Login
Big Brother News Watch
The COVID Vaccine Mandate for Military Members Might Be the Next One to Fall + More
The COVID Vaccine Mandate for Military Members Might Be the Next One to Fall
The question of the day is whether Congress will end a coronavirus vaccine mandate imposed on military service members as part of a roughly $800 billion bill to reauthorize the Pentagon, known as the National Defense Authorization Act (or NDAA).
Top leaders huddled yesterday as they hashed out an array of certain provisions of the legislation, though there are still unresolved issues. One person with knowledge of the NDAA, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the fluid legislation, said the bill as currently written directs the defense secretary to end the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for activity duty and reserve component service members.
But that doesn’t appear final. The vaccine mandate is one of the items still under discussion, two congressional aides, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid, said last night.
Late last week, over a dozen Senate Republicans warned they would drag out consideration of the defense policy bill if they didn’t secure a vote on ending the military’s vaccine mandate.
U.S. Intelligence Chief: Parents ‘Should Be’ Concerned for Kids’ Privacy on TikTok
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines is warning parents about risks to their children’s data privacy on the social media platform TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.
In an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell at the Reagan National Defense Forum, Haines said it is “extraordinary” how adept the Chinese government is at “collecting foreign data.”
“And their capacity to then turn around and use it, to target audiences for information campaigns but also to have it for the future to use it for a variety of means,” she said.
When Mitchell asked if parents should be worried, Haines responded, “I think you should be.” TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms in the U.S., with tens of millions of users. The video-sharing app is particularly popular among younger generations, fueling concerns about data collection from Beijing.
Fauci Deputy Was ‘Very Impressed’ With China’s COVID Lockdown Methods, Despite ‘Great Cost’
Dr. Anthony Fauci testified last week that his deputy at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Clifford Lane, was “very impressed” with how China was managing the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and said that the country “has demonstrated this infection can be controlled, albeit at great cost.”
Fauci was deposed under oath by state GOP attorneys general Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry as part of their lawsuit against the Biden administration. The two AGs have accused top-ranking government officials of working with Twitter, YouTube and Meta, which owns Facebook, “under the guise of combating misinformation” in order to censor viewpoints on COVID that went against the Biden administration’s position.
According to the transcript of the deposition released on Monday by Schmitt, Fauci said that Lane took note of China’s “extreme” measures to combat the virus. Fauci said he believes that he recommended that Lane travel to China with the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate the virus in February 2020.
“Dr. Lane was very impressed about how, from a clinical public health standpoint, the Chinese were handling the isolation, the contact tracing, the building of facilities to take care of people and that’s what I believed he meant when he said [they] were managing this in a very structured, organized way,” Fauci said.
CDC Encourages People to Wear Masks to Help Prevent Spread of COVID, Flu and RSV Over the Holidays
The Centers for Disease Control Prevention on Monday encouraged people to wear masks to help reduce the spread of respiratory illnesses this season as COVID, flu and RSV circulate at the same time.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, in a call with reporters, said wearing a mask is one of several everyday precautions that people can take to reduce their chances of catching or spreading a respiratory virus during the busy holiday season.
The CDC director said the agency is considering expanding its system of COVID community levels to take into account other respiratory viruses such as the flu. The system is the basis for when CDC advises the public to wear masks. But Walensky encouraged people to take proactive action.
Most Americans Support Elon Musk’s Efforts to Make Twitter ‘More Free and Transparent’: Poll
A significant portion of American citizens is supportive of industrialist Elon Musk’s efforts to ensure freedom of speech on Twitter, according to a poll by Trafalgar Group.
The poll asked respondents whether they support Musk seeking to make Twitter a “more free and transparent platform.” According to the survey, 52.3% responded positively, while 31.3% were not supportive of Musk’s actions at Twitter. The remaining 16.3% were “not sure.” Without the “not sure” option, support for Musk jumped to 62.6%, while those against such changes only made up 37.4%.
Amazon Is Offering Customers $2 per Month for Letting the Company Monitor the Traffic on Their Phones
Some Amazon users will now earn $2 dollar per month for agreeing to share their traffic data with the retail giant. Under the company’s new invite-only Ad Verification program, Amazon is tracking what ads participants saw, where they saw them and the time of day they were viewed. This includes Amazon’s own ads and third-party ads on the platform.
