many Democrats have pressured social media companies over the past six years to “be stronger in content moderation.” Moulton responded that many lawmakers are uncomfortable when they see critical posts online but expressed a willingness to consider more censorship in cases such as vaccine misinformation.
Report Says 500 Advertisers Paused Spending at Twitter, Daily Revenue Plunges 40%
Questions are swirling about the health of Twitter Inc.’s ad business. Since taking over Twitter, Elon Musk has faced an exodus of executives and advertisers. Nearly three months as ‘Chief Twit,’ Musk’s social media platform might be experiencing a significant decline in daily ad revenue and hundreds of top advertisers paused spending.
The Information reported that a senior Twitter manager told staff on Tuesday that more than 500 of Twitter’s top advertisers have paused spending since Musk bought the company on October 27.
Musk reduced the company’s headcount by thousands of employees to supplement sliding ad revenue and quickly pushed a paid verification subscription for users. However, Axios reported under Musk’s leadership, the social media company has secured content sponsorship deals with three dozen news outlets, media companies and sports leagues.
Twitter makes most of its money through advertising and now user subscriptions. It remains to be seen if Musk’s radical overhaul of the social media platform will be successful.
Apple Faces Third Class-Action Lawsuit Over Data Collection After Gizmodo Story
No one who understands how tech products work will be surprised to learn that Apple collects analytics data about how you use your iPhone. But a lot of people were surprised to learn that Apple collects that data even when the company’s own privacy settings promise not to. So surprised, in fact, that they filed lawsuits. Now Apple is facing a third class-action lawsuit over the issue, this time in New York state, marking the third legal action against the company over this data dilemma. The case asks for a cool $5 million in damages.
At some point, Apple will defend its privacy practices in court. But so far, the company refuses to defend itself to Gizmodo, or any other media outlet. We’ve asked Apple about the problem on six separate occasions since Gizmodo exclusively reported on the problem last November. Apple didn’t respond, and still hasn’t said anything publicly about the issue. The text of the third lawsuit is nearly identical to that of the second.
Central-Bank Digital Currencies Are Coming — Whether Countries Are Ready or Not + More
Central-Bank Digital Currencies Are Coming — Whether Countries Are Ready or Not
The Wall Street Journal reported:
“Central-bank digital currency” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. But you might want to get used to saying it. These so-called CBDCs, or digital versions of dollars, yuan, euros, yen or any other currency, are coming, say those who study them. And depending on how they are designed and rolled out, their impact on the banking system could be profound.
One hundred and fourteen countries are exploring digital currencies, and their collective economies represent more than 95% of the world’s GDP, according to the Atlantic Council’s Central Bank Digital Currency tracker. Some countries, including China, India, Nigeria and the Bahamas, have already rolled out digital currencies. Others, like Sweden and Japan, are preparing for possible rollouts.
The U.S. is studying the issue and has run trials of various technologies to enable a digital currency, although Fed chair Jerome Powell has indicated the U.S. central bank has no plans to create one and won’t do so without direction from Congress.
New York Eyes Nixed COVID Vaccine Rule for Health Workers
The New York State Department of Health is “exploring its options” after a state Supreme Court judge struck down a statewide mandate requiring healthcare workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the agency said Saturday.
Judge Gerard Neri wrote in a ruling released Friday that Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and the health department overstepped their authority by mandating a vaccine that’s not included in state public health law, the Syracuse Post-Standard reported.
The mandate is “null, void and of no effect,” the judge said. He sided with Medical Professionals for Informed Consent, a group of medical workers impacted by the vaccination mandate.
NYC Pols Urge Madison Square Garden Head James Dolan to Stop Using Facial Recognition Tech to Kick Out ‘Adversaries’
Local electeds are crying foul on Madison Square Garden’s ban on certain lawyers — and the use of facial recognition technology to impose it.
At issue is a recent series of four fan ejections from the Garden and Radio City Music Hall, which CEO James Dolan also runs as part of MSG Entertainment.
Earlier this month, MSG staff unceremoniously gave Benjamin Pinczewski the boot from a Rangers game after he was detected by facial recognition tech, Manhattan state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal said. Like two others recently kicked out of the Garden and a woman ejected from Radio City Music Hall, Pinczewski is employed by a law firm involved in litigation against MSG, though he’s not personally working on the case.
