Login
Murthy Wounds, but Doesn’t Kill, Free Speech on Social Media
The Wall Street Journal reported:
The Supreme Court’s Wednesday ruling in Murthy v. Missouri is being touted as a vindication of the Biden administration’s highly successful efforts to induce social media platforms to censor disfavored speech. The ruling is no such thing. The court’s opinion was based solely on standing, leaving the door wide open for other parties, with firmer standing, to continue the fight.
And the three justices who reached the merits found that the First Amendment had very likely been violated.
In Murthy, two states and five individuals sued the federal government for pressuring and colluding with Facebook, YouTube and other giant social media platforms to suppress protected speech. Discovery in the case, together with independent investigations such as the Twitter Files, revealed a yearslong multiagency federal effort to induce the platforms to censor specific individuals, facts and opinions the government didn’t want people to hear.
While the censored content was invariably described as “misinformation,” it included wholly accurate reporting as well as legitimate opinions, such as the original Hunter Biden laptop story and assertions that COVID might have originated in a Chinese lab.
House Hearing Exposes Biden FDA ‘Politicization,’ Fallout of Rushed COVID Vaccine Approval for Kids, Military
A House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Wednesday addressing the “politicization” of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during the pandemic exposed how the Biden administration allegedly pressured medical professionals to expedite the COVID-19 vaccine for children before enough testing was completed to confirm or deny its safety.
At the onset of the subcommittee hearing, “Follow the Science?: Oversight of the Biden COVID-19 Administrative State Response,” Chairman Thomas Massie, R-Ky., read from past testimony of Dr. Marion Gruber, the former director of the FDA’s vaccine office, regarding conversations she had with Dr. Peter Marks, the agency’s top vaccine regulator, about the efficacy of the COVID vaccine in children. Massie said Gruber expressed a need for more trial testing in the pediatric population, specifically among males ages 12 to 17, but Marks allegedly pushed to further compress the schedule to license the vaccines so they could be mandated.
“Right when they were getting the warnings that myocarditis and pericarditis are real and serious side effects to the vaccine, the top scientists at FDA had already agreed to compress the schedule as much as possible, right when they got the message that there were serious side effects,” Massie said. “And Peter Marks, instead of telling them, ‘We’re going to give you more time to study this,’ he told them to compress the schedule even more.
“And when they said that compressing the schedule was not possible, he fired them. He took them off the job, he assigned them to other duties. The top vaccine officials who had been there for 30 years, taken off the job because they wanted more time to study the effects of the vaccines. And they were told they needed to do this quickly because they needed to be mandated.
“The Biden administration was mandating the vaccine on the military and young people going to school despite a lack of testing and data, despite growing reports of vaccine injuries. This kind of decision made by the administrative state is concerning. The FDA should not have approved a vaccine for children, EOA or otherwise, without proper testing. Injury from COVID vaccination is real.”
As Mind-Reading Technology Improves, Colorado Passes First-in-Nation Law to Protect Privacy of Our Thoughts
If you think telepathy or mind control is the stuff of science fiction, think again. Advances in artificial intelligence are leading to medical breakthroughs once thought impossible, including devices that can actually read minds and alter our brains.
Dr. Sean Pauzauskie, a Neurologist at UCHealth Poudre Valley Hospital, says there are now about 30 neurotechnology devices for sale on the internet, including Emotiv, which he says is the first commercial-grade brain-to-computer interface, “Anything you want to do, you can move your computer with your mind, and you can control it with your mind using this device.”
The commercial devices are marketed for wellness, so they’re not regulated by the FDA, but Pauzauskie says the ones he’s tested do what they say they do. If the at-home technology is impressive, the devices being used in the lab are even more so. Elon Musk has developed an implantable chip that also allows a person to move a computer cursor with their thoughts. Apple, Meta, and Open-AI are also working on neurotechnology devices.
While medical research facilities are subject to privacy laws, private companies — that are amassing large caches of brain data — are not. Based on a study by The Neurorights Foundation, two-thirds of them are already sharing or selling the data with third parties. The vast majority of them also don’t disclose where the data is stored, how long they keep it, who has access to it, and what happens if there’s a security breach.
This is why Pauzauskie, Medical Director of The Neurorights Foundation, led the passage of a first-in-the-nation law in Colorado. It includes biological or brain data in the State Privacy Act, similar to fingerprints if the data is being used to identify people.
Advocates Blast House for Holding Kids Online Safety Act ‘Hostage’
Advocates pushing for social media regulations to keep kids safe online blasted the House for canceling a Thursday markup of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) amid opposition to a separate data privacy bill also slated to be considered. A House Energy and Commerce Committee markup of 11 bills, including KOSA and the American Privacy Rights Act, was canceled Thursday shortly before it was scheduled to begin after House Republican leaders strongly resisted the privacy bill.
Child online safety advocates slammed the decision to cancel the markup and said Congress should take action on KOSA separate from other tech bills, including the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA).
