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Senate Passes Defense Bill Rescinding COVID Vaccine Mandate + More
Senate Passes Defense Bill Rescinding COVID Vaccine Mandate
A bill to rescind the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for members of the U.S. military and provide nearly $858 billion for national defense passed the Senate on Thursday and now goes to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.
The Senate passed the defense policy bill by a vote of 83-11. The measure also received broad bipartisan support in the House last week.
To win GOP support for the 4,408-page bill, Democrats agreed to Republican demands to scrap the requirement for service members to get a COVID-19 vaccination. The bill directs Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to rescind his August 2021 memorandum imposing the mandate.
Va. Students With Disabilities Win Legal Right to Request Masking in Class
Parents of students with disabilities in Virginia public schools have won the right to require that their children’s peers and teachers wear masks after the state government agreed to a settlement with several families who had filed a lawsuit challenging a statewide mask-optional policy.
The parents of 12 immunocompromised students with disabilities filed suit in February over an executive order issued by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and subsequent state law, both of which forbid school districts from requiring mask-wearing as a coronavirus mitigation measure.
The parents, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, alleged that the imposition of mask-optional guidelines violated national disability law by making it impossible for their children to attend school safely to receive their federally guaranteed free and appropriate public education.
More Than a Third of Parents Oppose Vaccine Requirements in Schools, KFF Survey Finds
More than a third of U.S. parents say that vaccinating children against measles, mumps and rubella should be an individual choice and not a requirement to attend public school, even if that may create health risks, according to survey data published Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
That’s a notable increase from pre-pandemic times. A similar poll from the Pew Research Center found that 23% of parents opposed vaccine requirements in schools in 2019, but that’s now jumped to 35% in the KFF survey.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia require children attending public school to be vaccinated against certain diseases, including measles and rubella. Exemptions are allowed in only some circumstances.
Former UVA Employees Sue, Claim They Were Fired for Not Having COVID Vaccine
A class-action lawsuit has been filed against the University of Virginia Health System for discriminatory COVID-19 policies and practices regarding religious groups and beliefs.
On Dec. 13, the Founding Freedoms Law Center joined with the law firm of CrossCastle, PLLC filed the lawsuit in federal court, according to the law center. We’re told the lawsuit names six former employees and is filed on behalf of several hundred former employees and applicants to whom UVA Health systematically refused religious accommodations.
The complaint outlines examples of the accused first amendment violations and includes a written list of what is referred to as UVA’s favored religions, according to Founding Freedoms.
Elon Musk Defends Banning of Journalists: ‘You Dox, You Get Suspended’
Twitter CEO Elon Musk defended his decision to ban several prominent technology reporters from the platform on Thursday night, claiming they violated Twitter’s policies on “doxxing.”
“You dox, you get suspended,” Musk said on a Twitter Spaces conversation with journalists. “End of story.” Doxxing is the act of sharing information like addresses, phone numbers and emails online in an attempt to allow others to harass the individuals.
The billionaire abruptly suspended the accounts of reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other outlets on Thursday night who had covered Musk’s recent dispute with Jack Sweeney, the creator of @elonjet. Sweeney, who created the Twitter account that tracked the movements of Musk’s private jet, had his account suspended on Wednesday, despite previous assurances from Musk that he would not be banned.
“Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else,” Musk said in a tweet on Thursday night, later adding “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”
Twitter Censorship Contributed to Destructive Pandemic Policies and Is Criminal, Says Former White House COVID Adviser
The recently revealed censorship that has plagued Twitter in recent years is “criminal,” according to former White House COVID adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, as it allowed “lies to be imposed on the public” during a pandemic that wrought untold damage worldwide.
“When correct science policy is blocked, people die, and people died from the censorship,” Atlas, a special coronavirus adviser during the Trump administration and contributor to The Epoch Times, said in an interview.
