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Search Engines Required to Stamp Out AI-Generated Images of Child Abuse Under Australia’s New Code
Artificial intelligence tools could be used to generate child abuse images and terrorist propaganda, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has warned while announcing a world-leading industry standard that requires tech giants to stamp out such material on AI-powered search engines.
The new industry code covering search engines, to be detailed on Friday, requires big tech firms like Google, Microsoft’s Bing and DuckDuckGo to eliminate child abuse material from their search results, and to take steps to ensure generative AI products can’t be used to generate deepfake versions of that material.
Julie Inman Grant, the eSafety Commissioner, said the companies themselves needed to be at the forefront of reducing the harm their products can create. “We are seeing ‘synthetic’ child abuse material come through,” she said. “Terror organizations are using generative AI to create propaganda. It’s already happening. It’s not a fanciful thing. We felt it needed to be covered.”
NYC Teachers Win Jobs Back With Backpay After Refusing COVID Vaccine
A New York judge said Wednesday that 10 employees fired by the New York City Department of Education for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine must be reinstated with back pay.
In a major victory for vaccine mandate opponents, State Supreme Court Judge Ralph J. Porzio held that the city’s denials of religious accommodation to certain employees were unlawful, arbitrary and capricious. The case, DiCapua v. City of New York, concerned school principals, teachers and other educators who sued after city officials rejected their claims for a religious exemption to the vaccine mandate.
New York City’s vaccine mandate for all Department of Education workers was in effect from Oct. 1, 2021, to Feb. 10, 2023. Thousands of teachers and other education workers lost their jobs under the policy for refusing to comply with the mandate.
“The Court’s decision not only grants relief to these 10 teachers, but it also sets an important precedent for all other teachers denied religious accommodation,” Sujata Gibson, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said.
NYPD Spent Millions to Contract With Firm Banned by Meta for Fake Profiles
New York law enforcement agencies have spent millions of dollars to expand their capabilities to track and analyze social media posts, new documents show, including by contracting with a surveillance firm accused of improperly scraping social media platforms for data.
Documents obtained by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (Stop), a privacy advocacy non-profit and shared with the Guardian, reveal the New York police department in 2018 entered a nearly $9m contract with Voyager Labs, a surveillance company that has been sued by Meta for allegedly using nearly 40,000 fake Facebook accounts to collect data on an estimated 600,000 users.
NYPD purchased Voyager Labs products that the company claims can use artificial intelligence to analyze online human behavior and detect and predict fraud and crimes, the documents show.
A separate document reveals a contract between the Queens district attorney and Israeli firm Cobwebs Technologies, which also offers social network mapping products, as well as tools to track location information through phones. It’s unclear how much that contract is worth.
Mask Mandate Map Shows Where Restrictions Are Being Implemented, Blocked
With the U.S. seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases over the past few weeks, mask mandates are in the news again, prompting Republican governors to vow they will prevent their return.
Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a 15.7% increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations from August 20 to 26, compared with the week before. While those hospitalizations are still significantly down from peaks in 2021, the CDC recently released a warning about a new coronavirus variant, BA.2.86, which it said “may be more capable of causing infection in people who have previously had COVID-19 or who have received COVID-19 vaccines.”
In response to the COVID-19 news, some schools and hospitals have announced a return to mask mandates for a specific period. But Republican governors have spoken out against any return to masking in their states.
Newsweek has compiled a list and map of all the states that oppose a return to mask mandates, as well as places that have implemented masking requirements.
Lawsuit: BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Denied Workers Religious Exemptions From COVID Vaccine Mandate
In a federal lawsuit, 3 former employees of BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee claim the insurer violated their civil rights when firing them after they were denied a religious exemption from the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
The plaintiffs are James Abernathy of Davidson County, Tennessee, Heather Click of Sullivan County, Tennessee and Kerrie Ingle of Soddy-Daisy.
In August of 2021, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee (BCBST) announced a company-wide vaccine mandate. All employees were given 6 weeks to either comply and get the shot, or request an exemption.
This is not the first lawsuit BCBST is facing over this issue. Back in June, an appeals court ruled the insurer wrongly fired a worker for sharing her concerns about the vaccine mandate with state lawmakers.
Tuberville Demands Answers on Military Rankings of Discharged Service Members Who Refused COVID Vaccine
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., sent a letter to three military secretaries on Friday demanding answers about the rankings of service members who were discharged after refusing the COVID-19 vaccine in 2021.
Tuberville said that although the speedy development of the COVID-19 vaccines was an “impressive scientific feat,” the cooperation “to have these vaccines administered was met with an appropriate level of hesitation by many as test trials were quick, limited, and distributed with relatively no understanding of long-term health complications.”
“It was subsequently discovered that some vaccines were created and tested using cell lines derived from aborted fetal tissue,” Tuberville wrote. “This revelation led to widespread objections of conscience for civilians and service members with genuine religious convictions.”
Tuberville wants each secretary to provide information about what “staffing mitigation” plan was in place to handle a personnel shortage “due to the hasty COVID-19 vaccine mandate” by Sept. 22.
Chinese Operatives Are Using AI Photos to Trick American Voters and Turn Them Against Each Other, Microsoft Says
China has since March been using generative AI to create viral content that divides U.S. voters on social media — and is getting better at it, Microsoft analysts say.
Analysts from the center released a report on Thursday highlighting digital threats from China and North Korea, and said Chinese operatives are influencing their targets to “a greater extent than previously observed.”
They added that the new images are more eye-catching, and real U.S. voters are reposting them even though they contain “common indicators of AI generation,” like more than five fingers on a hand.
It’s now also harder to tell that these accounts aren’t genuine, Microsoft’s analysts said.
