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April 6, 2022

Big Brother News Watch

The FBI Is Spending Millions on Social Media Tracking Software + More

The Defender’s Big Brother NewsWatch brings you the latest headlines related to governments’ abuse of power, including attacks on democracy, civil liberties and use of mass surveillance.

The Defender’s Big Brother NewsWatch brings you the latest headlines.

The FBI Is Spending Millions on Social Media Tracking Software

The Washington Post reported:

The FBI is doubling down on tracking social media posts, spending millions of dollars on thousands of licenses to powerful social media monitoring technology that privacy and civil liberties advocates say raise serious concerns.

The FBI has contracted for 5,000 licenses to use Babel X, a software made by Babel Street that lets users search social media sites within a geographic area and use other parameters.

“Five-thousand licenses for social media monitoring in real time means that thousands of FBI agents will be looking for key words and topics on an ongoing basis with social media surveillance targeting at least eight languages,” said Greg Nojeim, a senior counsel and co-director at the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Security and Surveillance Project.

“It turns out that people dismissed as paranoid because they thought Big Brother was watching everything they say on social media were not paranoid after all,” Nojeim said.

Los Angeles County Supervisors Usurp Sheriff’s Authority in Enforcing COVID Vaccine Mandate

Fox News reported:

Los Angeles County, not the elected Sheriff Alex Villanueva, will now have the power to discipline and fire deputies who don’t comply with COVID-19 vaccine mandates after a new motion passed Tuesday.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance Tuesday giving the county personnel director, instead of the department heads, the power to discipline or terminate employees who do not comply with the county’s COVID-19 vaccine requirements.

Though the move reneges this authority from all department heads, it’s largely viewed as a way to rein in Villanueva, who has for months refused to enforce the county’s vaccine mandate, instead allowing a regular testing option. He has argued that thousands of deputies could now lose their jobs.

Broadway Shows Canceling Performances — Again — As NYC COVID Cases Rise

Forbes reported:

At least two Broadway shows have canceled performances this week due to COVID-19 cases within the cast — and others are playing with understudies in major roles — with transmission beginning to rise again in New York City as the highly transmissible Omicron BA.2 subvariant spreads.

$28.8 million. That’s the combined gross of all Broadway shows playing last week, according to the Broadway League, with 224,053 audience members attending shows. Individual shows made anywhere between $200,000 and upwards of $1 million, showing how much money can be lost if performances have to be canceled.

Broadway shows still require audiences to wear masks and show proof of COVID-19 vaccination to enter, even as those requirements have been lifted by other NYC businesses. The Broadway League has extended those protocols through at least April 30.

There’s No End in Sight for China’s COVID Lockdowns. Here’s What You Need to Know.

CNN World reported:

Millions of people across China’s locked-down financial hub of Shanghai have been desperately seeking medical care and basic supplies like food. Parents have been forcibly separated from young children infected with COVID-19. And public anger is mounting, with no end in sight as China clamps down.

Since March, China has battled its biggest COVID wave yet, with Shanghai now the largest hotspot. All 25 million residents are under lockdown, with national healthcare workers and the Chinese military dispatched to boost the city’s response.

Vietnam Set to Issue Vaccine Passports From April 15

The Phnom Penh Post reported:

Vietnam will begin issuing vaccine passports from April 15, the Health Ministry announced on Monday.

Vietnam has so far reached agreements on the mutual recognition of ‘vaccine passports’ with 17 countries, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They are: the U.S., UK, Japan, Australia, Belarus, India, Cambodia, the Philippines, the Maldives, Palestine, Turkey, Egypt, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Singapore, Saint Lucia and the Republic of Korea.

The passport will be available on the PC COVID-19 or Digital Health (So suc khoe dien tu) apps. If people don’t have the apps, they can get their passports by accessing the health ministry’s portal and filling in the necessary information. They will then receive the passports by email.

Artificial Intelligence Is Already Upending Geopolitics

TechCrunch reported:

Geopolitical actors have always used technology to further their goals. Unlike other technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) is far more than a mere tool. We do not want to anthropomorphize AI or suggest that it has intentions of its own. It is not — yet — a moral agent. But it is fast becoming a primary determinant of our collective destiny. We believe that because of AI’s unique characteristics — and its impact on other fields, from biotechnologies to nanotechnologies — it is already threatening the foundations of global peace and security.

