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Los Angeles Could End COVID Vaccination Rule for City Employees
Los Angeles could soon end its requirement for city employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. City officials are recommending that the Los Angeles City Council halt the requirement as soon as early June, according to a newly released report. The COVID vaccination rule was first approved by city leaders nearly three years ago as public health officials urged vaccination to protect people from the coronavirus.
In a report, City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo noted that other local government agencies — including the cities of Long Beach and San Diego and Los Angeles County — had stopped requiring COVID vaccination as a condition of employment. Szabo said L.A. employee groups had not opposed ending the requirement.
If city leaders approve ending the requirements, employees who resigned or were terminated because of the vaccination rule may be eligible to be rehired in the same positions as before. Eighty-six city workers were terminated under the rule, Szabo said; it is unclear how many employees resigned over the COVID vaccination requirement because they do not have to report their reasons.
Los Angeles has faced numerous lawsuits over its COVID vaccination rule. In one of the latest suits, filed last week in federal court, a woman formerly employed as a city accountant said she was denied a religious exemption from the vaccination requirement and ultimately discharged from her position. She accused the city of discrimination, saying it had ignored its policy of “accommodating sincerely held religious beliefs.”
The Death of Western Values — Surveillance, Conformity, and the Post-9/11 State
The West once prided itself on being the bastion of freedom, a place where the individual’s rights and liberties were sacrosanct, where various viewpoints weren’t just tolerated but encouraged. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, however, ushered in an era of unprecedented state surveillance, governmental overreach, and a pervasive culture of ideological conformity that would have appalled the very architects of Western democracy.
The enactment of the Patriot Act was ostensibly a necessary response to the terror that had just been unleashed upon American soil. However, it marked the beginning of a slow but steady erosion of civil liberties in the name of national security. The state, empowered by this draconian legislation, granted itself the authority to spy on its citizens, to delve into their private communications without due process, and to create vast databases of personal information, all under the pretext of safeguarding the homeland.
Surveillance became the new norm. The revelations by whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the government’s intrusion into the lives of ordinary citizens. The National Security Agency’s (NSA) metadata collection program, indiscriminately swept up information about billions of phone calls, effectively making every citizen a suspect in a never-ending hunt for the invisible enemy. This omnipresent surveillance apparatus has done little to enhance security but has significantly curtailed the freedoms that were once taken for granted.
The collusion between Big Tech and the government is not merely a matter of convenience, but a strategic alliance aimed at controlling the narrative and maintaining order. This unholy alliance ensures that any challenge to the status quo, be it political, social, or ideological, is swiftly neutralized. The algorithms designed to connect us now serve to divide and manipulate, creating echo chambers where conformity is enforced, and deviation is punished.
In the Pandemic, We Were Told to Keep 6 Feet Apart. There’s No Science to Support That.
The nation’s top mental health official had spent months asking for evidence behind the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social distancing guidelines, warning that keeping Americans physically apart during the coronavirus pandemic would harm patients, businesses, and overall health and wellness.
Now, Elinore McCance-Katz, the Trump administration’s assistant secretary for mental health and substance use, was urging the CDC to justify its recommendation that Americans stay six feet apart to avoid contracting COVID-19 — or get rid of it.
“It sort of just appeared, that six feet is going to be the distance,” Anthony S. Fauci testified to Congress in a January closed-door hearing, according to a transcribed interview released Friday. Fauci characterized the recommendation as “an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data.”
Four years later, visible reminders of the six-foot rule remain with us, particularly in cities that rushed to adopt the CDC’s guidelines hoping to protect residents and keep businesses open. D.C. is dotted with signs in stores and schools — even on sidewalks or in government buildings — urging people to stand six feet apart.
Perhaps the rule’s biggest impact was on children, despite ample evidence they were at relatively low risk of COVID-related complications. Many schools were unable to accommodate six feet of space between students’ desks and forced to rely on virtual education for more than a year, said Joseph Allen, a Harvard University expert in environmental health, who called in 2020 for schools to adopt three feet of social distance.
What to Know About ‘Open Banking,’ Coming Soon in the U.S.
The banking industry took its time to transition from paper bills to plastic cards. Now it’s in the midst of a more rapid transformation: going digital.
“Open banking” allows anyone to share data from their financial accounts with third parties, like merchants, financial tech companies, or rival banks. For customers, it creates a way to easily compare bank offerings, transfer their bank accounts, and get an overview of their finances. (If you’ve ever been prompted to give another app access to your bank, then you’ve already used open banking.)
It’s also a way for banks — and merchant partners — to leverage large stores of data to boost their revenues and expand their offerings.
New York Set to Restrict Social Media Algorithms for Teens, WSJ Reports
New York is planning to prohibit social media companies from using algorithms to control content to youth without parental consent under a tentative agreement reached by state lawmakers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Social media platforms have in recent years come under scrutiny for their addictive nature and impact on the youth.
The bill, which is still being finalized but expected to be voted on this week, would also prohibit platforms from sending minors notifications during overnight hours without parental consent, the WSJ said.
Meta to Settle Texas Lawsuit Over Facebook Facial Recognition Data
Meta’s Facebook (META.O) has agreed to settle a lawsuit by the state of Texas that accused the social media giant of illegally using facial-recognition technology to collect biometric data of millions of Texans without their consent.
Meta and Texas said in a court filing in Texas state court on Friday that they have agreed in principle to resolve the lawsuit, filed in 2022.
They asked a judge to pause the case for 30 days to allow the sides to finish the deal and present it to the court. The filing did not spell out the terms of the settlement.
Advocacy Group Accuses Microsoft of Shifting Child Data Role Onto Schools
Microsoft (MSFT.O) is shifting its responsibilities for children’s personal data onto schools that are not equipped to cope, advocacy group NOYB alleges in one of two complaints filed to Austria’s privacy watchdog.
The complaints against Microsoft’s online education software are the latest grievances leveled against the U.S. tech giant by rivals and campaigners. Online educational programs gained in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic as schools switched to remote teaching and students became online learners.
NOYB’s (None of your business) gripes center on Microsoft’s 365 Education suite of software programs for students that include Word, Excel, Microsoft Teams, PowerPoint and Outlook. In its first complaint, the advocacy group alleges Microsoft shifts its responsibility as a data controller required to process users’ personal data under EU privacy rules known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to schools, that do not hold the necessary data.
“This is nothing more but an attempt to shift the responsibility for children’s data as far away from Microsoft as possible,” NOYB lawyer Maartje de Graaf said.