The Ad Verification program — currently limited to U.S. and U.K.-based Amazon customers — was launched in the wake of concerns from privacy advocates over how Amazon handles sensitive user data. Earlier this month, Wired reported that experts were anxious about how Amazon would handle the data it obtained through healthcare startup OneMedical. And there have long been concerns over how the company uses the data from its smart home devices like Alexa and Ring, CNBC reported.
Exchanging user data for a financial reward is nothing new. In 2016, Facebook launched a program that gave monthly $20 gift cards to users between the ages of 13 and 25 if they installed Facebook Research, a VPN app that tracked their online activity for market research, TechCrunch reported.
In 2012, Google launched Screenwise, a program that gave volunteer users $5 Amazon gift cards — with additional ones every three months for up to a year — to download a Google Chrome browser extension that tracked what they did on the internet, Ars Technica reported. Both the Facebook and Google programs were shut down in 2019 due to privacy concerns, The Verge and TechCrunch reported.
Meta’s Oversight Board Finds Cross-Check Puts ‘Business Concerns’ Ahead of Human Rights
More than a year after Meta asked the Oversight Board to weigh in on its cross-check rules, the group has finally published its full policy advisory on the topic. The board found that the program, which creates a separate content moderation process for certain high-profile users, prioritizes the company’s business over the rights of its users.
“In our review, we found several shortcomings in Meta’s cross-check program,” the board writes in its assessment. “While Meta told the Board that cross-check aims to advance Meta’s human rights commitments, we found that the program appears more directly structured to satisfy business concerns.” Notably, the critique echoes that of whistleblower Frances Haugen, who revealed explosive details about cross-check last year, and has said that Meta “chooses profits over safety.”
Cross-check, or xcheck, is an internal program at Facebook and Instagram that shields celebrities, politicians and other high-profile users from the company’s automated content moderation systems. Meta has characterized it as a “second layer of review” to avoid mistakenly removing posts. But disclosures made by Haugen showed the program includes millions of accounts and has enabled billions of views on posts that would have otherwise been taken down.
‘A Clear and Present Danger to Its Users:’ South Carolina Gov. Bans State Employees From Using TikTok Amid National Security Concerns
South Carolina became the second state in the union Monday to permanently ban state employees’ electronic devices from using TikTok amid federal officials sounding the alarm that the Chinese-based social media app threatens national security.
Growing security concerns over the social media platform have caught lawmakers’ attention recently after the Federal Communications Commission said the government agency could not regulate the social media app or control American data from flowing back to Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who requires companies to share its data upon request under the country’s 2017 National Intelligence Law.
Heeding warning signs from federal officials, Governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina took action against state employees, alleging the app poses “a clear and present danger to its users,” as a growing bi-partisan coalition in Congress continues to push for a national ban on TikTok.
‘Troubling’ Study Finds Google’s Kidney Disease-Predicting AI Performs Worse in Women — and May Not Have a Quick Fix
Acute kidney failure is a common condition among people who have already been hospitalized with another critical condition. It develops rapidly, over the span of just a few days, and if left untreated can lead to permanent kidney damage or death.
That’s why Google’s DeepMind division and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs were met with such excitement in 2019 when they unveiled an artificial intelligence system that had been proven in a study to help predict the presence of acute kidney injury up to two days in advance.
But another study published this month has found that the AI not only is less effective when applied to female patients but also may not be easily fixed simply by adjusting its sample size and gender representation. The DeepMind and VA researchers acknowledged this potential issue in the original study: “Female patients comprised 6.38% of patients in the dataset, and model performance was lower for this demographic,” they wrote at the time, though their findings were limited only to patients in the earlier stages of acute kidney failure.
The more recent analysis of the deep learning AI — which was led by researchers from the University of Michigan — expanded on those findings, concluding that the model incorrectly identified female patients across all levels of acute kidney injury severity.
Beijing Drops COVID Testing Burden as Wider Easing Beckons
Residents of China’s capital were allowed into parks, supermarkets, offices and airports without a negative COVID-19 test on Tuesday, the latest in a mix of easing steps nationwide after unprecedented protests against a tough zero-COVID policy.
“Beijing readies itself for life again,” read a headline in the government-owned China Daily newspaper, adding that people were “gradually embracing” newfound freedoms.
Authorities have been loosening some of the world’s toughest COVID curbs to varying degrees and softening their tone on the threat of the virus, in what many hope could herald a more pronounced shift towards normalcy three years into the pandemic.
