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Lawsuit Filed Against Biden, Top Officials for ‘Colluding’ With Big Tech to Censor Speech on Hunter, COVID
Two GOP-led states filed a lawsuit against President Biden, White House press secretary Jen Psaki, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top administration officials alleging that they “pressured and colluded” with Big Tech social media companies to censor and suppress information on the Hunter Biden laptop story, COVID-19 origins and security of voting by mail during the pandemic.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry filed the lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. The suit accuses top-ranking government officials of working with the giant social media companies Meta, Twitter and YouTube “under the guise of combating misinformation” in order to achieve greater censorship.
Senator Johnson Demands CDC Explain Why It Tracked Movements of Americans During Pandemic
Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson is calling on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to address why it tracked Americans throughout the coronavirus pandemic — and what other departments may have tracked the movements of United States citizens as well.
“It remains unclear why the CDC tracked millions of Americans during the pandemic and whether it continues to do so,” Johnson told the CDC in a Thursday letter first obtained by The Daily Wire. “In response to COVID-19, the CDC should have been prioritizing the development of treatments, effective testing, and vaccine safety rather than tracking Americans’ daily lives.”
Johnson called on the CDC to explain if its use of location data was “the only mechanism it employed to monitor Americans during the pandemic,” which official or officials at the CDC approved the “use and subsequent purchase of location data,” what companies supplied the CDC with this data and whether the CDC shared this location data with any other federal, state, or local agencies.
Over 260 Travel, Business Groups Urge White House to End COVID Testing for U.S. Entry
Over 260 travel industry and business organizations are calling on the Biden administration to end its COVID testing requirement for vaccinated international passengers entering the U.S.
The travel industry has taken multiple blows over the last two years due to the pandemic and emerging variants. Companies are looking to rebound despite another rise in cases.
“Given the slow economic recovery of the business and international travel sectors, and in light of medical advancements and the improved public health metrics in the U.S., we encourage you to immediately remove the inbound testing requirement for vaccinated air travelers,” said the letter addressed to incoming White House COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha.
“While there is no longer a need for an inbound testing requirement for vaccinated travelers, the economic costs associated with maintaining the measure are significant.”
Bearing the Brunt of Inconsistent Mandates
As the country slowly bounces back from COVID-19, vaccine restrictions in restaurants and other indoor activities are lifting across the country. Beginning on March 7, the Key to NYC was discontinued, meaning that by law, residents and tourists alike no longer have to provide vaccine proof and ID to enjoy their favorite restaurants again.
Yet businesses are still permitted to continue checking vaccines at their own discretion. This isn’t easy on staff like me.
Whispers of the mandate lift spread around the restaurant, but management ensured that vaccines and ID would continue to be required for indoor eating. I was given a script on how to respond to questions regarding our continued checking: “Although the state has lifted the mandate, per NYC guidelines, our company still holds the right to ask for proof of vaccination.”
20 GOP Attorneys General Threaten Legal Action Over ‘Un-American’ Disinformation Board
Virginia Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares sent a letter signed by 20 GOP attorneys general on Thursday to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas threatening legal action against its ‘un-American’ Disinformation Governance Board.
The letter claims that the new board violates the constitutional freedoms that attorneys general are called to defend.
“Today we write you to insist that you immediately cease taking action that appears designed exclusively for the purpose of suppressing the exercise of constitutional rights,” they added.
The letter also condemned the chilling impact the board would have on the free speech rights of Americans.
Here’s How Many San Francisco Police Officers Have Been Fired for Refusing to Get COVID Vaccines
San Francisco Chronicle via MSN reported:
Ten San Francisco police officers have been fired to date for failing to receive their COVID-19 vaccines, and 13 others soon follow, according to records provided by the city’s Department of Human Resources.
The potential 23 firings represent only about 1% of the department’s roughly 1,723 sworn members but come at a time when police officials say they’re facing staffing shortages.
“Officers who are not fully vaccinated are in various stages of the administrative review process, including termination hearings in front of the San Francisco Police Commission,” said Sgt. Adam Lobsinger, a spokesman for the department.
Police are not required to receive a COVID-19 booster shot, according to a March Department of Public Health order that reversed an earlier mandate. San Francisco still requires boosters for city workers who regularly work in high-risk settings, which include jails, hospitals and nursing homes. City employees including firefighters, paramedics and EMTs have until June 30 to get boosted, according to the most recent health order.
