Big Brother News Watch

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has signed off on Canada dropping the vaccine requirement for people entering the country at the end of September, an official familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Canada, like the United States, requires foreign nationals to be vaccinated when entering the country. No change in the mandate is expected in the U.S. in the near term.

Unvaccinated foreign travelers who are allowed to enter Canada are currently subject to mandatory arrival tests and a 14-day quarantine.

Trudeau’s Liberal government is still deciding whether to maintain the requirement for passengers to wear face masks on trains and airplanes.

Hong Kong Will Scrap COVID Hotel Quarantine From Sept. 26

Reuters reported:

Hong Kong will scrap its controversial COVID-19 hotel quarantine policy for all arrivals from Sept. 26, more than 2.5 years after it was first implemented, in a long-awaited move for many residents and businesses in the financial hub.

All international arrivals will be able to return home or to the accommodation of their choice but will have to self-monitor for three days after entering the Chinese special administrative hub, the government said on Friday.

People will be allowed to go to work or school but will not be allowed to enter bars or restaurants for three days. A pre-flight PCR test which was required for travelers to Hong Kong 48 hours before flying will be replaced by a Rapid Antigen Test.

Hong Kong still bans public groups of more than four people and masks are mandatory for all, including children as young as two, who must also wear them during school.

Sen. Johnson Demands YouTube Answer for ‘Repeated Censorship’ on COVID, Conservative Viewpoints

GOP Sen. Ron Johnson demanded YouTube give account to the Senate for the company’s moderation policies surrounding COVID-19 that allegedly enabled a “troubling track record” of repeated censorship of a sitting U.S. senator.

In a letter first reviewed by Fox News Digital, ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Johnson, of Wisconsin, told YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Johnson that the company’s policies “appear to have led to repeated censorship.”

Johnson is requesting YouTube provide the committee with documentation “concerning the development and implementation” of the company’s content moderation policies surrounding COVID-19 ‘misinformation,’ which YouTube says were created with help from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food & Drug Administration and other “third party health authorities.”

The letter documents in detail multiple instances, starting in October 2021, in which Johnson alleges YouTube censored and suspended him for his expressed views of early treatment of COVID-19, opposition to vaccine mandates for children and workers, and advocacy for individuals injured by vaccines — including the removal of interviews with Sen. Johnson conducted by journalists discussing these topics.

Meta Sued for Skirting Apple Privacy Rules to Snoop on Users

Bloomberg reported:

Meta Platforms Inc. was sued for allegedly building a secret workaround to safeguards that Apple Inc. launched last year to protect iPhone users from having their internet activity tracked.

In a proposed class-action complaint filed Wednesday in San Francisco federal court, two Facebook users accused the company of skirting Apple’s 2021 privacy rules and violating state and federal laws limiting the unauthorized collection of personal data. A similar complaint was filed in the same court last week.

The suits are based on a report by data privacy researcher Felix Krause, who said that Meta’s Facebook and Instagram apps for Apple’s iOS inject JavaScript code onto websites visited by users. Krause said the code allowed the apps to track “anything you do on any website,” including typing passwords.

According to the suits, Meta’s collection of user data from the Facebook app helps it circumvent rules instituted by Apple in 2021 requiring all third-party apps to obtain consent from users before tracking their activities, online or off.

Microsoft CEO Doesn’t Want Employees Spied on When Working From Home

TechRadar reported:

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has urged companies not to spy on their staff who are working from home, despite a recent report that claims bosses are less trusting of their employees who do so.

The company’s report indicates that 85% of leaders find it “challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive”, despite a huge 153% increase in Microsoft Teams meetings since before the pandemic.

Microsoft VP Jared Spataro added to Bloomberg, “there’s a growing debate about employee surveillance, and [the company has] a really strong stance — we just think that’s wrong.”

“We don’t think that employers should be surveilling and taking note of the activity of keystrokes and mouse clicks and those types of things because, in so many ways, we feel like that’s measuring heat rather than the outcome.”

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Unvaccinated Americans Face Job Loss, No Pay + More

Unvaccinated Americans Face Job Loss, No Pay While Seeking Exemptions From State and Local COVID Mandates

Americans from coast to coast are still suffering from job loss for refusing to submit to sweeping vaccine mandates, despite President Biden‘s admission that the pandemic is “over.”

