Big Brother News Watch

In a matter of days, the United States is expected to ban federal employees from downloading or using TikTok on government-issued phones or tablets, marking the country’s broadest crackdown on the short-form video app to date.

The looming ban is the result of a bill that’s moved through Congress in the final days of the year with lightning-fast speed and bipartisan support. It’s gone from being just another proposal from a Republican lawmaker to being unanimously adopted in the Senate, backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and added to a massive year-end congressional spending package. The proposed ban has support from the White House, which already blocks TikTok on its devices.

The TikTok measure, while limited in its impact on the app’s wider U.S. user base, highlights how quickly lawmakers can act when a combination of national security fears, bipartisan anti-China suspicions and more targeted proposals cause the legislative stars to align.

Exclusive: TikTok Steps up Efforts to Clinch U.S. Security Deal

Popular short-video app TikTok is offering to operate more of its business at arm’s length and subject it to outside scrutiny as it tries to convince the U.S. government to allow it to remain under the ownership of Chinese technology company ByteDance, according to people familiar with the matter.

TikTok has been seeking to assure U.S. government departments and agencies for the last three years that the personal data of U.S. citizens cannot be accessed and its content cannot be manipulated by China’s Communist Party or any other entity under the influence of that country’s government.

Some government officials, including at the U.S. Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, remain opposed to a security deal, according to the sources. These officials argue that TikTok’s users would continue to be vulnerable because the app would still rely for its technology on ByteDance, which also operates Chinese short-video app Douyin.

U.S. officials involved in the talks have indicated that many of the voluntary measures TikTok is implementing to bolster its security may be part of any agreement to allow ByteDance to retain its ownership, one of the sources said. However, it is unclear whether Biden‘s administration will eventually sign off on a security deal with TikTok.

Some Universities Are Now Restricting TikTok Access on Campus

A small but growing number of universities are now blocking access to TikTok on school-owned devices or WiFi networks, in the latest sign of a widening crackdown on the popular short-form video app.

The University of Oklahoma and Auburn University in Alabama have each said they will restrict student and faculty access to TikTok, in order to comply with recent moves from the governors in their respective states to ban TikTok on government-issued devices. The 26 universities and colleges in the University System of Georgia are also reportedly taking a similar step.

TikTok has been negotiating for years with the U.S. government on a potential deal that addresses national security concerns and lets the app continue serving U.S. customers. It has also taken steps to isolate U.S. user data from other parts of its business.

In addition, TikTok faces scrutiny over its powerful algorithm which may lead users, and especially its youngest users, down concerning rabbit holes, including directing them to potentially harmful subject matter such as content around suicide and eating disorders.

India to Randomly Test 2% of International Travelers for COVID

India will start randomly testing 2% of international passengers arriving at its airports for COVID-19, Mansukh Mandaviya, the country’s health minister, told parliament on Thursday, as the country steps up surveillance for new coronavirus variants.

India’s iconic Taj Mahal, which attracts thousands of tourists every day will now require visitors to undergo a COVID-19 test before they enter, Reuters partner ANI reported.

The government earlier this week asked India’s states to keep a lookout for any new variants of the coronavirus and urged people to wear masks in crowded areas, citing an increase in COVID-19 cases in China and other parts of the globe.

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Face Recognition Tech Gets Girl Scout Mom Booted From Rockettes Show + More

Face Recognition Tech Gets Girl Scout Mom Booted From Rockettes Show — Due to Where She Works

NBC New York reported:

A recent incident at Radio City Music Hall involving the mother of a Girl Scout is shedding light on the growing controversy of facial recognition, as critics claim it is being used to target perceived enemies — in this case, by one of the most famous companies in the country.

Kelly Conlon and her daughter came to New York City the weekend after Thanksgiving as part of a Girl Scout field trip to Radio City Music Hall to see the Christmas Spectacular show. But while her daughter, other members of the Girl Scout troop and their mothers got to go enjoy the show, Conlon wasn’t allowed to do so. That’s because to Madison Square Garden Entertainment, Conlon isn’t just any mom. They had identified and zeroed in on her, as security guards approached her right as she got into the lobby.

A sign says facial recognition is used as a security measure to ensure safety for guests and employees. Conlon says she posed no threat, but the guards still kicked her out with the explanation that they knew she was an attorney.

Conlon is an associate with the New Jersey based law firm, Davis, Saperstein and Solomon, which for years has been involved in personal injury litigation against a restaurant venue now under the umbrella of MSG Entertainment. “I don’t practice in New York. I’m not an attorney that works on any cases against MSG,” said Conlon. But MSG said she was banned nonetheless — along with fellow attorneys in that firm and others.

Data Brokers Raise Privacy Concerns — but Get Millions From the Federal Government

Politico reported:

The site, Login.gov, launched in 2017 and got backing from the Biden administration in an executive order last December. As of this week, it’s connected to more than 20 government agencies, including the Small Business Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Social Security Administration and NASA.