The bill would require companies to limit access or allow minors to opt out of certain features, like automatic video playing and algorithmic recommendations, and also legally obligate the platforms to prevent the promotion of content about certain topics, such as suicide, eating disorders and self-harm.
Danny Weiss, chief advocacy officer for the advocacy group Common Sense Media, also slammed the House committee for holding KOSA “hostage” over their failure to pass a data privacy bill and urged Congress to act on the bill without consideration of other legislation.
‘Like Dealing With Big Tobacco in the 70s’: Meta Denies Teen Problems
The Sydney Morning Herald reported:
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has denied that teenagers’ use of social media has contributed to steep rises in mental health and body image disorders.
In tense questioning at a parliamentary hearing, global Meta executives confirmed reports in this masthead that the company was considering taking news links off its platforms if the federal government used its laws to force Meta to pay for Australian journalism.
Coalition MP Andrew Wallace, a long-time advocate for social media controls, said he had been dealing with Meta executives for nearly a decade and their behavior was similar to “dealing with Big Tobacco in the 1970s.”
North Carolina’s Restrictions on Public Mask-Wearing Are Now Law After Some Key Revisions
North Carolina’s contentious restrictions on public mask-wearing became law on Thursday after GOP lawmakers successfully overrode a veto by the state’s Democratic governor. The Senate gave its final stamp of approval in a 30-14 override vote along party lines. The state House initiated the process Wednesday when it voted to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto during a lengthy session that lasted well into the night.
The ban joins a list of more than 20 gubernatorial vetoes the GOP-dominated North Carolina General Assembly has overridden in the past year. Republicans hold narrow supermajorities in both chambers.
The law, most of which goes into effect immediately, contains different language from the bill that lawmakers first introduced this session. The original proposal had removed a 2020 bipartisan regulation put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic that allowed masking for health reasons, prompting pushback from the public and some Democratic legislators. The lawmakers restored a medical exemption.
The law allows people to wear medical or surgical-grade masks in public to prevent the spread of illness. Law enforcement and property owners can ask people to temporarily remove those masks to verify their identity.
Mall of America Arms Itself With Facial Recognition Tech, Sparking Fears Over Surveillance
In an effort to boost its security, the Mall of America has partnered with Corsight AI, which provides facial recognition systems to detect trespassers, threats, and missing persons.
The shopping mall installed surveillance cameras capable of scanning people’s faces in real-time and matching them with the database of persons of interest (POI) — individuals deemed by law enforcement as dangerous or missing or banned by the mall itself.
Facial recognition technology in public spaces is a controversial issue as it is known to be more biased toward people of color. The technology has mistakenly identified people as shoplifters and even led to wrongful arrests. And that’s just on top of the fact that they erode privacy and normalize surveillance.
In a statement to the press, the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Minnesota, emphasized that facial recognition algorithms might have “much higher rates of false positives for black men than white men.”
“Thousands of Minnesotans and Americans visit MOA [Mall of America] and this technology could lead to greater data harvesting where your image could be added to unknown databases. Remember that in order to catch the “bad guys” with facial recognition, you need to surveil everyone. This wholesale search and tracking without probable cause or consent poses a threat to some of our most fundamental civil liberties,” they said.
Google Is Testing Facial Recognition Technology for Campus Security, Starting at Site Near Seattle
Google is testing facial recognition technology for office security “to help prevent unauthorized individuals from gaining access to our campuses,” according to a description of the program that was viewed by CNBC.
At the Kirkland testing site, people entering the building will not be able to opt out of the facial screening. However, the document says the data is “strictly for immediate use and not stored,” and that employees can opt out of having their ID images stored by filling out a form. Google told CNBC that while ID badge photos were part of the test, they won’t be used going forward.
The Kirkland test lands at a sensitive moment for Google, which is at the center of the artificial intelligence boom and is rapidly adding AI across its portfolio of products and services. Facial recognition technology is particularly controversial because of the privacy concerns around surveillance.
How the Pentagon Can Avoid Stumbling on the Digital Battlefield — Again
As disinformation and misinformation become major tools of global conflict, democracies need to decide when and how they should influence populations abroad. Influence campaigns are undoubtedly necessary, but how to conduct them according to democratic values is less obvious.
The Pentagon has offered a good lesson in what not to do. A clandestine disinformation campaign against Chinese coronavirus vaccines in 2020 and 2021, a program just revealed in an investigation by Reuters, was a grave error.
Reuters journalists Chris Bing and Joel Schectman reported on June 14 that the Defense Department operation was targeted at the Philippines and “aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other lifesaving aid that was being supplied by China.” They found the Pentagon, through a contractor, General Dynamics IT, created some 300 phony social media accounts. Impersonating Filipinos, Reuters said, the accounts were used to criticize China and the quality of “face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines — China’s Sinovac inoculation.”
Psychological warfare has been a tool of foreign influence for many decades; the digital revolution has accelerated the use of disinformation and misinformation. Reuters reports that in 2019, then-Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper signed a secret order that allowed commanders to sidestep the State Department when carrying out psyops against Russia and China.
