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Jim Jordan Considers Holding Zuckerberg in Contempt of Congress
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is considering holding Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress, a source familiar with the situation confirmed to The Hill Monday. Fox Business was the first to report on Jordan’s potential move, with sources telling the news outlet Meta has not provided any internal communications on its censorship processes.
Zuckerberg was among five tech company heads who received subpoenas in February from the House Judiciary Panel to turn over “documents and communications relating to the federal government’s reported collusion with Big Tech to suppress free speech,” along with any documents related to their content moderation measures, the committee said at the time.
“Given that Meta has censored First Amendment-protected speech as a result of government agencies’ requests and demands in the past, the Committee is concerned about potential First Amendment violations that have occurred or will occur on the Threads platform,” Jordan wrote.
According to sources with direct knowledge of the situation, Jordan is considering holding Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress this month, because the documentation Meta has provided so far under the committee’s original subpoena has been insufficient.
Rival U.S. Lawmakers Mobilize to Stop Police From Buying Phone Data
United States lawmakers are moving with uncommon speed to close a loophole in federal law that police and intelligence agencies use to collect sensitive information on U.S. citizens — up to and including their physical whereabouts — all without the need for a warrant.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Defense Intelligence Agency are among several government entities known to have solicited private data brokers to access information for which a court order is generally required. A growing number of lawmakers have come to view the practice as an end run around the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment guarantees against unreasonable government searches and seizures.
“This unconstitutional mass government surveillance must end,” Warren Davidson, a Republican congressman from Ohio, says.
Members of the House Judiciary Committee, led by Ohio’s Jim Jordan, a Republican, will hold a markup hearing tomorrow to consider a Davidson bill aimed at restricting purchases of Americans’ data without a subpoena, court order, or warrant. If passed into law, the legislation’s restrictions would apply to federal agencies as well as state and local police departments. Known as the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, the bill is cosponsored by four Republicans and four Democrats, including the committee’s ranking member, Jerry Nadler, a Democrat, who first introduced it alongside California Democrat Zoe Lofgren in 2021.
Notably, the bill’s protections extend to data obtained from a person’s account or device even if hacked by a third party, or when disclosure is referenced by a company’s terms of service. The bill’s sponsors note this would effectively prohibit the government from doing business with companies such as Clearview AI, which has admitted to scraping billions of photos from social media to fuel a facial recognition tool that’s been widely tested by local police departments.
BofA and Others Share Records With FBI Without a Warrant ’All the Time’, Director Wray Admits
Among the doublespeak and other bombshells disclosed by FBI Director Christopher Wray during testimony to the House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, one particularly disturbing detail he released was that the FBI “regularly obtains innocent Americans’ personal data from companies with the intent of potentially charging them with crimes,” the Federalist reported last week.
At a time when many Americans are wondering why they should stick with Elon Musk at Twitter instead of joining Mark Zuckerberg over at the newly minted Threads, here’s one potential reason. Wray told Congress that Bank of America provided them with a “huge list” of financial records for Americans who used B of A cards around the capitol on January 6th. That’s right: no warrants, no court hearings, just blindly turning over records when the FBI asks.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie asked Wray at the hearing: “George Hill, former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst in the Boston field office, told us that the Bank of America, with no legal process, gave to the FBI gun purchase records with no geographical boundaries for anybody that was a Bank of America customer. Is that true?”
To which Wray replied: “A number of business community partners all the time, including financial institutions, share information with us about possible criminal activity, and my understanding is that that’s fully lawful.”
Instagram Agrees to Pay $68.5 Million in Illinois Biometric Privacy Settlement
Millions of Illinois Instagram users may be eligible for a cut of a new $68.5 million class-action biometric privacy settlement. The lawsuit alleges facial recognition technology used on the app until November 2021 violated Illinois’ biometric privacy law, which is considered the strictest in the nation.
The Instagram deal is the latest in a string of settlements by Big Tech companies over alleged violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. The law passed in 2008, prohibits companies from collecting or saving biometric information, such as fingerprints, without prior consent.
Facebook, now Meta, along with Google and Snapchat parent Snap Inc. have all settled biometric privacy cases in Illinois in recent years. Facebook, whose parent company also owns Instagram, settled its case for $650 million, with individual payouts topping $400 for some class members. Google and Snap settled their cases for smaller amounts at $100 million and $35 million, respectively.
“Upon information and belief, Meta also captured its Instagram users’ protected biometrics without their informed consent and without informing users of its practice,” the complaint alleges.
Amazon’s In-Van Surveillance Footage of Delivery Drivers Is Leaking Online
An influx of videos taken from Amazon’s in-van surveillance cameras has been published on Reddit in recent weeks, sparking fresh concerns about the privacy of delivery drivers being monitored for their entire shifts.