Both of the city’s airports also no longer require people to test to enter the terminal, state media reported, although there was no indication of a change to the rule for a negative test before boarding a flight.
China’s ‘Zero COVID’ not so Different to U.S., Some Say Amid Protests + More
China’s ‘Zero COVID’ not so Different to U.S., Some Say Amid Protests
As protesters in China risk incarceration and possibly worse to demonstrate against the Communist Party’s “Zero COVID” policy, some in the United States are wondering how the lockdowns, compulsory masking, suppression of critical opinions, surveillance, forced vaccinations and closures of businesses differ from America’s recent experience — minus the extraordinarily harsh punishments the Chinese demonstrators may face.
“There’s a direct correlation,” Louisiana pastor Tony Spell told Newsweek. “The only difference is the confrontations are more physical in China, where with us it’s been lawsuits, time, intimidation and false imprisonment.”
Others say authorities in the U.S. were also guilty of “unprecedented censorship“, “trampling rights” and “bullying” during the pandemic.
Pastor Spell was arrested for the first time on March 13, 2020, when COVID was tearing through the United States, for refusing to close his Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge. He was ordered to wear an ankle bracelet and confined to his house, while authorities installed nine cameras, some at his church, some at his home — including one at his bedroom window to monitor the whereabouts of him and his parishioners.
Former Global Head of Trust and Safety at Twitter Reveals Widespead Scientific Censorship
After Elon Musk‘s buyout and the ongoing release of the “Twitter files,” the cat is out of the bag, as it were, when it comes to Twitter’s extreme leftist political agenda and their collusion with the federal government and the DNC. And, it appears that some of the people deeply involved in the platform’s censorship model are willing to discuss their tactics and motives. One might expect them to take a more apologetic position in light of their exposed lies and trespasses against their customers and site users, but this is definitely not the case.
Former Twitter employees, most especially former moderators and Trust and Safety employees, are unrepentant for their censorship efforts tainted with political bias and seem to loath Elon Musk for opening the door to fair debate on the social media site.
The trust and safety elites within Big Tech companies have no doubts about the validity and righteousness of their cause, and that’s the biggest problem. The monstrous nature of the ideology of scientifically precise censorship is on full display in the following interview with Yoel Roth, the former Global Head of Trust And Safety, at the Knight Foundation. Roth has no qualms about the notion of crushing free speech.
The former trust and safety exec goes on to admonish the removal of COVID censorship, calling it “bad and damaging” without explaining how. One can only suggest that the leftists at Twitter were also in collusion with government officials to silence any and all facts and evidence that ran contrary to the mainstream pandemic narrative. Much of this information, like the Biden Laptop, was labeled “conspiracy theory” and banned, only to later be revealed as absolutely true.
Keep COVID Military Vaccine Mandate, Defense Chief Says
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he wants to keep the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate in place to protect the health of the troops, as Republican governors and lawmakers press to rescind it.
This past week more than 20 Republican governors sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking that the administration remove the mandate, saying it has hurt the U.S. National Guard’s ability to recruit troops. Those troops are activated by governors to respond to natural disasters or unrest.
Congress may consider legislation this coming week to end the mandate as a requirement to gather enough support to pass this years’ defense budget, which is already two months late.
“I’m the guy” who ordered the military to require the vaccine, Austin added. “I support continuation of vaccinating the troops.” Last year Austin directed that all troops get the vaccine or face potential expulsion from the military; thousands of active duty forces have been discharged since then for their refusal to get the shots.
Censorship by Surrogate: Why Musk’s Document Dump Could Be a Game Changer
“Handled.” That one word, responding to a 2020 demand to censor a list of Twitter users, speaks volumes about the thousands of documents released by Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, on Friday night.
As many of us have long suspected, there were back channels between Twitter and the Biden 2020 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to ban critics or remove negative stories. Those seeking to discuss the scandal were simply “handled,” and nothing else had to be said.
Musk’s dumped Twitter documents not only confirm the worst expectations of some of us but feature many of the usual suspects for Twitter critics. The documents do not show a clear role or knowledge by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Instead, the censor in chief appears to be Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former chief legal officer who has been criticized as a leading anti-free speech figure in social media.
State Appeals Court Revives Lawsuit Challenging University’s COVID Vaccine Mandate
A state appeals court has kept alive a lawsuit challenging Miami University’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate, which the plaintiffs claim led to discrimination against them.
