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How Does a Bank Collapse in 48 Hours? A Timeline of the Silicon Valley Bank Fall
The go-to bank for U.S. tech startups came rapidly unglued, leaving its high-powered customers and investors in limbo. Silicon Valley Bank, facing a sudden bank run and capital crisis, collapsed Friday morning and was taken over by federal regulators.
It was the largest failure of a U.S. bank since Washington Mutual in 2008. While relatively unknown outside of Silicon Valley, SVB was among the top 20 American commercial banks, with $209 billion in total assets at the end of last year, according to the FDIC. In short, SVB encountered a classic run on the bank.
Despite initial panic on Wall Street, analysts said SVB’s collapse is unlikely to set off the kind of domino effect that gripped the banking industry during the financial crisis. No later than Monday morning, all insured depositors will have full access to their insured deposits, according to the FDIC. It will pay uninsured depositors an “advance dividend within the next week.”
So, while a broader contagion is unlikely, smaller banks that are disproportionately tied to cash-strapped industries like tech and crypto may be in for a rough ride, according to Ed Moya, the senior market analyst at Oanda. “Everyone on Wall Street knew that the Fed’s rate-hiking campaign would eventually break something, and right now that is taking down small banks,” Moya said on Friday.
When Censorship Fails: Two-Thirds of U.S. Adults Think COVID Likely Started in a Lab
As Statista’s Anna Fleck notes, three years on and much has changed, including opinions on how the virus started, with one origin theory having taken particular hold in the United States.
According to the latest survey carried out by The Economist and YouGov, a majority of U.S. adults now think that COVID originated in a laboratory in China, whether intentionally or as a chance mutation. As Statista’s chart shows, 66% of U.S. respondents thought this theory was either probably or definitely true.
Despite conflicting theories, and the effort to completely censor any thought other than the official line, the exact origin story of the COVID-19 virus actually remains unknown. While the U.S. Department of Energy has said that COVID could have come from a lab leak in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the organization has admitted to having “low confidence” in its findings. The other main theory under discussion is that the virus could have jumped from animals to humans, for example in an animal market.
China has responded to the lab leak report by saying that the U.S. is politicizing the debate.
Merchant Marine Academy Rescinds COVID Vax Mandate After Post Report
The U.S. Merchant Marine Academy canceled its COVID-19 vaccine mandate on Friday — two days after The Post broke the story of its ongoing denial of all exemption requests from potential midshipmen.
“As of March 10, 2023, [USMMA] has rescinded the requirement that midshipmen be vaccinated against COVID-19,” a U.S. Maritime Administration spokesperson told The Post.
While all Defense Department military academies lifted their vaccine mandates in January after congressional Republicans demanded the Pentagon end the requirement as part of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, the USMMA was not covered by that action since it is administered by the Maritime Administration, which falls under the Department of Transportation.
All Travelers to the U.K. — Including From the EU and U.S. — Will Need Pre-Authorization by 2025
The U.K. will require all visa-exempt travelers to apply for digital travel authorization before entering the country, in a move regarded as the biggest shake-up of its border force rules in decades.
People holding passports that currently arrive in the country without pre-vetting — including European Union citizens and U.S., Canadian, Japanese, Australian, New Zealand and other nationals — will all need to apply and pay for Electronic Travel Authorization. The scheme is set to be fully rolled out by the end of 2024.
The European Union is set to launch its own digital travel authorization scheme, called ETIAS, for visa-exempt nationals in 2024. It will enable travel within 30 countries. Applications will be made online or via an app. Those with biometric passports will scan them using their phone, and may also need to take a “dynamic selfie,” involving movement, to submit an image of their face. They will also answer a set of questions.
It is understood the U.K. has ambitions to eventually require all travelers to submit fingerprint biometrics ahead of travel and is working on a scheme that would see this submitted by smartphone.
Milford Church Files Lawsuit Against Multiple CT State Departments Over Vaccine Mandate
Milford Christian Church has filed a lawsuit against multiple state departments in Connecticut, claiming a newer law violates their First Amendment rights. Listed in the lawsuit is the Connecticut State Department of Education, the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood, and the Connecticut Department of Public Health.