Despite declaring the end of the COVID-19 pandemic during a “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday, President Biden did not address the thousands of Americans who are unemployed due to federal and local vaccination mandates.

New York City dropped its private employer vaccine mandate, ending one of the nation’s strictest COVID-19 regulations. However, public servants are still forced to comply.

Marcus Thornton represents a group of over 8,000 federal employees who argue federal and local government regulations violate human rights and religious freedoms. “Over the past year, the government has threatened me with termination, excluded me from the workforce, discriminated against me and subjected me to harassment, for standing up for those very principles, for human rights and for religious freedom and the right to bodily autonomy and medical choice.”

State Employees Likely to Get 1K Bonuses for COVID Booster

International Business Times reported:

Under a tentative deal, Washington state employees would get $1,000 bonuses for receiving a COVID-19 booster shot.

The agreement between the state and the Washington Federation of State Employees also includes 4% pay raises in 2023, 3% pay raises in 2024 and a $1,000 retention bonus, The Seattle Times reported.

Gov. Jay Inslee announced this month that all pandemic emergency orders will end by Oct. 31, including state vaccine mandates for healthcare and education workers. But he has said a vaccine mandate will continue to be in effect for workers at most state agencies.

Florida Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Revive Law Targeting Social Media ‘Censorship’

Florida on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revive a state law aimed at stopping social media companies from restricting users’ political speech after a federal appeals court blocked it earlier this year.

The law, which had been challenged by industry group NetChoice, would require social media companies to disclose the rules they use for banning or censoring users and to apply them consistently and would limit their ability to ban candidates for political office from their platforms.

NetChoice’s members include Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms Inc. (META.O), Google parent Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL.O) and Twitter Inc. (TWTR.N).

The ruling comes days after a different federal appeals court, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, allowed a similar Texas law that had also been challenged by NetChoice to take effect.

Unvaccinated Novak Djokovic Awaiting Word on Australian Open

Novak Djokovic is still awaiting word on whether he will be allowed to return to the Australian Open in January after missing the tournament this year because he is not vaccinated against COVID-19.

He was deported from Australia last January after a 10-day legal saga that culminated with his visa being revoked; he originally was granted an exemption to strict vaccination rules by two medical panels and Tennis Australia in order to play in the Australian Open.

The 35-year-old Djokovic, who is from Serbia, has insisted he will not get the shots against the illness caused by the coronavirus, even if it means missing tennis events.

He was not able to enter two of this season’s four Grand Slam tournaments, including the U.S. Open that ended this month. The United States and Canada currently bar entry to foreign citizens who have not received COVID-19 vaccines, and so he also missed four other events in North America in 2022.

Djokovic was able to get into France, losing to Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinals at the French Open in June, and England, winning the title at Wimbledon in July.

Goldman Sachs Lifts COVID Vaccine and Testing Mandate for NYC Employees

Goldman Sachs told its New York City-based employees on Wednesday that as of Nov. 1 they will no longer need to get vaccinated for COVID-19, CNN has learned.

The move comes weeks after Goldman Sachs relaxed its COVID requirements for all U.S. employees except those based in New York, its home city.

The announcement comes barely 24 hours after New York City officials made vaccine mandates optional for private businesses and encouraged firms to put in place their own policies.

In a memo obtained by CNN, Goldman Sachs told employees: “In accordance with the updated guidance from the Mayor of New York City related to the private sector, beginning on Tuesday, Nov. 1, all Goldman Sachs colleagues can enter 200 West Street regardless of vaccination status, with no requirement to participate in regular testing or wear face coverings.”

California Is Easing COVID Mask Recommendations as Conditions Improve. Here’s Where

Los Angeles Times reported:

In a new sign of improving coronavirus conditions, California will ease its mask-wearing recommendations for the first time in seven months.

The state is largely rescinding its broad recommendation that everyone — regardless of vaccination status — mask up when in indoor public settings and businesses. That guidance had been in place since mid-February.

Instead, California will recommend universal mask wearing only when a county’s COVID-19 community level — which indicates rates of new coronavirus-positive hospitalizations — is high.

Among the changes slated to take effect Friday is the end of state-ordered mandatory masking in jails and prisons, homeless shelters and emergency and cooling centers located in counties with a low COVID-19 community level, as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. LA county will end its recommendation for universal masking in indoor public settings Friday, and instead say doing so will be a matter of personal preference.

