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TikTok Could Face $29 Million Fine From U.K. Over Kids’ Data Privacy Violations
TikTok could face a fine of 27 million pounds, or roughly $29 million, over allegations of violating the United Kingdom’s children’s data privacy protection standards, a U.K. agency said Monday.
TikTok allegedly breached the U.K.’s protections for children’s data privacy between May 2018 and July 2020, in part by processing the data for children under 13 without appropriate parental consent, according to an investigation by the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
The ICO also found that TikTok breached privacy protections by failing to provide proper information to users in a transparent way, and processing “special category data” without legal grounds to do so, according to the announcement.
“We all want children to be able to learn and experience the digital world, but with proper data privacy protections. Companies providing digital services have a legal duty to put those protections in place, but our provisional view is that TikTok fell short of meeting that requirement,” Information Commissioner John Edwards said in a statement.
Federal Judge Grants Marines Class Action Status in Challenge to COVID Vaccine Requirement
A federal judge has granted class-action status for U.S. Marines in their fight against Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The ruling is another blow to the Biden administration and consistent with other court rulings that have found military branches are violating federal law.
Judge Steven Merryday of the U.S. District Court Middle District of Florida Tampa Division granted a classwide preliminary injunction for Marines serving in active and reserve duty who were denied religious accommodation requests from taking the COVID-19 vaccine.
Merryday preliminarily enjoined the Department of Defense from “enforcing against a member of the class any order, requirement or rule to accept COVID-19 vaccination, … from separating or discharging from the Marine Corps a member of the class who declines COVID-19 vaccination, and … from retaliating against a member of the class for the member’s asserting statutory rights under RFRA [Religious Freedom Restoration Act].
Manhattan Judge Says NYC Vaccine Mandate Can’t Be Enforced Against NYPD Union Members
A Manhattan judge on Friday barred enforcement of New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate against members of the city’s largest police union. The city vowed an immediate appeal of the ruling by Supreme Court Judge Lyle E. Frank, who said the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s mandate couldn’t be used to fire or put on leave members of the Police Benevolent Association.
In his ruling, Frank wrote that the city’s vaccine mandate is “invalid to the extent it has been used to impose a new condition of employment to current PBA members.” Frank ordered the reinstatement to the NYPD of any PBA member who was “wrongfully terminated” or put on unpaid leave for refusing to get vaccinated.
The union said the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene “exceeded” its legal authority when ordering the mandate, which in its view lacked a “rational basis.”
In a joint statement Friday, the Uniformed Firefighters Association, which represents rank-and-file firefighters, and the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, which represents FDNY commanders, praised Frank as a “common sense judge,” and said they would ask the department to reinstate their members fired or suspended because they refused COVID-19 vaccines.
Meta Executive Apologizes Over Inappropriate Content Seen by Molly Russell
A senior executive at Instagram’s owner has apologized after admitting that the platform had shown Molly Russell content that violated its policies before she died.
Elizabeth Lagone, head of health and wellbeing policy at Meta, acknowledged that some of the posts and videos had broken Instagram guidelines at the time, which prohibited the glorification, encouragement and promotion of suicide and self-harm.
Molly, 14, from Harrow, north-west London, killed herself in November 2017 after viewing extensive amounts of content online related to suicide, self-harm, depression and anxiety.
Fired WSU Coach Nick Rolovich Explains Why He Refused COVID Vaccine
Former Washington State football coach Nick Rolovich spoke publicly for the first time since being fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine during the 2021 season.
The website DailyWire+ published an interview with Rolovich on Friday. He said a “lack of answers” and “lack of dialogue” about the effects of the vaccine, along with his religious beliefs, led him to decide against the vaccine, which was mandated for state employees by Gov. Jay Inslee. ESPN first reported a story based on the interview.
This year Rolovich filed a $25 million wrongful-termination claim against Washington State, which fired him for cause with about $9 million remaining on his contract. Rolovich coached 11 games in less than two seasons. Four of his assistant coaches also were fired for not taking the vaccine.
CDC Says Some Nursing Homes and Hospitals No Longer Need to Require Universal Masking
Outside of communities seeing “high” levels of COVID-19 transmission, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has ended a blanket plea for Americans in hospitals and nursing homes to wear masks indoors.
The change, one of many published Friday evening to the agency’s guidance for COVID-19 infection control for healthcare workers, marks one of the final sets of revisions in a sweeping effort launched in August to overhaul the CDC’s recommendations for the virus.
Now, the CDC says facilities in just over a quarter of counties can “choose not to require” all doctors, patients and visitors to mask.
After Friday’s revisions, the agency now has exceptions for where masking “remains recommended.” These include situations like during an outbreak among patients, or “when caring for patients who are moderately to severely immunocompromised.”
