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Facial Recognition Technology Being Studied as a Way to Identify Vaccinated Dogs
Humans use facial recognition technology all the time, like for unlocking your phone, but now it’s being studied as a way to determine whether a dog has been vaccinated or not.
A facial recognition app for animals has been used here in North America to correctly identify lost pets. Now researchers used the same smartphone technology in a village in Tanzania and were able to identify vaccinated dogs with a high degree of accuracy.
The idea is that when a dog receives its rabies vaccine, it would be registered in the facial recognition app with a photo. If the vaccination status of that dog is ever in question, they can then use the app to correctly identify the dog and confirm that it has already been vaccinated.
GOP Pols Demand Pentagon Probe Into More Than $50 Million Spent on Chinese Pandemic Research Labs
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) are demanding the Defense Department’s inspector general probe more than $50 million in defense grants to Chinese pandemic research institutions — including those based in Wuhan, the city where COVID-19 emerged in 2019.
The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which passed last month, included an amendment from the lawmakers that directed the IG’s office to review Pentagon funding of risky research on pathogens of pandemic potential or “chimeric versions” of viruses in foreign nations over the past decade.
The law specifically targets Chinese government-linked research at the now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing.
Through grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Manhattan-based EcoHealth Alliance used American taxpayers’ money to fund more than $1.4 million in research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology from 2014 to 2021, including risky gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses.
“We cannot trust the mad scientists at EcoHealth to get their hands on taxpayer money or bats ever again,” Ernst added. “This investigation is the first step to bringing long overdue transparency and accountability to the indefensible ways Washington is spending our defense dollars.”
iPhone Apps Secretly Harvest Data When They Send You Notifications, Researchers Find
iPhone apps including Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and X/Twitter are skirting Apple’s privacy rules to collect user data through notifications, according to tests by security researchers at Mysk Inc., an app development company.
Users sometimes close apps to stop them from collecting data in the background, but this technique gets around that protection. The data is unnecessary for processing notifications, the researchers said and seems related to analytics, advertising, and tracking users across different apps and devices.
It’s par for the course that apps would find opportunities to sneak in more data collection, but “we were surprised to learn that this practice is widely used,” said Tommy Mysk, who conducted the tests along with Talal Haj Bakry. “Who would have known that an innocuous action as simple as dismissing a notification would trigger sending a lot of unique device information to remote servers? It is worrying when you think about the fact that developers can do that on-demand.”
This isn’t the first time Mysk’s tests have uncovered data problems at Apple, which has spent untold millions convincing the world that “what happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.” In October 2023, Mysk found that a lauded iPhone feature meant to protect details about your WiFi address isn’t as private as the company promises.
New York City Mayor Classifying Social Media as ‘Public Health Hazard’
New York City has become the first major city to designate social media as an environmental toxin, or “public health hazard,” Mayor Eric Adams (D) announced Wednesday.
Adams, during his State of the City address, called out a series of social media companies and claimed they are “fueling a mental health crisis,” especially for young people.
“Companies like TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook are fueling a mental health crisis by designing their platforms with addictive and dangerous features,” he said. “We cannot stand by and let Big Tech monetize our children’s privacy and jeopardize their mental health.”
Congress Can Fulfill the Constitution’s Promise to America’s Parents
Congress has a new opportunity to fulfill the Constitution’s promise to America’s parents by protecting families from harmful federal policies.
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the U.S. Constitution protects the fundamental rights of parents. In a landmark 1925 case, the Court reiterated that “the child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
That means that the duty-bearers, parents, are to be the primary decision-makers for their children in education, healthcare, and custody. “This primary role of parents…is now established beyond debate as an enduring American tradition,” explained the Court in a subsequent decision.
The good news is that parents are acting. They helped pass legislation in 17 states to secure the highest level of legal protection for the parent-child relationship. This will safeguard the rights of parents from state policies that exclude them from crucial decisions involving their children.
The bad news is that the White House has announced a federal policy that could gravely intrude upon parental rights in all 50 states and U.S. territories.
One Week Before Its Big Senate Hearing, Meta Announces Even More Teen Safety Controls
Meta has rolled out stricter Instagram and Facebook messenger settings, intended to push back against unsolicited DM’s from strangers in a company-wide attempt to address teen safety on its bevy of platforms.
The new default setting turns off a teen user’s ability to receive DMs from anyone they don’t follow or aren’t connected to online, including other teens, the company explained in a blog post. This also applies to minor accounts (defined as 16 years or younger in the U.S. and 18 years or younger in certain countries) added to group chats.
As Mashable’s Christianna Silva noted, the influx of new teen safety measures is presciently timed, with Meta officials set to testify alongside other major social media companies in a Senate hearing on online child exploitation taking place on Jan. 31. Other attendees include X/Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, and Discord CEO Jason Citron.
Hovering in the background are several lawsuits levied against Meta over the last year, including a recent Massachusetts case against Zuckerberg once again alleging he repeatedly blocked attempts to address teen mental health on the app.
Florida Lawmakers Vote to Restrict Children’s Access to Social Media
The Florida House of Representatives approved on Wednesday a bill aimed at barring children aged 16 and younger from social media platforms, following similar action in several states to limit online risks to young teenagers.
Passed by a bipartisan vote of 106 to 13, the measure would require social media platforms to terminate the accounts of anyone under 17 years old and use a third-party verification system to screen out the underaged.
“We must address the harmful effects social media platforms have on the development and well-being of our kids,” said Florida House Speaker Paul Renner. The bill would also require firms to permanently delete personal information collected from the terminated accounts and let parents bring civil suits against those failing to do so.
Meta (META.O), the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, opposed the legislation, usually referred to as HB1, saying it would limit parental discretion and raise data privacy concerns
Kids Spent 60% More Time on TikTok Than YouTube Last Year, 20% Tried OpenAI’s ChatGPT
No wonder YouTube launched Shorts. A new study of children’s online habits found that children ages 4 through 18 spent a global average of 112 minutes daily on TikTok’s short video app in 2023, an increase from 107 minutes the year prior. And although YouTube remains the world’s biggest streaming app among this demographic, kids spent 60% more time on TikTok last year. The data, from a new study on kids’ digital media also examined kids’ use of novel technologies, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The study, which takes into account the digital media habits of over 400,000 families and schools worldwide, hails from parent control software maker Qustodio. In its annual report, the company paints a picture of the digital habits of kids and their technology usage across mobile and desktop devices, with deep dives into select markets, including the U.S., U.K., Spain, Australia, and France.
What’s unique about its data set is that it comes from kids’ real-world usage of technology, rather than panelist questions. However, the data may not be fully representative of kids’ digital media habits, since its slice of the market represents those households and schools using its parental control software.
Notably, the firm for the first time this year looked into kids’ use of new technologies, including AI.