The rapid rate of AI technological development, paired with the breadth of new applications (the global AI market size is expected to grow more than ninefold from 2020 to 2028) means AI systems are being widely deployed without sufficient legal oversight or full consideration of their ethical impacts. This gap, often referred to as the pacing problem, has left legislatures and executive branches simply unable to cope.

After all, the impacts of new technologies are often hard to foresee. Smartphones and social media were embedded in daily life long before we fully appreciated their potential for misuse. Likewise, it took time to realize the implications of facial recognition technology for privacy and human rights violations.

Some countries will deploy AI to manipulate public opinion by determining what information people see and by using surveillance to curtail freedom of expression.

Europe Is Building a Huge International Facial Recognition System

Wired reported:

The expansion of facial recognition across Europe is included in wider plans to “modernize” policing across the continent, and it comes under the Prüm II data-sharing proposals. The details were first announced in December, but criticism from European data regulators has gotten louder in recent weeks, as the full impact of the plans have been understood.

“What you are creating is the most extensive biometric surveillance infrastructure that I think we will ever have seen in the world,” says Ella Jakubowska, a policy adviser at the civil rights NGO European Digital Rights (EDRi). Documents obtained by EDRi under freedom of information laws and shared with WIRED reveal how nations pushed for facial recognition to be included in the international policing agreement.

The inclusion of facial images and the ability to run facial recognition algorithms against them are among the biggest planned changes in Prüm II. Facial recognition technology has faced significant pushback in recent years as police forces have increasingly adopted it, and it has misidentified people and derailed lives. Dozens of cities in the US have gone as far as banning police forces from using the technology. The EU is debating a ban on the police use of facial recognition in public places as part of its AI Act.

The Metaverse Is a Huge Opportunity for Education. Big Tech Must Not Ruin It.

Newsweek reported:

The metaverse has the potential to transform education in the classroom. Yet we must be careful how we allow Big Tech companies to intrude into our schools. Next-generation educational technology must not come at the cost of turning our children into nothing more than yet another data extraction source.

Before we allow the likes of Meta, Google and Tencent into the fabric of our education system, we need clear assurance that it will not simply be “business as usual.” Before we let our children anywhere near the metaverse, we must be absolutely clear who is watching, and how.

In the next 10 years, the biggest development in education will be the introduction of the metaverse into everyday learning. Virtual Zoom classrooms have already become the norm thanks to the pandemic. What if instead of the teacher giving the lesson, it was a students’ favorite celebrity beamed into their bedroom via the metaverse?

For all the opportunities for educational enrichment, the metaverse also presents a big threat to child safety.

Amazon Is Planning a New Internal-Messaging App That Could Censor Terms Like ‘Union,’ ‘Slave Labor’ and ‘Restrooms,’ Report Says

Business Insider reported:

Amazon is considering launching a messaging app for employees, but planning documents indicate it would flag or outright block employee posts containing words linked to unions and working conditions, among other things, according to The Intercept.

Among the blacklisted terms are “slave labor,” “prison,” “plantation,” “pay raise,” “compensation,” “living wage,” “restrooms,” “grievance,” “harassment,” “favoritism,” “ethics,” “unfair,” “slave,” “master,” “freedom,” “petition,” “coalition,” “diversity,” “injustice” and “fairness,” as well as phrases like “this is dumb” and “this is concerning,” The Intercept reported. Slurs and swear words would also be banned from the platform.

A pilot program for the app was scheduled to start later in April, according to The Intercept, but Amazon says the program hasn’t been greenlit yet, and it may never go live.

Pinterest Bans All Climate Change Misinformation on Its Platform

TechCrunch reported:

Pinterest announced today it’s becoming the first major digital platform to introduce a comprehensive misinformation policy designed to combat false and misleading claims around climate change on its platform. According to the company’s newly updated misinformation guidelines, Pinterest will now be able to remove content that denies the existence of impacts of climate change, denies human influence on climate change and denies climate change is backed by scientific consensus, among other things.

It will also remove false and misleading content about climate change solutions that contradict scientific consensus, content that misrepresents scientific data either by omission or cherry-picking in order to erode trust in climate science and experts and harmful and misleading content about public safety emergencies including natural disasters and extreme weather events.

The company noted the new Community guidelines don’t only apply to posts on the social network, but also to ads. Pinterest advertisers will have to follow the same rules and the Pinterest Advertising guidelines were updated to also prohibit ads containing conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation related to climate change.

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