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Rutgers Will Still Require COVID Vaccine, Masks
While nearly all universities and colleges across the country have dropped the strictest guidelines stemming from the pandemic, a few holdouts remain.
More than 100 schools still require students to be vaccinated in order to attend classes in person, according to No College Mandates, a group that tracks COVID-19 policies in higher education. A smaller number of schools, including Rutgers and Georgetown, still require indoor masking.
Rutgers said incoming students must abide by a COVID-19 vaccine mandate, according to the school website. The mandate says there will be no exceptions, though it also says evaluation of exception requests will be made on a case-by-case basis. Even if students are hypothetically granted an exemption to the vaccination rule, on-campus attendance is not guaranteed, and students will be required to undergo testing.
New Jersey State Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R) told NewsNation that he is ready to stand with any student who may be disenrolled from the university over their vaccination status, going so far as to call Rutgers administrators cowards.
Major Movie Studio Brings Back Mask Mandate Amid Spike in COVID Cases
Major Hollywood studio Lionsgate has brought back mask mandates to nearly half its employees amid a spike in COVID-19 cases. Sommer McElroy, response manager for Lionsgate/Starz, announced the new policy in an internal memo obtained by Deadline after several employees tested positive.
The mandate will be in effect until further notice for the third and fifth floors of the five-story building at the company’s flagship office in Santa Monica, according to the email cited by Deadline.
Every employee also is required to perform a self-screening before arriving at work every day and must notify McElroy and remain at home if they exhibit any symptoms or have traveled internationally in the prior 10 days.
Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia, also announced a mask mandate for everyone on campus, citing “reports of positive cases among students in the Atlanta University Center” as the reason, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Gates Foundation Pushes National Digital ID Tech
The digital era, with its myriad of innovations, has ushered in a wave of conveniences — but at what cost? The recent advocacy by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the Modular Open-Source Identification Platform (MOSIP) will now be under scrutiny by privacy advocates, questioning the broader implications of such a global digital identification system.
The Seattle-based Gates Foundation, guided by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, has actively endorsed MOSIP’s undertakings with a sizable $10 million pledge.
The Foundation’s aim seems to focus on propelling a universal digital identification framework, especially targeting low to middle-income economies. But as history has shown, with such advancements often come potential pitfalls, particularly regarding personal privacy.
The MOSIP initiative, although modeled after India’s controversial state digital ID (Aadhaar) system initiated in 2009, prompts a plethora of concerns.
The Feds Asked TikTok for Lots of Domestic Spying Features
U.S. government regulators reportedly tried to come to an agreement with TikTok to prevent banning the app that would have granted the federal government vast powers over the app. That’s according to a draft of a deal between TikTok and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) obtained by Forbes, a contract that would have given multiple U.S. agencies unprecedented access to the app’s records and operations.
Many of the concessions the government asked of TikTok look eerily similar to the surveillance tactics critics have accused Chinese officials of abusing. To allay fears the short-form video app could be used as a Chinese surveillance tool, the federal government nearly transformed it into an American one instead.
CDC Weighs Lower Infection Safety Precautions for Healthcare Workers
While seemingly esoteric and of little impact to health workers and the public, a little-known group called HICPAC is creating a firestorm in the public health community.
HICPAC, the Healthcare Infection Control Advisory Committee, advises the CDC on guidelines for infection control in healthcare settings. They met in June and published slides summarizing their draft guidelines. This is where the controversy began.
The planned HICPAC revisions will water down infection control protections, particularly for aerosol transmission and MDRO (multiply drug-resistant organisms). Most immediately worrisome is their conclusion that plain surgical masks (aka “baggy blues”) are equivalent to N95s and provide adequate protection to healthcare workers and patients. There is abundant evidence to the contrary. It is clear that N95s offer far better protection against aerosols, such as COVID-19, and other inhaled pathogens. Why are they ignoring this?
The CDC responded to this letter only now, a month later, and just before the Aug 22 meeting. They offered no substantive or specific rebuttal, but gave platitudes about their dedication to “improving healthcare quality,” and commitment to “transparency, communication, and stakeholder engagement.” They also claim that they meet the guidelines for transparency required by the Federal Advisory Committees Act (FACA).
Elon Musk’s X Is Testing User Verification That Requires Government ID
X (the social media site formerly known as Twitter) is in the process of launching a new identity verification feature that could prove controversial. The feature, which is currently only offered to/forced on premium “Blue” subscribers, asks users to fork over a selfie and a picture of a government-issued ID to verify that they are who they say they are.
