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The Breach of a Face Recognition Firm Reveals a Hidden Danger of Biometrics
Police and federal agencies are responding to a massive breach of personal data linked to a facial recognition scheme that was implemented in bars and clubs across Australia. The incident highlights emerging privacy concerns as AI-powered facial recognition becomes more widely used everywhere from shopping malls to sporting events.
The affected company is Australia-based Outabox, which also has offices in the United States and the Philippines. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Outabox debuted a facial recognition kiosk that scans visitors and checks their temperature. The kiosks can also be used to identify problem gamblers who enrolled in a self-exclusion initiative.
This week, a website called “Have I Been Outaboxed” emerged, claiming to be set up by former Outabox developers in the Philippines. The website asks visitors to enter their names to check whether their information had been included in a database of Outabox data, which the site alleges had lax internal controls and was shared in an unsecured spreadsheet. It claims to have more than 1 million records.
The incident has rankled privacy experts who have long set off alarm bells over the creep of facial recognition systems in public spaces such as clubs and casinos.
“Sadly, this is a horrible example of what can happen as a result of implementing privacy-invasive facial recognition systems,” Samantha Floreani, head of policy for Australia-based privacy and security nonprofit Digital Rights Watch, tells WIRED. “When privacy advocates warn of the risks associated with surveillance-based systems like this, data breaches are one of them.”
Louisiana House Splits on Vaccine ‘Discrimination’ Proposals
Louisiana Illuminator reported:
The Louisiana House of Representatives approved a proposal Tuesday to prohibit what its author considers “discrimination” against K-12 students on the basis of vaccination status. But lawmakers rejected a bill that would have placed similar restrictions on businesses and governmental entities.
Both bills are authored by Rep. Beryl Amedee, R-Schriever, who has carried several pieces of legislation dealing with vaccines and medical consent in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. She has consistently been critical of vaccine mandates, insisting that the COVID shot did not prevent the spread of the virus while failing to acknowledge vaccine rates were well below herd immunity status.
Amedee told House members unvaccinated students were discriminated against during the peak of the pandemic by being seated separately from their classmates and not being allowed to participate in extracurricular sports. Her bill to prevent such actions would apply to all vaccinations.
Her proposal would not allow teachers or school administrators to use a student’s vaccination status to determine their eligibility for athletics or other extracurricular activities or to allow or deny their participation inside and outside of the classroom. Teachers would not be allowed to organize seating arrangements based on vaccination status, nor would schools be allowed to issue surveys to students asking about what vaccines they have received.
Supreme Court Rejects Military Chaplains’ Lawsuit Claiming Refusal of COVID Vaccine Hurt Their Careers
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to hear a case involving 39 military chaplains who say they continue to face recrimination for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine for religious reasons. In an announcement Monday of the cases the court has selected to hear next year, the justices denied the chaplains’ petition to review last year’s dismissal of the case by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
The appellate court ruled that the Defense Department’s decision in January 2023 to rescind the vaccine mandate rendered the chaplains’ case moot.
In their petition, the chaplains said they needed the court to consider the case to protect them and their First Amendment rights. They argued that many continue to have bad marks in their fitness reports influencing assignments and promotions.
At least 50 service members previously sued the Defense Department over its vaccine mandate, alleging that the services and the Pentagon had violated their right to religious freedom for “categorically denying” their request for religious exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccine.
Senators Want Limits on the Government’s Use of Facial Recognition Technology for Airport Screening
A bipartisan group of senators is pushing for restrictions on the use of facial recognition technology by the Transportation Security Administration, saying they are concerned about travelers’ privacy and civil liberties.
In a letter on Thursday, the group of 14 lawmakers called on Senate leaders to use the upcoming reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration as a vehicle to limit TSA’s use of the technology so Congress can put in place some oversight.
The effort, led by Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., John Kennedy, R-La., and Roger Marshall, R-Kan., “would halt facial recognition technology at security checkpoints, which has proven to improve security effectiveness, efficiency, and the passenger experience,” TSA said in a statement.
The technology is currently in use at 84 airports around the country and is planned to expand in the coming years to the roughly 430 covered by TSA.