Atlas was speaking days after Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, released troves of internal files showing how the previous Twitter team built a blacklist to limit disfavored tweets’ visibility without the knowledge of those using the platform. Among those flagged was Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, whose tweet criticizing pandemic lockdowns shortly after joining the platform last August got him on the “trends blacklist” preventing the amplification of his tweets.
But such revelations, Atlas said, are “only the tip of the iceberg. This seems to be criminal behavior, and I think it needs to be investigated in the courts.”
California to End Mandatory Pay for Workers With COVID
California will stop making companies pay employees who can’t work because they caught the coronavirus while on the job.
For the past two years, California workplace regulators have tried to slow the spread of the coronavirus by requiring infected workers to stay home while also guaranteeing them they would still be paid.
But Thursday, the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board voted to end that rule in 2023 — in part because the rule has become harder to enforce. Only people who caught the virus while at work are eligible to keep getting paid. But the coronavirus is now so widespread that it’s much harder to tell where someone got sick.
Millions of IP Cameras Around the World Are Unprotected
Over 3.5 million active Chinese-manufactured IP cameras are only protected by a vendor’s default password, or lacking protection altogether, putting users at risk of snooping, experts have warned.
New research from CyberNews found over 458,000 devices protected only by default credentials operational in the U.S. alone, alongside almost 250,000 in the United Kingdom, with countries such as Mexico, China, the Korean Republic, India, Brazil and Russia also appearing on the list.
At least 21,000 cameras worldwide lack any authentication whatsoever, raising questions about invasions of privacy, and the impact IP cameras are having on the global uptick in cyber warfare.
All devices connected to the internet are in danger of being accessed by unknown and potentially malicious third parties. In the case of security cameras, threat actors can access the live feed, record sensitive personal data and use the camera as a vulnerable endpoint on a network.
Inventor of the World Wide Web Wants Us to Reclaim Our Data From Tech Giants
The internet has come a long way since Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989. Now, in an era of growing concern over privacy, he believes it’s time for us to reclaim our personal data.
Through their startup Inrupt, Berners-Lee and CEO John Bruce have created the “Solid Pod” — or Personal Online Data Store. It allows people to keep their data in one central place and control which people and applications can access it, rather than having it stored by apps or sites all over the web.
Users can get a Pod from a handful of providers, hosted by web services such as Amazon (AMZN), or run their own server, if they have the technical know-how. The main attraction to self-hosting is control and privacy, says Berners-Lee.
Not only is user data safe from corporations and governments, but it’s also less likely to be stolen by hackers, Bruce says.
Corporate Coalition Pushes Government to Create Digital ID Infrastructure
A group of private companies has published a digital ID blueprint encouraging state governments to implement policies involved in creating a digital ID system.
The blueprint was published by the Better Identity Coalition, a group of 27 U.S. companies, including Mastercard, Equifax, AT&T and more. The group either wants to stop the worry about ID fraud or to profit from preventing ID fraud by pushing to normalize digital IDs.
The coalition is encouraging states to make their department of motor vehicles the core of developing and maintaining digital ID systems because these departments are central to each state’s identification systems.
Top Justice Department Official Calls on Social Media Companies to Do More as Teens Die From Fentanyl + More
Top Justice Department Official Calls on Social Media Companies to Do More as Teens Die From Fentanyl
Landen Hausman, a high school sophomore, died in January after buying fentanyl-laced Percocet through a dealer on social media. His family found him collapsed on the bathroom floor and tried to revive him with CPR, but it was too late. “He basically bought two of these counterfeit Percocet pills,” his father Marc Hausman said. “He took one. One killed him. We found the other one [in his bedroom].”
Sadly, Landen’s story is all too common. Last year, more than 100,000 Americans died from fentanyl — more deaths than there were of Americans killed in the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Deaths among teens have more than tripled since 2019.
