Massachusetts State Police Must Reinstate 7 Troopers Who Refused to Be Vaccinated, Arbitrator Says
Massachusetts State Police must reinstate seven troopers who refused to be vaccinated for COVID-19, an independent arbitrator has ruled. The troopers have been on unpaid leave, but the arbitrator’s decision means they can return to work with retroactive pay if they choose.
The union representing state troopers, which plans to hold a news conference Monday outside the State House, filed a grievance after the law enforcement officers were suspended following former Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s 2021 order requiring executive department employees to be vaccinated. Current Democratic Gov. Maura Healey lifted the vaccine mandate in May.
Massachusetts State Police are in the process of determining the “scope as well as the administrative and legal steps” needed to implement the arbitrator’s ruling, David Procopio, an agency spokesperson, said Sunday in an email.
The arbitrator concluded State Police violated a collective bargaining agreement in the way they handled the cases of eight troopers who cited religious grounds for refusing to take the vaccine. The agency summarily dismissed the troopers instead of reviewing their accommodation requests, the arbitrator said Friday. One of the eight troopers later returned to work.
Detroit Woman Sues City After Being Falsely Arrested While Pregnant Due to Facial Recognition Technology
A Detroit woman is suing the city and a police detective after she was falsely arrested because of facial recognition technology while she was eight months pregnant, according to court documents.
Porcha Woodruff, 32, was getting her two children ready for school on the morning of Feb. 16 when six police officers showed up at her doorstep and presented her with an arrest warrant alleging robbery and carjacking.
Woodruff initially believed the officers were joking given her visibly pregnant state. She was arrested.
“Ms. Woodruff later discovered that she was implicated as a suspect through a photo lineup shown to the victim of the robbery and carjacking, following an unreliable facial recognition match,” court documents say.
Zoom Contradicts Its Own Policy About Training AI on Your Data
Zoom updated its Terms of Service in March, spelling out that the company reserves the right to train AI on user data with no mention of a way to opt-out. On Monday, the company said in a blog post that there’s no need to worry about that. Zoom execs swear the company won’t actually train its AI on your video calls even though the Terms of Service still say it can.
The company’s legal documents call your video, audio, and chat transcripts “Customer Content.” When you click through Zoom’s terms, you agree to give Zoom a “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license and all other rights” to use that Customer Content for “machine learning, artificial intelligence, training, testing,” and a variety of other product development purposes. The company reserves similar rights for “Service Generated Data,” which includes telemetry data, product usage data, diagnostic data, and other information it gets from analyzing your content and behavior.
Zoom didn’t answer questions about “Service Generated Content,” which includes analytics data and basically everything other than the content of your video, audio, and chats. Zoom’s privacy policy says it can do all kinds of things with that data, including training AI. Gizmodo looked through Zoom’s settings and couldn’t find any way to opt out of allowing the company to train its AI on service-generated content.
The company’s track record of keeping promises to consumers about their privacy isn’t great. In 2020, Zoom said it would offer end-to-end encryption only to paying users only to backtrack after outcry over offering privacy as a paid feature. A lawsuit alleged the company had claimed it already offered end-to-end encryption to everyone. In fact, Zoom was using a far less secure form of encryption, though it later fixed the issue. The company also shared user data with Google and Facebook without letting customers know, and Zoom agreed to an $85 million settlement over these and other issues in 2021.
The Internet Speech Case That the Supreme Court Can’t Dodge
When the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Gonzalez v. Google, its first case involving Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the tech-policy world was laser-focused on its implications. The week before oral arguments, in February last year, the Brookings Institution held a panel touting the case’s “power to reshape the internet.” The New York Times wrote that the case “could have potentially seismic ramifications for the social media platforms that have become conduits of communication, commerce and culture for billions of people.” Google’s general counsel wrote that the “decision could radically alter the way that Americans use the internet.”
Those predictions fell short a few months later when the court released its opinion and completely punted on any interpretation of Section 230, the 1996 law that protects platforms from liability for user content.
Despite their reluctance to decide lofty cyber issues, there is a good chance that another internet law dispute will come before the justices in the next year. And this time, it will be difficult for them to avoid directly deciding the issue and having a huge impact on how the internet looks for decades to come.
The disputes involve two similar Texas and Florida laws which both restrict platforms from moderating certain speech and require transparency about user content policies. The Texas law, for example, states that large social media platforms “may not censor a user, a user’s expression, or a user’s ability to receive the expression of another person” based on viewpoints or the users’ location. NetChoice, a group representing tech companies, has challenged both laws.