The court’s decision could influence the outcomes of similar lawsuits against other universities in Ohio, including Ohio University.
While the Miami lawsuit can now continue to move forward, the plaintiffs have just one legal claim left to pursue, involving discrimination. Multiple other claims made by the plaintiffs were dismissed.
And the court did not decide whether there was any discrimination against the plaintiffs. The only issue before the court was whether the lawsuit could continue.
Empty Pews: How COVID Changed the Way the Bay Area Worships
Empty pews. Taking communion at home. Zooming into Shabbat services in pajamas.
It’s been nearly three years since COVID-19 shut down the world, but the Bay Area’s places of worship have yet to return to their pre-pandemic normal — and experts wonder if they ever will. More than one in three local residents say they still aren’t going to their spiritual centers as often as they did before COVID struck, according to an exclusive poll by the Bay Area News Group and Joint Venture Silicon Valley. That’s despite the fact that nearly everything has opened back up, vaccines are widespread and hospitalizations and deaths from the virus have plummeted.
This massive shift — which has seen some congregants get comfortable with worshipping online while others have stopped attending altogether — is forcing the Bay Area’s religious institutions to reevaluate their roles as they struggle to adapt to the new needs of their congregations and try to stay relevant at a time when faith already is in the midst of a years-long decline.
The change is clearly visible in some half-empty sanctuaries, and it comes as religion’s prevalence continues to drop. About three in 10 U.S. adults said they identified with no religion in 2021, up 10 percentage points from a decade prior, according to the Pew Research Center.
COVID Is Weakening, China State Media Claims, as Major Cities Lift Lockdowns
Coronavirus is weakening and management protocols could be downgraded, an expert on China’s state media has claimed, after unprecedented protests last week led to a major shift in Beijing’s commitment to its zero-COVID policy.
Since January 2020, China has classified COVID-19 as a Category B infectious disease but has managed it under Category A protocols, which give local authorities the power to put patients and their close contacts into quarantine and lock down affected regions.
Category A diseases in China include bubonic plague and cholera, while SARS, Aids and anthrax fall under Category B. Category C diseases include influenza, leprosy and mumps. Infectious diseases that can be easily spread and have a high fatality rate are classified as Class A or Class B but managed as Class A.
But an unnamed infectious disease expert told Chinese media outlet Yicai that more than 95% of China’s cases are now asymptomatic and mild, and the fatality rate is very low. Under such circumstances, adhering to Class A management is not in line with science, Yicai reported on Sunday. COVID-19 could be downgraded to Category B management or even Category C, the expert was quoted as saying.
Meta Faces Record EU Privacy Fines
This Christmas is bound to be an expensive one for U.S. tech giant Meta.
The Big Tech firm looks set to soon face a huge regulatory bill for all three of its social networks, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. Europe’s privacy regulator body, the European Data Protection Board, is expected to issue decisions on Monday that target the three platforms, after which Meta’s lead regulator in Ireland will issue a final decision within a month.
The detail and possible value of the monetary penalty will remain under wraps until then, but the triplet of fines could add up to over €2 billion, financial statements by Meta indicate — setting a new record for the highest fines under the European Union’s feared General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) received by a single company in one go.
What Is AI Chatbot Phenomenon ChatGPT and Could It Replace Humans?
ChatGPT is a prototype dialogue-based AI chatbot capable of understanding natural human language and generating impressively detailed human-like written text. It is the latest evolution of the GPT — or Generative Pre-Trained Transformer — family of text-generating AIs.
The new AI is the latest chatbot from the Elon Musk-founded independent research body OpenAI foundation. Trained by AI and machine learning, the system is designed to provide information and answer questions through a conversational interface.
Early users have described the technology as an alternative to Google because it is capable of providing descriptions, answers and solutions to complex questions including ways to write code, and solve layout problems and optimization queries.
There has been speculation that professions dependent upon content production could be rendered obsolete, including everything from playwrights and professors to programmers and journalists.
TSA Now Wants to Scan Your Face at Security. Here Are Your Rights. + More
TSA Now Wants to Scan Your Face at Security. Here Are Your Rights.
Next time you’re at airport security, get ready to look straight into a camera. The TSA wants to analyze your face.
The Transportation Security Administration has been quietly testing controversial facial recognition technology for passenger screening at 16 major domestic airports — from Washington to Los Angeles — and hopes to expand it across the United States as soon as next year. Kiosks with cameras are doing a job that used to be completed by humans: checking the photos on travelers’ IDs to make sure they’re not impostors.