The Drug Enforcement Administration says it is investigating more than 120 cases that involve social media. The agency has issued a warning about emoji code language dealers use to target young buyers.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who oversees the DEA, says fentanyl is the agency’s top priority. Monaco also said the Justice Department is pushing social media companies to crack down on dealers, calling the crisis “a national security issue, “a public safety issue” and “a public health issue.”
Tech Industry Group Sues to Block California Children’s Safety Law
The tech industry group NetChoice on Wednesday sued to block a landmark California law that requires tech companies to adopt new policies to protect children and their privacy online, in the latest legal salvo over the future of social media regulation.
NetChoice argues in its lawsuit that the law violates the First Amendment, arguing that tech companies have the right under the Constitution to make “editorial decisions” about what content they publish or remove. The industry group said that the law, which is set to go into effect in 2024, would force companies to “serve as roving censors of speech on the Internet” and result in “over-moderation” of content online.
California’s law is the latest battleground in the state’s efforts to control the actions of tech companies after years of inaction in Washington. Wednesday’s lawsuit highlights how the industry is equally hostile to legislation from Democrats as it is from Republicans, even though the challenged laws address different tech concerns.
Senate Votes to Ban TikTok Use on Government Devices
The Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved legislation that would ban the use of TikTok on government phones and devices as part of the push to combat security concerns related to the Chinese-owned social media company.
The “No TikTok on Government Devices Act,” introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), was passed via unanimous consent late Wednesday, meaning that no member objected to the bill. The proposal would “prohibit certain individuals from downloading or using TikTok on any device issued by the United States or a government corporation.”
The move comes as state governments, especially those led by Republicans, have taken steps to limit the use of the app on state-owned devices. Thirteen states overall have taken action against TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-owned entity. Eleven of those actions have taken place since the beginning of the month.
The bill would still need to be passed by the House and signed by President Biden to become law.
Elon Musk Should Take a Clear Stand Against Twitter Censorship by Proxy
From the outside, Twitter’s content moderation decisions looked haphazard at best. From the inside, they look worse, especially because government officials played an unseemly and arguably unconstitutional role in shaping those decisions.
The internal communications that Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has been gradually revealing to a select few journalists show that the company’s former executives arbitrarily applied the platform’s vague rules and surreptitiously suppressed content from disfavored accounts. The “Twitter Files” also confirms that the company had a cozy relationship with federal agencies, allowing them to indirectly censor speech they deemed dangerous.
Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” is trying to signal that things will be different under his ownership. He faces a daunting challenge as he attempts to implement lighter moderation policies without abandoning all content restrictions, lest Twitter becomes a “free-for-all hellscape” that alienates users and advertisers.
One part of that mission should be relatively straightforward. Musk could make it clear that neither government bureaucrats nor elected officials have any business dictating what Twitter’s rules should be or how they should be enforced.
USCG Admiral: Military Vaccine Mandate Rollback Not Enough for Discharged Service Members
The latest government funding bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, is expected to pass both chambers of Congress this week and head to the president to sign into law.
Florida Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio and others’ efforts to rollback COVID-19 vaccine requirements for U.S. military service members were included in the legislation, seeking to end the vaccine mandate and audit the process of discharges for lack of vaccination from the requirement’s start in August 2021.
While the rollback cleared the vote in the U.S. House, it has not yet been approved in the Senate, though a vote is expected by Friday. Advocates for the proposal, including a retired admiral, say it should also reinstate service members who were discharged over vaccination status. The portion of the legislation containing the removal of the vaccine requirement, called the Defending Religious Accommodations Act, was announced on Dec. 5.
Sen. Scott, retired Coast Guard Rear Admiral Peter Brown and other advocates for removing the mandate said the rollback would allow service members to opt out of the vaccination with exemptions for sincerely held religious beliefs. Brown said he first got involved in this political fight after he heard of seven cadets at the Coast Guard Academy who were disenrolled and discharged over their lack of COVID vaccination.
Mask Mandate Is Back at This New York College
Purchase College, part of the State University of New York system, mandated masking indoors as respiratory viruses have been spreading rapidly in the state and around the country.
