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Top Justice Department Official Calls on Social Media Companies to Do More as Teens Die From Fentanyl
Landen Hausman, a high school sophomore, died in January after buying fentanyl-laced Percocet through a dealer on social media. His family found him collapsed on the bathroom floor and tried to revive him with CPR, but it was too late. “He basically bought two of these counterfeit Percocet pills,” his father Marc Hausman said. “He took one. One killed him. We found the other one [in his bedroom].”
Sadly, Landen’s story is all too common. Last year, more than 100,000 Americans died from fentanyl — more deaths than there were of Americans killed in the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Deaths among teens have more than tripled since 2019.
The Drug Enforcement Administration says it is investigating more than 120 cases that involve social media. The agency has issued a warning about emoji code language dealers use to target young buyers.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who oversees the DEA, says fentanyl is the agency’s top priority. Monaco also said the Justice Department is pushing social media companies to crack down on dealers, calling the crisis “a national security issue, “a public safety issue” and “a public health issue.”
Tech Industry Group Sues to Block California Children’s Safety Law
The tech industry group NetChoice on Wednesday sued to block a landmark California law that requires tech companies to adopt new policies to protect children and their privacy online, in the latest legal salvo over the future of social media regulation.
NetChoice argues in its lawsuit that the law violates the First Amendment, arguing that tech companies have the right under the Constitution to make “editorial decisions” about what content they publish or remove. The industry group said that the law, which is set to go into effect in 2024, would force companies to “serve as roving censors of speech on the Internet” and result in “over-moderation” of content online.
California’s law is the latest battleground in the state’s efforts to control the actions of tech companies after years of inaction in Washington. Wednesday’s lawsuit highlights how the industry is equally hostile to legislation from Democrats as it is from Republicans, even though the challenged laws address different tech concerns.
Senate Votes to Ban TikTok Use on Government Devices
The Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved legislation that would ban the use of TikTok on government phones and devices as part of the push to combat security concerns related to the Chinese-owned social media company.
The “No TikTok on Government Devices Act,” introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), was passed via unanimous consent late Wednesday, meaning that no member objected to the bill. The proposal would “prohibit certain individuals from downloading or using TikTok on any device issued by the United States or a government corporation.”
The move comes as state governments, especially those led by Republicans, have taken steps to limit the use of the app on state-owned devices. Thirteen states overall have taken action against TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-owned entity. Eleven of those actions have taken place since the beginning of the month.
The bill would still need to be passed by the House and signed by President Biden to become law.
Elon Musk Should Take a Clear Stand Against Twitter Censorship by Proxy
From the outside, Twitter’s content moderation decisions looked haphazard at best. From the inside, they look worse, especially because government officials played an unseemly and arguably unconstitutional role in shaping those decisions.
The internal communications that Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has been gradually revealing to a select few journalists show that the company’s former executives arbitrarily applied the platform’s vague rules and surreptitiously suppressed content from disfavored accounts. The “Twitter Files” also confirms that the company had a cozy relationship with federal agencies, allowing them to indirectly censor speech they deemed dangerous.
Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” is trying to signal that things will be different under his ownership. He faces a daunting challenge as he attempts to implement lighter moderation policies without abandoning all content restrictions, lest Twitter becomes a “free-for-all hellscape” that alienates users and advertisers.
One part of that mission should be relatively straightforward. Musk could make it clear that neither government bureaucrats nor elected officials have any business dictating what Twitter’s rules should be or how they should be enforced.
USCG Admiral: Military Vaccine Mandate Rollback Not Enough for Discharged Service Members
The latest government funding bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, is expected to pass both chambers of Congress this week and head to the president to sign into law.
Florida Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio and others’ efforts to rollback COVID-19 vaccine requirements for U.S. military service members were included in the legislation, seeking to end the vaccine mandate and audit the process of discharges for lack of vaccination from the requirement’s start in August 2021.
While the rollback cleared the vote in the U.S. House, it has not yet been approved in the Senate, though a vote is expected by Friday. Advocates for the proposal, including a retired admiral, say it should also reinstate service members who were discharged over vaccination status. The portion of the legislation containing the removal of the vaccine requirement, called the Defending Religious Accommodations Act, was announced on Dec. 5.
Sen. Scott, retired Coast Guard Rear Admiral Peter Brown and other advocates for removing the mandate said the rollback would allow service members to opt out of the vaccination with exemptions for sincerely held religious beliefs. Brown said he first got involved in this political fight after he heard of seven cadets at the Coast Guard Academy who were disenrolled and discharged over their lack of COVID vaccination.
Mask Mandate Is Back at This New York College
Purchase College, part of the State University of New York system, mandated masking indoors as respiratory viruses have been spreading rapidly in the state and around the country.
The college, in suburban Westchester County, raised its alert level for COVID transmission to orange, triggering the change. Other educational systems in the area, including the New York City school district, began encouraging masks indoors this week without requiring them. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene recommends masking in public indoor settings and crowded outdoor settings.
Senate’s Year-End Children’s Privacy Push Faces Uphill Climb
Senate lawmakers are mounting an end-of-year push to pass new children’s online privacy and safety protections, but the campaign is rapidly running out of time amid a packed legislative schedule. And it’s facing resistance in the House.
A bipartisan group of senators in recent weeks has ramped up efforts to get two bills over the finish line during the lame duck: one to expand federal privacy protections for children and another to create safeguards for their online activity.
Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) have separately been pushing for the omnibus package to include the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would create a “duty” for tech companies to prevent harm to children online and require added parental controls.
But the push faces steep odds in the House, where lawmakers have been working for months on competing legislation to expand privacy protections for all Americans.
State Attorneys General Tell Twitter to Preserve Censorship Evidence
Missouri’s Attorney General Eric Schmitt who, together with Louisiana’s Attorney General Jeff Landry, filed a lawsuit alleging collusion between the federal government and social media companies to censor certain speech, sent a letter to Twitter asking for the preservation of evidence related to communications between the company and federal government officials on content moderation and misinformation.
Schmitt, who was elected to the Senate in November, referenced the internal documents, dubbed “Twitter Files,” that are being released by CEO Elon Musk via journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger.
After the release of the first batch of the Twitter Files, it was revealed that then-deputy legal counsel Jim Baker was vetting the documents being released to Taibbi and other journalists. Baker was fired immediately.
On Monday, Schmitt announced: “We sent a letter to Twitter asking the platform to look into whether any key documents were deleted.”
Ontario Superior Court Upholds Vaccine Passport, Appeal Expected
An Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruling on Dec. 13 held that vaccine passports were constitutional. The Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) said it is considering an appeal.
JCCF represented eight clients who argued their Charter freedoms were violated by vaccine passports. One of the clients was Sarah Lamb, who experienced long-term neurological side effects after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, said JCCF in a release following the ruling. She lost sensation from her waist down but was denied a vaccine exemption.
“All Ontarians should be free to enjoy the rights that our democracy has to offer. However, the exemptions to the vaccine passport regime were incredibly limited and unfairly narrow, and none of the Applicants were eligible for an exemption under the vaccine passport regime,” said Jorge Pineda, one of the lawyers for the applicants, in the release.
Exemptions were limited to those who are verifiably allergic to vaccine ingredients or who developed heart conditions of myocarditis or pericarditis after their first dose.