The TSA says facial recognition, which has been banned by cities such as San Francisco, helps improve security and possibly also efficiency. But it’s also bringing an unproven tech, with civil rights ramifications we still just don’t understand, to one of the most stressful parts of travel.
No, you don’t have to participate in facial recognition at the airport. Whether you’ll feel like you have a real choice is a separate question.
Forced Medication: An Out-of-Control Abuse of Patient Rights
Dr. David J. Alfandre, an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at New York University has described patients going against medical advice as a “common and vexing problem,” expressing a sentiment many clinicians feel.
But American law actually requires physicians to respect patients’ autonomy. A federal court case decided in 1972, “Canterbury v. Spence,” specified that doctors must give patients all the information needed to understand the risks and benefits of a recommended medical intervention, as well as reasonable alternatives — including doing no intervention.
Despite these ethical stipulations, there seems to be a growing trend toward forcing people to take medicine they feel is harmful to them as well as to take vaccines they do not want. Medicating people against their will appears to be an ominous tendency, according to both the peer-reviewed scientific literature and people’s recent experience with the COVID-19 vaccines.
Rumble Files Lawsuit to Challenge New York’s Social Media Censorship Law
Free speech video-sharing platform Rumble and its subscription platform Locals have sued New York Attorney General (AG) Letitia James to challenge a social media censorship law that they say would force platforms to target constitutionally protected speech.
Rumble and Locals are being represented by the free speech nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and are joined in the lawsuit by constitutional law professor Eugene Volokh, the co-founder of the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog.
“The law is titled ‘Social media networks; hateful conduct prohibited,’ but it actually targets speech the state doesn’t like — even if that speech is fully protected by the First Amendment,” FIRE said in a statement.
It comes into force on Saturday, December 3, 2022.
Irish Privacy Watchdog Quizzes Twitter After Millions of User Records Surface Online
Ireland’s privacy watchdog has asked Twitter to provide information about a data scraping incident that saw the profile details — including emails and phone numbers — of millions of Twitter users leaked online.
The Irish Data Protection Commission, in charge of overseeing Twitter’s operations in the European Union, sent a letter to Twitter seeking an explanation following reports about the breach, a spokesperson for the regulator told POLITICO. “We’re now waiting for their response,” said Graham Doyle, who’s also deputy data protection commissioner.
Twitter confirmed back in August that hackers had exploited a vulnerability in its system — since fixed — to obtain Twitter profiles linked to phone numbers and emails and vice versa.
While Twitter did not confirm the number of accounts affected, media reports citing hackers said that the profile details, including email addresses and phone numbers, of 5.4 million users had been shared for free on a hacker forum as recently as November 24. According to the website bleepingcomputer.com, a second dump of Twitter profile accounts, exploiting the same vulnerability, had exposed the details of millions more users.
Elon Musk’s Neuralink Could Be Trialed in Humans in 2023. Here’s What You Need to Know.
Elon Musk’s Neuralink—the company which promises to enable a direct interface between the human brain and computers—plans to begin human trials of its implantable brain chip, the billionaire said during a live-streamed event demonstrating the technology Wednesday.
Musk, who co-founded the company, said Neuralink has sought approval from the Food and Drug Administration to begin human clinical trials for the device and said the company expects it will be able to plant its first brain chip in a human in six months.
Here’s how it works: Neuralink’s brain-computer interface uses thousands of small electrodes embedded in the brain to read signals emitted by neurons and transmit them to a computer.
Dr. Cristin Welle, a neuroscience professor who helped draft the FDA’s guidance on brain-computer implants, told the New York Times that regulators will need to determine if the Neuralink device poses any risk to patients. This would include any potential for the device to cause damage to the brain and the device’s durability.
L.A. County COVID Surge Raises Prospect of Return to Indoor Masking Order
Coronavirus case and hospitalization rates have risen dramatically in Los Angeles County, which on Thursday reentered the medium COVID-19 community level for the first time since the end of the summer Omicron wave.
The increasing rates of hospitalization — which are so rapid they are coming as a surprise to officials — raise the prospect of a return to an indoor mask mandate in L.A. County in the coming weeks, based on previously established criteria by local public health officials. But it remains uncertain whether that threshold will be met.
