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Democrats Demand Trump Administration Halt Collection of Patients’ ER Records
A group of Democratic lawmakers is calling for the Trump administration to suspend a new surveillance program it quietly launched to collect the personal and identifiable health data of Americans who visit emergency rooms. KFF Health News first reported that the Consumer Product Safety Commission — a federal agency tasked with monitoring injuries from household items — was pressuring hospitals to provide a private company with personally identifiable health information for analysis.
The rollout of the program has inspired broad pushback from hospitals and privacy advocates. The CPSC’s goal is to obtain millions of Americans’ medical records from emergency rooms for most injuries, even when a consumer product is not involved, internal emails and documents reviewed by KFF Health News revealed.
The agency instructed hospitals to share detailed patient information for more than 10,000 types of injuries or conditions, such as vaccine reactions, suicide attempts, or stingray stabs.
Connecticut Towns Are Installing License Plate Reading Cameras on School Buses
City and town leaders across Connecticut have been fielding growing pushback from residents over automated license plate readers, which opponents say raise a range of concerns about privacy. But as many state and local leaders have called for a pause on the technology to weigh new policy guidance, several towns are installing AI-powered license plate readers on school buses.
More than half a dozen towns — including Vernon, Bridgeport, Danbury, Shelton, Stratford, North Haven and New Haven — have contracted with a company called BusPatrol, which installs the technology on the towns’ bus fleets, then uses it to gather footage of any motorist passing a bus that’s displaying flashing red signal lights.
The company’s technicians log the events and provide the recordings to local law enforcement. Unlike some license plate reading cameras — such as those owned and operated by the company Flock Safety — BusPatrol’s aren’t continuously monitoring the roads.
American Data Centers in Just Seven States Are Reportedly Using More Water Than All the Cities in California
Non-profit think tank Ceres has published a new report analyzing the water used to generate electricity for data centers across Virginia, Texas, California, Illinois, Georgia, Ohio, and Arizona. Ceres estimates data centers use 3.4 trillion gallons of freshwater a year, or 10.4 million acre-feet.
Bloomberg Law’s Bobby Magill compared that unfavorably against the 8 million acre-feet California uses annually for urban purposes, a figure from a 2021 Legislative Analyst’s Office report.
Meta Sued Over Alleged Facial Recognition Training for Smart Glasses
Meta Platforms is facing a proposed nationwide class action lawsuit accusing the company of using photographs from Facebook and Instagram to extract biometric information for an unreleased facial recognition system intended for its smart glasses.
The suit further alleges that Meta has used images to train generative AI models without obtaining consent.
The 66-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleges Meta used images depicting both users and non-users to train and test facial recognition technology known internally as NameTag; to generate facial templates for the system; and to develop image-generation models including Emu and Muse Image.
The lawsuit, Alvarez et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc., was brought by Illinois resident Francisco Alvarez, his minor child, California resident Jeremy Wahl, and Wahl’s minor daughter. It alleges violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), California publicity and misappropriation law, and the California Constitution’s privacy protections.
Australians May Soon Be Able to Switch off Social Media Algorithms. Is That Censorship?
The federal government has released an exposure draft of its long-promised digital duty of care. The headline feature is an “off switch”. Social media platforms would have to ask users, through prompts that appear from time to time, whether they want to keep a personalised, algorithm-driven feed, or instead see mostly the accounts they have chosen to follow. The Prime Minister calls it “My feed, my way”.
Communications Minister Anika Wells has been careful to say plenty of Australians appreciate the algorithm and will keep it. She argues big tech should offer them the choice in the first place, and should respect it. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor says the Coalition has not seen the bill and wants parents to have more control over what their children see, but he has warned the government against censoring speech online.
But Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson was more blunt, accusing the government of trying to “censor and silence Australians”. One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson is opposing the plan, saying “Australia should be moving away from government censorship, not building the Orwellian machinery for it”.
