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Banking on Surveillance: Republicans Investigate Major Banks’ Warrantless Data Sharing With Federal Agencies
Congressional Republicans are further investigating claims that at least 13 major US banks collaborated with federal agencies to monitor private transactions for signs of “extremism” following the January 6 Capitol events. The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led by Republican Jim Jordan from Ohio, is delving further into the alleged cooperation between these financial institutions and federal agencies without proper warrants.
These banks, including Bank of America, Chase, US Bank, Wells Fargo, Citi Bank, and more, are among those scrutinized for their roles in the reported surveillance. We previously reported about how Bank of America was found to be handing over data of everyone in the area during the events of January 6, whether they were suspect or not — and whether they had a warrant or not. But now, investigations suggest that the transfer of data was more systematic, potentially involving multiple financial institutions and the Biden administration itself.
Concerns about this alleged surveillance extend to Americans’ rights to privacy and freedom of expression. Jim Jordan criticized the federal government’s “backdoor information sharing,” which categorized broad groups of transactions as suspicious or indicative of extremism. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Jordan highlighted that this type of financial monitoring infringes on fundamental civil liberties.
Photo-Sharing Community EyeEm Will License Users’ Photos to Train AI if They Don’t Delete Them
EyeEm, the Berlin-based photo-sharing community that exited last year to Spanish company Freepik after going bankrupt, is now licensing its users’ photos to train AI models. Earlier this month, the company informed users via email that it was adding a new clause to its Terms & Conditions that would grant it the rights to upload users’ content to “train, develop, and improve software, algorithms, and machine-learning models.” Users were given 30 days to opt out by removing all their content from EyeEm’s platform. Otherwise, they were consenting to this use case for their work.
At the time of its 2023 acquisition, EyeEm’s photo library included 160 million images and nearly 150,000 users. The company said it would merge its community with Freepik’s over time. Despite its decline, almost 30,000 people are still downloading it each month, according to data from Appfigures.
Once thought of as a possible challenger to Instagram — or at least “Europe’s Instagram” — EyeEm had dwindled to a staff of three before selling to Freepik, TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden previously reported. Joaquin Cuenca Abela, CEO of Freepik, hinted at the company’s possible plans for EyeEm, saying it would explore how to bring more AI into the equation for creators on the platform. As it turns out, that meant selling their work to train AI models.
Of note, the notice says that these deletions from EyeEm market and partner platforms could take up to 180 days. Yes, that’s right: Requested deletions take up to 180 days but users only have 30 days to opt out. That means the only option is manually deleting photos one by one.
Section 8 is where licensing rights to train AI are detailed. In Section 10, EyeEm informs users they will forgo their right to any payouts for their work if they delete their account — something users may think to do to avoid having their data fed to AI models. Gotcha!
Kashmir Hill: ‘They Shouldn’t Be Collecting Photos From Social Media Without People’s Consent, but They Keep Doing It and Nobody’s Stopping Them’
In November 2019, journalist Kashmir Hill received a tip that a startup called Clearview AI claimed to be able to identify anyone from a picture. Her source said that the company had collected billions of photos from social networks like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn without telling either the websites or the people involved and that if you uploaded someone’s photo into the app, it would show you all the websites where that person appeared, plus their complete name and personal information.
Until then, no one had dared to develop anything like this. An application capable of identifying strangers was too much. It could be used, for example, to photograph someone in a bar and find out in seconds where they live and who their friends are. Hill, a reporter for The New York Times, published the story about this small company, which in a few months went from being a total unknown to receiving the support of Peter Thiel, one of the godfathers of Silicon Valley, and becoming a service coveted by police forces in the U.S. and abroad.
She reached Hoan Ton-That, the inscrutable engineer and co-founder of Clearview AI, who made the tool with Richard Schwartz, a politician with a long career behind the scenes in the Republican Party. Hill’s research informed her book Your Face Belongs to Us: The Secretive Startup Dismantling Your Privacy.
“I just thought Clearview AI was striking because of what a small ragtag group it was. Unusual and fascinating characters. And I just thought that really captured something about the tech industry, a certain kind of naivete. And just this desire to create these things, these really transgressive new technologies without a serious reckoning with the implications and how it would change society,” she explains by videoconference from New York.
Middle Schools in Norway Banned Smartphones. The Benefits Were Dramatic, a Study Shows.
The long-running debate over whether to ban smartphones in schools has intensified in recent months, fueled by increased warnings about the harms of social media on youth mental health and the distractions phones cause in class.
This week, social media was abuzz about a study published earlier this year out of Norway that tested the argument: How would student outcomes and mental health be affected if schools banned smartphones?
The research found the impacts were positive, including decreased bullying and improved academic performance among girls. Author and organizational psychologist Adam Grant highlighted the findings on X, formerly Twitter, saying “Smartphones belong at home or in lockers.”