“This technology is biased, it is error-prone and it is a threat to every New Yorker,” Albert Fox Cahn of the nonprofit Surveillance Technology Oversight Project said alongside the electeds. “It cannot be tolerated when the rich and powerful use surveillance technology to use our own images as a weapon against us.”
UT Blocks Students From Accessing TikTok
The University of Texas at Austin has barred access to the social media platform TikTok on its Wi-Fi network after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) banned the application from use on government devices.
The university told students in an email on Tuesday obtained by The Hill that they were taking the step to comply with Abbott’s December directive to “eliminate the cybersecurity risk posed by TikTok.”
The platform’s ban on a campus of more than 52,000 students is the latest in a string of moves by Democratic- and Republican-controlled states to eliminate the use of the app on government devices. The backlash to TikTok stems from its ownership by Chinese company ByteDance, raising concerns at the federal and state level that it could harvest and supply sensitive information to the Chinese government.
Vaccine Manufacturers ‘Pressured’ Twitter to Censor Activists Demanding Generic COVID Vaccine: Report
A new installment of the Twitter Files released Monday alleges that a coronavirus vaccine manufacturer pressured Twitter into censoring accounts that were pushing companies to share the intellectual property and patents associated with the vaccines so low-cost generic versions could be made.
The Intercept reported that BioNTech, which developed Pfizer’s vaccine, and the German government allegedly warned the social media company of upcoming pressure campaigns targeting the companies.
Nina Morschhaeuser, a lobbyist for Twitter, allegedly forwarded requests to the company asking them to “hide” activist tweets targeting BioNTech’s account over a period of two days.
She also allegedly asked Twitter to shield accounts belonging to Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca from activists and to monitor hashtags on the platform like “#PeoplesVaccine.” The report acknowledges that it is not clear the extent to which Twitter complied with the requests.
Tech Executives Could Be Jailed for Deliberately Failing to Protect Kids Under U.K. Proposal
Tech executives could face the possibility of jail time for breaching online safety standards under a proposal in the U.K. after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government reached an agreement with Conservative lawmakers who sought to amend the Online Safety Bill.
The legislation is a highly anticipated bill that aims to make the internet safer for kids by enforcing age verification requirements and putting more responsibility on tech platforms to shield minors from harmful content.
The latest agreement could mean severe punishment for company leaders who deliberately fail to protect kids from online harm.
Michelle Donelan, the U.K.’s secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport, said in a statement Tuesday that the changes “deliver our shared aims of holding people accountable for their actions in a way which is effective and targeted towards child safety, whilst ensuring the U.K. remains an attractive place for technology companies to invest and grow.”
A New Yorker Is Suing Twitter for $5 Million Over a Data Leak That Researchers Say Exposed the Information of More Than 200 Million Users
Twitter is being sued for $5 million over a data leak that researchers said exposed the personal information of more than 200 million users.
New York resident and Twitter user Stephen Gerber filed a lawsuit against the social media firm on Friday in the Northern District of California, claiming that his personal data was leaked after the information was stolen by hackers between 2020 and 2021.
Gerber filed the class action lawsuit, which Insider has viewed, on behalf of himself and others affected by the data leak, and is seeking $5 million or more in damages.
Gerber pinned the data leak on hackers exploiting a vulnerability in Twitter’s application programming interface (API) which allowed them to obtain users’ Twitter usernames, email addresses and phone numbers.
Will Your Smartphone Be the Next Doctor’s Office?
The same devices used to take selfies and type out tweets are being repurposed and commercialized for quick access to information needed for monitoring a patient’s health. A fingertip pressed against a phone’s camera lens can measure a heart rate. The microphone, kept by the bedside, can screen for sleep apnea. Even the speaker is being tapped, to monitor breathing using sonar technology.
In the best of this new world, the data is conveyed remotely to a medical professional for the convenience and comfort of the patient or, in some cases, to support a clinician without the need for costly hardware.
Companies and researchers eager to find medical applications for smartphone technology are tapping into modern phones’ built-in cameras and light sensors; microphones; accelerometers, which detect body movements; gyroscopes; and even speakers. The apps then use artificial intelligence software to analyze the collected sights and sounds to create an easy connection between patients and physicians.