A Lawsuit Argues Meta Is Required by Law to Let You Control Your Own Feed
A lawsuit filed Wednesday against Meta argues that U.S. law requires the company to let people use unofficial add-ons to gain more control over their social feeds.
It’s the latest in a series of disputes in which the company has tussled with researchers and developers over tools that give users extra privacy options or that collect research data. It could clear the way for researchers to release add-ons that aid research into how the algorithms on social platforms affect their users, and it could give people more control over the algorithms that shape their lives.
The suit was filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of researcher Ethan Zuckerman, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts — Amherst. It attempts to take a federal law that has generally shielded social networks and use it as a tool forcing transparency.
Maricopa County and Arizona State Collaborate to Surveil Social Media and Censor ‘Misinformation’
The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office and the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office have been exposed as doing their best to team up with social media companies, non-profits, as well as the U.S. government to advance online censorship.
This, yet another case of “cooperation” (aka, collusion) between government and private entities to stifle speech disapproved of by federal and some state authorities has emerged from several public records, brought to the public’s attention by the Gavel Project.
The official purpose of several initiatives was to counter “misinformation” using monitoring and reporting whatever the two offices decided qualified; another was to censor content on social platforms, while plans also included restricting discourse to the point of banning users from county-run accounts.
Bipartisan Senators Unveil Bill Limiting Kids’ Social Media Use
Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) are leading a group of bipartisan senators reintroducing a bill that would limit kids’ social media use by setting a minimum age for users and restricting access to the sites in schools.
Schatz originally introduced a version of the legislation, called the Kids Off Social Media Act, in the spring of 2023. It would set the minimum age for online social media users to 13 years old, and prevent platforms from “feeding algorithmically-boosted content” to users under 17.
Users under 18 must have parental permission to use apps like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat under the bill.
“There is no good reason for a nine-year-old to be on Instagram or TikTok. There just isn’t. The growing evidence is clear: social media is making kids more depressed, more anxious, and more suicidal,” Schatz said in a statement. “This is an urgent health crisis, and Congress must act.”
Schatz’s past bill faced some opposition, but its sponsors hail it as a way for parents to regain control over what their kids see online and say it would prevent platforms from using minors’ data to promote potentially harmful content.
What Happens When Google Censors News to Protect Its Bottom Line?
Search engines like Google have always selectively censored content by limiting what its users can find. Usually, the censored material has been either sexually explicit, intellectual property guarded by copyright, disinformation or sensitive personal information.
Last month, Google stopped being a neutral aggregator of the internet and began censoring out of its economic self-interest by denying its users access to content created and reported by California news outlets. Sacramento is no stranger to political hardball, but what Google is doing is different and dangerous.
Google’s suppression of journalism raises the issue of whether a tech giant should be allowed to block access to news content for purely economic reasons. How is the consumer protected? How should government regulate a search engine when it becomes a suppression engine?
UnitedHealth CEO Estimates One-Third of Americans Could Be Impacted by Change Healthcare Cyberattack
UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty on Wednesday told lawmakers that data from an estimated one-third of Americans could have been compromised in the cyberattack on its subsidiary Change Healthcare and that the company paid a $22 million ransom to hackers.
Witty testified in front of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, which falls under the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce. He said the investigation into the breach is still ongoing, so the exact number of people affected remains unknown. The one-third figure is a rough estimate.
UnitedHealth has previously said the cyberattack likely impacts a “substantial proportion of people in America,” according to an April release. The company confirmed that files containing protected health information and personally identifiable information were compromised in the breach.
Microsoft’s Billion-Dollar OpenAI Investment Was Triggered by Google Fears, Emails Reveal
Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 because it was “very worried” that Google was years ahead in scaling up its AI efforts. An internal email, titled “Thoughts on OpenAI,” between Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, CEO Satya Nadella, and co-founder Bill Gates reveals some of the high-level discussions around an investment opportunity in the months before Microsoft revealed the partnership.
The email was released on Tuesday as part of the ongoing U.S. Justice Department antitrust case against Google, Business Insider reports.
