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You Can Say No to a TSA Face Scan. But Even a Senator Had Trouble.
On his way to catch a flight, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) was asked to have his photo taken by a facial recognition machine at airport security. The Transportation Security Administration has been testing facial recognition software to verify travelers’ identification at some airports.
Use of the technology is voluntary, the TSA has told the public and Congress. If you decline, a TSA agent is supposed to verify your identification, as we have done at airport security for years.
When Merkley said no to the face scan at Washington’s Reagan National Airport, he was told it would cause a significant delay, a spokeswoman for the senator said. There was no delay. The spokeswoman said the senator showed his photo ID to the TSA agent and cleared security.
“This needs to change immediately,” Merkley said. “The TSA says the facial scans are optional, but they are operating at Reagan National as if they are mandatory, providing no signs that indicate passengers have a right to opt-out.”
New York City Mom Stands Up to Government Overreach Post-COVID: ‘Mom Army Is Stepping Into the Breach’
Jacqueline Toboroff is waving the banner of the “mom army” as it heads into battle to defend America’s children from an ever-growing, emboldened and seemingly irrational government. “The one issue that unites all moms is the safety of their kids,” Toboroff, author of the new book “Supermoms Activated: 12 Profiles of Hero Moms Leading the American Revival,” told Fox News Digital in an interview.
She suddenly jumped into action for the first time, she said, when the COVID-19 outbreak was followed by an onslaught of government mandates, social coercion and dystopian fears.
Toboroff formed online communities with other moms, became an outspoken voice in public and on social media, and in 2021 ran for public office — the New York City Council — for the first time in her life.
Her book “Supermoms Activated” profiles 12 moms from diverse backgrounds across the nation. Toboroff believes these moms, and millions of others around the nation, have the power to save the nation from what appears to be a big government-fueled downward spiral.
House Republicans Want Political Payback for COVID Vaccine Mandates for Troops, but the White House Is Refusing to Back Down
The White House on Monday dug into its defense of COVID-19 vaccine mandates for American service members, signaling a fight with House Republicans that will loom large over funding for the Pentagon.
In a lengthy statement, the White House said it would not back down from a series of penalties that service members incurred if they refused to get vaccinated. House Republicans have for months pressured the Pentagon to revisit the punishment defiant service members incurred, including those who were discharged as a result of their decision.
Congress previously forced the Pentagon to rescind the COVID-19 vaccine mandate in January. At issue now is how and to what, if any, extent reinstatement or other assistance will be offered to troops who defied the requirement. Republicans have repeatedly pushed for the reinstatement of service members that were discharged as a result of defying the mandate.
More than 8,000 active-duty service members were kicked out for refusing to get the vaccine. The disagreement also underlines that as the U.S. moves past the pandemic, debates about the government response will continue on.
Billions in NIH Grants Could Be Jeopardized by Appointments Snafu, Republicans Say
The Biden administration allegedly failed to correctly reappoint more than a dozen top-ranking National Institutes of Health leaders, House Republicans say, raising questions about the legality of billions in federal grants doled out by those officials over the last year.
Their claim, detailed Friday in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, obtained by CBS News, follows a monthslong probe led by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the Republican chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, into vacancies at the agency.
“The failure to reappoint the above NIH IC Directors jeopardizes the legal validity of more than $25 billion in federal biomedical research grants made in 2022 alone,” the committee wrote. After the committee’s probe was launched, Becerra signed affidavits the department says retroactively ratified and adopted the appointments.
Thousands of researchers compete every year for NIH funding, which supports a variety of projects ranging from fundamental laboratory research to human clinical trials.
The Republican-led committee’s letter comes as the Biden administration has yet to fill key vacancies in the NIH leadership. The agency has been without a director since December 2021, when Dr. Francis Collins stepped down from his post.
