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U.S. Intelligence Has Amassed ‘Sensitive and Intimate’ Data on ‘Nearly Everyone’
When it comes to data privacy in our present, hyper-connected age, many of your worst fears and biggest anxieties are probably correct. Yes, smartphones and our manifold other devices collect an incredible array of information on our habits, choices, and movements at all times.
Yes, all of this information is compiled by companies to sell for profit. Yes, the U.S. government is among the many clients buying up that data. And yes, it represents a significant and persistent threat to your civil liberties and safety, as confirmed in a newly released report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) — the top dog among all of our nation’s spy agencies.
The declassified document made public on Friday, was completed in January 2022, following 90 days of assessment. It was commissioned by Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence in the Biden Administration, at the behest of Oregon Senator Ron Wyden. Haines agreed to look into the issue of how U.S. intelligence uses commercially available data during her confirmation hearing, and now the result of that inquiry is fully on display.
The newly released report affirms a mounting bevy of evidence that government agencies — from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Pentagon — are compiling vast stores of for-sale data.
Taken altogether, the information that the government is easily able to purchase from data brokers rivals anything that’s been available to intelligence agencies in the past — even through warrants, wiretaps, and Fourth Amendment due process.
Suicide Hotlines Promise Anonymity. Dozens of Their Websites Send Sensitive Data to Facebook
Websites for mental health crisis resources across the country — which promise anonymity for visitors, many of whom are at a desperate moment in their lives — have been quietly sending sensitive visitor data to Facebook, The Markup has found.
Dozens of websites tied to the national mental health crisis 988 hotline, which launched last summer, transmit the data through a tool called the Meta Pixel, according to testing conducted by The Markup. That data often included signals to Facebook when visitors attempted to dial for mental health emergencies by tapping on dedicated call buttons on the websites.
In some cases, filling out contact forms on the sites transmitted hashed but easily unscrambled names and email addresses to Facebook.
The Markup’s testing revealed that more than 30 crisis center websites employed the Meta Pixel, formerly called the Facebook Pixel. The pixel, a short snippet of code included on a webpage that enables advertising on Facebook, is a free and widely used tool. A 2020 Markup investigation found that 30% of the web’s most popular sites use it.
Rep. Kiley Slams HHS for ‘Forcing’ Mask Mandates on 2-Year-Olds During the COVID Pandemic
Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., harangued Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra Tuesday on why the government forced 2-year-olds to wear masks without evidence of public health benefits.
During a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing Tuesday, titled “Examining the Policies and Priorities of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS),” Kiley shared his concerns over why young children were required to wear masks during the coronavirus pandemic and demanded to know if “forcing 2-year-olds to wear masks save[d] lives?”
When Becerra did not say if there were any public health benefits to the child mask mandate, Kiley turned up the heat and accused him of avoiding the question. The Republican congressman also asked why HHS policy did not align with “the international norm” that did not require young kids to wear masks. Becerra again did not directly answer the question.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, HHS policy required children as young as 2 to wear masks, even when outdoors. While most states no longer enforce COVID-19 health mandates, the HHS website, last updated in February 2023, still states that masking helps prevent the spread of COVID among “children under 2 who cannot wear masks.”
Texas Bans Kids From Social Media Without Parental Consent
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill Tuesday banning kids under 18 from joining a wide variety of social media sites without parental consent.
The bill, HB 18, requires social media companies to receive explicit consent from a minor’s parent or guardian before they’d be allowed to create their own accounts starting in September of next year. It also forces these companies to prevent children from seeing “harmful” content — like content related to eating disorders, substance abuse, or “grooming” — by creating new filtering systems.
Texas’ definition of a “digital service” is extremely broad. Under the law, parental consent would be necessary for kids trying to access nearly any site that collects identifying information, like an email address. There are some exceptions, including sites that primarily deliver educational or news content and email services. The Texas attorney general could sue companies found to have violated this law.
The law’s requirements to filter loosely defined “harmful material” and provide parents with control over their child’s accounts mirror language in some federal legislation that has spooked civil and digital rights groups.
A Massive Vaccine Database Leak Exposes IDs of Millions of Indians
On the evening of June 11, a journalist from the Kerala-based news portal The Fourth reported that a Telegram bot in a channel called “hak4learn” was offering access to the private data of millions of Indians.
All a user had to do was put in a phone number or Aadhaar (India’s national ID) number, and it would return details including their name, passport number, and date of birth. The data appears to have come from India’s CoWIN vaccination tracking app, which has more than 1 billion registered users.
“The scale of the data breach is what makes it hard to guess the repercussions,” says Srikanth Lakshmanan, a researcher who runs the digital payments collective Cashless Consumer. “Conservative estimates mean at least personal data of several hundred million users was exposed.”
The CIA Is Begging Congress to Please Keep Spying on U.S. Citizens Legal
High-level officials from the CIA, FBI, and NSA are testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, asking Congress to continue allowing the agency to spy on the communications of U.S. citizens.
They are urging Congress to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — one of the nation’s most hotly contested government surveillance programs. Intelligence agencies have long cited the powerful 2008 FISA provision as an invaluable tool to effectively combat global terrorism, but critics, including an increasing number of lawmakers from both parties, say those same agencies have morphed the provision into an unchecked, warrantless domestic spying tool. The provision is set to expire at the end of this year.
Federal agents urged lawmakers to reauthorize 702 without adding new reforms that could potentially slow down or impair operators’ access to intelligence. The officials danced around advocates’ concerns of civil liberty violations and instead chose to focus on a wide array of purported national security threats they say could become reality without the “model piece of legislation.”