The college, in suburban Westchester County, raised its alert level for COVID transmission to orange, triggering the change. Other educational systems in the area, including the New York City school district, began encouraging masks indoors this week without requiring them. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene recommends masking in public indoor settings and crowded outdoor settings.
Senate’s Year-End Children’s Privacy Push Faces Uphill Climb
Senate lawmakers are mounting an end-of-year push to pass new children’s online privacy and safety protections, but the campaign is rapidly running out of time amid a packed legislative schedule. And it’s facing resistance in the House.
A bipartisan group of senators in recent weeks has ramped up efforts to get two bills over the finish line during the lame duck: one to expand federal privacy protections for children and another to create safeguards for their online activity.
Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) have separately been pushing for the omnibus package to include the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would create a “duty” for tech companies to prevent harm to children online and require added parental controls.
But the push faces steep odds in the House, where lawmakers have been working for months on competing legislation to expand privacy protections for all Americans.
State Attorneys General Tell Twitter to Preserve Censorship Evidence
Missouri’s Attorney General Eric Schmitt who, together with Louisiana’s Attorney General Jeff Landry, filed a lawsuit alleging collusion between the federal government and social media companies to censor certain speech, sent a letter to Twitter asking for the preservation of evidence related to communications between the company and federal government officials on content moderation and misinformation.
Schmitt, who was elected to the Senate in November, referenced the internal documents, dubbed “Twitter Files,” that are being released by CEO Elon Musk via journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger.
After the release of the first batch of the Twitter Files, it was revealed that then-deputy legal counsel Jim Baker was vetting the documents being released to Taibbi and other journalists. Baker was fired immediately.
On Monday, Schmitt announced: “We sent a letter to Twitter asking the platform to look into whether any key documents were deleted.”
Ontario Superior Court Upholds Vaccine Passport, Appeal Expected
An Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruling on Dec. 13 held that vaccine passports were constitutional. The Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) said it is considering an appeal.
JCCF represented eight clients who argued their Charter freedoms were violated by vaccine passports. One of the clients was Sarah Lamb, who experienced long-term neurological side effects after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, said JCCF in a release following the ruling. She lost sensation from her waist down but was denied a vaccine exemption.
“All Ontarians should be free to enjoy the rights that our democracy has to offer. However, the exemptions to the vaccine passport regime were incredibly limited and unfairly narrow, and none of the Applicants were eligible for an exemption under the vaccine passport regime,” said Jorge Pineda, one of the lawyers for the applicants, in the release.
Exemptions were limited to those who are verifiably allergic to vaccine ingredients or who developed heart conditions of myocarditis or pericarditis after their first dose.
Former Twitter CEO Takes Blame for ‘Government Control of Social Media’ + More
Jack Dorsey Takes the Blame for Even Building Twitter’s Moderation Tools
Twitter co-founder and ex-CEO Jack Dorsey has not had it easy the past few weeks. After being hounded on the internet by mobs of Elon Musk fans wanting his blood for what’s been presented in the so-called “Twitter Files,” Dorsey finally came out late Tuesday not to apologize for banning former President Donald Trump, but to apologize for ever even creating moderation tools in the first place.
In a blog post, Dorsey wrote “The biggest mistake I made was continuing to invest in building tools for us to manage the public conversation, versus building tools for the people using Twitter to easily manage it for themselves.”
He also laid out three points that exemplify his social media philosophy: that social media should be kept out of any corporate or government control, that only an author should have the option to remove content they produce on a platform and that moderation is best implemented by “algorithmic choice,” which is essentially ranking content based on user preferences. It’s an idea that’s been championed by the Dorsey-fronted Bluesky social app.
Facebook Knew Instagram Was Pushing Girls to Dangerous Content: Internal Document
A previously unpublished internal document reveals Facebook, now known as Meta, knew Instagram was pushing girls to dangerous content.
