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FTC Says Meta Misled Parents and Failed to Protect Children Using Facebook’s Messenger Kids App
The Federal Trade Commission said Meta violated a 2020 privacy order by misleading parents and failing to protect children using Facebook’s Messenger Kids app.
The FTC proposed a series of changes to the order on Wednesday after the agency claimed Meta mishandled data collected from the app, including a ban on the company’s ability to monetize data collected from its products, including virtual reality, from users under age 18. The initial 2020 order led to a $5 billion settlement with Facebook and called for an expanded privacy program.
The proposed changes would slow Meta’s ability to release new products until they are confirmed to meet the privacy requirements, while also limiting the company’s future ability to use facial recognition technology.
The agency claimed Meta misled parents about their ability to control who children communicate with through Messenger Kids, as some were able to talk to unapproved contacts through group messages. It also alleged that Meta shared certain user data with third-party app developers long after it said it would stop in 2018.
Mind-Reading Technology Has Arrived
For a few years now, I’ve been writing articles on neurotechnology with downright Orwellian headlines. Headlines that warn “Facebook is building tech to read your mind” and “Brain-reading tech is coming.” Well, the technology is no longer just “coming.” It’s here.
With the help of AI, scientists from the University of Texas at Austin have developed a technique that can translate people’s brain activity — like the unspoken thoughts swirling through our minds — into actual speech, according to a study published in Nature.
Now we’ve got a non-invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) that can decode continuous language from the brain, so somebody else can read the general gist of what we’re thinking even if we haven’t uttered a single word. How is that possible?
It comes down to the marriage of two technologies: fMRI scans, which measure blood flow to different areas of the brain, and large AI language models, similar to the now-infamous ChatGPT.
Biden Administration Investing $140 Million Into AI Research and Development Amid Boom
The Biden administration announced on Thursday it will invest $140 million into research and development of artificial intelligence (AI) amid the current boom of the new technology.
Along with the funding, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will issue policy guidance on the use of AI by the federal government in the coming months and companies that develop AI, like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, have made commitments to participate in a public evaluation of AI systems.
The National Science Foundation will invest $140 million in funding to launch seven new National AI Research Institutes, bringing the total number of these institutes to 25 in the U.S. The institutes work on collaboration efforts across the federal government, industry and higher education.
CEOs from Alphabet, Anthropic, Microsoft and OpenAI are heading to the White House on Thursday for a meeting on AI. Vice President Harris will lead the meeting and plans to emphasize the importance of responsible innovation and the importance of safeguards that mitigate risks and potential harms.
Therapy Apps Are Still Failing Their Privacy Checkups
An investigation into mental health apps has revealed that many of the most popular services are failing to protect the privacy and security of their users. Following up on a report from last year’s Privacy Not Included guide, researchers at Mozilla found that apps designed for sensitive issues like therapy and mental health conditions are still collecting large amounts of personal data under questionable or deceptive privacy policies.
The team re-reviewed 27 of the mental health, meditation, and prayer apps featured in the previous year’s study, including Calm, Youper, and Headspace, in addition to five new apps requested by the public. Of those 32 total apps, 22 were slapped with a “privacy not included” warning label, something Mozilla assigns to products that have the most privacy and personal data concerns. That’s a minor improvement on the 23 that earned the label last year, though Mozilla said that around 17 of the 27 apps it was revisiting still scored poorly — if not worse — for privacy and security this time around.
Replika: My AI Friend, a “virtual friendship” chatbot, was one of the new apps analyzed in the study this year and received the most scrutiny. Mozilla researchers referred to it as “perhaps the worst app we’ve ever reviewed,” highlighting widespread privacy issues and that it had failed to meet the foundation’s minimum security standards. Regulators in Italy effectively banned the chatbot earlier this year over similar concerns, claiming that the app violated European data privacy regulations and failed to safeguard children.
Boston Drops COVID Vaccine Mandate for City Employees
Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration will lift the COVID vaccine mandate for all city employees on May 11, a decision that comes about a month after the state’s top court ruled in favor of Boston having this pandemic-era policy in place.