Judge Rejects Attempt by 5 Western University Students to Block COVID Booster Mandate
An attempt by five Western University students to block the school’s COVID-19 booster shot mandate has been rejected by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
In a written decision, Justice Kelly Tranquilli stated that as an independent, autonomous and self-governing institution, Western can govern its affairs separately from the province, and collecting personal health data from staff and students is its way of implementing the vaccination policy.
The students — Simon Hawke, Tiana Gleason, Michael Puzzo, James Donalds and Ashanté Camara — alleged that by collecting the personal medical information of students, Western is violating the Freedom of Information and Protection of the Privacy Act (FIPPA), arguing that it was not categorized as “lawfully authorized activity,” according to section 38(2).
They wanted an injunction to block Western from requiring students to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination to enroll in classes, attend campus “or for any other purpose” and to destroy the existing personal vaccine data they collected to date from earlier in the pandemic.
U.S. Should Follow Canada and Scrap COVID Border Rules, Lawmakers Urge White House
Lawmakers from the northern United States are cheering reports that Canada is poised to abandon COVID-19 vaccination rules for foreign visitors, and want President Joe Biden’s administration to follow suit.
Montana Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week to urge him to lift the vaccine requirement for truck drivers and other travelers entering the U.S.
Vaccine mandates at the border are making international trade “harder and more expensive,” particularly in states like Montana that enjoy a special trading relationship with their northern neighbors, he continued.
New York congressman Rep. Brian Higgins, the co-chair of the multipartisan, bilateral Canada-U.S. Inter-Parliamentary Group, said the question of vaccination rules at the border was a hot topic during recent meetings in DC. Higgins said it would defy logic for the U.S. to maintain its vaccine mandate for foreign travelers in light of Biden’s own claim in a recent “60 Minutes” interview that “the pandemic is over.”
Social Media Challenges Pose Dangers to Even the Most Well-Adjusted Kids, Experts Say
A recent FDA warning about the latest social media challenge to go viral has brought renewed focus on the dangerous trend that endangers impressionable children and teens.
The need for affirmation on social media heightened by peer pressure can lead to dangerous consequences, as stunts like eating a Tide detergent pod, holding one’s breath until they pass out or ingesting chicken cooked in NyQuil have injured young people and even led to fatalities.
“That’s where the danger lies, in immature children combined against very powerful algorithms and the desire to be liked and accepted,” said Titania Jordan, chief parent officer of Bark Technologies, an app that gives parents control over their kids’ internet activities.
“Social media rewards outrageous behavior, and the more outrageous, the bigger the bragging rights,” the American Academy of Pediatrics said on its website. “It’s a quick-moving, impulsive environment, and the fear of losing out is real for teens. That environment plays into a teen’s underdeveloped ability to think through their actions and possible consequences.”
U.S. Courts Must Stop Shielding Government Surveillance Programs From Accountability
Imagine the government has searched your home without a warrant or probable cause, rifling through your files, your bedroom dresser, your diary. You sue, arguing that the public record shows it violated your fourth amendment rights. The government claims that it has a defense, but that its defense is secret. The court dismisses the case.
That’s precisely what the federal government has increasingly said it can do in cases related to national security — under the so-called “state secret privilege.” It can violate constitutional rights and then defeat any effort at accountability by claiming that its defense is secret — without even showing its evidence to a court behind closed doors.
The latest installment in this troubling trend involves the National Security Agency’s monitoring of Americans’ international internet communications.
Elon Musk to Face Deposition by Twitter Lawyers Ahead of Trial
Elon Musk is scheduled to spend the next few days with lawyers for Twitter, answering questions ahead of an October trial that will determine whether he must carry through with his $44 billion agreement to acquire the social platform after attempting to back out of the deal.
The deposition, planned for Monday and Tuesday and a possible extension on Wednesday, will not be public. As of Sunday evening, it was not clear whether Musk will appear in person or by video.
Twitter’s attorneys are expected to use the interview to try to show that Musk abandoned the deal due to falling financial markets and not because the company misled him about the real number of users or hid security flaws, as he alleged.
AI Is Probably Using Your Images, and It’s Not Easy to Opt out
Viral image-generating artificial intelligence (AI) tools like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion are powered by massive datasets of images that are scraped from the internet, and if one of those images is of you, there’s no easy way to opt out, even if you never explicitly agreed to have it posted online.
In one stark example of how sensitive images can end up powering these AI tools, a user found a medical image in the LAION dataset, which was used to train Stable Diffusion and Google’s Imagen. On the LAION Discord channel, a user expressed their concern for their friend, who found herself in the dataset through Have I Been Trained, a site that allows people to search the dataset.
The person whose photo was found in the dataset said that a doctor photographed them nearly 10 years ago as part of clinical documentation and shared written proof that she only gave consent to her doctor to have the image, not share it. Somehow, the image ended up online and in the dataset anyway.
