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Preparing Schools for the H5N1 Bird Flu They’re Likely to Face
As COVID-19 swept across the United States, schools were among the most highly affected public spaces. To prepare for a potential H5N1 avian influenza jump to humans, schools need to be preparing for the scenario now before a sustained transmission event occurs.
The response to COVID-19, which first appeared in the U.S. in early 2020, has been scrutinized by numerous case studies, after-action reports, and Congressional fact-finding hearings. Despite the federal government investing billions of dollars to improve public health infrastructure and efforts to streamline red tape through the new White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, significant challenges remain. While these efforts suggest that the U.S. should be better prepared for the next pandemic, recent warnings from experts give pause for concern.
Robert Redfield, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recently predicted that avian flu will cause a pandemic. Seth Berkley, the former CEO of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, derided the shocking ineptitude of the U.S. response to the avian flu outbreak among dairy cattle.
In school settings, testing, contact tracing, masks, and isolation cannot be counted on to control the spread of an avian flu that has adapted to efficiently infect humans. Before COVID-19, these nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) were a cornerstone of pandemic response strategy. While such interventions can work for short periods of time in small settings, lack of consistent use and variability in operation make them unreliable over longer periods. It is also clear that views towards masks and other NPIs are influenced by political preferences, which further contribute to differing patterns of behavior and personal use.
Who takes responsibility for public health measures in the United States today emerges from a widely fragmented patchwork of incomplete administrative policies and political authorities that compete with fundamental ideals of free speech, individualism, and personal liberty. This realty, compounded by the fog of uncertainty in the early days of any viral outbreak, when nearly everything about an emerging infectious disease is up in the air, suggests a high likelihood of repeating the disjointed approach to COVID-19, with some jurisdictions opting to close schools to in-person instruction, others moving to hybrid learning, and others making no changes and remaining open.
Musk Announces X to Sue ‘Perpetrators and Collaborators’ Behind Advertising Censorship Cartel
Elon Musk announced on Thursday that social media platform X will sue ‘perpetrators and collaborators’ who have colluded to control online speech, as revealed on Wednesday by an interim staff report released by the House Judiciary Committee.
“Having seen the evidence unearthed today by Congress, has no choice but to file suit against the perpetrators and collaborators in the advertising boycott racket,” Musk wrote on his platform, adding “Hopefully, some states will consider criminal prosecution.”
The House report details a coordinated effort by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative to demonetize and suppress disfavored content across the internet.
The Committee report details multiple instances of GARM’s coordinated efforts to influence and censor online content. Perhaps the most notable example is the recommendation for a boycott of Twitter following Elon Musk’s acquisition. GARM members, including Danish energy company Ørsted, were advised to pull their advertising from Twitter, a move that significantly impacted Twitter’s revenue. Internal emails show GARM’s satisfaction with the result, with GARM leader Rob Rakowitz boasting about the impact on Twitter’s financials.
‘Alarming Mental Health Crisis’: Virginia GOP Governor Calls for Phone-Free Schools in Executive Order
Virginia’s Republican governor called for “phone-free” schools in an executive order on Tuesday, citing the mental health and learning crisis among school-age children.
Governor Glenn Youngkin’s order directs the education department to issue guidance on establishing “cell phone-free education policies and procedures” for public schools.
The order cites the “alarming mental health crisis” among teenagers that is “driven in part by extensive social media usage and widespread cell phone possession among children.”
Human Rights Groups Raise Alarm Over UN Cybercrime Convention
As the date for finalizing the UN Cybercrime Convention approaches, human rights organizations are warning that it threatens freedom of expression and normalizes domestic surveillance.
After two and a half years of negotiations and seven negotiating sessions, the UN General Assembly is set to either adopt or reject the draft on August 9. The aim is to create an over-arching legal framework for nations to cooperate on preventing and investigating cybercrime and prosecuting cybercriminals.
However, rights organizations are concerned that the document hampers freedom of expression, enables state surveillance and could threaten the work of journalists and security researchers.
The Aftermath of the Supreme Court’s NetChoice Ruling
The NetChoice decision states that tech platforms can exercise their First Amendment rights through their content moderation decisions and how they choose to display content on their services — a strong statement that has clear ramifications for any laws that attempt to regulate platforms’ algorithms in the name of kids online safety and even on a pending lawsuit seeking to block a law that could ban TikTok from the U.S.
“When the platforms use their Standards and Guidelines to decide which third-party content those feeds will display, or how the display will be ordered and organized, they are making expressive choices,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority opinion, referring to Facebook’s News Feed and YouTube’s homepage. “And because that is true, they receive First Amendment protection.”
NetChoice isn’t a radical upheaval of existing First Amendment law, but until last week, there was no Supreme Court opinion that applied that existing framework to social media platforms.
The justices didn’t rule on the merits of the cases, concluding, instead, that the lower courts hadn’t completed the necessary analysis for the kind of First Amendment challenge that had been brought. But the decision still provides significant guidance to the lower courts on how to apply First Amendment precedent to social media and content moderation.
The decision is a revealing look at how the majority of justices view the First Amendment rights of social media companies — something that’s at issue in everything from kids online safety bills to the TikTok “ban.”
Musk Says Next Neuralink Brain Implant Expected Soon, Despite Issues With the First Patient
Elon Musk said Wednesday that his brain tech startup Neuralink hopes to implant its system in a second human patient within “the next week or so.” Executives also said the company is making changes to address the hardware problems it encountered with its first participant.
In a livestream with Neuralink executives on Wednesday, Musk said the company is hoping to implant its device in the “high single digits” of patients this year. It is not clear when or where those procedures will take place.
In January, Neuralink implanted its BCI in its first human patient, 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh, at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, as part of a clinical study approved by the FDA.
Neuralink also plans to insert some threads deeper into the brain tissue and track how much movement occurs, according to the company livestream. Dr. Matthew MacDougall, head of neurosurgery at Neuralink, said it will insert threads “at a variety of depths” now that it knows retraction is a possibility.
Mall of America’s New AI-Fueled Facial Recognition Tech Sparks Pushback
Privacy advocates and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are raising concerns about the Mall of America’s use of AI-fueled facial recognition technology.
Why it matters: The expansive shopping and entertainment center says the tool will help keep customers and staff safe, but critics argue it presents privacy and civil rights concerns.
How it works: The system, made by a company called Corsight, scans the mall’s security video feeds and looks for matches to a “person of interest” (POI) photo database.
The intrigue: State Sens. Omar Fateh (DFL-Minneapolis) and Eric Lucero (R-Saint Michael) — legislators who are polar opposites on most political issues — issued a joint news release slamming MOA’s decision. They called it a “direct assault on privacy” that creates a clear “potential for racial profiling, harassment, and false arrests.”
New Privacy Tools Promise Protection From Prying Eyes
In a world increasingly dominated by data, privacy has become both a precious commodity and a pressing concern. Enter differential privacy to protect individuals’ data in an era where information, like water, is vital but potentially destructive if not properly contained.
But what exactly is differential privacy, and how does it measure up to the promises it makes?
The mechanism behind differential privacy involves adding a certain amount of “noise” to the data. This noise is designed to be statistically negligible for the overall dataset but significant enough to obscure individual data points. This way, even if an adversary gets their hands on the data, they cannot extract specific information about any individual.
Using differential privacy allows organizations to collect and analyze data without exposing the details of the original individual entries. Imagine you have a dataset containing the ages of all employees in a company. Differential privacy allows you to determine the average age without revealing any specific employee’s age.