Discord Introduces New Opt-In Parental Controls for Teens
Discord is introducing a new Family Center opt-in tool designed to make it easy for parents and guardians to learn more about who their teens are friends with and talk to on the platform, the company announced on Tuesday. The official rollout of the parental controls comes two months after Discord was seen testing the Family Center feature.
Family Center has two major components: an activity dashboard accessible from Discord anytime and a weekly email summary containing information about your teen’s activity. Although parents will be able to see which Discord communities and users their teens are talking to, they won’t be able to see the contents of the conversations themselves in order to protect their privacy.
Although Discord is regularly used by a young audience, the platform is often left out of the larger conversation around the harm to teens caused by social media use. As execs from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snap, YouTube and TikTok have had to testify before Congress on this topic, Discord has been able to sit on the sidelines.
Discord has flown under the radar, despite the warnings from child safety experts, law enforcement and the media about the dangers the app poses to minors, amid reports that groomers and sexual predators have been using the service to target children.
HCA Healthcare Patient Data Stolen and for Sale by Hackers
Personal information for potentially tens of millions of HCA Healthcare patients has been stolen and is now available for sale on a data breach forum as of earlier this week.
HCA, one of the largest companies in the U.S., first acknowledged the breach earlier today. In a release, it warned patients that critical personal information had been compromised, including their full name, city and when and where they last saw a provider.
“This may be one of the biggest healthcare-related breaches of the year and one of the biggest of all time. That said, despite affecting millions of people, it may not be as harmful as other breaches as, based on HCA’s statement, it doesn’t seem to have impacted diagnoses or other medical information,” Brett Callow, an analyst at New Zealand-based Emsisoft, told CNBC.
Amazon Tells Court It Shouldn’t Have to Police Its Platforms for Hate Speech and Disinformation
Amazon has become the first U.S. company to challenge the European Union’s upcoming laws on online disinformation. The online retail giant filed a petition to the general court in Luxembourg on Tuesday, in relation to rules on tackling disinformation, the Financial Times first reported.
The EU’s Digital Services Act — which comes into force on August 25 — is a wide-ranging set of regulations designed to regulate big tech companies. 19 companies have been designated as “very large online platforms” or “very large online search engines” because they reach at least 45 million monthly active users.
Amazon has asked the court to annul its designation as a “very large online platform” (VLOP) under the act, according to a summary of the petition viewed by Insider.
That’s primarily because Amazon says some of these rules shouldn’t apply to it as an online retailer — rather than a social network or search engine — and that other large retailers in the EU haven’t received the same designation.
Appeals Court Says Minnesota Governor Had Authority to Impose Mask Mandate
Gov. Tim Walz had the legal authority to mandate face masks when he declared a public health emergency in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled Monday.
Walz declared a peacetime emergency in March 2020 and mandated masking in most indoor public spaces in July 2020. The conservative Upper Midwest Law Center sued, challenging the mask requirement as unconstitutional. Walz lifted the mandate in May 2021, at which point the Court of Appeals declared the case moot.
But the Minnesota Supreme Court in February sent the case back to the appeals court to settle the key legal question behind the case: whether the Minnesota Emergency Management Act of 1996 authorizes a governor to declare a peacetime emergency during a public health emergency such as the pandemic. The high court called it an “important issue of statewide significance.”
The appeals court rejected as “unreasonable” the plaintiffs’ assertions that the coronavirus “most likely” originated from a laboratory leak, so that the resulting pandemic did not occur “naturally” and therefore was not an “act of nature” under the state law.
Meta Tells Australia Inquiry It Will Label Government-Affiliated Media Accounts
Social media giant Meta Platforms (META.O), owner of Facebook and Instagram, plans to label government-affiliated media accounts on its new Twitter-like platform Threads, an executive told an Australian inquiry on foreign interference on Tuesday.
The disclosure comes less than a week after Meta launched Threads, which is widely seen as similar to the microblogging site Twitter.
Twitter has removed tags from government-affiliated accounts since billionaire Elon Musk took it private in 2022, bringing complaints about degrading users’ media literacy.
