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GOP: Biden Violated First Amendment by Pressing Big Tech on COVID Misinfo
House Republicans on Wednesday used a hearing on the U.S. government’s COVID-19 policies to highlight a lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of using social media to censor Americans’ First Amendment speech rights.
The hearing featured testimony from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who with his Louisiana counterpart is suing in federal court to block the White House from working with tech companies like Google and Meta to restrict what Americans can say on social media sites. A Trump-appointed Louisiana federal judge has allowed the case to move forward, raising the possibility of another high-profile legal clash in higher courts over online speech.
The hearing and lawsuit are part of a years-long political tug-of-war over what Americans can and can’t say on social media — and who gets to decide. As social media sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have worked to remove or reduce the spread of messages they deem offensive, harmful or even dangerous, conservatives have pushed back, saying the efforts target conservative opinion and infringe on Americans’ freedom of expression.
House Republicans Look to Aid Troops Kicked Out for Refusing Former Pentagon Vaccine Mandate
Several Pentagon policies meant to protect troops penalized under the Defense Department’s since-repealed COVID-19 vaccine mandate have made it into the House Armed Services Committee’s annual defense policy bill.
The panel, which held its markup for the annual National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday, adopted five separate GOP-offered amendments on how to treat service members and military academy cadets kicked out for refusing the vaccine after the mandate was put in place in August 2021.
The first amendment, offered by Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), passed 32-26. It would prohibit any adverse action for troops who did not receive the vaccine and allow those kicked out for refusing it to be reinstated without any detriment to their career.
Banks offered two more amendments that passed, including one that would require the military services’ boards of corrections to prioritize cases for troops who didn’t receive the vaccine and want to rejoin the ranks, and another that requires the DOD to inform those who were separated on how to rejoin if they choose to do so.
Unvaccinated Canadian Woman Denied Organ Transplant Finds U.S. Hospital to Perform Surgery
An Alberta woman who was removed from a high-priority organ transplant list for not receiving a COVID-19 vaccine has found a hospital in the United States that is willing to perform the surgery.
Sheila Annette Lewis was diagnosed with a terminal illness in 2018 and was told she would not survive without an organ transplant. She was placed on an organ waiting list in 2020, but in 2021 she was informed that a COVID-19 vaccine was required to receive the transplant.
With the help of her friends, Lewis has now found a hospital in the U.S. that would not require her to be vaccinated for COVID-19 to be a transplant recipient. The testing is estimated to cost $100,000 and, after Lewis finds a suitable transplant donor, the surgery will cost another estimated $500,000.
Microsoft Wants Your Company to Feed Its Private Data Into ChatGPT
Microsoft has revealed a new launch giving firms the ability to hand over their corporate data to its Azure OpenAI Service in order to get better results when querying the AI chatbot.
OpenAI is the company behind the ever-popular ChatGPT, and Microsoft has been one of its biggest investors, pouring billions of dollars into its development; ChatGPT is hosted on Azure. Since then, the Redmond giant has been integrating the AI models behind it — the latest being GPT-4 — into many of its products and services.
Although there have been numerous privacy and regulatory concerns about ChatGPT since its release — due to the amount of data it gathered from countless sources in its initial training and continues to collect from users— Microsoft seems to have gone the other way, with Andy Beatman, senior product marketing manager for Azure AI, saying that the new data hand-over feature is a “highly requested customer capability.”
So Microsoft’s argument appears to be that in handing over your company’s data, you’ll be able to get those tailored answers without needing to customize an AI model yourself.
Social Media Execs Face U.K. Criminal Liability Over Data of Deceased Children
Social media executives could face criminal liability if they refuse to share information about deceased children’s online activity with authorities, according to changes to the U.K.’s Online Safety Bill announced by the government today.
The changes would empower Ofcom to demand relevant data from social media companies, including information about how a child interacted with content online and how that content was promoted by the company’s algorithms, in instances where online harms are suspected to have played a part in a child’s death.
Details of how Ofcom would legally compel companies headquartered outside of the U.K. to hand over the relevant data are still to be worked out. Parkinson said the government would “seek to engage our American counterparts” to ensure U.S. data laws did not inadvertently prevent compliance with the new U.K. legislation.
TechCrunch Disrupt’s Security Stage Highlights the Risks of Spyware, Government Surveillance
Governments all over the world, authoritarian and democratic, use spyware to hack the phones of activists, journalists, and political rivals who are critical of their governments.
Initially, the spyware industry consisted of a few known actors, like Hacking Team and FinFisher.
But over the past decade — as the technology evolved and smartphones and computers became ubiquitous — the industry has ballooned in size. Can this industry operate legally and ethically? If not, what can we do to counter state-backed abuse of spyware and its violent consequences, including harassment, arbitrary detention, and killings?
Governments using spyware that exploits flaws found in billions of phones put everyone at risk. Should there be a vulnerabilities equities process to ensure serious vulnerabilities are reported and disclosed to the relevant technology companies affected, the way that U.S. intelligence does now?
Europe’s Digital ‘Enforcer’ Takes EU Tech Rulebook to Silicon Valley
The European Union is firing a last warning shot at Silicon Valley titans ahead of the incoming rules to police social media platforms.
Europe’s digital Commissioner Thierry Breton is set to give Meta and Twitter‘s top management an in-person reminder that the clock is ticking to comply with the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The law starts applying in late August and will oblige major tech platforms to fight back against online hate speech, illegal content and disinformation.
While Twitter’s Elon Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg square off on social media over a prospective cage fight, Breton, who as the internal market commissioner oversees EU services regulating Big Tech, is starting a two-day trip to California to push the EU’s new rules.