Administration officials said this mandate, implemented by Wu in December 2021, is no longer needed — as cases are low and most people have developed immunity to the virus, through either vaccination or infection.
Employee testing requirements will also be eliminated on May 11. Although no longer needed, Chief People Officer Alex Lawrence said these policies were critical tools for the city, in terms of curbing virus exposure and transmission in workplaces and the community at large, during the height of the pandemic.
Despite high compliance among employees, the city’s vaccine mandate proved to be controversial among parts of the workforce. Three unions — the International Association of Fire Fighters, Boston Police Superior Officers Federation and Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society — sued, claiming Wu had violated their labor rights by overriding previous policy. Employees who refused vaccination by mid-January 2022 faced suspension or possible termination, the Herald has reported.
Florida Legislature Passes Bill Extending Ban on COVID Mandates
The Florida House on Wednesday passed a bill that extends and expands the state’s ban on COVID-19 mandates, furthering Gov. Ron DeSantis’ resistance to COVID-related restrictions.
The House approved S.B. 252 on an 84-31 vote while the Senate approved it last week. The measure will extend bans related to COVID-19 indefinitely; they were set to expire in June.
The new measure defines vaccine mandates and face mask requirements as discriminatory against people who choose not to follow them. Businesses also can’t compel employees to disclose their post-infection recovery status if they were infected.
Eighth Graders Had Record Low U.S. History, Civics Scores in 2022
Eighth graders had the lowest U.S. history scores on record in 2022 and among the lowest civics scores, the Department of Education revealed this week.
The Education Department on Wednesday released the first federal history and civics testing data since before the COVID pandemic. The data shows that the last few years have erased the progress made since the 1990s on eighth-grade students’ knowledge of history and civics.
Math and reading scores have also suffered over the pandemic, the Education Department revealed last year. Math scores plummeted among fourth and eighth graders in almost every state, the Education Department reported back in October. Reading scores have also sunk across the country, erasing the last three decades of progress.
Learning loss caused by many months of remote learning during the pandemic spurred parents across the country to demand schools return to in-person learning, especially after data showed that children were low-risk for serious cases of COVID.
These New Yorkers Want to Stop Landlords From Using Facial Recognition
Brooklyn resident Fabian Rogers knew he had to act in 2018 when his penny-pinching landlord suddenly attempted to install a facial recognition camera in the entrance of a rent-stabilized building he’d called home for years. Under the new security system, all tenants and their loved ones would be forced to submit to a face scan to enter the building.
The landlord, like many others, tried to sell the controversial tech as a safety enhancement, but Rogers told Gizmodo he saw it as a sneaky attempt to jack up prices in a gentrifying area and force people like him out.
Rogers says he tried to speak out against what he saw as an invasive new security measure but quickly realized there weren’t any laws on the books preventing his landlord from implementing the technology. Instead, he and his tenant association had to go on a “muckraking tour” attacking the landlord’s reputation with an online shame campaign. Remarkably, it worked. The exhausted landlord backed off. Rogers now advocates against facial recognition on the state and national levels.
Despite his own success, Rogers said he’s seen increasing efforts by landlords in recent years to deploy facial recognition and other biometric identifiers in residential buildings. A first-of-its-kind law discussed during a fiery New York City Council hearing Wednesday, however, seeks to make that practice illegal once and for all. Rogers spoke in support of the proposed legislation, as did multiple city council members.
Police Accused Over Use of Facial Recognition at King Charles’s Coronation
The Metropolitan police has been accused of using the coronation to stage the biggest live facial recognition operation in British history.
The force said on Wednesday it intended to use the controversial technology, which scans faces and matches them against a list of people police want for alleged crimes and could identify convicted terrorists mingling in the crowds.
A leading academic expert said the number of people whose faces would be scanned would make it the largest deployment yet of live facial recognition (LFR) in the U.K.
Emmanuelle Andrews of the campaign group Liberty said: “The fact LFR is being used at the coronation is extremely worrying. LFR is a dystopian tool and dilutes all our rights and liberties.”
