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Apple Says Your iPhone’s Usage Data is Anonymous, but New Tests Say That’s Not True

Gizmodo reported:

A new test of how Apple gathers usage data from iPhones has found that the company collects personally identifiable information while explicitly promising not to.

The privacy policy governing Apple’s device analytics says that “none of the collected information identifies you personally.” But an analysis of the data sent to Apple shows it includes a permanent, unchangeable ID number called a Directory Services Identifier, or DSID, according to researchers from the software company Mysk.

Apple collects that same ID number along with information for your Apple ID, which means the DSID is directly tied to your full name, phone number, birth date, email address and more, according to Mysk’s tests.

The findings worsen recent discoveries about Apple’s privacy problems and promises. Earlier this month, Mysk discovered that Apple collects analytics information even when you switch off an iPhone setting called “Share iPhone Analytics,” an action that Apple pledges will “disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether.” Days after Gizmodo reported on Mysk’s tests, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Apple for allegedly deceiving its customers over the issue.

Religious Employees Allegedly Fired for Not Getting COVID Vaccine Sue Massachusetts Pharmaceutical Company

FOXBusiness reported:

Religious employees at a major pharmaceutical company have filed suit in Massachusetts, claiming their employer instructed them to be vaccinated against their beliefs.

Norm Pattis, an attorney who represents controversial political commentator Alex Jones, filed a lawsuit Thursday representing employees of Takeda Pharmaceuticals alleging their employer discriminated against their religious beliefs, which are protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when they refused the COVID-19 vaccine.

“In response to the global pandemic caused by the spread of various strains of COVID-19, the defendant, a pharmaceutical company, elected to create a company-wide policy requiring vaccination against potential infection by COVID-19 of current and prospective employees,” reads the complaint filed with the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts. According to the complaint, the company offered its employees an opportunity to request an exemption from receiving the vaccine but ultimately denied warranting one.

“Takeda rarely, if ever, finds the religious beliefs of an employee ‘sincere’ enough to warrant an exemption. When it cannot defeat the claims of a believer by claiming insincerity, Takeda then claims that accommodating the religious beliefs of an employee or prospective employee would pose an undue hardship on its business. The result is that Takeda almost never grants religious exemptions, in violation of Title VII,” the complaint adds.

Twitter Reinstates Project Veritas After It Was Banned for Revealing Big Tech Censorship

Reclaim the Net reported:

The non-profit investigative journalism enterprise Project Veritas had its Twitter account reinstated on Sunday. Its founder, James O’Keefe, remains in Twitter jail.

Project Veritas was banned in 2021 after posting a video of Facebook Vice President of Integrity Guy Rosen admitting that Facebook had developed a system that could freeze commenting on a post where hate speech or violence has been detected, without first confirming if indeed the speech is violent or hateful. O’Keefe’s account was also banned after posting that video.

Elon Musk promised to reinstate some accounts that had been permanently banned under the previous ownership.

In a video leaked by Project Veritas in the summer, Musk said: “I think it’s essential to have free speech and for us to be able to communicate freely … If there are multiple opinions — but just make sure we’re not sort of driving the narrative.

Not so Fast, Elon: Europe Warns Musk He Must Hire Hundreds of Moderators to Limit Free Speech

ZeroHedge reported:

At a time when Musk is cutting hundreds if not thousands of workers on a weekly basis, early on Friday Europe delivered some unexpected news to the world’s richest man: according to Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, Musk will have to increase the number of moderators in Europe, a continent which long ago gave up all pretense of having free speech.

Breton added that Musk “will have to open his algorithms. We will have control, we will have access, people will no longer be able to say rubbish.” By “rubbish” he meant anything that Europe’s unelected technocrats disagree with, which these days is anything not endorsed by the World Economic Forum.

Breton earlier warned that Twitter would have to “fly by our rules,” shortly after Musk closed his $44 billion takeover last month. The EU’s Digital Services Act gives governments power to enforce rules governing how tech companies moderate content and to decide when they must take down illegal content. The DSA specifically will also force companies to moderate content in the languages they operate in, according to Bloomberg.

If Musk doesn’t comply, Twitter will face fines of as much as 6% of annual sales and could even be banned.

Judge Turns Away Psaki’s Effort to Quash Subpoena

Associated Press reported:

A judge refused Friday to quash a subpoena issued to former White House press secretary Jen Psaki that seeks her deposition in a lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana, alleging that the Biden administration conspired to silence conservative voices on social media.

Psaki filed a motion in federal court in Alexandria seeking to quash the subpoena, saying that she had no relevant information to provide and that a deposition would place an undue burden on her. The Justice Department supported her efforts to quash.

The lawsuit filed by the attorney general in Missouri and Alexandria accuses President Joe Biden, former federal health official Anthony Fauci and others of conspiring with social media companies to restrict free speech by censoring conservative opinions about the COVID-19 response and other issues.

Missouri and Louisiana say they want more information about statements Psaki made during news conferences in which she urged social media platforms to do a better job of blocking disinformation on their sites. In one briefing, for instance, she said the administration was flagging problematic posts to social media companies.

Trudeau Went All in Against the Freedom Convoy. This Week, It’s on Him to Explain Why.

Politico reported:

In a rare showing this week, Canada’s prime minister will publicly defend his decision to invoke never-before-used emergency powers to end a weekslong occupation of the nation’s capital last winter.

