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GOP AGs Ask Supreme Court to Peel Back Content Moderation From Big Tech in Landmark First Amendment Case
A group of 20 Republican states are weighing in on a Supreme Court legal battle that could sharply alter the landscape of Big Tech’s content moderation. Next month, the high court will hear a set of cases that question whether state laws that limit Big Tech companies’ ability to moderate content on their platforms curb the companies’ First Amendment liberties.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey — one of the Republican AGs leading the lawsuit against the Biden administration, alleging it engaged in a “vast censorship enterprise” — on Monday filed an amicus brief along with 19 of his colleagues in the cases, asking the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the laws meant to limit internet platform’s ability to moderate content.
“If the Supreme Court lets social media companies silence speech, it will set a devastating anti-free speech precedent at a time when the First Amendment is under widespread attack,” Bailey told Fox News Digital on Monday.
Separate laws that passed in Florida and Texas and are now challenged in court would require large Big Tech companies like X, formerly Twitter, and Facebook to host third-party communications but prevent those businesses from blocking or removing users’ posts based on political viewpoints.
U.S. Seeks to Stop Citizens’ Data Exploitation for Blackmail, Espionage — Bloomberg News
The United States plans to announce a new executive order to seek to prevent foreign adversaries from accessing troves of highly sensitive personal data about Americans and people connected to the U.S. government, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.
The draft order focuses on ways that foreign adversaries are gaining access to Americans’ “highly sensitive” personal data through legal means and through intermediaries like data brokers, third-party vendor agreements, employment agreements or investment agreements, the report added.
The administration is concerned about the collection of data on political figures, journalists, academics, activists and members of marginalized communities, as well as patient data obtained through healthcare providers and researchers, the report said.
In October last year, Biden signed an executive order requiring developers of AI systems that pose risks to U.S. national security, economy and public safety to share results of safety tests with the federal government. The order goes beyond voluntary commitments AI companies had made this year.
CDC Labeled Accurate Articles as Misinformation, Documents Show
The top U.S. public health agency labeled multiple news articles as misinformation even though the articles were accurate, according to internal emails and experts. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) added the misinformation labels to articles from The Epoch Times in widely-circulated internal messages, according to copies obtained by The Epoch Times.
One of the articles reported on a peer-reviewed paper that found heart inflammation, or myocarditis, was more common after COVID-19 vaccination than after COVID-19 infection.
Nordic researchers reviewed electronic health records and counted 109 cases of myocarditis following COVID-19 infection compared to 530 after vaccination. Their study was published by the British Medical Journal.
“The Epoch Times article should not be labeled as misinformation,” Dr. Tracy Hoeg, a physician-scientist at the University of California-San Francisco, told The Epoch Times via email.
26 Billion Records Have Been Leaked in ‘Mother of All Breaches,’ but Don’t Freak Out
A database of 26 billion leaked records has been discovered, in what has been called the “Mother of all Breaches.” Fortunately, it actually isn’t as bad as it sounds.
The massive 12-terabyte leak was discovered by cybersecurity researcher Bob Dyachenko, working alongside the team at Cybernews. It isn’t clear exactly who is responsible for the database, however, it contains both credentials and sensitive data.
The leak is in fact a compiled collection of data from thousands of previous breaches and doesn’t appear to contain any new information. If you’ve kept up to date on your security, you should have little more to fear than you did yesterday. It’s also reasonable to expect that some of the records are duplicated, so there may not necessarily be 26 billion unique records.
Tencent was the most heavily impacted by the leak, with 1.5 billion records in the compilation. It was followed by the Chinese social media platform Weibo at 504 million, MySpace at 260 million, Twitter at 281 million, and Wattpad at 271 million. Other brands included LinkedIn, AdultFriendFinder, Adobe, MyFitnessPal, and Canva.
Government organizations weren’t spared either, with the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Turkey, and the Philippines among those swept up in the compiled database.
Judge Says Canada’s Use of Emergencies Act to Quell Truckers’ Protests Over COVID Was Unreasonable
A Canadian judge has ruled that the government’s use of the Emergencies Act to quell weeks of protests by truckers and others angry over COVID-19 restrictions in 2022 was unreasonable and unconstitutional.
Up to thousands of protesters clogged the streets of the capital of Ottawa and besieged Parliament Hill, demonstrating against vaccine mandates for truckers and other precautions and condemning Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.
The act allowed authorities to declare certain areas as no-go zones. It also allowed police to freeze truckers’ personal and corporate bank accounts and compel tow truck companies to haul away vehicles.
In the decision released Tuesday, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley said the invocation of the Emergencies Act led to the infringement of constitutional rights. “I conclude that there was no national emergency justifying the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the decision to do so was therefore unreasonable,” Mosley wrote.
Fake Biden Robocall Fuels Calls for AI Regulation
A wave of misleading robocalls in the New Hampshire primary mimicking the voice of President Biden is rekindling calls for artificial intelligence regulations ahead of the 2024 general election.
As my colleague Meryl Kornfield reported Monday, voters in the state received calls ahead of the tally “from what sounded like a digitally generated voice impersonating President Biden that advised them not to vote.” The robocall told primary voters that it was “important that you save your vote for the November election.”
The robocalls spotlighted how digitally altered or AI-generated media could be used to undermine the 2024 elections and reignited calls by officials for federal action.
Netherlands’ Queen Maxima Pushes for Global Digital ID Systems for Financial Access, Vaccine Verification and More
The Dutch Queen Maxima utilized her platform during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos to advocate for the far-reaching benefits of digital ID for various sectors. Queen Maxima highlighted that a digital ID could become a critical instrument, capable of determining vaccination statuses, facilitating school registrations, and simplifying the process of claiming government subsidies.
There has been a growing push by various global elites, including governments, tech companies, and international organizations, towards the adoption of digital identity systems. This shift is often presented as a means to increase efficiency and security. But, few talk about the major implications for surveillance and the erosion of civil liberties.
Africa is being used as the testing ground for several digital ID projects.
Of course, Queen Maxima also said that digital ID systems would be useful to act as a vaccine passport. “It is also good for school enrollment; it is also good for health — who actually got a vaccination or not; it’s very good actually to get your subsidies from the government,” she said.
France Fines Amazon $35 Million for ‘Excessively Intrusive’ Monitoring of Warehouse Staff
France’s privacy watchdog said Tuesday that it slapped Amazon’s French warehouse business with a 32 million euro fine ($35 million) for using an “excessively intrusive system” to monitor worker performance and activity.
The French Data Protection Authority, also known by its acronym CNIL, said the system allowed managers at Amazon France Logistique to track employees so closely that it resulted in multiple breaches of the European Union’s stringent privacy rules, called the General Data Protection Regulation.
The watchdog’s investigation focused on Amazon employees’ use of handheld barcode scanners to track packages at various points as they move through the warehouse, such as putting them in crates or packing them for delivery.
Amazon uses the system to manage its business and meet performance targets, but the regulator said it’s different from traditional methods for monitoring worker activity and puts them under “close surveillance” and “continuous pressure.”