Should hospital measures worsen, L.A. County could be on track for the return of a mandatory mask mandate in indoor public settings. But that threshold — if it were to be reached — is probably a few weeks away.
TransLink Drops COVID Vaccine Mandate for Workers
Metro Vancouver’s regional transit and transportation agency has dropped its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for workers, effective Thursday. The policy, which was implemented last year, required all TransLink employees to have two doses of the vaccine by Nov. 29, 2021.
“As federal and provincial restrictions continue to ease, we believe suspending our policy at this time is the right decision,” spokesperson Dan Mountain said.
China Fines Former NBA Star Lin Over Quarantine Comments
Former NBA star Jeremy Lin, who plays for a Chinese team, was fined 10,000 yuan ($1,400) for criticizing quarantine facilities, China’s professional league and a news report said Friday, as the government tries to stop protests against anti-virus controls that are among the world’s most stringent.
Also Friday, more cities eased restrictions, allowing shopping malls, supermarkets and other businesses to reopen following protests last weekend in Shanghai and other areas in which some crowds called for President Xi Jinping to resign. Urumqi in the northwest, the site of a deadly fire that triggered the protests, announced supermarkets and other businesses were reopening.
The ruling Communist Party is trying to crush criticism of the human cost and disruption of its “zero-COVID” strategy, which has confined millions of people to their homes. Protesters have been detained and photos and videos of events deleted from Chinese social media. Police fanned out across Shanghai, Beijing and other cities to try to prevent additional protests.
China Pledges to Slowly Exit ‘Zero COVID’
China’s coronavirus czar said that the country would take “baby steps” in extricating itself from a three-year pursuit of “zero COVID,” after authorities stepped up censorship efforts following rare mass protests, and ahead of a state funeral for a former leader.
“We should prioritize stability while pursuing progress: take baby steps, but don’t stop going, to optimize the COVID policy,” Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, who heads China’s coronavirus response efforts, said during a panel discussion with health workers on Thursday.
Sun, widely regarded as the face of China’s lockdown measures, had said Wednesday that the country is facing a “new reality” as the virus now poses a lesser threat. She made the rare move of convening panel discussions on consecutive days amid widespread confusion over Beijing’s messaging, which had recently pushed local governments to loosen measures before imposing lockdowns again as infections continued to climb.
Beijing has not offered a timetable for exiting zero COVID, but some health experts say the strictest measures could be lifted by the middle of next year.
Amazon’s Creep Into Healthcare Has Some Experts Spooked + More
Amazon’s Creep Into Healthcare Has Some Experts Spooked
Amazon is making another push to get into healthcare. Yes, again. This time, it’s aiming for low-hanging fruit: telehealth, which exploded in popularity during the pandemic. On Nov. 15, Amazon announced the launch of its own telehealth platform, called Amazon Clinic. The service, to roll out in 32 U.S. states, will connect users to health providers to help treat over 20 common conditions, including allergies, acne and dandruff.
The concept is simple: The patient will select their condition, fill out a questionnaire, and Amazon will connect them with a doctor to get a treatment plan. The scheme does not accept insurance; the cost of seeing a doctor will be around that of the average copay for a doctor’s visit, the announcement says: “At Amazon, we want to make it dramatically easier for people to get and stay healthy.”
It’s also seemingly another move by the tech giant to know every last detail about your life — even down to whether you’re suffering from erectile dysfunction (one of the conditions that Amazon Clinic will cover). Yet given that Amazon doesn’t have the squeakiest track record when it comes to protecting data, handing the company the keys to people’s intimate health information raises red flags for privacy experts.
If this feels familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before. The launch of this new service comes hot on the heels of Amazon’s takeover of One Medical, a U.S. company described as a “Netflix-for-healthcare subscription” with around 800,000 members. The acquisition proved controversial due to concerns about patient data privacy mostly centered on the simple fact that Amazon would have access to the data. (When news of the $3.9 billion deal broke in July, it prompted protests outside One Medical’s headquarters in San Francisco.)
Teenage Brains Prematurely Aged by Pandemic, Stanford Study Finds
Adolescent brains have been prematurely aged as a result of the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study from Stanford University. Scans taken before and after the pandemic showed the sort of impact on the brain normally only seen in children who have experienced serious adversity, such as domestic violence or neglect.
Now scientists warn that their findings suggest the pandemic could have serious consequences for an entire generation of adolescents later in life. And the possibility of permanent brain damage comes on top of fears over the impact of the pandemic on adolescent mental health.