Hawley Probes Pentagon Over ‘Alarming’ Mishandling of Religious Exemptions to the COVID Vaccine

Sen. Josh Hawley is demanding the Pentagon provide information related to its internal investigation into the handling of service members’ religious accommodation requests to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Hawley, R-Mo., who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to the Pentagon’s Acting Inspector General Sean O’Donnell Thursday requesting more information about the Pentagon’s internal report.

The senator’s letter comes a week after the Pentagon’s watchdog said the Department of Defense is in “potential noncompliance” with standards for reviewing and denying religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, according to a report obtained by Fox News Digital last week.

“These findings are alarming. If true, not only do they suggest that the military services failed to satisfy all legal and regulatory obligations when reviewing servicemembers’ requests for religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate,” writes Hawley. “They also raise very serious concerns about the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s apparent failure to promulgate or enforce lawful guidance for reviewing such requests.”

Microsoft Won’t Label Fake News as False in an Attempt to Avoid ‘Censorship’ Cries

Bloomberg reported:

Microsoft Corp. won’t label social media posts that appear to be false in order to avoid the appearance that the company is trying to censor speech online, President Brad Smith said in an interview with Bloomberg News, hinting that the company is taking a different approach than other technology firms in dealing with disinformation.

“I don’t think that people want governments to tell them what’s true or false,” Smith said when asked about Microsoft’s role in defining disinformation. “And I don’t think they’re really interested in having tech companies tell them either.”

The comments are Smith’s strongest indication yet that Microsoft is taking a unique path to tracking and disrupting digital propaganda efforts.

Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook and Twitter Inc. have experienced a backlash over their attempts to flag and remove inaccurate and misleading posts on their websites and apps.

Amazon’s Bezos, Jassy Must Testify in FTC Investigation

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy must testify in an ongoing Federal Trade Commission probe into whether the company misled people into subscribing to Amazon Prime and other services, the agency said Wednesday.

The decision follows earlier Amazon (AMZN) claims that FTC staff were harassing the two men and imposing undue burdens on them. Amazon (AMZN) had filed a petition to the agency’s topmost officials asking them to intervene.

But agency commissioners said Amazon had not met the legal threshold to quash the civil subpoenas issued to the two men.

The requirement that Amazon’s most powerful leaders testify to the FTC underscores the depth and breadth of the agency’s investigation, which covers a sweeping range of Amazon services.

Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen Launches Nonprofit to Make Social Media Healthier

CNBC reported:

Former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen on Thursday announced a new nonprofit with the goal of making social media healthier.

The new group appears to build on the solutions she’s proposed to lawmakers and social media companies themselves about how to make platforms safer, based in part on her experience as a former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team.

Haugen has become a well-known figure since leaking tens of thousands of pages of internal documents and later revealing her identity on “60 Minutes” last year. She also testified before Congress.

“Beyond the Screen” will start by creating an open-source database of ways “Big Tech is failing in its legal and ethical obligations to society,” according to a press release, and detail potential solutions. The group calls this a “Duty of Care” project that aims to identify gaps in research about online harm and come up with ways to fill them.

Europe Edges Closer to a Ban on Facial Recognition

Politico reported:

Should the EU ban software that can pick a face out of a crowd? A growing political coalition thinks so — and just received heavyweight support from the third largest group in the EU parliament, where a majority is now in favor of banning facial recognition tech that scans crowds indiscriminately and in real-time.

The support from Renew, which joins the Greens and Socialists & Democrats groups in backing a ban, shows how a growing part of Europe’s political leadership is in favor of restrictions on artificial intelligence that go far beyond anything in other technologically-advanced regions of the world including the U.S.

Last week, POLITICO obtained a document detailing a new civil liability law for AI applications — an avant-garde step toward a legal regime for autonomous programs and devices.

Opponents of live facial recognition tech argue that such tools are favored by authoritarian governments in places like Russia and China to track dissidents or vulnerable minorities, and are ultimately dangerous for civil liberties. They also point to risks of racial profiling and invasion of privacy, which led large companies including IBM, Amazon and Microsoft to suspend the sale of facial recognition tools to governments.

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Federal Judge Strikes Down Biden Administration’s Head Start Vaccine, Mask Mandate + More

Federal Judge Strikes Down Biden Administration’s Head Start Vaccine, Mask Mandate

The Hill reported:

A federal judge in Louisiana on Wednesday struck down a mandate from the Biden administration that required staffers at Head Start childcare facilities to be vaccinated and to wear masks.