China Builds Permanent COVID Testing Stations for Life After Lockdown
China is setting up thousands of permanent PCR testing stations, with 9,000 already completed in Shanghai alone, as authorities seek to “normalize” tough pandemic controls even after the current round of lockdowns end.
At present, nearly 25 million residents in the eastern financial hub of Shanghai remain under some form of lockdown as the city battles China’s biggest-ever coronavirus outbreak.
But in a bid to head off future flare-ups, municipal authorities have been setting up a system that will make regular COVID-19 testing a permanent feature of everyday life, with other cities taking similar steps.
A Week off Social Media Reduces Depression and Anxiety: Research
Taking a break from social media for as little as a week can reduce depression and anxiety, according to new research. People who took a break from platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for seven days reported an increased sense of well-being, a study by the University of Bath found.
Researchers split a sample of 154 people aged 18 to 72 into two groups — one of which was banned from social media while the other was not.
On average, participants used social media for eight hours a week. Participants were quizzed on their baseline levels of anxiety and depression, and their sense of well-being, using three recognized tests.
In the future, the researchers hope to study the impact of pausing social-media use on specific segments of the population, such as younger people and those with physical and mental health conditions.
The WWII Writer Who Forecast 2022
“1984” and the term “Orwellian” have been used (and abused) for decades, but our current moment arguably is genuinely “Orwellian.” Much of Orwell’s writing, and particularly his final novel “1984,” was preoccupied with the importance of speaking the truth and the risk to both individuals and societies when states attempt to censor and manipulate speech.
Truth, Orwell worried, could not exist in a vacuum. If the state were able to completely control what could be said and written, it could effectively control reality.
“1984” is a totalitarian dystopia in which Big Brother’s ruling party controls reality through their complete control of language. Through a combination of propaganda and censorship, the party remolds what truth means for the citizens of Oceania.
Facebook Doesn’t Know What It’s Doing With Your Data
Facebook’s biggest strength is quickly becoming its largest headache. For years, Facebook has survived by tracking every little thing its users do and selling that on to everyone.
But now a slew of regulations across the globe are looking to crack down on the social media site and, according to leaked documents, Facebook has no idea how to get compliant. Worse, the social media giant has no idea where any given piece of data goes once it enters its ecosystem.
Lack of a Federal Privacy Law Opens the Door to Dystopia
Imagine every one of us could be located using only a photograph, or identified based on the way we walk — that our fingerprints could be scanned from afar, and our productivity assessed remotely as we work. This might sound like a dystopia, but at least one technological juggernaut thinks the vision will sell.
Clearview, a facial recognition company, says its client roster has expanded to more than 3,100 law enforcement agencies — but despite past promises to restrict its work to crime-fighting, the company dreams in its presentation of “limitless future applications” outside government. These include tackling “tough physical security problems” in retail, screening gig economy laborers and sizing up potential dates on smartphone apps.
The nation desperately needs a federal privacy law: a framework that dictates not merely what companies are permitted to do with specific types of technology, but also how and when they can collect, process and use all the personal data that flows through the Internet.
One key to Clearview’s apparent eminence in the realm of facial recognition is how little restraint it has espoused compared with its more mainstream peers in Silicon Valley and Seattle that have limited sales of their technology until risks are reduced.
10 Ways Information Shapers Have Infiltrated Our Institutions
Few matters are so important as the integrity of the information we receive and the recent degradation in its reliability. The recent leak of a Supreme Court draft related to the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion case underscores how corrupted so many of our important institutions have become by those dedicated to shaping public opinion in a sometimes-dishonest way.
Nearly every facet of our American institutions has been infiltrated by activists, corporate and political propagandists and even criminals.
Here are 10 key institutions that have been successfully infiltrated by information shapers:
U.K. Regulator Will Have the Power to Impose Steep Fines on Big Tech
The U.K.’s recently established Big Tech regulator will have extensive authority to punish giant companies it deems anti-competitive. As TechCrunch notes, the country’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) has revealed that the Digital Markets Unit will have the power to levy fines of up to 10% of a company’s worldwide annual turnover if it doesn’t honor codes of conduct, plus up to 5% of daily turnover for each day the violations continue.
Firms will also have to make it easier to switch between platforms (such as mobile devices and social networks), break away from default apps (including search) and take more control of data sharing.