As well as disruption to their education and routines, many teenagers also experienced social isolation during lockdowns, when they were cut off from their friends at a time when friends are becoming increasingly important.
Scans revealed areas of the brain that control access to memories and regulate emotions — the hippocampus and amygdala respectively, were enlarged, and tissues in the cortex — involved in executive functioning — had become thinner. This made their brain structures appear several years older than the brains of comparable peers before the pandemic.
GOP Governors, Senators Take Aim at Pentagon COVID Vaccine Mandate
Nearly all Republican governors and 13 GOP Senate lawmakers are taking aim at the Biden administration’s military COVID-19 vaccine mandate, with the two groups on Wednesday urging congressional leadership to try to alter or altogether dismantle the ruling.
The 21 GOP governors, led by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, issued a joint letter to top lawmakers asking them to “take immediate action to remove and prohibit” the mandate.
The 13 Republican senators, meanwhile, hope to insert language in the annual defense authorization bill that would prohibit any service member from being removed from the ranks should they refuse the coronavirus vaccine, as well as reinstate those already discharged with back pay.
In a separate letter led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the lawmakers oppose moving forward with the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act unless the Senate votes on an amendment that includes such stipulations.
Feds Pay Journalism Group $5 Million to Create Software to Turn People Into Anti-‘Misinformation’ Bots
The federal government has awarded $5 million to a group of journalists called Hacks/Hackers to develop software that will encourage regular Americans to confront their friends over “harmful” posts, and “correct misinformation” by replying with text suggested by the software.
The group is also organizing Wikipedia censors to determine who is a “credible source” on vaccines, and block anyone else from being cited in the online encyclopedia. Job ads for the project do not require that applicants have any expertise in medicine.
That list is already taking shape on Wikipedia, with liberal outlets such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian and The Atlantic all marked “reliable.” Conservative sites, including The Daily Wire, Daily Mail, Epoch Times and The Federalist, are all classified as either “unreliable” or “conspiracy.”
The group led by Hacks/Hackers received $5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop “the Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust (ARTT), a suite of expert-informed resources that are intended to provide guidance and encouragement to individuals and communities as they address contentious or difficult topics online,” it said on Oct. 24.
Veterans Affairs Admits to Improperly Disclosing COVID Vaccine Data for 500,000 Staff
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has admitted that it failed to adequately protect COVID-19 vaccination status data for about 500,000 of its employees.
Following an internal investigation by the VA’s Data Breach Response Service, the agency removed a spreadsheet containing personal details including vaccination status, according to a notice sent to the agency’s bargaining unit employees that was obtained by FedScoop. Federal Times first reported about the data breach.
Approximately 500,000 employees’ vaccination records were disclosed last year without permission and were sent to various members of Veterans Health Administration (VHA) senior leadership, according to the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union, which filed a grievance.
Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, regulated entities are prohibited from disclosing an individual’s protected health information, which includes COVID-19 vaccination status.
B.C. Civic Workers Fired for Refusing to Comply With COVID Vaccine Mandate Have Case Thrown out
A group of civic employees who were fired by the city of Quesnel for failing to comply with a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy has had a lawsuit they filed against the authorities thrown out of court.
In November 2021, the city announced that it was important to act in alignment with the provincial mandate that all B.C. public sector employees must be vaccinated to protect against the spread of the coronavirus.
Workers were warned that if they failed to comply with the policy by Jan. 3 they would be terminated on Jan. 28. The 10 employees who declined to get vaccinations were placed on an involuntary unpaid leave of absence on Jan. 10 and then terminated on Feb. 7.
They filed a lawsuit in B.C. Supreme Court alleging that the vaccination requirement was an infringement of bodily integrity contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They also claimed that the vaccines were neither necessary, safe, nor effective.
EU Threatens Musk With Twitter Ban Over Content Moderation
The EU has threatened to ban Twitter in Europe unless new owner Elon Musk adheres to its strict rules on content moderation.
The threat was made by Thierry Breton, the EU’s commissioner in charge of implementing the bloc’s digital rules, who said during a video meeting with Musk on Wednesday that Twitter must follow a checklist of rules, including ditching his “arbitrary” approach to reinstating banned users, the Financial Times reports, citing people with knowledge of the conversation.