U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty issued a permanent injunction against federal agencies enforcing Head Start vaccine and masking requirements.

In his ruling, Doughty found that the plaintiffs had satisfied the requirements to warrant a permanent injunction. He ruled that the plaintiffs — a group of Head Start teachers from across the country along with several state governments — faced a “substantial threat of irreparable injury” if the mandate wasn’t taken down.

In November, the Office of Head Start, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Administration for Children and Families issued a rule requiring universal masking for all children and staff at Head Start facilities over the age of 2. Adult staff members were also required to get immunized against COVID-19, with weekly testing required for those who were exempt from vaccinations.

NYC Subways Are Getting a ‘Big Brother’ Addition

Gizmodo reported:

New York City subways are getting an upgrade. No, not more trains, more stops, fewer delays or updated stations, but instead a ton more surveillance cameras. Every car in the subway system will soon be equipped with two cameras, Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Tuesday.

“You think Big Brother’s watching you on the subways? You’re absolutely right. That is our intent,” the Governor said during a news conference in a Queens subway yard. “We are going to be having surveillance of activities on the subway trains, and that is going to give people great peace of mind.”

The addition of cameras on train cars is the expansion of the pilot program which began in June. In the test phase, about 100 cars were equipped with cameras. The security push followed a spate of highly publicized subway attacks, including an April mass shooting on a Manhattan-bound N train. During that attack, a single gunman shot 10 people. Miraculously, nobody was killed, though multiple people were injured.

Hochul preemptively dismissed potential concerns about the increased surveillance, adding “If you’re concerned about this, the best answer is don’t commit any crimes on the subways, then you won’t have any problems.” This is a pro-surveillance argument so classic and critiqued, it has its own Wikipedia page.

Supreme Court to Consider Taking up Challenge to New York’s Vaccine Mandate

Politico reported:

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear an NYPD detective’s challenge to New York City’s vaccine requirement for municipal workers after all.

Last month, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor rejected a request by Det. Anthony Marciano to take up his legal challenge — the outcome of which could have significant implications for Mayor Eric Adams’ administration. But Marciano resubmitted the exact same request to conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, and the high court’s press office confirmed Tuesday the case will be deliberated at a conference on Oct. 7.

Marciano sued the city last year challenging a policy requiring municipal workers to be inoculated against COVID-19. He did not qualify for religious or medical exemptions, but instead argued he’d acquired immunity through his front-line service and should be free to make his own decision about getting the jab.

His case began in state court and was quickly kicked up to the federal level. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied his request for a stay of the vaccine mandate while his case plays out, so he asked the Supreme Court to grant him that injunction or strike down the city’s policy altogether.

Revealed: U.S. Military Bought Mass Monitoring Tool That Includes Internet Browsing, Email Data

Vice reported:

Multiple branches of the U.S. military have bought access to a powerful internet monitoring tool that claims to cover over 90% of the world’s internet traffic, and which in some cases provides access to peoples’ email data, browsing history and other information such as their sensitive internet cookies, according to contracting data and other documents reviewed by Motherboard.

Additionally, Senator Ron Wyden says that a whistleblower has contacted his office concerning the alleged warrantless use and purchase of this data by NCIS, a civilian law enforcement agency that is part of the Navy, after filing a complaint through the official reporting process with the Department of Defense, according to a copy of the letter shared by Wyden’s office with Motherboard.

The material reveals the sale and use of a previously little-known monitoring capability that is powered by data purchases from the private sector. The tool, called Augury, is developed by cybersecurity firm Team Cymru and bundles a massive amount of data together and makes it available to government and corporate customers as a paid service.

Motherboard has found that the U.S. Navy, Army, Cyber Command and the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency have collectively paid at least $3.5 million to access Augury. This allows the military to track internet usage using an incredible amount of sensitive information.

Oklahoma Supreme Court Rules School Districts, Not Governor, Should Decide Mask Mandates

The Oklahoman via Yahoo!News reported:

The Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down the governor’s influence over school mask mandates in an opinion issued Tuesday, ruling in favor of doctors and parents who challenged a state law that at one point effectively blocked masking requirements in public schools.

The court decided a crucial provision in Senate Bill 658 that made school mask mandates contingent on the governor declaring a state of emergency is “impermissible” and denies school districts local control.

