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Defense Bill Orders Pentagon to Review Reinstatement of Troops Fired for COVID Refusal
Congress, in a draft version of the annual defense bill, has directed the Pentagon to review the reinstatement of U.S. troops who were discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.
The provision is included in the compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), reached by negotiators in the Democratic-controlled Senate and Republican-controlled House and released Thursday.
The Senate added a secondary provision that requires those seeking reinstatement to have before submitted a request for a religious, administrative or medical exemption.
Lawmakers also included an amendment to create an investigatory board that will review cases of service members who were discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.
Other amendments require the Pentagon to communicate the path to be reinstated to COVID-related discharged troops and the Defense Department to conduct a study of potential health consequences to service members who got the vaccine.
23andMe Changes Terms of Service to Prevent Lawsuits After Data Breach
Days after a data breach allowed hackers to steal 6.9 million 23andMe users’ personal details, the genetic testing company changed its terms of service to prevent customers from suing the firm or pursuing class-action lawsuits against it.
Why it matters: It’s unclear if 23andMe is attempting to retroactively shield itself from lawsuits alleging it acted negligently.
The big picture: Through a mechanism called acceptance by silence or inaction, 23andMe stipulated that customers must explicitly tell the company they disagree with the new terms within 30 days of being notified of the changes or they will be locked into the terms automatically.
Between the lines: Nancy Kim, a Chicago-Kent College of Law professor who is an expert in online contracts, said if 23andMe was attempting to shield itself from the fallout from the data breach, it’s unlikely that most courts would uphold such an effort.
Millions of Patient Scans and Health Records Leaked Online
Personally identifiable information (PII), as well as plenty of medical records belonging to millions of patients across the world, have been found exposed on the internet and available to anyone who knows where to look.
These are the findings of Aplite, which claimed to have found more than 3,800 accessible PACS servers. For the uninitiated, PACS is short for Picture Archiving and Communications Server, an used for storing, retrieving, and accessing medical images.
These images are called Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) and they’ve been the medical industry standard for decades. The servers were found in more than 110 countries and exposed sensitive information on roughly 16 million patients.
The data that was exposed includes patient names, genders, addresses, phone numbers, and in some cases Social Security numbers. The researchers also said that they found 43 million health records such as examination results, examination dates, and the details of the physician who conducted the examination.
Big Tech Funds the Very People Who Are Supposed to Hold It Accountable
Tech giants including Google and Facebook parent Meta have dramatically ramped up charitable giving to university campuses over the past several years — giving them influence over academics studying such critical topics as artificial intelligence, social media and disinformation.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg alone has donated money to more than 100 university campuses, either through Meta or his personal philanthropy arm, according to new research by the Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit watchdog group studying the technology industry. Other firms are helping fund academic centers, doling out grants to professors and sitting on advisory boards reserved for donors, researchers told The Post.
Silicon Valley’s influence is most apparent among computer science professors at such top-tier schools as Berkeley, University of Toronto, Stanford and MIT. According to a 2021 paper by University of Toronto and Harvard researchers, most tenure-track professors in computer science at those schools whose funding sources could be determined had taken money from the technology industry, including nearly 6 of 10 scholars of AI.
Academics say they are increasingly dependent on tech companies to access the large amounts of data required to study social behavior, including the spread of disinformation and hate speech. Both Meta and X, formerly Twitter, have reduced the flow of that data to researchers, requiring them to negotiate special deals to obtain access or pay far more, respectively.
Do You Know Who’s Posting Pictures of Your Kid Online?
Recently, a group of teen girls made the shocking discovery that boys in their New Jersey high school had rounded up images they’d posted of themselves on social media, and then used those pictures to generate fake nudes. The boys, who shared the nudes in a group chat, allegedly did this with the help of a digital tool powered by artificial intelligence, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The incident is a frightening violation of privacy. But it also illustrates just how rapidly AI is fundamentally reshaping expectations regarding what might happen to one’s online images. What this means for children and teens is particularly sobering.
A recent report published by the Internet Watch Foundation found that AI is increasingly being used to create realistic child sexual abuse material. Some of these images are generated from scratch, with the aid of AI-powered software. But a portion of this material is created with publicly available images of children, which have been scraped from the internet and manipulated using AI.
John Pizzuro, former commander of the New Jersey Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, told Mashable that pictures of children available online just a few years ago were difficult to manipulate with the software that existed at the time.
Now, a bad actor can seamlessly digitally excise the background of an image featuring a child, then superimpose the youth onto another background with ease, according to Pizzuro, CEO of Raven, an advocacy and lobbying group focused on combating child exploitation.
Meta Launches End-to-End Encryption for Messages on Facebook and Messenger
Meta is rolling out end-to-end encryption for calls and messages across its Facebook and Messenger platforms, the company announced Thursday, a major update considered a victory for privacy advocates but that draws concerns from law enforcement and child protection groups that the feature will hamper efforts to tackle abuse and crime.
The major privacy update means Meta will no longer be able to see the contents of messages and brings Facebook and Messenger in line with the company’s other platform, WhatsApp. Instagram is not yet covered by the new standard, though the company suggests this will happen soon. In August, Meta said it had plans to roll out the new security standard to Instagram “shortly after” its launch on Messenger, though it did not provide a timeline for this.
While privacy advocates have long sought stronger privacy standards on social platforms like Facebook and Messenger, the proposals are not universally welcome. Police and governments have warned encryption could endanger security and hamper efforts to combat crime by making it harder to monitor bad actors and obtain evidence of criminal activity.
Child safety advocates warn tougher encryption could help potential child abusers effectively hide online. The tension fits within a wider discussion in technology that pits privacy against security, with tech companies like Apple pushing back against government efforts to introduce backdoors or surveillance powers to skirt security protocols.
Fresenius Medical Care Says Data on 500,000 People Stolen in U.S.
Dialysis group Fresenius Medical Care (FMEG.DE) said on Wednesday that data including medical records on 500,000 patients and former patients were stolen from a U.S. subsidiary’s data warehouse.
“The incident may have affected approximately 500,000 patients, former patients, guarantors and 200 staff located across several states, U.S. territories and four countries,” the German company said in a statement.
China Restarts COVID Testing in Hospitals, Airports
Authorities in China have started testing people for COVID-19 again in hospitals and transportation hubs as a wave of respiratory disease tears through the country, according to local residents and government directives.
As parents and children continued to flock to pediatric clinics and emergency rooms in Beijing with severe respiratory disease, hospitals are once more performing COVID-19 tests on patients, although there has been little on the news regarding a resurgence of the virus, new variants of which are emerging globally.
Chinese health officials have acknowledged the spike in pneumonia and other respiratory cases, blaming a cocktail of pathogens including mycoplasma pneumonia, respiratory syncytial virus, seasonal influenza and COVID-19.
Now, government documents are starting to warn about a new wave of coronavirus infections in particular, with the State Council ordering local authorities to resume testing and disease monitoring at ports and airports, in schools, care homes and other institutions.
