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Southern Maine Community College Falsely Told Healthcare Students They Still Required COVID Shots
Southern Maine Community College (SMCC) was inaccurately telling students in its health science program that they needed to receive a COVID vaccine or lose their place in the program, despite the state ending the COVID vaccine mandate for healthcare workers in 2023. The policy remained in place until Thursday, when the parent of a student, who asked not to be named, reached out to school officials with concerns.
“The state has removed religious and philosophical exemptions so you are choosing to mandate this controversial vaccine for students to access your ‘free’ education. This ‘free’ education comes with a price tag of a loss personal choice and religious freedom,” said a concerned parent while reaching out to school officials. “It is time to reassess this policy to mandate the COVID vaccine for health science students,” she added.
The concerned parent reached out to The Maine Wire, saying that the school wanted to require her daughter to receive a COVID vaccine before she could participate in clinical classes. The parent said that students were required to use a third-party software program, Castle Branch, which cost students $130 to use, to submit their immunization records before they would be allowed to participate in the program.
Amish Lose Bid to Reinstate NY Vaccine Law’s Religious Exemption
Amish parents and schools can’t force New York to recognize a religious-based exemption to its vaccine mandate for schoolchildren, a federal appeals court said Tuesday.
It’s the second time the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has considered the case, having previously affirmed a lower court’s 2024 decision dismissing allegations that the state’s elimination of the mandate’s religious exemption violates the plaintiffs’ First and 14th Amendment free-exercise rights.
The US Supreme Court sent it back to the Second Circuit after ruling, in a separate case, that a Maryland school system likely violated parents’ constitutional rights by using …
A US City’s Push for Facial Recognition on Public Buses Ignites Debate Over Security and Privacy
Officials in Kansas City, Missouri, are preparing to equip cameras on some public buses with facial recognition software capable of identifying passengers who appear on a list of banned riders or missing persons.
Supporters and opponents alike view the effort as a major litmus test for tapping the AI-powered software on a US public transportation system, positioning Kansas City as the latest epicentre of a fierce debate over whether the safety benefits of artificial intelligence are worth the privacy costs.
“The idea of running face recognition on a camera that is pointed on live spaces in public is a line that until recently has never really been crossed in the last 25 years,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the Project on Speech, Privacy and Technology at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Many Child Safety Features on Social Apps Don’t Work, Report Finds
Child safety features on the most popular social media apps often don’t work as advertised, a new report found. Researchers at New York University and Northeastern University tested dozens of safety features promoted by Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube in recent years, as the products came under fire for enabling adolescent loneliness, bullying and sexual exploitation.
The study found that in some cases, the safety tools appeared to be missing altogether, while in others they were broken, easily circumvented or difficult to find. Snapchat, for example, allowed adults to send message requests to children they didn’t know and suggested that teenagers befriend adult strangers. Instagram, too, prompted teen accounts to connect with unknown men.
And TikTok, after promising to remove content that promoted eating disorders, recommended searches to teen accounts such as “how to pretend to eat your food.”
The findings, many of which were replicated by The New York Times, come in the midst of an intense backlash against the social media industry.
Fox News Poll: Move Over Big Brother, Voters See Big Tech as Greater Threat to US
As artificial intelligence (AI) companies race toward IPOs and scramble to construct data centers, a new Fox News Poll finds voters now view Big Tech — not Big Government — as the greater threat to the nation’s future, a striking turnaround from seven years ago.
By a 5 percentage-point margin, more see Big Tech as the greater threat to the outlook of the country rather than big government (52% vs. 47%). That’s a 28-point reversal since 2019 — three years before ChatGPT burst onto the scene — when more were concerned about the government (58%) than tech companies (35%).
The swing toward a greater dread of Big Tech can be seen across most groups, with only a few exceptions, like very conservative voters (by 11 points) and moms (+8), who view big government as the bigger villain. Republicans and independents are split on which is worse.
“As AI integrates into daily life, voters are reevaluating where power resides,” says Democratic pollster Chris Anderson, whose firm Beacon Research conducts the poll with Republican Daron Shaw. “Concerns about government overreach are shifting toward tech companies, as voters question whether rapid growth has concentrated too much power in institutions largely outside of public accountability.”
Supreme Court Rules Your Cellphone Location Data Is Protected by the Fourth Amendment
Law enforcement officials frequently draw virtual fences around areas of interest and require Google to identify every cellphone in the area using cell location history. Dubbed a “geofence search,” officers obtain a warrant that permits a multistep, give-and-take information sharing process between officers and tech employees that winnows down and identifies subjects.
On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that whenever police obtain an individual’s cell location data, even from a third-party tech company, it constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable government searches and seizures, and it does so in part by requiring search warrants based on probable cause that describe the particular person or thing to be searched. A geofence warrant that identifies every phone in an area does not align well with those requirements.
