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Moderna Keeps Tabs on ‘High Risk’ Anti-Vaccine Celebs Like Elon Musk, Novak Djokovic, Russell Brand: Report
Moderna has hired a former FBI agent to compile internal company reports about “high-risk” celebrities — including tennis star Novak Djokovic, tech mogul Elon Musk and actor Russell Brand — who have been publicly critical of vaccine mandates, according to a report.
The Boston-based pharmaceutical company, which marketed one of the first mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 that was distributed to tens of millions of Americans during the coronavirus pandemic, is said to be employing a team of former law enforcement officials who make up a “disinformation department” that keeps track of anti-vaccine sentiment.
News of the department’s existence and its reports was first revealed by independent journalists Lee Fang and Jack Poulson. The department commissioned one report which was titled “Djokovic Crowned Anti-Vaccine Hero after U.S. Open Win,” according to Fang and Poulson.
Djokovic, the Serbian tennis legend who holds the all-time record for Grand Slam title victories, was not allowed to participate in the 2021 and 2022 U.S. Open tournaments due to his refusal to get the COVID vaccine. He won the grand slam tournament that was held this past September at Flushing Meadows — his 24th overall.
Moderna was concerned about the fact that “vaccine opponents are celebrating” Djokovic’s win, which was made all the more troublesome due to the fact that people on social media “mockingly point out that Moderna is a U.S. Open sponsor,” according to the report.
Amazon Wants Businesses to Use Its Palm-Scanning Tech to Let Employees Into the Office
Amazon is expanding its palm-scanning technology beyond grocery stores and is rolling out a version that’s designed for the business world.
Amazon One Enterprise repackages the company’s palm-based payment system as an authentication tool that lets corporate employees swipe their hands to enter an office or access sensitive information like financial data or human resources records.
Companies already signed up for the biometric technology include IHG Hotels & Resorts, turnstile manufacturer Boon Edam, and Kone, an escalator and elevator provider. Amazon didn’t disclose pricing for the service, which is available in preview in the U.S. starting Monday.
Advocacy groups have criticized the service over privacy and security concerns, contending it leads to increased surveillance. Amazon says palm recognition is more private than other biometric systems “because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm.” The company also claims it doesn’t capture purchase data from scans collected by non-Amazon stores.
U.S. Federal Judge Rules Against Meta in Privacy Fight With FTC
Meta Platforms (META.O), which owns WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, lost the latest round of a court battle over privacy on Monday after a federal judge ruled a U.S. regulator can seek to reduce the amount of money the social media company makes from users under 18.
Judge Timothy Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied a motion filed by Meta for the court to take over the dispute with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
In May, the FTC accused Meta of misleading parents about how much control they had over who their children had contact with in the Messenger Kids app, among other issues.
The FTC proposed changing a settlement reached in 2019 which required Facebook to pay $5 billion. The FTC said it would tighten that to bar Facebook from making money off data collected on users under age 18, including in its virtual reality business. It would also face expanded limitations on using facial recognition technology.
Ron Paul: Big Tech Censorship Is a Problem Created by Big Government
The Orange County Register reported:
Some libertarians dismiss concerns over social media companies’ suppression of news and opinions that contradict select agendas by pointing out that these platforms are private companies, not part of the government. There are two problems with this argument.
First, there is nothing un-libertarian about criticizing private businesses or using peaceful and voluntary means, such as boycotts, to persuade businesses to change their practices.
The second and most significant reason that the “they are private companies” argument does not hold water is the tech companies’ censorship has often been done at the “request” of government officials. The extent of government involvement with online censorship was revealed in emails between the government and employees of various tech companies. In these emails, the government officials addressed employees of these “private companies” as though these employees were the government officials’ subordinates.
Government officials using their authority to silence American citizens is a blatant violation of the First Amendment. Yet some conservative elected officials and writers think the solution to the problem of big tech censorship is giving the government more power over technology companies.
Instead of giving the government more power over social media, defenders of free speech should work to separate tech and state.
Former Google CEO: Companies’ AI Guardrails ‘Aren’t Enough’ to Prevent Harm
Guardrails that AI companies add to their products to prevent them from causing harm “aren’t enough” to control AI capabilities that could endanger humanity within five to ten years, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Axios’ Mike Allen on Tuesday.
The big picture: Interviewed at Axios’ AI+ Summit in Washington, DC, Schmidt compared the development of AI to the introduction of nuclear weapons at the end of the Second World War.
The danger, he said, arrives at “the point at which the computer can start to make its own decisions to do things” — when, say, such a system discovers access to weapons, and we can’t be certain the system will tell us the truth. Two years ago, that moment was expected to be 20 years off. Today, Schmidt said, some experts think it’s only two to four years away.
What’s next: Schmidt argued that the best solution is to create a global body akin to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to “feed accurate information to policymakers” so that they understand the urgency and can take action.
Meta EU Ad-Free Subscription: ‘Privacy for the Rich’
Less than a month after its launch, Meta’s ad-free subscription for European users is facing its first privacy troubles in the EU.
Austria-based digital rights group Noyb (stylized as noyb) filed a complaint to the country’s data protection authority on November 28, 2023, warning that such a model will make privacy an exclusive right “for the rich.”
The organization is now urging the Austrian privacy protection body to initiate the procedure to halt what it deemed as an “illegal processing.”
In its official announcement, Meta describes the new subscription model as a way to balance “the requirements of European regulators while giving users choice and allowing Meta to continue serving all people in the EU, EEA and Switzerland.” However, according to noyb, data privacy should be a right accessible to anyone — no matter their bank account.