Big tech companies like Google have heavily invested in researching this kind of technology, catering to clinicians and in-home caregivers, as well as consumers. Currently, in the Google Fit app, users can check their heart rate by placing their finger on the rear-facing camera lens or track their breathing rate using the front-facing camera.
Airplane Lavatories Deliver New Hope for the CDC’s Variant Hunt
The cramped, damp and poorly lit airplane toilet is among the scourges of air travel, a source of dread for young and old alike. But the deafening “swoosh” of the airplane lavatory may have finally found a higher calling: helping government scientists detect deadly viruses entering the United States.
As COVID-19 cases explode in China and new viral threats loom, the Biden administration is ramping up surveillance of biological samples from international passengers arriving at U.S. airports to scan for new virus variants and other hazards to Americans’ health.
The small but growing Traveler Genomic Surveillance program, run by the CDC with a biotech firm and a company that collects samples, is seen by administration officials and public health experts as part of a revolution in biosafety infrastructure — and a critical plank of national security in the post-pandemic era.
As it expands geographically and sets its sights on new pathogens, it could function as an early warning system for where and when dangerous viruses and bacteria, natural or otherwise, enter the country.
Fed up With Facial Recognition Cameras Monitoring Your Every Move? Italian Fashion May Have the Answer
The red-headed man wearing what looks like the ultimate Christmas sweater walks up to the camera. A yellow quadrant surrounds him. Facial recognition software immediately identifies the man as … a giraffe?
This case of mistaken identity is no accident — it’s literally by design. The sweater is part of the debut Manifesto collection by Italian startup Cap_able. As well as tops, it includes hoodies, pants, t-shirts and dresses. Each one sports a pattern, known as an “adversarial patch,” designed by artificial intelligence algorithms to confuse facial recognition software: either the cameras fail to identify the wearer, or they think they’re a giraffe, a zebra, a dog or one of the other animals embedded into the pattern.
“When I’m in front of a camera, I don’t have a choice of whether I give it my data or not,” says co-founder and CEO, Rachele Didero. “So we’re creating garments that can give you the possibility of making this choice. We’re not trying to be subversive.”
Appeals Court Refuses to Reinstate Vaccine Mandate in 3 States + More
Appeals Court Rules Against Vaccine Mandate in 3 States
An appeals court has affirmed a ban in three states on enforcing a federal vaccine mandate for workers who contract with the federal government.
A panel of the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on Thursday affirmed a lower court’s ruling that said the mandate was unconstitutional. President Joe Biden’s administration is not enforcing the rule while legal battles play out around the country.
A federal judge in Louisville, Kentucky, blocked the Biden rule in November 2021 for that state and two others: Tennessee and Ohio. The mandate requires workers contracting with the federal government to wear face masks and be vaccinated for COVID-19.
The Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a similar ruling in December for Indiana, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Pence: Discharged Military Members Should Be Reinstated, Get Back Pay Over Vaccine Mandates
Former Vice President Mike Pence in an exclusive interview called on the Biden administration to reinstate and provide back pay to members of the military who were discharged for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine now that the mandate for the shot has been lifted.
Pence, in a Wednesday interview with The Hill, called it “unconscionable” that some troops were put in a position to decide between serving their country and complying with the vaccine mandate, which was instituted in August 2021. The mandate was rescinded through a bipartisan defense policy bill signed into law late last year.
In a memo announcing the mandate had been dropped, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said those who were discharged can petition for a change in the characterization of their discharge in personnel records.
Google Claims a Supreme Court Defeat Would Transform the Internet — for the Worse
An unfavorable ruling against Google in a closely watched Supreme Court case this term about YouTube’s recommendation engine could have sweeping unintended consequences for much of the wider internet, the search giant argued in a legal filing Thursday.
Google, which owns YouTube, is fighting a high-stakes court battle over whether algorithmically generated YouTube recommendations are exempt from Big Tech’s signature liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Section 230 broadly protects tech platforms from lawsuits over the companies’ content moderation decisions. But a Supreme Court decision that says AI-based recommendations do not qualify for those protections could “threaten the internet’s core functions,” Google wrote in its brief.