But when citizens enter their personal information to register for the site, it’s not the federal government that validates it — it’s a group of private-sector data brokers, companies that are increasingly under scrutiny for collecting, storing and selling massive amounts of information on Americans without their knowledge.

As the data broker industry has come into Washington’s sights, it has been pushing back against a proposed law that would limit its ability to harvest millions of people’s information and give citizens a right to block all third parties from collecting it.

At the same time, Washington is also increasingly reliant on the industry. Thanks to a combination of a 50-year-old privacy law, growing need for anti-fraud measures and the difficulty of building its own in-house systems, Washington has become an enormous client for services that many consumer advocates would far rather curtail than support.

FBI and Twitter Formed a Censorship Alliance and They Can’t Be Allowed to Get Away With It

Fox News reported:

“They are probing & pushing everywhere.” That line sums up an increasingly alarming element in the seventh installment of the so-called “Twitter files.” “They” were the agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and they were pushing for the censorship of citizens in an array of stories.

Twitter has admitted that it made a mistake in blocking the Hunter laptop story. After roughly two years, even the media that pushed the false “Russian disinformation” claims have acknowledged that the laptop is authentic.

Yet, those same networks and newspapers are now imposing a new de facto blackout on covering the details of the Twitter files on the systemic blacklisting, shadow-banning and censorship carried out in conjunction with the government.

The Twitter files now substantiate the earlier allegations of “censorship for surrogate” or proxy. While the First Amendment applies to the government, it can also apply to agents of the government. Twitter itself now admits that it acted as an agent in these efforts.

Elon Musk on Twitter: I’ll Resign as CEO

Politico reported:

Elon Musk plans to resign as CEO of Twitter, he tweeted late Tuesday, following a poll on the platform in which a majority of users said he should leave his post. “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” Musk tweeted on Tuesday. “After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”

Musk’s tweet on Tuesday night marks the first time he’d responded to a Sunday unscientific poll in which he asked whether he should step down as CEO. The results reflected that a majority of respondents (57.5%) said he should leave the top role of the company.

Musk’s words aren’t binding, and it’s not clear what the role of a CEO would be with a dominating personality like Musk still as owner of the company.

Despite the controversy Musk has stoked in lifting most of its existing rules against misinformation with his commitment to “free speech,” lawmakers remain on the site. Many say there isn’t another social media platform with the equivalent reach to reporters and Washington insiders.

Harris Says Social Media Companies Should ‘Cooperate and Work With Us’ on ‘Protecting Our Democracy’

The Epoch Times reported:

Vice President Kamala Harris said on Monday that she expects and “would require” social media companies to work with the Biden administration to prevent so-called misinformation and disinformation, and to “protect democracy.”

During an interview with NPR that aired on Monday, Harris was asked for her thoughts regarding the changes made at Twitter since Elon Musk took over the platform. “I think about this issue a bit differently, which is my deep and profound concern about how misinformation and disinformation have infiltrated information streams in our country,” Harris said.

“So, what I would say about any social media site is this: I fully expect and would require that leaders in that sector cooperate and work with us who are concerned about national security, concerned about upholding and protecting our democracy, to do everything in their power to ensure that there is not a manipulation that is allowed or overlooked that is done with the intention of upending the security of our democracy and our nation.”

The vice president’s comments come amid reports of federal government collusion with Big Tech companies to censor users. White House officials have denied claims that the administration colluded with social media companies to censor free speech on multiple topics, including COVID-19.

Arbitration Hearing: State Police Union Bashes Baker Over Vaccine Mandate

Mass Live reported:

The saga over Gov. Charlie Baker’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for Executive Department employees, which took effect in mid-October 2021, has spilled into the final days of the outgoing governor’s second term in office.

Seven State Police troopers who successfully proved their sincerely held religious belief but were not granted an exemption are still suspended without pay and state benefits in the lead-up to the winter holidays, the leader of the State Police Association of Massachusetts (SPAM) lamented in downtown Boston Wednesday morning ahead of the second day of a private arbitration hearing on the matter.

It comes after the Suffolk Superior Court this spring granted an injunction that blocked the SPAM members from being fired over Baker’s strict mandate, which omitted an alternative option for regular COVID testing in lieu of vaccination.

Thirteen state troopers were fired for failing to comply with Baker’s mandate, while a handful who sought medical exemptions are still currently working, SPAM President Patrick McNamara said. About 1,000 state workers overall were fired or terminated amid a wave of suspensions and disciplinary hearings, in which they were urged to get the shot.

Eric Adams Urges New Yorkers to Put Their Masks Back On

Fox News reported:

New York City Mayor Eric Adams urged New Yorkers to once again don their masks for the holiday season in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19 and other sicknesses.

Adams wore a mask himself during a Tuesday press conference at City Hall where he warned of a winter surge in COVID cases, according to the New York Times. Adams did not announce a mask mandate.