The law, An Act Concerning Immunizations, was altered in 2021 to remove all vaccine exemptions that are not medical. That means all students in daycare, PreK, and K-12 must get their required vaccines for school.
“That they had a choice between compelling their students to vaccinate, expelling them if they didn’t, or facing the force-able state closure,” said Cameron Atkinson, an attorney with Atkinson Law, representing the church.
In a press conference on Friday, Atkinson said the school refuses to comply, standing by its rights. “Our message to the state is clear. We will obey God first,” Atkinson said.
B.C. Ending COVID Vaccine Mandate for Public Service, but Not Healthcare Workers
As of April 3, workers in British Columbia’s public service will no longer be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Healthcare workers, however, will still need to be vaccinated. The ministry said the COVID-19 policy will remain in place for people working in settings with provincial health officer orders or other vaccination requirements.
B.C. implemented the mandatory vaccine policy for the public service in November 2021. The B.C. Public Service agency said a total of 314 employees were terminated for non-compliance and approximately 175 workers were currently on unpaid leave under the policy.
“People who were terminated while the policy was in place can reapply for employment and would be considered new hires,” it said in an email.
After 20 Years, the Department of Homeland Security Is a Money-Guzzling Failure
Twenty years ago this month, the U.S. government took a sharp turn toward surveillance, racial profiling and an immigration policy based on fear.
In March 2003, the newly christened Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, opened its doors. The department took everything from immigration enforcement and counterterrorism to airport security and disaster response under one gargantuan bureaucracy.
Despite these wide-ranging missions, the department’s unifying logic in the post-9/11 era has been to wage the so-called war on terror at home. The result has been systemic abuse of minority communities, a dangerous militarization of American life and a massive waste of money that sapped resources from addressing the real threats to our homeland.
Jeremy Hunt: Britain Has ‘a Lot to Learn’ From Swedish Approach to COVID Rules
Jeremy Hunt has said Britain has “a lot to learn” from Sweden’s decision not to impose a mandatory COVID lockdown.
The Chancellor acknowledged that the Scandinavian country had achieved a similar outcome to the U.K. without having to resort to draconian rules. Throughout the pandemic, Stockholm stuck to a voluntary approach to restrictions, relying on people to exercise personal responsibility.
His remarks come as The Telegraph reveals how Boris Johnson was warned by Britain’s top civil servant over the impact of lockdowns. Just days before the then-prime minister shut down the country for a second time, Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, told him doing so would be “terrible for other outcomes.”
ChatGPT Is Now Being Used to Make Scams Much More Dangerous
Scams on the internet might get a lot more dangerous now, thanks to fraudsters having unobstructed access to ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot that never seems to leave the headlines.
That’s according to a report published earlier this month by cybersecurity researchers Norton. In it, the company laid out three key ways threat actors could abuse ChatGPT to make internet scams more effective: through deep fake content generation, phishing at scale and faster malware creation.
Norton also argues that the ability to generate “high-quality misinformation or disinformation at scale” could assist bot farms in stoking division more efficiently, allowing threat actors to “sow mistrust and shape narratives in different languages” with ease.
Ring Car Cam Hands-On: Amazon’s Video Security Ecosystem Hits America’s Highways
Amazon’s evolution from an omnipresent shopping platform to an omnipresent surveillance platform continues apace, having drastically expanded its line of Ring security camera systems in recent years. Nowadays, the company offers video doorbells, exterior cameras, interior cameras, flying cameras, lighting systems, alarm systems and vehicle security packages — the lattermost of which is why we are here today. I put a Ring camera in my car.
Ring’s business decisions have made very clear that it is on the side of the police — even if the homeowners themselves aren’t — freely volunteering data to, and often partnering with, law enforcement agencies around the country.
When asked whether safeguards have been put in place to prevent law enforcement from surreptitiously spying through the Car Cam, Ring’s spokesperson noted, “Ring builds products and services for our customers, not law enforcement.
When parked, Car Cam only records when the smart sensors detect an incident (such as a collision or broken window) or if the device owner or Shared User initiates Live View.” What happens to that data once it’s off the device and in Ring’s cloud servers was not made clear.