The new feature was originally noted by app researcher Nima Owji, who posted screenshots of X’s announcement to his profile last week. “Verify your account by providing a government-issued ID. This usually takes about 5 minutes,” a screenshot shared by Owji reads. The notice includes a consent form that users must agree to that allows X to store the user’s data, including biometric data, for up to 30 data for the purposes of “safety and security, including preventing impersonation.”
While the details surrounding X’s new verification process are scant, the system seems reminiscent of other web verification efforts that have popped up in recent years. Most notably, X’s system brings to mind the ID.me biometric verification process that the IRS piloted for its website last year. Like X’s new feature, that system also involved submitting biometric data and government-issued documentation to a third-party contractor to verify a user’s identity.
Kids’ Mental Health Worsened With Pandemic-Related German School Closures
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, German school closures were likely linked to a surge in mental health crises among 11- to 17-year-old adolescents, according to a new analysis of a national survey and crisis helpline data. The study, published last week in Science Advances, also suggests regions with the longest school closures saw the worst mental health outcomes among youth.
The study included an analysis of nationwide mental health survey data collected from May to June 2020 from 907 adolescents and their parents, and compared answers given among a cohort of teens from August 2015 to November 2017. Also included were high-frequency data from the largest German crisis helpline from January 2019 until December 2020.
The authors of the study said German school closures were a natural experiment for assessing student mental health; all 16 German federal governments mandated statewide school closures between March 16 and 18, 2020, and schools reopened on different dates beginning as early as April 20, 2020.
Each additional week of school closures was associated with an increase in psychosomatic symptoms of depression, behavioral and emotional health problems, and depressive symptoms. When paired with nationwide survey data, school closures were linked with a significant decrease in health-related quality of life (HRQoL). The effects were seen most strongly in boys, younger children (age 11), and adolescents in homes with limited space, the authors said.
The Internet Is Turning Into a Data Black Box. An ‘Inspectability API’ Could Crack It Open
In today’s digital world, injustice lurks in the shadows of the Facebook post that’s delivered to certain groups of people at the exclusion of others, the hidden algorithm used to profile candidates during job interviews, and the risk-assessment algorithms used for criminal sentencing and welfare fraud detention. As algorithmic systems are integrated into every aspect of society, regulatory mechanisms struggle to keep up.
Over the past decade, researchers and journalists have found ways to unveil and scrutinize these discriminatory systems, developing their own data collection tools. As the internet has moved from browsers to mobile apps, however, this crucial transparency is quickly disappearing.
I have put these tools to use as a data journalist to show how a marketing company logged users’ personal data even before they clicked “submit” on a form and, more recently, how the Meta Pixel tool (formerly the Facebook Pixel tool) tracks users without their explicit knowledge in sensitive places such as hospital websites, federal student loan applications, and the websites of tax-filing tools.
In addition to exposing surveillance, browser inspection tools provide a powerful way to crowdsource data to study discrimination, the spread of misinformation, and other types of harms tech companies cause or facilitate. But in spite of these tools’ powerful capabilities, their reach is limited. In 2023, Kepios reported that 92% of global users accessed the internet through their smartphones, whereas only 65% of global users did so using a desktop or laptop computer.
Don’t Let China and Russia Export Digital Censorship
From Nicaragua’s adoption of Russia’s oppressive foreign agent law to Huawei’s provision of surveillance technology to Uganda, the Kremlin and the People’s Republic of China have been reliable exporters of authoritarian tactics and innovators in surveillance and repression. Thanks in large part to China and Russia, new research indicates that digital censorship is on the rise.
The foremost innovator in this area is China, which oversees a vast censorship ecosystem. Through internet infrastructure, advanced legislation and regulatory mechanisms and its “Great Firewall,” the Chinese government can control all aspects of digital information within its borders.
While Russia trails China in terms of technical sophistication, its censorship regime is catching up and remains potent. For example, Russia’s notorious Foreign Agents Law is used to censor individuals and organizations that criticize the Putin regime and block websites and social media accounts of “unregistered” entities, while government-controlled telecommunications regulatory bodies have further tightened the noose on free expression.
The impact of this rising tide of digital censorship is evident across multiple countries, and it poses a severe threat to free speech, human rights and the principles of an open society.