In 2021, according to the document, an Instagram employee ran an internal investigation on eating disorders by opening a false account as a 13-year-old girl looking for diet tips. She was led to graphic content and recommendations to follow accounts titled “skinny binge” and “apple core anorexic.”
Other internal memos show Facebook employees raising concerns about company research that revealed Instagram made 1-in-3 teen girls feel worse about their bodies, and that teens who used the app felt higher rates of anxiety and depression.
Attorney Matt Bergman started the Social Media Victims Law Center after reading the so-called “Facebook Papers,” disclosed by whistleblower Frances Haugen last year. He’s now working with more than 1,200 families who are pursuing lawsuits against social media companies. Next year, Bergman and his team will start the discovery process for the consolidated federal cases against Meta and other companies in multimillion-dollar lawsuits that he says are more about changing policy than financial compensation.
Is Social-Media Censorship a Crime?
The Wall Street Journal reported:
Amid growing revelations about government involvement in social-media censorship, it’s no longer enough to talk simply about tech censorship. The problem should be understood as gov-tech censorship. The Biden White House has threatened tech companies and federal agencies have pressed them to censor disfavored opinions and users. So it’s time to ask about accountability.
Will there be legal consequences for government officials, for the companies, or for their personnel who cooperate in the gov-tech censorship of dissent on COVID-19, election irregularities or other matters? Cooperation between government officials and private parties to suppress speech could be considered a criminal conspiracy to violate civil rights. The current administration won’t entertain such a theory, but a future one might.
Such accountability is constitutionally desirable — not for reasons of retribution but because without accountability, censorship will persist. The platforms probably will reassure their directors, officers and censorship review board members that there’s little to worry about. That may turn out to be correct. Section 241 is sufficiently broad that prosecutors should hesitate to pursue it in marginal cases.
But there’s nothing marginal about the most massive system of censorship in the nation’s history. If the gov-tech partnership to suppress speech isn’t a conspiracy to interfere in the enjoyment of the freedom of speech, what is?
U.S. Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Ban TikTok Nationwide
As more and more states across the country pile on to ban TikTok from state-owned devices, Republican Senator Marco Rubio from Florida along with Republican Representative Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin and Democrat Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi from Illinois have taken the move to the next level by proposing a national ban of the platform.
The bill, titled “Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party Act” or, more succinctly, the ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act. If passed, the Act would then go to the President’s desk and if signed, would “block and prohibit all transactions in all property and interests in property of a social media company,” 30 days after passage.
The ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act defines the social media company of interest as those that are either headquartered in, use algorithms controlled by, or are influenced by a “country of concern,” while later specifying that the companies of interest are TikTok parent company ByteDance and any of its subsidiaries.
“The federal government has yet to take a single meaningful action to protect American users from the threat of TikTok. This isn’t about creative videos — this is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults every day,” Senator Rubio stated in a press release on his website. Representative Gallagher, meanwhile, referred to the platform as “digital fentanyl that’s addicting Americans, collecting troves of their data, and censoring their news” in a subsequent statement.
Dr. Fauci Says He Ignores Elon Musk and ‘Cesspool’ Twitter After ‘Bizarre’ Allegations
Elon who? Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday said he doesn’t know or care what billionaire Elon Musk has said about him and derided his Twitter as a “cesspool of misinformation.”
“[Musk] has a big megaphone, but [Twitter] has really gone berserk lately. It’s kind of become almost a cesspool of misinformation,” Fauci said in an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC.
“I don’t have a Twitter account. I don’t tweet and I don’t listen to tweets,” the Brooklyn-bred pandemic doctor said. “So whatever he said, I’m not paying attention to it.”
Musk has in recent days called for Fauci, who is leaving government after six decades of public health service, to be charged with unspecified crimes related to his management of the COVID-19 pandemic.