The decision means public schools wouldn’t have to wait for a governor’s emergency order to require face coverings, though few schools, if any, still mandate them.

Official: Canada Likely to Drop Vaccine Requirement to Enter

Canada will likely drop the vaccine requirement for people who enter Canada by the end of September, an official familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Canada, like the United States, requires foreign nationals to be vaccinated when entering the country. It is not immediately known whether the U.S. will make a similar move by Sept. 30.

Unvaccinated travelers who are allowed to enter Canada are currently subject to mandatory arrival tests and a 14-day quarantine.

The official said that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau needs to give a final sign-off on it but that the government will likely be dropping the requirement as well as ending random COVID-19 testing at airports. Filling out information in the unpopular ArriveCan app will also no longer be required.

City of Toronto Pulls Controversial Vaccination Ad Campaign Within Hours

Toronto Sun reported:

Saying it “can do better,” the City of Toronto has pulled a $20,000 video ad campaign encouraging families to vaccinate their kids.

They removed the five ad spots just hours after release and following public and media backlash about the city’s use of children in these Public Service Announcements attempting to illustrate there are things in life that they can’t partake in without receiving a COVID-19 injection.

Knowing this approach of using kids to try to encourage parents to vaccinate their children at a time when mandates and masking protocols are no longer in existence, I sent a request to the city for comment.

“People who are vaccinated are still susceptible to contracting COVID-19, so what is this about?” I asked. “Is this trying to guilt families into vaccinating a child or some form of peer pressure? Is it trying to suggest families should keep unvaccinated (children) indoors?”

Morgan Stanley to Pay $35 Million After Hard Drives With 15 Million Customers’ Personal Data Turn up in Auction

TechCrunch reported:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has agreed to settle charges against Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (MSSB) for its “astonishing” failure to protect the personal identifying information of some 15 million customers.

MSSB, now known as Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, is the wealth and asset management division of banking giant Morgan Stanley, which this week agreed to pay $35 million to settle allegations that it failed to properly dispose of hard drives and servers containing its customers’ personal data over a five-year period as far back as 2015.

Morgan Stanley hired a moving and storage company with “no experience or expertise in data destruction services,” according to the SEC, and failed to properly monitor the moving company’s work. Some of the hard drives were later found on an internet auction site with customers’ personal data still stored within.

“While MSSB recovered some of the devices, which were shown to contain thousands of pieces of unencrypted customer data, the firm has not recovered the vast majority of the devices,” the SEC said in a statement.

That Instagram Selfie You Posted Is an Open Invitation to Surveillance

Mashable reported:

Next time you pose for an Instagram photo in public, don’t forget to also smile for the numerous surveillance cameras in the area. “The Follower” may be watching.

Belgium-based artist Dries Depoorter‘s latest project, “The Follower,” reveals just how often people are being surveilled in public. And all he needed to track down his social media targets in real life was a photo that they posted on Meta-owned Instagram.

“One day I saw a person taking photos for like 20 minutes and I was trying to find the photo on Instagram a day later without success,” Depoorter told Mashable. “Then I started building the [artificial intelligence] software.”

Thanks to facial recognition software created by Depoorter and footage from open cameras live streaming public spaces from around the world, the artist was able to find a video of Instagrammers preparing to take a photo they later posted on the social media platform. It’s an interesting look at what goes on behind the scenes of a curated Instagram picture. More importantly, it shows just how much information can be pulled from a photo posted online.

TikTok Tightens Policies Around Political Issues in Run-up to U.S. Midterms

The Guardian reported:

Politicians on TikTok will no longer be able to use the app tipping tools, nor access advertising features on the social network, as the company tightens its policies around political issues in the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections in six weeks’ time.

Political advertising is already banned on the platform, alongside “harmful misinformation,” but as TikTok has grown over the past two years, new features such as gifting, tipping and e-commerce have been embraced by some politicians on the site.

Now, new rules will again limit political players’ ability to use the app for anything other than organic activity, to “help ensure TikTok remains a fun, positive and joyful experience”, the company said.

Would You Sell Your Data for Profit? Nearly 50% of Americans Said They Would

TechRadar reported:

You might take your online privacy very seriously. You always connect to one of the best VPN services when surfing the net. Likewise, you also carefully read terms and conditions before clicking the ‘Agree’ button. You may even customize the settings of your smartphone and apps to make sure they record as less information about you as possible.