In schools with bans, the number of specialist care visits for mental health issues fell among middle-school girls. And the data suggested the longer the girls were exposed to the ban, the fewer visits they needed.
FTC Finalizes Changes to Data Privacy Rule to Step Up Scrutiny of Digital Health Apps
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) finalized a rule Friday that aims to tighten the reins on digital health apps sharing consumers’ sensitive medical data with tech companies.
The agency issued a final version of its revised Health Breach Notification Rule to underscore the rule’s applicability to health apps in a bid to protect consumers’ data privacy and provide more transparency about how companies collect their health information.
The Health Breach Notification Rule (HBNR) requires vendors that manage digital health records, including health apps, that are not covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to notify individuals, the FTC, and, in some cases, the media of a breach of unsecured personally identifiable health data.
Bill Gates Never Left
In 2017, just before Microsoft forged a partnership with a then-relatively unknown startup called OpenAI, Bill Gates shared a memo with CEO Satya Nadella and a small group of the company’s top executives. A new world order, Gates predicted, would soon be brought on by what he called “AI agents” — digital personal assistants that could anticipate our every want and need. These agents would be far more powerful than Siri and Alexa, with godlike knowledge and supernatural intuition.
“Agents are not only going to change how everyone interacts with computers,” Gates wrote. “They’re also going to upend the software industry, bringing about the biggest revolution in computing since we went from typing commands to tapping on icons.”
Today, though, it’s clear that Gates’ secret correspondence anticipated Copilot, the artificial intelligence tool that has helped propel Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable public company. Powered by a version of OpenAI’s GPT large language model, Copilot debuted last year as a tool within Microsoft products to help users with tasks such as preparing presentations and summarizing meetings. “Copilot now sounds exactly like what he wrote,” the executive said.
That’s not by accident.
Publicly, Gates has been almost entirely out of the picture at Microsoft since 2021, following allegations that he had behaved inappropriately toward female employees. In fact, Business Insider has learned, that Gates has been quietly orchestrating much of Microsoft’s AI revolution from behind the scenes. Current and former executives say Gates remains intimately involved in the company’s operations — advising on strategy, reviewing products, recruiting high-level executives, and nurturing Microsoft’s crucial relationship with Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI.
Turning Point: COVID-Era Hospital Reporting Set to End
Hospitals starting this week will no longer have to report data on admissions, occupancy and other indicators of possible system stress from respiratory diseases to federal officials as another COVID-era mandate expires.
Why it matters: The sunset of the reporting requirement on May 1 marks a turning point in the government’s real-time tracking of airborne pathogens that helped drive coronavirus surveillance and reports like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s FluView.
The required reporting to the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network was scheduled to end with the COVID-19 public health emergency last May but was extended through this Tuesday, with fewer requirements.
Google Hits a New Milestone: $2 Trillion
Google is now the world’s fourth most valuable public company, right behind Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft, which has a market cap of just over $3 trillion and overtook Apple earlier this year for first place.
This isn’t Alphabet’s first brush with the $2 trillion club. The company briefly hit the threshold in November 2021 and earlier this month but closed above it for the first time on Friday, according to Bloomberg.
Austria Calls for Rapid Regulation as It Hosts Meeting on ‘Killer Robots’
Austria called on Monday for fresh efforts to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in weapons systems that could create so-called ‘killer robots‘, as it hosted a conference aimed at reviving largely stalled discussions on the issue.
With AI technology advancing rapidly, weapons systems that could kill without human intervention are coming ever closer, posing ethical and legal challenges that most countries say need addressing soon.
We cannot let this moment pass without taking action. Now is the time to agree on international rules and norms to ensure human control,” Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg told the meeting of non-governmental and international organizations as well as envoys from 143 countries.
“At least let us make sure that the most profound and far-reaching decision, who lives and who dies, remains in the hands of humans and not of machines,” he said in an opening speech to the conference entitled “Humanity at the Crossroads: Autonomous Weapons Systems and the Challenge of Regulation.”
Media Freedom ‘Perilously Close to Breaking Point’ in Several EU Countries
Media freedom is declining across the EU and “perilously close to breaking point” in several countries, a leading civil liberties network has said, highlighting widespread threats against journalists and attacks on the independence of public broadcasters.
The Berlin-based Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties) said in its annual media freedom report, compiled with 37 rights groups in 19 countries, that alarming trends identified previously persisted in 2023 — although new EU-wide legislation could offer hope of improvement.
“Media freedom is clearly in steady decline across the EU — in many countries as a result of deliberate harm or neglect by national governments,” said Eva Simon, the senior advocacy officer at Liberties.
“Declining media freedom goes hand in hand with a decline in the rule of law. There’s a close correlation between the two. This is the playbook of authoritarian regimes.” She said new EU media legislation “has potential” but must be properly implemented.
