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AI Tools Are Secretly Training on Real Images of Children
Over 170 images and personal details of children from Brazil have been scraped by an open-source dataset without their knowledge or consent, and used to train AI, claims a new report from Human Rights Watch released Monday.
The images have been scraped from content posted as recently as 2023 and as far back as the mid-1990s, according to the report, long before any internet user might anticipate that their content might be used to train AI. Human Rights Watch claims that the personal details of these children, alongside URL links to their photographs, were included in LAION-5B, a dataset that has been a popular source of training data for AI startups.
“Their privacy is violated in the first instance when their photo is scraped and swept into these datasets. And then these AI tools are trained on this data and therefore can create realistic imagery of children,” says Hye Jung Han, children’s rights and technology researcher at Human Rights Watch and the researcher who found these images. “The technology is developed in such a way that any child who has any photo or video of themselves online is now at risk because any malicious actor could take that photo, and then use these tools to manipulate them however they want.”
Social Media Giants Avoid School Districts’ Addiction Claims
Meta Platforms Inc. and other social media companies won the dismissal of novel claims in hundreds of lawsuits brought by school districts seeking to recover costs for addressing the negative impacts of students’ social media use.
A California state judge sided Friday with Meta, Snap Inc., TikTok Inc. and Google LLC in throwing out the districts’ allegations that social media has increased the cost of education because it makes students more distracted and disruptive, driving up the need for classroom discipline, employee training and communication with parents.
The cases are among hundreds in state and federal courts alleging that social media platforms are designed to be addictive and dangerous for youths.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl wrote that there must be limits on liability — otherwise any company could be held responsible when “emotional harm” it inflicts on individuals then causes those individuals to “act out.”
New York Passes Legislation to Ban ‘Addictive’ Social Media Algorithms for Kids
New York’s Legislature passed a bill on Friday that would ban social media platforms from using “addictive” recommendation algorithms for child users.
It’s expected that Gov. Kathy Hochul will sign the bill into law. On Friday, she posted on X celebrating the bill’s passage. The bill could fundamentally change how children use social media in the state.
The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act will prohibit social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram from serving content to users under the age of 18 based on recommendation algorithms, meaning that, instead, social media companies will have to provide reverse-chronological feeds for child users.
Evan Greer, the director of nonprofit digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future, said that commercial age-verification methods, which would likely be required to enforce the law, further threaten the privacy of social media users and could pose a danger to civil liberties and anonymity online.
California COVID Vaccine Mandate Lawsuit Sees New Life
A California lawsuit suing the state over a COVID-era vaccine mandate received new life on Friday after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court’s dismissal of the lawsuit.
The lawsuit targeted Los Angeles schools that imposed a vaccine mandate on its workers. Attorneys for the schools had argued that the lawsuit was moot given the end of the mandate in 2023. The Ninth Circuit disagreed, ruling 2-1 that the workers could move forward with the case.
Critically, the court recognized the plaintiffs “plausibly alleged” that the vaccine for COVID-19 “does not effectively ‘prevent the spread'” of the disease, rather it merely mitigates symptoms for those who contract it. Therefore, the court said, there is an argument to be made that there is no legal basis for forcing workers to take the vaccine against their will.
The ruling comes roughly a year after California reversed course on a vaccine mandate for students. That move came as part of a wider rollback of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s expansive COVID-19 restrictions. California was the first state to issue a statewide stay-at-home order during the pandemic.
Canada, UK Launched Joint Probe Into 23andMe Data Breach, Says Canada
The Canadian and British privacy authorities have launched a joint probe into a data breach at genetics testing company 23andme last year, Canada’s privacy commissioner said in a statement on Monday.
Last October, 23andMe told some customers of a breach into the “DNA Relatives” feature that allowed them to compare ancestry information with users worldwide.
Supreme Court to Consider Meta Bid to End Cambridge Analytica Privacy Scandal Lawsuit
The Supreme Court will consider a request by Meta to shut down a class action lawsuit against the company filed by investors relating to the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, the court said Monday.
The lawsuit centers on allegations from investors that the Facebook parent company failed to disclose how Facebook users’ personal information would be misused by the firm Cambridge Analytica, which supported former President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Separate from the case, Meta has already paid a $5.1 billion fine to federal regulators and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users based on the same Cambridge Analytica data breach.
Google Cuts Part of Team That Vets Police Requests for User Data
Google cut a group of workers from the team responsible for making sure government requests for its users’ private information are legitimate and legal, raising concerns among workers and privacy experts that the company is weakening its ability to protect customer data.
Google has intimate data on the billions of people who use its products, including emails, passwords, financial information, web browsing history and physical locations, and police around the world are increasingly asking the tech company to provide that data to aid with investigations.
The cuts represent a significant reduction in the company’s ability to vet and respond to search warrants and other requests, and have already led to delays in fulfilling court orders, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Proposed EU Chat Control Law Wants Permission to Scan Your WhatsApp Messages
The EU is currently considering a new plan to scan citizens’ encrypted communications, in yet another chapter of its fight against online child sexual abuse material (CSAM). After harsh criticism, legislators have abandoned the idea of allowing law enforcement to access text messages and audio — shared photos, videos, and URLs are now the target. Yet, experts still warn that citizens’ privacy is at risk.
Belgium, which heads the Council of Europe until June 30, proposed the new text as a compromise on what was nicknamed Chat Control law last May, and it’s now under review.
There’s a catch, though. People must consent to the shared material being scanned before being encrypted. Choosing to reject the scanning will lead to users being prevented from using this functionality at all. The tech world isn’t buying it, in fact, Romain Digneaux, Senior Public Policy Associate at Proton, describes it to TechRadar as “a blatant attempt to pull the wool over our eyes.”
“It will potentially subject all EU citizens to mass surveillance, undermining their fundamental rights while doing nothing to address the spread of CSAM online, nor any of the criticism from the European Data Protection Supervisor and countless experts.”
Religious Discrimination Suit Over Vaccine Mandate Can Advance
A Missouri woman’s religious discrimination lawsuit claiming she was illegally fired for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine can move forward, a district court ruled Thursday.
Judge Henry Edward Autrey denied Centene Management Co. LLC’s motion to dismiss Andrea Carlson’s lawsuit, ruling she sufficiently stated a claim of discrimination against the company. Carlson’s amended complaint satisfied the requirements to survive the initial dismissal stage, Autrey ruled.
Carlson alleges Centene violated both the Civil Rights Act and the Missouri Human Rights Act when it fired her in 2021 for failing to fulfill the company’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement.