‘Out of Control’: Dozens of Telehealth Startups Sent Sensitive Health Information to Big Tech Companies
Open the website of Workit Health, and the path to treatment starts with a simple intake form: Are you in danger of harming yourself or others? If not, what’s your current opioid and alcohol use? How much methadone do you use?
Within minutes, patients looking for online treatment for opioid use and other addictions can complete the assessment and book a video visit with a provider licensed to prescribe suboxone and other drugs. But what patients probably don’t know is that Workit was sending their delicate, even intimate, answers about drug use and self-harm to Facebook.
A joint investigation by STAT and The Markup of 50 direct-to-consumer telehealth companies like Workit found that quick, online access to medications often comes with a hidden cost for patients: Virtual care websites were leaking sensitive medical information they collect to the world’s largest advertising platforms.
On 13 of the 50 websites, STAT and The Markup documented at least one tracker — from Meta, Google, TikTok, Bing, Snap, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest — that collected patients’ answers to medical intake questions. Trackers on 25 sites, including those run by industry leaders Hims & Hers, Ro, and Thirty Madison, told at least one big tech platform that the user had added an item like a prescription medication to their cart, or checked out with a subscription for a treatment plan.
YouTube Will Send a Notification to Users if Their Comment Is Abusive
Toxic and hateful comments on YouTube have been a constant headache for the company, creators and users. The company has previously attempted to curtail this by introducing features such as showing an alert to individuals at the time of posting so that they could be more considerate. Now, the streaming service is introducing a new feature that will more aggressively nudge such individuals of their abusive comments and take broader actions.
YouTube says it will send a notification to people whose abusive comments have been removed for violating the platform’s rules. If despite receiving the notification a user continues to post abusive comments, the service will ban them from posting any more comments for 24 hours. The company said it tested the feature before the rollout today and found that notifications and timeouts proved materially successful.
At the moment, hateful comment detection is available only for English-language comments, but the streaming service aims to include more languages in the future. Notably, the pre-posting warning is available for English and Spanish.
This Stalkerware Tracked Thousands of Android and iPhones
One of the most widely-used stalkerware apps is supposedly “riddled” with security flaws, and risks exposing its victim’s data to third parties, experts have warned.
Xnspy allows users to monitor the activities of their spouse, partner, or child after they covertly install it on their victim’s device, it then runs in the background secretly while sending data back to the installer.
An investigation by TechCrunch found that in addition to the already questionable more and legal issues that a tool like Xnspy presents, its underlying technology makes users extremely vulnerable to data security issues like identity theft.
According to the research, this app primarily targeted Android users — although it also reported that thousands of iPhones were compromised.
Police Detain 4 in Guangzhou After COVID Protests
Police in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou have detained at least four people for more than a week after they attended protests against COVID-19 restrictions in late November, according to activists, family members and friends of the detained.
While many who attended protests in cities across China last month were released after being held for 24 hours — the legal limit on detention before police must file charges — the four Guangzhou residents as of Wednesday have been held for a week and a half.
The detentions came a week after a burst of nationwide protests on the last weekend in November where people demanded freedom from China’s strict pandemic restrictions across several cities in a rare display of direct defiance against the central government. Protesters took to the streets despite great personal risk, knowing that surveillance cameras were pervasive and their social media would be tracked by police.
Now, what the protesters feared — that police would arrest them after the initial wave of action had passed — is happening in Guangzhou.
Dr. Robert Malone Reinstated on Twitter After Being Banned Over COVID Misinformation Policy + More
Vaccine Researcher Dr. Robert Malone Reinstated on Twitter After Being Banned Over COVID Misinformation Policy
Twitter on Monday unsuspended the account of Dr. Robert Malone, who was previously kicked off the platform for his posts on coronavirus vaccines.
Malone, an mRNA vaccine researcher, was removed from Twitter nearly a year ago for apparently violating the social media site’s policy on COVID-19 misinformation. He had repeatedly made claims regarding the effectiveness of the vaccines.