However, despite all your efforts, big tech companies are still collecting a huge amount of data about you every day. They unsurprisingly make tons of money out of it, too.

Being that data collection looks like an inevitable practice, why not gain from it yourself, then? Would you feel comfortable selling your sensitive data for a profit if you would have the means to do so?

This is exactly one of the questions that analysis firm Exploding Topics addressed to more than 1,600 Americans. And — surprise, surprise — nearly half of the respondents said they would.

FTC Reviewing Amazon’s $1.7 Billion Deal to Buy iRobot

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Amazon’s $1.7 billion acquisition of iRobot, the latest deal that’s under scrutiny by the regulators amid growing concerns about the company’s market power.

In a regulatory filing Tuesday, iRobot said both it and Amazon received a request for additional information in connection with an FTC review of the merger. Earlier this month, securities regulators made a similar request to Amazon and One Medical, the primary healthcare company the e-commerce giant is planning to buy for $3.9 billion.

Both Amazon and iRobot said they would cooperate with the FTC’s review, which delays the completion of a deal. Following an investigation, the agency can challenge a merger in court, seek remedies or do nothing, which allows the deal to close. The agency says it retains the right to challenge a deal even after it is closed.

Privacy advocates have also voiced concerns the Seattle company will suck up more information on consumers from Roombas, iRobot’s popular vacuum cleaners that can remember a home’s floor plans. They say that feature makes it more possible for Amazon to target consumers with ads. Amazon has said it won’t do that.

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Nets Star Kyrie Irving Calls Vaccine Mandates ‘One of Biggest Violations of Human Rights in History’ + More

Nets Star Kyrie Irving Calls Vaccine Mandates ‘One of Biggest Violations of Human Rights in History’

PennLive reported:

At this point, it is pretty well known where Brooklyn Nets superstar Kyrie Irving stands in regard to COVID-19 vaccine legislation.

The point guard, who is unvaccinated, missed a large portion of his team’s regular-season home games a season ago due to New York’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate, as he was unable to play at the Barclays Center until the rule was lifted in March.

On Tuesday morning, Irving doubled down on his sentiment, this time taking to Twitter to refer to mandates as overreaches of historic proportions.

“If I can work and be unvaccinated, then all of my brothers and sisters who are also unvaccinated should be able to do the same, without being discriminated against, vilified or fired,” Irving tweeted. “This enforced Vaccine/Pandemic is one the biggest violations of human rights in history.”

NYC Mayor Adams Ends COVID Vaccine Mandates for Private Sector, Student Athletes — but City Worker Rule Stays

New York Daily News reported:

Mayor Adams announced Tuesday that he’s scrapping the city’s coronavirus vaccine mandates for private-sector employees and student-athletes — but the inoculation requirement for municipal workers will stay in place.

The workforce rule, which was the first of its kind in the country when rolled out by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in December, has required all private-sector employees in the city to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The second policy has mandated high school students be vaccinated if they want to engage in sports and other extracurricular activities.

In a press conference at City Hall on Tuesday morning, Adams said his administration is lifting the private-sector requirement effective Nov. 1. The school rule is going away immediately. But one pandemic precaution that Adams said he’s not squashing at the moment is the vaccine mandate for the city’s municipal workforce.

“It was crucial to put that in place and we’re keeping it in place,” he said. The mandate has required the city’s more than 300,000 municipal workers — including teachers, cops and firefighters — to be fully vaccinated. The requirement has for months prompted loud protests from a small group of unvaccinated city workers as well as Republicans in the City Council.

California Parents Petition SCOTUS Over Gavin Newsom’s COVID-Induced School Closures

The Center for American Liberty and the Dhillon Law Group, filed a petition to the Supreme Court last week to overturn a decision by the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, which dismissed the case Brach v. Newsom, regarding California’s school closures during COVID.

The Ninth Circuit court ruled that the lawsuit was moot because Newsom had allowed in-person education to resume. However, the petition to the Supreme Court noted that other circuit courts have “concluded that challenges to an executive’s emergency restrictions are not moot when the declaration of emergency remains in effect.”

The petitioners “include parents of school-age children in California who challenged Governor Newsom’s school-closure policy because they wanted to send their children to a private school in person,” the petition states.