Multiple intelligence agents speaking Tuesday invoked the specter of September 11th and warned lawmakers new safeguards limiting agents’ ability to rapidly access and share intelligence on Americans could risk a repeat scenario.
“I will only support the reauthorization of section 702 If there are significant, significant reforms,” Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin said. “And that means, first and foremost, addressing the warrantless surveillance of Americans in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
Forget ChatGPT: Facial Recognition Emerges as AI Rulebook’s Make-or-Break Issue
The battle brewing over artificial intelligence in Brussels is about facial recognition.
On Tuesday, the European Parliament’s plenary passed its version of the Artificial Intelligence Act after two years of wrangling. The text — backed by a coalition of Socialists and Democrats, center-right Christian Democrats of the EPP, liberals from Renew, and Greens — passed by a large margin, with 499 lawmakers giving it their final approval, 28 voting against and 93 abstaining. Yet until the very end, one issue threatened to scupper the deal: The Parliament’s text, as presented, would ban facial recognition.
The Parliament wants to crack down on the use of facial recognition in public places, an area considered one of artificial intelligence’s riskiest uses.
AIs powering facial-recognition cameras (and tools designed to identify individuals relying on other biometric indicators) are dogged by biases, sometimes struggling to tell non-white people apart, for instance. Politicians also support the ban as a way to differentiate between Europe’s approach to AI and that of authoritarian countries.
NJ Drops COVID Vaccine Mandate for Healthcare Workers
Melissa Alfieri-Collins never received a COVID-19 vaccine. The registered nurse declined to be vaccinated after the pandemic hit, granted a religious exemption from Jersey Shore University Medical Center, where she worked in the oncology unit.
But in October 2021, when Neptune Hospital said unvaccinated workers had to be regularly tested, she quit, believing the policy was unfair. Alfieri-Collins wants to be a nurse again — especially as the state grapples with a severe nursing shortage — but not if she’s forced to be immunized against the coronavirus.
“I have thousands of nurses that would be ready and willing to enter back into the workforce, but are simply just not willing to be vaccinated against COVID at this point,” said Alfieri-Collins, who advocates on behalf of about 5,000 nurses as part of the New Jersey Coalition for Vaccination Choice.
Now the 46-year-old Holmdel resident and her colleagues can get back to work. On Monday, Gov. Phil Murphy signed an executive order lifting the COVID-19 vaccination requirements for healthcare workers in New Jersey, effective immediately. The state’s pivot comes after the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced last week that it will rescind its rule requiring most employees of certified healthcare providers to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Blaming the Unvaccinated During the COVID Pandemic: The Roles of Political Ideology and Risk Perceptions in the USA
The Journal of Medical Ethics reported:
Individuals unvaccinated against COVID-19 (C19) experienced prejudice and blame for the pandemic. Because people vastly overestimate C19 risks, we examined whether these negative judgments could be partially understood as a form of scapegoating (i.e., blaming a group unfairly for an undesirable outcome) and whether political ideology (previously shown to shape risk perceptions in the USA) moderates scapegoating of the unvaccinated.
We grounded our analyses in scapegoating literature and risk perception during C19. We obtained support for our speculations through two vignette-based studies conducted in the USA in early 2022. We varied the risk profiles (age, prior infection, comorbidities) and vaccination statuses of vignette characters (eg, vaccinated, vaccinated without recent boosters, unvaccinated, unvaccinated-recovered) while keeping all other information constant.
We examine whether negative sentiments towards the C19 unvaccinated can be considered a form of scapegoating (vs a protective response against social deviants). To be clear, we make no attempt to identify a threshold after which any social threat becomes sufficiently dangerous to justify the punishment or ostracism of those who do not comply with widely endorsed mitigation measures.
However, because perceptions of what is harmful can vary and, if erroneous, can lead to suboptimal actions, we call attention to how negative judgments can be misdirected. Specifically, because C19 represents a highly uncertain situation, and there is evidence that people overestimate C19 risks, the ill will directed against the unvaccinated could lead to unjustified blaming of people who are not as much of a threat to public health as many believed.
Walensky Faces COVID Panel for Final Time as CDC Director
Rochelle Walensky, the outgoing director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Tuesday in a retrospective discussion touching on the federal government’s failures and successes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In what may likely be her final appearance before Congress before she leaves at the end of this month, Walensky was greeted with a somewhat more cordial line of questioning from Republican lawmakers on the committee, who sought to place more blame on the White House than on the CDC director for the policy failures they perceived during the pandemic.
Committee chair Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) focused much of his criticisms on President Biden, suggesting in his opening remarks that the White House had attempted to block Walensky from testifying on Tuesday. He also blasted the definitive remarks Biden made during the pandemic, such as when he said, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations” in 2021.
One of the main points of contention that GOP members of the panel brought against Walensky directly was a concern that Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), had undue access and influence over CDC’s guidance regarding school reopenings and closings.
‘Very Little Thought’ Given to ‘Damaging’ Impact Lockdown: COVID Inquiry
The COVID-19 Inquiry, the U.K.’s probe into the handling of the pandemic has officially begun its public hearings and has heard from its lead lawyer that the “potentially massive impact” of lockdowns was not considered. On Tuesday, the first full hearings started into the inquiry, which will be split into six areas, looking first into the U.K.’s handling of the coronavirus.
The aims of the COVID Inquiry will be to “examine, consider, and report on preparations and the response” to the pandemic in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.”
The inquiry’s lead counsel, Hugo Keith KC said there was very “little thought” given to lockdowns. “Very little thought was given to how, if it proved to be necessary, something as complex, difficult and damaging as a national lockdown could be put in place at all.
“Equally, there appears to have been a failure to think through the potentially massive impact on education and on the economy in trying to control a runaway virus in this way.”