In the face of such a ruling, websites could have to choose between intentionally over-moderating their websites, scrubbing them of virtually everything that could be perceived as objectionable, or doing no moderation at all to avoid the risk of liability, Google argued.
Meta Sues ‘Predictive Policing’ Firm for Using Fake Accounts to Scrape More Than 600,000 Facebook Profiles
Meta, the company previously known as Facebook, may not have the best track record when it comes to preserving its users’ privacy, but it nonetheless wants to make damn sure other companies aren’t spying on its community without its approval.
This week, the tech giant filed a lawsuit against United Kingdom-registered scrapping and surveillance firm Voyager Labs, alleging the company created fake, unauthorized accounts and used them to collect data from Facebook and Instagram, as well as Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Telegram. The lawsuit comes just days after the U.S. The Supreme Court allowed Meta’s separate lawsuit against Israeli surveillance-for-hire giant NSO Group to proceed.
In its newest complaint, Meta claims Voyager created more than 38,000 fake accounts and used those to scrape 600,000 Facebook users’ “viewable profile information.” That profile data potentially implicates posts, likes, friends lists, photos and comments and certain data pulled from Facebook Groups and Pages.
Voyager allegedly marketed its scraping tools to companies interested in conducting surveillance on social media sites without being detected and then sold its bounty to the highest bidder.
Wisconsin, North Carolina Become Latest States to Ban TikTok From Government Devices
Wisconsin and North Carolina became the latest states to ban TikTok from government devices on Thursday, as concerns grow over potential cybersecurity risks posed by the Chinese-owned social media platform.
North Carolina also banned WeChat, a messaging platform owned by a Chinese technology company, and left the door open to banning other applications that pose an “unacceptable cybersecurity risk.”
More than 20 state governments have banned TikTok from official devices over cybersecurity concerns. Federal employees have also been barred from using the social media platform on government devices, following President Biden’s signing of the omnibus spending package.
France Fines TikTok $5.4 Million for Online Tracking Shortcomings
France on Thursday fined TikTok 5 million euros ($5.4 million) for shortcomings linked to the short video platform’s handling of online tracking known as “cookies,” which the ByteDance-owned company said it had now addressed.
French data protection watchdog CNIL said that its investigation only concerned the website tiktok.com and not the service’s much more heavily used smartphone applications.
The CNIL found that for tiktok.com’s users, it was not as easy to refuse online trackers as to accept them. The authority also found that internet users were not sufficiently informed about TikTok’s use of cookies.
Under European Union rules, websites must clearly ask for the prior consent of internet users for any use of cookies — small pieces of data stored while navigating on the Web. They should also make it easy to refuse them, according to the EU’s rules.
The Battle Over Women’s Data
2023 will be the year that the battle over data ownership takes to the streets. The United States Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade has politicalized women’s bodies — and not only in the U.S. When the ruling was debated in Westminster, several U.K. parliamentarians took the opportunity to question a woman’s bodily autonomy.
The reaction of every woman I know — and many men — was instinctive and visceral. We are being transported backward — to the 70s, or before. But there is a difference. In those eras, we didn’t have artificial intelligence and big data. We did not have digital.
We are all digital beings now. It’s been over a decade since the story broke of how supermarket Target knew a teenager was pregnant before her parents did, based on what she was purchasing. Think of the tremendous “advances” in algorithms, data collection and adtech since then. Legislation has not kept pace.
Deleting period apps is not enough. Your phone, the sites you visit, the other apps you run — all monitor you. Even in the U.K., it is perfectly legal to sell this data if it has been aggregated and supposedly anonymized. As computer scientist Latanya Sweeney famously showed, the term “anonymized data sets” should have “pseudo” in front of it. Even most data that has been deleted is recoverable.
Germany to Scrap COVID Mask Rule on Long-Distance Transport
German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach announced on Friday that, from February 2, travelers will no longer need to wear face masks on long-distance public transport in Germany.
The minister said the government had taken the decision to scrap the mask mandate several months ahead of schedule because of a reduction in the risk posed by the coronavirus.
“The pandemic situation has stabilized,” said Lauterbach, who has been under mounting pressure to drop the mandate.
The number of known or suspected infections is evening out or even falling, and the number of people hospitalized continues to decline, he explained. “The population has built up high immunity, and the experts who advise us no longer believe there will be another big, serious winter wave.”