Brach v. Newsom was filed on behalf of plaintiffs who challenged Gov. Newsom’s order barring in-classroom education in over 30 counties across California. The Vice President of Education Policy at California Policy Center Lance Christensen told Fox News Digital that “California arbitrarily closed schools at the behest of the teacher union and kept kids out of classrooms, damaging the lives of millions of kids unnecessarily.”

EXCLUSIVE: Hospital With 1st COVID Vaccine Mandate in United States Not Requiring Updated Booster

The Epoch Times reported:

The first hospital in the United States to mandate all its healthcare workers get the COVID-19 vaccine has quietly decided not to require the updated booster shot after facing staffing shortages, according to an internal email obtained by The Epoch Times.

Houston Methodist Hospital in April 2021 announced it was mandating the vaccine. The hospital fired hundreds of employees who refused to get the original vaccines and later mandated booster shots.

But in the new email, the hospital’s chief physician informed employees that they will not be made to get the newest boosters, which are produced by Pfizer and Moderna and aimed at the Omicron subvariant strains BA.4 and BA.5.

Spokeswoman Stephanie Amin said the hospital hadn’t ended its vaccine mandate. “We just aren’t mandating the new booster just yet. Waiting to see if we surge again and what the scientific data will show,” Amin told the Epoch Times.

Challenges Against Employer COVID Vaccine Mandates Show No Sign of Slowing

The National Law Review reported:

Lawsuits opposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates have surpassed the 1,000-complaint mark. The vast majority of these cases (75%) have been filed against employers. August 2022 brought the highest number of new complaints challenging employer COVID-19 vaccination requirements since the wave of vaccine mandate litigation began.

When legal challenges to COVID-19 vaccine mandates began to rise sharply in the fall of 2021, cases were directed mostly at Biden Administration executive orders and agency directives, as well as vaccination requirements, imposed upon certain industries by state and local governments. However, the bulk of filings since has mostly targeted employers, public and private, that have adopted policies requiring their employees to get vaccinated. These cases have been filed at a steady clip in 2022 and saw a sharp uptick this summer.

The jump in filings may be attributed in part to the dismissals that the EEOC and state agencies are beginning to issue on some of the thousands of charges that have been filed. The updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the changing attitude toward vaccines and COVID-19 also may be having an impact.

U.S. States Ask Appeals Court to Reinstate Facebook Lawsuit

Reuters reported:

A big group of U.S. states, led by New York, argued to an appeals court Monday that it should reinstate an antitrust lawsuit against Meta’s (META.O) Facebook because of ongoing harm from the company’s actions and because the states had not waited too long to file their complaint.

Barbara Underwood, solicitor general of New York which led the group that consists of 46 states, Guam and District of Columbia, said that it was wrong to treat states like a class action and put a limit on when they can sue. States not involved are Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and South Dakota. She said that Facebook’s actions harmed the economy and the marketplace.

The states are asking the three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reinstate a lawsuit filed in 2020, the same time that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued the company.

Both the FTC and the states had asked the court to order Facebook to sell Instagram, which it bought for $1 billion in 2012, and WhatsApp, which it bought for $19 billion in 2014. The FTC fight with Facebook is going forward.

Molly Russell Inquest Opens Almost Five Years After Teenager’s Death

The Guardian reported:

The inquest into the death of the teenager Molly Russell, who killed herself after viewing graphic content online, opens on Tuesday, with executives at Instagram’s parent company and Pinterest among the witnesses scheduled to appear.

Molly, 14, from Harrow, north-west London, viewed a large amount of online material, including some linked to anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide, in the months before she died in November 2017.

Her father, Ian Russell, has become a prominent campaigner for regulating social media platforms in order to better shield young people from damaging content.

The inquest has been delayed multiple times owing to legal and procedural issues including requests from Instagram’s owner, Meta, to redact content to protect the privacy of users.

As TikTok Competes With Google in Search, Report Flags Misinfo Concerns

Newsweek reported:

TikTok may be the preferred platform for entertaining videos, but a research report released a few days ago stated that many of its users — who are mostly teenagers and young adults — are likely to find misleading information on the Chinese app when they search for important topics such as COVID-19, the Russia-Ukraine war or the U.S. presidential election.

When researchers searched for content on top news topics on TikTok, they found that almost 20%, or one in five, of the suggested videos, contained misinformation, according to the report published by NewsGuard, a tool that tracks the credibility of online information.

