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Arbitrator Rules in Favor of Ontario Nurses Fired for Refusing COVID Vaccines
An arbitrator has ruled that nine Ontario nurses, who were fired because they didn’t get two COVID-19 vaccinations, should be reinstated because their termination was “unreasonable.”
“Nurses intent on remaining unvaccinated are a small minority everywhere but their employee rights may not be ignored,” wrote James Hayes, in his decision published March 1.
While he wrote that the initial vaccine mandate was “well-motivated, driven as it was by genuine safety concerns,” Hayes decided that the nurses “should have been placed on unpaid leaves of absence,” which would have allowed them to return to their jobs if there were changes to the policy or changes in their vaccination status.
The terminations meant the RNs had a “misconduct” for lack of compliance making it difficult for them to get a new nursing job and because they were fired they would not be able to collect unemployment insurance or other support payments.
Jordan Peterson to Testify to Congress on Government Collusion With Banks
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson will testify on Capitol Hill this week for a House hearing on allegations of government collusion with banks to snoop on the private financial information of U.S. citizens, The Daily Wire has learned.
The Thursday hearing will be held by the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which is chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). Jordan announced in January of this year that his committee obtained documents that show the federal government flagged monetary transactions using terms associated with former President Donald Trump for financial institutions.
In addition to being a DailyWire+ host, Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist, best-selling author, and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto.
Ever since February of 2022, when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to freeze money to members of the “Freedom Convoy” who protested restrictive COVID-19 measures and vaccine mandates, Peterson has raised concerns about government abuse of the financial system.
Concerns about federal law enforcement targeting political and religious expression protected by the Constitution as well as protecting civil liberties are certain to be topics of discussion during the hearing on Thursday.
U.S. Sanctions Top Spyware Maker Over Claims It Targeted Thousands of Americans
The U.S. government has sanctioned Intellexa Consortium, the company that developed and sold the notorious Predator spyware.
Commercial malware is usually sold to government agencies around the world, who use it to target political opponents, journalists, human rights activists, and dissidents, the Treasury Department reported.
In late May 2023, researchers analyzed a sample of the malware and discovered that it can record audio from phone calls and VoIP apps, and steal data from chat apps such as WhatsApp or Telegram. Although not confirmed, the researchers believe the malware also allows for geolocation tracking, access to camera apps, and tricking the user into thinking the device is powered off (for easier use during the “off” time).
The researchers also said that the list of features is not conclusive and that Predator could be capable of a lot more. The Department of Treasury sanctioned the group mostly because, as it said in the press release, Predator was used to target U.S. government officials, journalists, and activists.
This Agency Is Tasked With Keeping AI Safe. Its Office Is Crumbling.
At the National Institute of Standards and Technology — the government lab overseeing the most anticipated technology on the planet — black mold has forced some workers out of their offices. Researchers sleep in their labs to protect their work during frequent blackouts. Some employees have to carry hard drives to other buildings; flaky internet won’t allow for the sending of large files.
And a leaky roof forces others to break out plastic sheeting. “If we knew rain was coming, we’d tarp up the microscope,” said James Fekete, who served as chief of NIST’s applied chemicals and materials division until 2018. “It leaked enough that we were prepared.”
Interviews with more than a dozen current and former NIST employees, Biden administration officials, congressional aides and tech company executives, along with reports commissioned by the government, detail a massive resources gap between NIST and the tech firms it is tasked with evaluating — a discrepancy some say risks undermining the White House’s ambitious plans to set guardrails for the burgeoning technology. Many of the people spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Even as it races to set up the new U.S. AI Safety Institute, the crisis at the degrading lab is becoming more acute. On Sunday, lawmakers released a new spending plan that would cut NIST’s overall budget by more than 10 percent, to $1.46 billion. While lawmakers propose to invest $10 million in the new AI institute, that’s a fraction of the tens of billions of dollars tech giants like Google and Microsoft are pouring into the race to develop artificial intelligence. It pales in comparison to Britain, which has invested more than $125 million into its AI safety efforts.
Insurance Giant Fidelity Hit by Data Breach — Thousands of Customers May Have Had Data Stolen
Sensitive information belonging to tens of thousands of Fidelity Investments Life Insurance customers was stolen, reportedly thanks to a supply chain attack that happened in 2023.
The insurance giant has filed a data breach notification with the Maine attorney general’s office in which it stated that 28,268 of its customers had their private data leaked after a data breach at Infosys McCamish Systems LLC — a U.S. subsidiary of Indian tech services giant Infosys.
The breach, which happened in November 2023, resulted in the theft of people’s names, Social Security numbers, states of residence, bank accounts and routing numbers, or credit/debit card numbers in combination with access code, password, and PIN for the account, and dates of birth.
This database is a real treasure trove for every hacker out there, as it provides enough information to mount incredibly believable phishing attacks, identity theft, impersonation, wire fraud, and a whole slew of similar scams.
Top AI Photo Generators Produce Misleading Election-Related Images, Study Finds
Leading artificial intelligence image generators can be manipulated into creating misleading election-related images, according to a report released Wednesday by tech watchdog the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
The findings suggest that despite pledges from leading AI firms to address risks related to potential political misinformation ahead of elections in the United States and dozens of other countries this year, some companies still have work to do to ensure their AI tools cannot be manipulated to create misleading images.
CCDH researchers tested AI image generators Midjourney, Stability AI’s DreamStudio, OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus and Microsoft Image Creator. They found that each tool could be prompted to create misleading images related to either U.S. presidential candidates or voting security.
Worldcoin Hit With Temporary Ban in Spain Over Privacy Concerns
Spain’s data protection authority has ordered Worldcoin to temporarily stop collecting and processing personal data from the market. It must also stop processing any data it previously collected there.
The controversial, Sam Altman-founded eyeball-scanning blockchain crypto project started operations in the market last July, as part of a global rollout.
The Spanish authority is using “urgency procedure” powers contained in the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the temporary data processing cessation order — which means the order can have a maximum duration of three months (so until mid-June).
