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Berlin: Thousands March in COVID Pandemic Skeptic Protest
Several thousand people on Saturday joined a street demonstration and rally in Berlin organized by Germany’s “Lateral Thinking” protest movement.
The protest faction, best known for staging demonstrations against COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, was calling for a reassessment of government measures and “consequences for those responsible.” However, a large contingent also protested against the German government’s push to rebuild the country’s military.
A preliminary estimate by police put the crowd at the demonstration at around 9,000 people.
The movement began in Stuttgart and eventually spread across Germany during the coronavirus pandemic. Supporters repeatedly protested against lockdown measures and vaccine requirements as measures to contain the virus.
Illinois Governor Approves Business-Friendly Overhaul of Biometric Privacy Law
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has signed a bill into law that will significantly curb the penalties companies could face for improperly collecting and using fingerprints and other biometric data from workers and consumers.
The Bill passed by the legislature in May and signed by Pritzker, a Democrat, on Friday amends the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) so that companies can be held liable only for a single violation per person, rather than for each time biometric data is allegedly misused.
The amendments will dramatically limit companies’ exposure in BIPA cases and could discourage plaintiffs’ lawyers from filing many lawsuits in the first place, management-side lawyers said.
BIPA, a 2008 law, requires companies to obtain permission before collecting fingerprints, retinal scans and other biometric information from workers and consumers. The law imposes penalties of $1,000 per violation and $5,000 for reckless or intentional violations.
Companies have faced massive verdicts and settlements in BIPA cases. In 2020, Facebook agreed to pay $650 million to settle a class action accusing it of violating BIPA by using facial recognition technology to allow users to “tag” photos of their friends.
Millions of Voter Documents Leaked Online — Fears of Election Interference Rise Following Breach
The voter documents of 4.6 million Americans have been leaked online after being stolen from 13 non-password-protected databases.
The information contained within the databases included voter records, ballots, and election-related records that include personally identifiable information (PII), social security numbers (SSN), driver’s license and voter ID numbers.
There are fears the information could be used maliciously to commit identity theft, data theft, voter fraud and intimidation, and even election disruption.
‘Dystopian Surveillance, Suspicionless Seizures’: Wall Street Market Monitor Under Attack
Washington regulators have been bracing for legal challenges ever since the Supreme Court upended decades of precedent by ruling that agencies no longer have broad leeway to interpret the law. For Wall Street’s top cop, that day has arrived.
Conservatives and financial groups are using the high court’s landmark June ruling on what’s known as Chevron deference to boost their campaign to dismantle a massive surveillance system that the Securities and Exchange Commission recently brought fully online to closely monitor the nation’s stock markets.
The system collects billions of records each day on trades and allows the agency to analyze data across the markets to spot any abuses. But critics say it violates privacy rights and is vulnerable to hacking, given the sheer amount of information — including investors’ personal data — housed within it. Former Attorney General Bill Barr wrote earlier this year that the database “would take us far down the road toward an Orwellian surveillance state.”
Federal Court Blocks Net Neutrality Rules in Blow to Biden and Internet Activists
A federal appeals court on Thursday issued a temporary injunction against the Federal Communications Commission’s reinstatement of net neutrality rules.
Net neutrality rules are proposed regulations that would permit the FCC to regulate broadband internet access as a telecommunications service. The rules were first adopted under the Obama administration in 2015 but later rescinded by then-President Trump when he flipped control of the FCC to Republican hands.
Under President Biden, the FCC returned to a majority of Democratic appointees, and the commission voted along party lines in April to resurrect the rules. However, in a blow to the Biden administration, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on Thursday said that broadband providers are likely to prevail in a legal challenge and temporarily paused the net neutrality regulations pending these challenges.
TikTok Agrees to Pull Rewards Feature From E.U. Amid Concerns Over ‘Addictive Effect’
TikTok has committed to “permanently withdraw” a rewards program from the European Union after the 27-member bloc raised concerns about the feature’s potential “addictive effect,” the European Commission announced Monday.
The move means TikTok is now in compliance with the E.U.’s Digital Services Act, a sweeping regulation that aims in part to “create a safer digital space in which the fundamental rights of all users of digital services are protected.”
The European Commission raised concerns that the reward feature had been “launched without a prior diligent assessment of the risks it entails, particularly in relation to [its] addictive effect.” It could “potentially have negative effects on the physical and mental health of users,” the commission added.
Neuralink Implanted Second Trial Patient With Brain Chip, Musk Says
Neuralink has successfully implanted in a second patient its device designed to give paralyzed patients the ability to use digital devices by thinking alone, according to the startup’s owner Elon Musk.
Neuralink is in the process of testing its device, which is intended to help people with spinal cord injuries. The device has allowed the first patient to play video games, browse the internet, post on social media and move a cursor on his laptop.
Musk did not disclose when Neuralink performed the second patient’s surgery. Musk said he expects Neuralink to provide the implants to eight more patients this year as part of its clinical trials.
Big Tech Fails to Convince Wall Street That AI Is Paying Off
Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. had one job heading into this earnings season: show that the billions of dollars they’ve each sunk into the infrastructure propelling the artificial intelligence boom is translating into real sales.
In the eyes of Wall Street, they disappointed. Shares in Google owner Alphabet have fallen 6.1% since it reported last week. Microsoft has declined in the two days since its own results. Amazon — the latest to drop its earnings on Thursday — slid in premarket trading.
Silicon Valley hailed 2024 as the year that companies would begin to deploy generative AI, the type of technology that can create text, images and videos from simple prompts.
This mass adoption is meant to finally bring about meaningful profits from the likes of Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot. The fact that those returns have yet to meaningfully materialize is stoking broader concerns about how worthwhile AI will really prove to be.