NewsGuard cited the example of hydroxychloroquine, a drug that sparked a debate after the onset of COVID-19. While many people — including former U.S. President Donald Trump — touted it as a cure, the FDA had disregarded claims that it could prevent coronavirus.

On TikTok, when the researchers searched for ‘hydroxychloroquine,’ a video of a woman claiming to make the drug in her kitchen appeared. Four videos that appeared in the top 20 results offered instructions for making a homemade version of the prescription drug, which can only be made in controlled laboratory settings.

Here’s Why Tech Companies Keep Paying Millions to Settle Lawsuits in Illinois

Regulators have spent years trying to make big tech companies pay for the ways they harvest and, at times, abuse users’ data. One state, meanwhile, is literally making them pay up — and pay out directly to consumers.

Illinois is one of just a few states in the United States that has a law requiring companies to get consumers’ consent before snagging their biometric data, and its rule, passed in 2008, is seen as the toughest in the nation.

The law, called the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), doesn’t just force companies to get permission from people before collecting biometric data like fingerprints or scans of facial geometry. It also sets rules regarding how companies must safeguard such information, prohibits companies from selling Illinois residents’ biometric data and allows Illinois residents to sue companies for alleged violations of the law.

In the nearly 15 years since its passage, services using biometric data — from palm print recognition for buying groceries to facial-recognition software for unlocking your smartphone — have become increasingly common. But legislation in the United States has not kept up. There is no federal legislation on the matter, and among the select few states to have taken action, the Illinois law is seen as uniquely effective.

Dozens of Civil Rights Groups Are Calling on Amazon and MGM to Cancel Ring Nation Reality Show

The Verge reported:

Amazon and MGM are marketing Ring Nation, their upcoming reality TV show hosted by comedian and former NSA agent Wanda Sykes, as “a new twist on the popular clip show genre.”

But over 40 different civil rights organizations are now speaking out against the program for being a dangerous piece of pro-surveillance corporate propaganda and are calling on the studios to cancel the show before it ever sees the light of day.

Today, Fight for the Future, MediaJustice, Action Center on Race and the Economy, and dozens of other civil rights groups affiliated with the Cancel Ring Nation campaign published an open letter addressed to MGM leadership warning them about “the dangerous precedent MGM is setting in normalizing and promoting Amazon’s harmful network of surveillance cameras.”

The letter, addressed to MGM TV chairman Mark Burnett and MGM president of unscripted TV Barry Poznick, goes into detail about the dangers Ring cameras and the culture associated with them pose to vulnerable communities and argues that Ring Nation is just the latest piece of Amazon’s Ring-branded “surveillance network” being sold as entertainment.

Mark Zuckerberg Has Lost $70 Billion in Net Worth, Bumping Him Down to 20th Richest Person in the World

Insider reported:

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth has plummeted by $70 billion so far this year, bumping him down to the 20th richest person in the world, estimates show.

Zuckerberg started the year with a $125 billion fortune, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. But since then, it’s tanked down to $55.3 billion, a fall of just over 55%, according to the data. Forbes puts his net worth at $53.4 billion.

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus, has had a tumultuous past 12 months since Zuckerberg said it would become a “metaverse” company and then unveiled a massive rebrand last October. Facebook went on to report its first-ever decline in user numbers, losing roughly one million daily active users in the last quarter of 2021.

Don’t Cook Chicken in NyQuil: FDA Warns About Dangerous Social Media Challenges

CNN Health reported:

Want to cook chicken in NyQuil? Overdose on antihistamines? Swallow laundry detergent pods? While most of us would recoil in horror from such dangerous suggestions, adolescents and young adults continue to be susceptible to social media dares like these, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“One social media trend relying on peer pressure is online video clips of people misusing nonprescription medications and encouraging viewers to do so too. These video challenges, which often target youths, can harm people — and even cause death,” the FDA stated in a warning.

One recent challenge posted on social media encouraged people to cook chicken in a mixture of acetaminophen, dextromethorphan and doxylamine — the basic ingredients of NyQuil and some similar over-the-counter cough and cold products.

The agency also pointed to a TikTok challenge daring people to hallucinate by taking large doses of the over-the-counter antihistamine diphenhydramine. Called the “Benadryl Challenge,” the FDA cited reports of teens ending up in hospital emergency rooms or dying after participating.

Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey to Be Deposed in Twitter v. Musk Case