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U.S. Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Order Curbing Biden Social Media Contacts
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday maintained a block on restrictions imposed by lower courts on the ability of President Joe Biden‘s administration to encourage social media companies to remove content deemed misinformation, including about elections and COVID-19.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito temporarily put on hold a preliminary injunction constraining how the White House and certain other federal officials communicate with social media platforms pending the administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana and a group of social media users had sued federal officials, accusing them of unlawfully helping suppress conservative-leaning speech on major social media platforms, such as Meta’s (META.O) Facebook, Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube and X, formerly called Twitter.
Friday’s action keeps the matter on hold until Oct. 20. This gives the justices more time to consider the administration’s request to block an injunction issued by a lower court that had concluded that administration officials likely coerced the companies into censoring certain posts, in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment free speech protections.
Dumbocracy Achieved: ACT Test Scores for U.S. Students Drop to 30-Year Low
The government-enforced lockdown of schools and months of forced remote learning during COVID have devastated the education of America’s future leaders. New data on ACT college admissions tests shows high school students’ scores have plunged to the lowest in over three decades.
According to data published by ACT, the nonprofit organization that administers the college readiness exam, the average composite score on the ACT test fell to 19.5 for the class of 2023, a decline of .3 points from 2022. The average scores in mathematics, reading, and science subjects were below ACT College Readiness Benchmarks, indicating fewer seniors than ever are ready for college. About 1.4 million high school seniors took the ACT test, and about 21% of them met benchmarks for college subjects. And a shocking 43% met none of these benchmarks.
Readers have well-understood the COVID crisis and government lockdowns unleashed a ‘learning poverty.’ Last fall, Anthony Fauci told corporate media he had “nothing to do” with school lockdowns and the resulting learning loss among public school students. But history shows Fauci is a liar.
Meanwhile, some universities and colleges no longer require applicants to submit ACT and SAT standardized tests. This may be because the education-industrial complex understands the dumbing down of the youth — plus, the continuation of the EDU bubble is only made possible by giving false promises of future success to the younger generation while strapping them with $100,000 in student debt.
Apple Accused of Not Doing Enough to Stop AirTag Stalking in Class-Action Lawsuit
Apple received a class action lawsuit filed last week from people who claim its AirTag tracking devices allegedly led to “multiple murders.” The lawsuit claims stalkers or would-be killers use AirTags to track their victims by slipping them into a bag, in a car or directly on the individual. It adds that Apple hasn’t taken adequate steps to “protect people from unwanted, dangerous tracking.”
Apple claims its AirTags are built to avoid or discourage unwanted tracking via a phone alert. Its website says that if someone else’s AirTag is placed in your bag or coat, for example, your iPhone will notice and send an alert saying: “AirTag Found Moving With You. The location of this AirTag can be seen by the owner.” The company further claims if the person can’t find the AirTag, after a certain amount of time, the device will play a sound to let the individual know where it is.
However, the lawsuit argues that because the alert isn’t immediate and AirTag won’t alert you if its owner is near, it has made it ideal for stalkers to track a person’s whereabouts. While Apple reduced the amount of time it takes for a person to receive an alert, the lawsuit claims individuals have reported not receiving a notification that they were being tracked until as much as a day after the device was planted on them. It cites one industry expert who says Apple takes an estimated four to eight hours before sending the message.
An increasingly concerning aspect of AirTags, the lawsuit says, is that Android users don’t have the same protections as iPhone users, because their devices run on a different operating system, meaning they won’t receive an alert that they’re being tracked. Apple plans to roll out the tracking option for Android users, but only after striking a deal with Google to collaborate on anti-stalking measures back in May, more than two years after Apple rolled out the AirTags.
British Columbia Court Hears Cases Pushing Back Against Dystopian Vaccine Passports
The British Columbia Court of Appeal set the stage for an intriguing legal discourse on the contentious vaccine passport mandate this month. This came in response to an appeal lodged against its initial dismissal by Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson in September. The disconnect at the heart of this debate revolves around the charge of discrimination embedded in the province’s controversial vaccination passport mandate.
The dissidents, among them the Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, hold the view that the prevailing vaccine passport system, an attack on civil liberties, is unconstitutional.
As reported by Rebel News, the appeal, lodged by individuals and advocacy groups alike, is symptomatic of an increasing concern over possible governmental surveillance and infringement on personal privacy rights. The justice panel, consisting of Justice Abriuox, Justice Groberman and Justice Skolrood, is entrusted with oversight of this delicate matter.
How a Billionaire-Backed Network of AI Advisers Took Over Washington
An organization backed by Silicon Valley billionaires and tied to leading artificial intelligence firms is funding the salaries of more than a dozen AI fellows in key congressional offices, across federal agencies and at influential think tanks.
The fellows funded by Open Philanthropy, financed primarily by billionaire Facebook co-founder and Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna, are already involved in negotiations that will shape Capitol Hill’s accelerating plans to regulate AI. And they’re closely tied to a powerful influence network that’s pushing Washington to focus on the technology’s long-term risks — a focus critics fear will divert Congress from more immediate rules that would tie the hands of tech firms.
Acting through the little-known Horizon Institute for Public Service, a nonprofit that Open Philanthropy effectively created in 2022, the group is funding the salaries of tech fellows in key Senate offices, according to documents and interviews.
The network’s fixation on speculative harms is “almost like a caricature of the reality that we’re experiencing,” said Deborah Raji, an AI researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who attended last month’s AI Insight Forum in the Senate.
She worries that the focus on existential dangers will steer lawmakers away from addressing risks that today’s AI systems already pose, including their tendency to inject bias, spread misinformation, threaten copyright protections and weaken personal privacy.
White House AI Order to Flex Federal Buying Power
The Biden administration’s long-awaited executive order on artificial intelligence is expected to leverage the federal government’s vast purchasing power to shape American standards for a technology that has galloped ahead of regulators, according to three people with knowledge of the White House’s deliberations.
The White House is also expected to lean on the National Institute of Standards and Technology to tighten industry guidelines on testing and evaluating AI systems — provisions that would build on the voluntary commitments on safety, security and trust that the Biden administration extracted from 15 major tech companies this year on AI, the people said.
Biden’s order is also expected to require cloud computing companies to monitor and track users who might be developing powerful AI systems, two people said. The EO is likely to contain provisions to streamline the recruitment and retention of AI talent from overseas and to boost domestic AI training and education as well, one person said.
The White House declined to comment on specific provisions in the executive order, which is still being finalized. It is expected to come out in late October.