Fauci Successor, Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, Said There Should Be ‘Consequences’ for ‘Misinformation,’ but Spreads It Herself
In the wake of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s retirement from his contentious role as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), an air of apprehension cloaks the announcement of his successor.
Fauci’s tenure was marred by accusations of a slew of misinformation, all while calling for “misinformation” to be curbed by social media platforms, and seemingly intentional deceit, leading to his referral for prosecution regarding potential misrepresentation of the evidence on the origins of COVID-19.
Now, the successor named by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is proving to be an equally divisive choice steeped in similar controversy.
Dr. Marrazzo’s tenure during the pandemic was far from exemplary as she pumped out her own breed of misinformation. In 2020, Dr. Marrazzo grossly exaggerated the COVID-19 mortality rate, presenting a 10% figure in stark contrast to the non-politicized estimation of a 0.034% infection fatality rate (IFR). This gross overestimation of approximately 23,311% amplifies the concern regarding her appointment as head of NIAID.
In 2020, Dr. Marrazzo tweeted that there should be “consequences” for those that spread misinformation. Yet, in another instance of flaunting false narratives, Dr. Marrazzo echoed the controversial affirmation that masks play a crucial role in curbing COVID-19 transmission, even as late as 2021, contradicting other studies and showing that there is no general consensus on scientific matters — which is why free speech needs to be protected.
White House Censorship of Social Media Violates First Amendment Rights
On March 26, 2021, White House digital director Rob Flaherty e-mailed Facebook, asking what sort of restrictions the social-media company was going to put on the New York Post.
“I’m curious — NY Post churning out articles every day about people dying. What is supposed to happen to that from a Policy perspective? Does that article get a reduction, labels?”
What we were “churning out” was the occasional news piece about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine based on the information we had at the time (even as we also advocated for taking it in editorials).
There is absolutely no reason for the government to be pressuring social-media companies to ban or delete articles and opinions. It is pure propaganda and contrary to the spirit of the First Amendment. They’re not protecting you. They’re protecting themselves.
Republican Utah Governor Highlighting Harms of Social Media Use in Ad Campaign
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) launched a public awareness campaign Friday focusing on the harms of social media for children, his office announced.
The campaign argues that many children use social media and the internet too much and it could be having a negative impact on their mental health. “Rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, suicidal thoughts and behaviors have increased in recent years,” Cox said in a statement.
“It’s undeniable that social media is harming our children’s mental and physical health, brain chemistry, self-esteem and more. Parents need to know about these dangers so they can best help their children and teens. We encourage all Utahns to consider less screen time and more human connection. Let’s disconnect to reconnect.”
The Utah campaign will feature on billboards, television ads and, ironically, social media videos in the coming months.
Long Beach Harbor Employee Sues Over City’s COVID Vaccine, Testing Mandates
A longtime Long Beach Harbor Department employee sued the city Friday, alleging he was wrongfully denied accommodations when he asked to be excused on religious grounds from the mandatory coronavirus vaccination mandate and the alternative for regular testing.
Christian Scientist Jeremy Groves filed the case in Los Angeles Superior Court. His claims include religious discrimination, retaliation, failure to prevent discrimination and retaliation, failure to engage in the interactive process and both intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
Groves has worked for the Long Beach Harbor Department for more than 25 years. In September 2021, he sought accommodations due to his objections to the city’s employee coronavirus vaccination mandate and the alternative of weekly testing, which involved giving saliva samples, the suit states.
Groves alleges he was still on leave last November when the city lifted its vaccination and testing mandates, but failed to notify him or engage him in an interactive process that would enable him to return to work.
Australian Intelligence Agency Funding Research to Merge Human Brain Cells With AI
Australia’s Office of National Intelligence, the equivalent of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, is funding a project to study ways of merging human brain cells with artificial intelligence.
A team of researchers collaborating with Melbourne-based startup Cortical Labs received a $600,000 grant to merge biology with AI. The team has already demonstrated how roughly 800,000 brain cells in a Petri dish are capable of playing a game of “Pong.“
“This new technology capability in the future may eventually surpass the performance of existing, purely silicon-based hardware,” said team lead Adeel Razi, an associate professor at Monarch University.
“The outcomes of such research would have significant implications across multiple fields such as, but not limited to, planning, robotics, advanced automation, brain-machine interfaces, and drug discovery, giving Australia a significant strategic advantage.”
Meanwhile, Elon Musk‘s Neuralink has had FDA approval to study brain implants in humans since May.