Around the same time as his Twitter ban, Malone’s appearance on Joe Rogan‘s podcast was censored by YouTube. In the interview with Rogan, Malone discussed vaccines and the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What the media doesn’t understand is that you can’t suppress information,” he told host Laura Ingraham in January. “It’ll find a way to be free.”
We’ve Failed to Learn From Past Pandemics. Our Posterity Deserves Better
A headline from a Santa Barbara newspaper blared: “Mask is the Chief Ally of the [‘Disease’] Physicians Declare.” The subtitle ran: “Average person doesn’t know how to take care of a mask and it becomes a veritable bacteria incubator.” This wasn’t the work of some dissident group of “fringe epidemiologists” in 2020; it was published on November 16, 1918, as the Spanish Flu swept across the country.
The basic fact is that our current crop of “public health” experts, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, has failed to learn the lessons of past pandemics. COVID-era lockdowns, mandates and other draconian mitigation measures fundamentally destroyed trust in our public health institutions. Historic accounts from 100 years ago convey a cautionary tale, warning against these excessive measures — but our so-called “experts” ignored them. We cannot afford to let the COVID era pass into history without uncovering what transpired and determining who should be held accountable. Our children deserve a maskless future.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has again issued guidance recommending universal masking. But universal mask mandates and other ultra-strict pandemic interventions have been tried before. As many scientific studies will attest: They failed then, as they did now. The forgotten history of stringent interventions is something we should have remembered at the onset of COVID.
U.K. Government Asked Twitter and Facebook to ‘Tweak’ Algorithms During COVID
Former United Kingdom Health Secretary Matt Hancock, self-styled as an official who was at the forefront of Britain’s battle against COVID, didn’t seem to feel like he had done enough in 2020 and 2021, so he felt compelled to milk the pandemic cow by writing a book about that “battle.”
But he wasn’t laboring alone, since he had a co-author, Isabel Oakeshott, who reports say is actually opposed to Hancock’s policies and is a lockdown skeptic.
And now, Oakeshott, who had access to official records and Hancock’s notes exchanged with “all the key players in Britain’s COVID-19 story” — as the book’s blurb states — has penned her own “story,” an article based on the collaboration published by the Spectator, whose content draws from the material used for the book.
Oakeshott writes about the “key lessons” that include revelations about the details of U.K.’s vaccine and mask policies, but also the mechanisms to deal with dissenters, particularly online.
Mexican State Brings Back Mask Mandate as COVID Numbers Rise
A northern Mexican state reintroduced the obligatory use of face masks in closed public spaces, officials said on Monday, in a bid to reduce rising COVID-19 infections, as well as the spread of other respiratory diseases.
The health minister of Nuevo Leon state, home to Mexico’s third-biggest city Monterrey, highlighted the updated guidelines in a news conference and said that the measure will go into effect immediately.
Giving Your Child a Screen May Hinder Emotional Regulation, Study Says. Here’s What to Do Instead
Researchers looked at 422 parent and caregiver responses to assess how likely they were to utilize devices for distraction and how dysregulated their 3- to 5-year-old child’s behavior was over a six-month period, according to the study published Monday in the JAMA Pediatrics.
Frequently using digital devices to distract from unpleasant and disruptive behavior like tantrums was associated with more emotional dysregulation in kids — particularly boys and children who were already struggling with emotional regulation, according to the study.
The study lines up with the current recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the World Health Organization that children ages 2 to 5 should have very limited screen time, said Dr. Joyce Harrison, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.
Instead of distraction, Dr. Jenny Radesky, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician and associate professor of behavioral sciences at the University of Michigan Medical School, recommends taking tantrums and emotional dysregulation as opportunities to teach children how to identify and respond to emotions in helpful ways.
Ex-NYT Columnist Swipes Media Downplaying Twitter Files: ‘Less Interesting’ Facebook Leaks Made Front Pages
Former New York Times media columnist Ben Smith took a swipe at the lack of coverage Elon Musk‘s “Twitter Files” have been receiving from the legacy press.
