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Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers Whistleblower, Dies at 92
Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who exposed the U.S. government’s lies about the Vietnam War by leaking the Pentagon Papers to some of the nation’s top newspapers, has died, his family said in a statement on Friday. He was 92.
Ellsberg’s demise came about four months after he announced on Twitter that he had been diagnosed with “inoperable pancreatic cancer.”
Ellsberg was working as an analyst for the RAND Corporation in 1969 when he and a colleague named Anthony Russo secretly photocopied a 7,000-page study privately commissioned by the Defense Department which revealed the U.S. government knew early on the Vietnam War could not be won.
Initially, Ellsberg and Russo offered the study to several members of Congress and government officials before deciding to leak it to the newspapers.
Meta Rolls Back Measures to Tackle COVID Misinformation
Meta Platforms said on Friday that a policy put in place to curb the spread of misinformation related to COVID-19 on Facebook and Instagram would no longer be in effect globally.
Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter came under immense pressure to tackle misinformation related to the pandemic, including false claims about vaccines, prompting them to take stringent measures.
Earlier in 2021, Facebook said it took down 1.3 billion fake accounts between October and December and removed more than 12 million pieces of content on COVID-19 and vaccines that global health experts flagged as misinformation.
Meta said on Friday that the rules would still stand in countries that still have a COVID-19 public health emergency declaration, and the company would continue to remove content that violates its coronavirus misinformation policies.
Elon Musk Expects Neuralink to Do Its First Implantation in Humans Later This Year
Elon Musk said on Friday that his brain-chip startup Neuralink expects to do its first human device implantation hopefully later this year.
The billionaire was speaking at the Paris VivaTech event. Last month, Neuralink received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for its first-in-human clinical trial, a critical milestone for the startup as it faces U.S. probes over its handling of animal experiments.
In a First, FTC Charges Genetic Testing Firm Over Failure to Protect Data
The Federal Trade Commission has charged a genetic testing company with failing to protect customers’ genetic data, marking the agency’s first case focused on the privacy and security of genetic information.
San Francisco-based 1Health.io, formerly known as Vitagene, sold DNA health test kits and test results to provide consumers with reports about their health, wellness, and ancestry as part of product packages costing as much as $259. The company claimed to apply an “ironclad” standard of cybersecurity to its handling of customer data in these sales.
According to the FTC’s complaint, the company failed to keep several core promises, including its claims that it would not store DNA results with a customer’s name or other identifying information; that consumers could delete their personal information at any time, wiping it from the company’s servers; and that it would destroy DNA saliva samples shortly after they were analyzed.
Moreover, the company did not have agreements in place with third parties requiring them to destroy DNA samples, raising questions about what might have happened to the samples, the FTC said.
Montgomery County Public Schools Joins Federal Social Media Lawsuit
Montgomery County Public Schools is joining hundreds of school systems around the country in a lawsuit against social media companies that are behind Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and other websites, arguing that social media has fueled a youth mental health crisis.
The school system — which is Maryland’s largest with over 160,000 students — joins roughly 500 districts already signed onto the suit, according to the Frantz Law Firm, which announced Montgomery’s involvement in a news release on Tuesday. Several Maryland districts, including Prince George’s, Cecil and Carroll County are also involved in the suit.
Legal action against the companies started in January with a lawsuit by Seattle Public Schools. The school systems involved allege that social media companies have fueled a mental and emotional health crisis that has caused “anxiety, depression, thoughts of self-harm, body dissatisfaction, disordered eating behaviors, and low self-esteem among children and students,” according to the news release from the law firm.
The suit seeks funding and staffing resources to mitigate some of the costs school districts are incurring to address the crisis.
Forget About the AI Apocalypse. The Real Dangers Are Already Here
Two weeks after members of Congress questioned OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the potential for artificial intelligence tools to spread misinformation, disrupt elections and displace jobs, he and others in the industry went public with a much more frightening possibility: an AI apocalypse.
Altman, whose company is behind the viral chatbot tool ChatGPT, joined Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Microsoft’s CTO Kevin Scott and dozens of other AI researchers and business leaders in signing a one-sentence letter last month stating: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
Some AI industry experts say that focusing attention on far-off scenarios may distract from the more immediate harms that a new generation of powerful AI tools can cause to people and communities, including spreading misinformation, perpetuating biases and enabling discrimination in various services.
“Motives seemed to be mixed,” Gary Marcus, an AI researcher and New York University professor emeritus who testified before lawmakers alongside Altman last month, told CNN. Some of the execs are likely “genuinely worried about what they have unleashed,” he said, but others may be trying to focus attention on “abstract possibilities to detract from the more immediate possibilities.”
Amazon’s $1.7 Billion iRobot Acquisition Greenlighted by U.K. Antitrust Regulator
The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has given the go-ahead to Amazon’s proposed billion-dollar iRobot acquisition, concluding that the deal “would not lead to competition concerns in the U.K.”
Amazon first revealed plans to buy robot vacuum maker iRobot for $1.7 billion last August, though the megabucks deal was always likely to draw scrutiny from regulators. The European Commission (EC) will decide by July 6 whether to clear the deal (with or without remedies) or launch a full-scale investigation, while the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the U.S. is also currently mulling an official investigation into the deal.
The FTC did recently greenlight Amazon’s $3.9 billion One Medical acquisition, though it is reportedly pushing to stop Microsoft’s planned $68.7 billion Activision acquisition.
Major Louisville Hospital System Ends COVID Vaccine Mandate for Employees
Louisville Courier Journal reported:
Norton Healthcare has ended its COVID-19 vaccination mandate for all employees, a spokesperson with the company said.
Maggie Roetker, Norton’s director of public relations, said workers were notified Wednesday. The new policy is effective immediately.
Roetker said the update on vaccine mandates goes along with new regulations enacted by accrediting agency DNV along with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, two federal agencies.
