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Trump Says He’ll Reinstate Troops Who Refused COVID-19 Vaccination
President Donald Trump said on Jan. 20 — moments after being sworn into office — that he would reinstate former members of the military who refused to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
“This week, I will reinstate any service members who were unjustly expelled from our military for objecting to the COVID vaccine mandate with full back pay,” Trump said at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. “And I will sign an order to stop our warriors from being subjected to radical political theories and social experiments while on duty. It’s going to end immediately.”
Both promises drew applause from the crowd that had gathered to watch Trump be sworn in and deliver a speech. “Our armed forces will be freed to focus on their sole mission: defeating America’s enemies,” Trump said.
Under direction from then-President Joe Biden, the military imposed a COVID-19 vaccine mandate in 2021. More than 16,000 troops requested religious accommodation, but many of the requests were denied. The military discharged more than 7,000 troops whose requests were denied, and who still refused to receive a COVID-19 shot.
Link EU Digital ID Wallet to Social Media Accounts to End Anonymity: Spanish PM
Social media accounts held in the European Union should be linked to EU Digital Identity Wallets to prevent anonymity, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Sánchez presented social media as a promising set of platforms that fulfilled some of their early promise, but ultimately have led to greater concentration of wealth and power and a range of harms to society. These negative effects were brought in through the algorithms that determine what people see on each platform, which he compares to the Trojan Horse with raiders hiding concealed within.
Rigour is replaced with immediacy when social dialogues move from newspapers and coffee shops to outlets that limit messages to a few hundred characters, or 30 seconds of video, Sánchez argues. Despite this, he believes social media is too important to society at this point to abandon it entirely. To improve the situation, he proposes ending anonymity on social media, comparing anonymous posting with driving a car without carrying a license. It provides impunity for the worst actors, while making space for the plague of bots.
Every user account should be connected to a EUDI Wallet, though the user could post under a pseudonym or nickname. He also notes that this measure could help prevent children from accessing inappropriate or dangerous content.
DHS Releases ‘Comprehensive’ Report on Use of Face Biometric Systems
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) new report on the department’s use of facial recognition and face capture technologies underscores the importance of maintaining a balance between security and civil liberties in the age of artificial intelligence.
The report highlights that as DHS continues to deploy facial recognition and face capture technologies, it faces the dual challenge of maximizing its potential while minimizing its risks. Future efforts will likely focus on improving algorithmic fairness, strengthening data protection measures, and enhancing public awareness about the benefits and limitations of these systems.
The report was released on the heels of renewed scrutiny of the use of facial recognition and face capture across the DHS enterprise. Earlier this month, House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green and Rep. Carlos Gimenez, chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security, formally “requested a detailed review from the Government Accountability Office on the Transportation Security Administration’s implementation of biometric identification and use of AI-driven technology in its homeland security mission.”
US Age Verification Laws Put Your Privacy at Risk — And ‘VPNs Are Not a Solution’
U.S. age verification laws threaten people’s data privacy and security — and not even the most secure VPN services are a solution. This is the warning coming from experts at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), pointing out the risks of collecting more users’ data to fulfill mandatory online age checks.
Florida citizens have been the last to turn en masse to the best VPN services to bypass new legislation requiring age verification to access adult content sites. Despite their privacy-enhancing technology, these tools “are not foolproof,” the EFF explains, “nor should they be necessary to access legally protected speech.” In January, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee joined 15 U.S. States already enforcing age verification laws. Louisiana was the first to do so in 2023, alongside Utha, Texas, and Montana, among others.
Seven States, including Kansas, Alabama, and Oklahoma, also joined this list in 2024. Georgia is also expected to enforce a similar law in July this year. These laws come as an effort to regulate online content to protect children online. Florida’s HB 3 rules, for example, include mandatory age checks to access adults and a ban on those under 14 from having a social media account. To do so, these laws require online service providers to collect vast amounts of personal identifier data, such as government-issued identification. Companies could face penalties for failing to comply.
Privacy experts have long warned against the risks of getting rid of online anonymity. According to the EFF, these laws introduce “surveillance systems that threaten everyone’s rights to speech and privacy, and introduce more harm than they seek to combat.”
Powerschool Hack Keeps Getting Worse — 62 Million Students Now Thought to Be Affected
The PowerSchool hack seems to have been much worse than originally believed, as new reports now claim more than 62 million students, and nine million teachers, were actually affected by the attack.
In late Dec. 2024, an unidentified threat actor used stolen credentials to access its PowerSchool Student Information System platform. From there, they were able to use the “export data manager” customer support tool to exfiltrate “Students” and “Teachers” database tables to a CSV file, which was then stolen.
The information grabbed in this attack included names, and postal addresses, and in some districts, the threat actors also obtained Social Security numbers, personally identifiable information, medical information and grades.