Drivers have expressed concerns about their privacy since these cameras were installed, likening the experience to being watched by “Big Brother.” Similar surveillance systems were a bargaining point in the negotiations between UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters trade union earlier this month, with the courier company now tentatively agreeing to shut off its in-vehicle cameras.
Amazon started installing the AI-enabled cameras — supplied by Netradyne Driveri — back in 2021 to analyze drivers as they operate the vehicle and deliver packages. Amazon delivery drivers were later made to sign a biometric consent form to allow the company to collect information like photographs, vehicle location, speed, acceleration, “potential traffic violations,” and “potentially risky driver behavior” or lose their jobs.
The surveillance cameras record on-device “100% of the time,” and the AI system uploads specific clips to the “secure servers” of Amazon or its partners when it detects a class of safety-related issues or opportunities to improve maps and routing. Uploads can also happen when Amazon, a DSP, or a driver makes a request.
Facebook’s Twitter Alternative Isn’t Different. It Steals Self-Worth.
It feels good until the brain fog rolls in. Being praised, finding inspiration, rejecting bad actors — social media peddles connection, esteem and instant justice. The catch is that it requires reducing complex humans to selfies and slogans.
The new social network Threads is posing as an alternative to toxic Twitter. In fact, the platform launched by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is just another drug feeding the same addiction. The endless scrolls fleetingly boost users’ self-worth but cumulatively erode their humanity.
No one needs more platforms. We need ways to cope with the ones we have. The fix must go beyond government regulation. To quit the craving, people need to understand the emotions that social media masks — and amplifies. Then, users must treat themselves with compassion. Again, and again.
As Fear Rises Over AI, Google and Epic Fight Stronger Regulation of the Technology in Healthcare
Big businesses poised to profit from the advance of artificial intelligence in healthcare are pushing back against newly proposed federal rules meant to increase oversight and fairness of AI tools used to help make decisions about patient care.
The opposition, which includes Google and Amazon as well as large healthcare providers, insurers, and medical software vendors, is focused on an attempt to put tighter guardrails around the use of AI by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
The agency wants to require developers of electronic health records and other health software to provide users with details about the training and testing of predictive models that draw data from their systems or are hosted within them. It also wants developers to assess and publicly disclose potential risks and create a way for clinicians and other users to report problems.
Facebook to Make Its AI Free to Use, Expanding Access to Powerful Tech
Facebook will make its cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology freely available to the public to use for research and building new moneymaking products, doubling down on an “open source” approach to the tech that has garnered both praise and criticism.
Facebook’s Llama 2 is a “large language model” — a highly complex algorithm trained on billions of words scraped from the open internet. It’s Facebook’s answer to Google’s Palm-2, which powers its AI tools, and OpenAI’s GPT4, the tech behind ChatGPT. App developers will be able to download the model directly from Facebook or access it through cloud providers including Microsoft, Amazon and open-source AI start-up Hugging Face.
But critics say open-sourced AI models could lead to the technology being misused. Earlier this year, Meta released Llama to a select group of researchers only for the model to be leaked and later used for applications ranging from drug discovery to sexually explicit chatbots.
More Than 28,000 Convicted of COVID Rule Breaches in England and Wales
More than 28,000 people in England and Wales have been convicted of breaches of COVID-19 regulations, despite the government’s insistence that it never intended to criminalize people for minor infractions during the pandemic.
The convictions are for COVID-related offenses, such as attendance at gatherings during lockdowns or arriving at airports without the proper evidence of a coronavirus test. Almost 16,000 of the convictions — or 55% — involved people under 30.
The figures, which were obtained by the Guardian through analysis of data from the Ministry of Justice, are considerably higher than any previous estimate.
They reveal how tens of thousands of mostly young people have been severely penalized for relatively minor infractions of COVID rules that have left them with damaging fines and, in many cases, criminal records.
Norway Has Had It With Meta, Threatens $100K Fines for Data Violations
Meta‘s data privacy woes in Europe continue as Norway has announced an immediate ban on “behavioral advertising” on Facebook and Instagram. Until Meta makes some big changes, it will be fined $100,000 daily for Norwegian user privacy breaches, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, Datatilsynet, said yesterday.
“Meta tracks in detail the activity of users of its Facebook and Instagram platforms,” Datatilsynet’s press release said. “Users are profiled based on where they are, what type of content they show interest in, and what they publish, amongst others.
“These personal profiles are used for marketing purposes — so-called behavioral advertising. The Norwegian Data Protection Authority considers that the practice of Meta is illegal and is therefore imposing a temporary ban of behavioral advertising on Facebook and Instagram.”
Norway has not banned the apps. Its ban is focused on restricting data collection for behavioral advertising and starts August 4. The temporary ban could drag on for three months unless Meta takes remedial action sooner.