“Of course, the ‘Twitter files’ are a story,” Smith wrote in his newsletter on Sunday. “Elon Musk’s selective release of internal correspondence has shed some light on how Twitter clamped down on voices it deemed extreme and misleading, mostly on the right and far right. Less interesting leaks from Facebook made front pages for years.”
Ever since Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss began reporting on the “Twitter Files,” several members of the legacy media including from NBC News, CNN and The Washington Post have attempted to dismiss the findings as “nothing burgers.”
The three broadcast networks have virtually given zero coverage to each of the installments of the “Twitter Files” with CBS offering roughly 30 seconds about the first installment with ignoring the rest like ABC and NBC. CNN and MSNBC, meanwhile, have put less emphasis on the revelations from the tech giant and kept their ire on its new owner, Elon Musk.
Washington Regulator Aims for More Control of Microsoft and Meta
Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission has two headline-making cases underway right now: Its trial against Meta in a California courtroom, and a new suit to block a Microsoft megadeal.
But Khan’s long game appears to be even bigger. She wants to win unprecedented powers to review and potentially block any future deals by two of tech’s most acquisitive companies.
Buried in court filings for both cases — a lawsuit to block Microsoft’s takeover of video game company Activision Blizzard, and a trial against Meta’s takeover of Within, maker of the virtual reality fitness app Supernatural — Khan’s push for new authorities shows how much more aggressive the agency is under her watch.
If the FTC can score a victory in either proceeding — though there’s likely a long way to go before either reaches that point — Khan and her team would do more than just block these deals, they’d be arming themselves with broad investigative authority over future acquisitions at Meta and Microsoft. For two tech giants that have built some of their most successful enterprises around buying companies, it would be a radically new regulatory process compared to how they’ve done business in the past.
Musk’s Twitter Dissolves Trust and Safety Council That Advised Platform’s Content
Twitter, under the leadership of Elon Musk, dissolved an outside advisory council minutes before a scheduled meeting, according to reports.
The Trust and Safety Council comprised nearly 100 independent civil, human rights and other organizations that the company formed in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform.
“Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal,” said an email provided to The Associated Press. It was signed “Twitter.”
‘Effective Immediately’: Utah Bans TikTok From State Devices
Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox issued an executive order on Monday that bans TikTok from all state-owned devices, citing “security threats by China and China-based entities.”
“China’s access to data collected by TikTok presents a threat to our cybersecurity,” Cox said. “As a result, we’ve deleted our TikTok account and ordered the same on all state-owned devices. We must protect Utahns and make sure that the people of Utah can trust the state’s security systems.”
The decision adds Utah to a growing list of Republican-led states to recently enact similar policies. On Thursday, Oklahoma Republican Governor Kevin Stitt issued his executive order to ban TikTok from state devices. On Wednesday, Texas became the largest state to ban the app, with Republican Governor Greg Abbott denouncing TikTok.
HR Platform Sequoia Says Hackers Accessed Customer SSNs and COVID Data
Benefits and payroll management company Sequoia says hackers accessed sensitive customer information, including their Social Security numbers and COVID-19 test results.
According to Wired, which first broke the news of Sequoia’s breach last week, the incident impacted customers of Sequoia One, a professional employer organization (or PEO) that provides outsourced human resources and payroll services. The service is popular with U.S.-based startups and says it works with more than 500 venture-backed companies.
Now, in a data breach notice filed with the California attorney general’s office, Sequoia said it became aware that an “unauthorized party may have accessed a cloud storage system that contained personal information” over a two-week period between September 22 and October 6.
This breached cloud system stored an array of sensitive personal data, including names, home addresses, dates of birth, gender, marital status and employment status. It also included Social Security numbers, their salary wage related to benefits, government identity cards and COVID-19 test results and vaccine cards.