“With the holiday season in full swing and cases of COVID-19, flu and RSV rising, we are asking New Yorkers to protect themselves and their loved ones once again. Mask up, get tested, get treated if you’re eligible, and, if you haven’t gotten your flu shot or your COVID-19 booster, we encourage you to roll up your sleeve,” he added.

It is uncommon for Adams to wear a mask during events, as he did on Tuesday. The mayor removed the city’s mask mandate for schools in March, and he has announced no plans to reinstate any form of mandate this month.

Teen Social Media Screen Time Should Concern Parents

Newsweek reported:

Smartphones have always posed a range of challenges for parents of teens. From social media apps and excessive screen time to explicit content and mental health problems, the digital world often seems as threatening as the physical. A new Pew Research study shows that when it comes to teens and their smartphone use, parents might be worried too much about certain problems, and not worried enough about others.

The study shows that about half (46%) of parents of teens are worried about their teen being exposed to explicit content online. This is a valid concern, of course. Adults know explicit content is ubiquitous online and can be damaging to see. But there are ways to mitigate the spread of explicit content, from changing the settings in their kids’ phone to preventing and monitoring such content with apps like Bark.

But just as alarming as the availability of explicit content to teens, if not more so, is that the amount of time teens spend on social media can lead to anxiety and depression. About 40 percent of parents polled were worried about teens and social media as it relates to productivity, and less than 30 percent of parents worried their child may struggle with anxiety or depression because of social media use. Almost half of parents surveyed said “they are only a little or not at all worried about social media causing anxiety or depression in their teens.”

Unfortunately, the time teens spend online consuming social media should be cause for alarm, particularly due to the adverse effect it has on their mental health.

Google Using Tech to Read Your Doctor’s Handwritten Prescriptions

Fox News reported:

Google is working on an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning model that can identify and even highlight medicines on handwritten prescriptions from physicians.

Google Research India said in a Monday release that the system will act as an assistive technology for digitizing handwritten medical documents by augmenting the humans in the loop, such as pharmacists.

It said that the system is currently under development — later telling TechCrunch that the feature is in research prototype and that the company has not yet committed to launching it — and that Google India would share updates on its broader rollout in the future.

Google Research India also noted that the need to develop AI responsibly is “fundamental,” and that the search engine giant had invested $1 million in grants to the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, to establish the first-of-its-kind multidisciplinary center for Responsible AI.

Soon-to-Be Grandfather Bill Gates Is Betting on AI, Gene Therapy and Other New Technologies to Solve Global Problems

Forbes reported:

Despite all the problems facing the world now — Russia’s war in Ukraine, the COVID pandemic, extreme weather — Bill Gates is optimistic about the future. The main reason? The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is adopting and supporting new technology such as artificial intelligence and gene therapy to tackle global challenges like childhood mortality and diseases like HIV.

The renowned cofounder of Microsoft is currently the world’s sixth richest person, by Forbes’ count. He’d be worth at least $162 billion — and rank as No. 3 in the world — if he hadn’t given $59 billion over time to the Gates Foundation, mostly gifts of Microsoft stock. But his plan is that going forward, his rank among the world’s wealthiest will drop. Down the line, says Gates, he expects to fall off the list of billionaires altogether. The reason has everything to do with his commitment to give nearly all his fortune to the Gates Foundation, the largest charitable foundation in the U.S.

Gates points out that while childhood deaths have fallen by half since 2000, the number of babies who die in the first 30 days of their life — the neonatal period — is not dropping as much. In fact, 1.9 million newborns died in 2019. To try and reduce those deaths, the Gates Foundation, working with partners, has come up with a scaled-down ultrasound tool that could be used in the developing world: a probe that gets plugged into a mobile phone or a tablet.

The Gates Foundation worked to develop the AI software with Google as a partner and also Philips, which makes traditional ultrasound machines, Gates told me. The technology is being tested in Kenya and South Africa now; if it proves to make a positive difference, it would be another two to three years before it would be ready for wider use.

China Wants COVID Patients to Go to Work. The Public Isn’t so Sure

Just weeks ago, catching COVID in China meant being taken to government quarantine for an indeterminate stay and your entire residential building being locked down, trapping neighbors in their homes for days or weeks.

Now, as the country rapidly relaxes restrictions, millions of people have been told to keep going to work — even if they’re infected.

The cities of Wuhu, Chongqing and Guiyang, and the province of Zhejiang, collectively home to more than 100 million people, all recently issued directives to public sector employees indicating a shift from preventing infection to allowing the resumption of life and work.

Asymptomatic and mildly ill workers can “go to work normally after taking protective measures as necessary for their health status and job requirements,” said the Chongqing and Wuhu authorities in similar statements posted on their municipal government websites.

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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

ZeroHedge reported:

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

The Hill reported:

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

Wired reported:

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

Reclaim the Net reported:

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.

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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

FOXBusiness reported:

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

TechCrunch reported:

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 Epoch Times reported:

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.

The Washington Post reported:

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