The EU’s demands also include a requirement that Musk provide clear rules on which users are at risk of being banned. Users such as Kanye West and Andrew Tate, who were unbanned from Twitter — yet remain banned on rival platforms Facebook and Instagram, might be of concern to the EU.
Further, the EU wants Twitter to commit to an audit by the summer of 2023 when the company must hand over data on various metrics such as the number of active users and banned accounts.
Girl’s Surprise Reunion With Family After Years Away Has Internet in Tears
TikTok video of an Irish woman returning home to her family after being stuck in Australia due to COVID-19 restrictions has garnered over three million views and touched users’ hearts.
At one point she greets her father, who acts with considerable surprise, “Dad just couldn’t stop crying, no words” she says, while her mother can be heard saying, “Oh my God, oh my God my child!”
Australia only ended its mandatory COVID isolation requirements on October 14, 2022, as it ended the “emergency phase” of its response to the virus.
Australia imposed some of the harshest lockdown policies to reduce the spread of COVID and citizens spent 19 months in lockdown. In October 2021, Australia lifted its ban on citizens leaving the country. Previously citizens were only allowed to leave the country for reasons such as essential work or to visit a dying family member.
Japan Says Kids Can Speak During School Lunches in COVID Shift
Japanese schools are being asked to allow students to talk with classmates again during meals, as the country inches away from pandemic practices that have been a mainstay of daily life for nearly three years.
Many schools had enforced a strict silent lunch policy since the start of the pandemic, based on the national guidelines encouraging less chatting in close proximity to avoid spreading the virus. “Eat in silence as much as possible and wear a mask when conversing,” the old recommendations said.
Despite its success in keeping deaths low during the pandemic, Japan has lagged behind other developed nations in easing COVID restrictions, with a full border reopening to foreign tourists only happening last month. Many virus precautions like wearing masks — which are not mandatory outdoors — remain popular as the country sees another rise in infections.
Children may “talk to each other during lunch if there’s appropriate ventilation and seating arrangements,” the ministry said, adding it would ask schools to proactively get students to remove their masks where they are not necessary.
China Clamps Down on Internet as It Seeks to Stamp out COVID Protests
The Wall Street Journal reported:
China’s internet watchdog instructed tech companies to expand censorship of protests and moved to curb access to virtual private networks this week, as a government clampdown succeeds in keeping most protesters off the streets after nationwide demonstrations erupted over the weekend against the country’s strict COVID policies.
The Cyberspace Administration of China issued guidance to companies on Tuesday, including Tencent Holdings Ltd. and ByteDance Ltd., the Chinese owner of short video apps TikTok and Douyin, asking them to add more staff to internet censorship teams, according to people familiar with the matter.
The companies were also asked to pay more attention to content related to the protests, particularly any information being shared about demonstrations at Chinese universities and a fire in the western Xinjiang region that triggered the nationwide backlash over COVID policies.
Protesters took to the streets of Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities across China over the weekend calling for an end to the country’s zero-tolerance COVID policies, in a rare display of widespread defiance against the government.
Google to Introduce Behavioral ‘Interventions’
Google has presented its project dubbed “Info Interventions” based on what it says is a behavioral science that, if these “interventions” are used as directed, could “teach” users to the degree they will become resilient to online harms.
Another promise is that by “pre-bunking misinformation” users can be “immunized.”
How is this supposed to work? Google has put up a site that states the goal is to provide accuracy prompts that would refocus users’ attention toward whatever Google decides qualifies as accurate information.
This method of effectively training users to behave in a desired way is unsurprisingly attempting to draw from behavioral science research and Google says it has been validated by digital experiments.
The Big Problem With Spotify Wrapped
This year’s surprise Wrapped drop came on Wednesday. And, as they have for the past several years, Wrapped screenshots flooded Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.
It’s a social trend that rises each year and cuts through the noise, fueled by pride and/or self-deprecating humor, depending on who your top artists turned out to be. And it’s all built on user data, which Spotify packages in cool neon colors with cheeky commentary — a move that takes the edge off the creepiness of knowing Spotify is always listening.
And in return for entertaining its users for the day, Spotify gets its annual chance to drive a social media trend and reap the benefits of free advertising as millions share their Wrapped publicly.
As more companies come under fire for tracking users and storing data, Spotify manages to largely avoid such widespread criticism. Instead, many anticipate and welcome Wrapped’s arrival. But it’s also a nicely-packaged manifestation of the music streamer’s ability to capture every second people spent listening from January to October.