Justin Trudeau’s highly anticipated testimony will cap six weeks of hearings at a public inquiry that has witnessed extraordinary disclosures of the inner workings of police and government during the protest, which culminated in the Feb. 14 invocation of the Emergencies Act.

The act gave authorities broad new powers they used to freeze the bank accounts of protesters, ban travel to protest sites, prohibit people from bringing children to protests and compel tow trucks to clear out vehicles blocking Ottawa streets. Officials have said those measures, especially the ability to freeze accounts, also helped deter blockades at Canada-U.S. border crossings.

The public inquiry must determine whether Trudeau was justified in using the act. To date, it has heard and seen considerable evidence casting doubt on the Liberal government’s decision.

Ex-Levi’s Exec Pushed out Over Anti-COVID School Closure Remarks Speaks out on ‘Tucker Carlson Today’

Fox News reported:

A longtime Levi Strauss & Co. executive is revealing how she was allegedly pushed out of her high-profile role after speaking out against the COVID-19 school closures on Fox Nation’s “Tucker Carlson Today.”

Jennifer Sey, who spent nearly 23 years at Levi Strauss & Co. and described herself as a “lifelong liberal,” said she took her stance against school closure “in defense of children, which should have been a progressive value,” but soon realized it was not a welcome idea at the company.

Advocates for keeping schools open during the pandemic were deemed racists and accused of wanting to “murder teachers,” Sey explained. Soon people were emailing the CEO and head of human resources and calling for boycotts of the company. After being told there would be severance, she resigned publicly. While she never received her requested severance package, she believes it would have come with a non-disclosure agreement, despite the company’s denial.

“I wanted to be able to talk about the terms of the separation because I wanted to be able to tell you the story… In addition to the children being harmed, this idea that we can’t hold different views and work together, like the idea that I couldn’t have this view and work in this company is so disturbing to me that I did not want to sign my right away to talk about that,” Sey argued. “I wouldn’t do it.”

Meta Rolls out New Privacy Updates for Teens on Instagram and Facebook

TechCrunch reported:

Meta announced today that it’s introducing new privacy updates for teens on Instagram and Facebook. Most notably, everyone under the age of 16, or under 18 in certain countries, will be now defaulted into more private settings when they join Facebook.

For teens already on the app, Facebook is going to start encouraging them to choose more private settings in terms of who can see their friends lists, the posts they’re tagged in, the people and lists they follow and who is allowed to comment on their public posts. The Facebook privacy update comes over a year after Instagram started to default young users’ accounts to private accounts at sign-up.

Meta is also testing ways to protect teens from messaging suspicious adults they aren’t connected to. An example of a suspicious account is one that belongs to an adult that was recently blocked or reported by a young user. On Facebook, Meta won’t show suspicious accounts in teens’ People You May Know recommendations. Meta is also testing removing the message button on teens’ Instagram accounts when they’re viewed by suspicious adults.

Facebook Sued for Collecting Personal Data to Target Adverts

The Guardian reported:

A human rights campaigner is suing Facebook’s owner in the high court, claiming the company is disregarding her right to object to the collection of her personal data.

Tanya O’Carroll has launched a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta alleging it has breached U.K. data laws by failing to respect her right to demand Facebook stop collecting and processing her data. Facebook generates revenue from building profiles of users and matching them with advertisers who direct ads at people targeting their specific interests and backgrounds.

O’Carroll told BBC Radio 4’s Today program: “This case is really about us all being able to connect with social media on our own terms, and without having to essentially accept that we should be subjected to hugely invasive tracking surveillance profiling just to be able to access social media.”

Power-Hungry Robots, Space Colonization, Cyborgs: Inside the Bizarre World of ‘Longtermism’

The Guardian reported:

In February, the Future Fund, a philanthropic organization endowed by the now-disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, announced that it would be disbursing more than $100 million — and possibly up to $1 billion — this year on projects to “improve humanity’s long-term prospects.”

The slightly cryptic reference might have been a bit puzzling to those who think of philanthropy as funding homelessness charities and medical NGOs in the developing world. In fact, the Future Fund’s particular areas of interest include artificial intelligence, biological weapons and “space governance,” a mysterious term referring to settling humans in space as a potential “watershed moment in human history.”

Out-of-control artificial intelligence was another area of concern for Bankman-Fried — so much so that in September the Future Fund announced prizes of up to $1.5 million to anyone who could make a persuasive estimate of the threat that unrestrained AI might pose to humanity. “We think artificial intelligence” is “the development most likely to dramatically alter the trajectory of humanity this century,” the Future Fund said.

Less than two months after the contest was announced, Bankman-Fried’s $32 billion cryptocurrency empire had collapsed, much of the Future Fund’s senior leadership had resigned and its AI prizes may never be rewarded.

China’s Guangzhou Locks Down Millions in ‘Zero-COVID’ Fight

Associated Press reported:

The southern Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou locked down its largest district Monday as it tries to tamp down a major COVID-19 outbreak, suspending public transit and requiring residents to present a negative test if they want to leave their homes.

The outbreak is testing China’s attempt to bring a more targeted approach to its zero-COVID policies while facing multiple outbreaks driven by fast-spreading Omicron variants. China is the only major country in the world still trying to curb virus transmissions through strict lockdown measures and mass testing.

Baiyun district, home to 3.7 million people in Guangzhou, also suspended in-person classes for schools and sealed off universities. The measures are meant to last until Friday, the city announced.