Big Brother News Watch
Amazon Sued for Not Telling New York Store Customers About Facial Recognition + More
Amazon Sued for Not Telling New York Store Customers About Facial Recognition
Amazon did not alert its New York City customers that they were being monitored by facial recognition technology, a lawsuit filed Thursday alleges.
In a class-action suit, lawyers for Alfredo Perez said that the company failed to tell visitors to Amazon Go convenience stores that the technology was in use. Thanks to a 2021 law, New York is the only major American city to require businesses to post signs if they’re tracking customers’ biometric information, such as facial scans or fingerprints.
The lawsuit says that Amazon only recently put up signs informing New York customers of its use of facial recognition technology, more than a year after the disclosure law went into effect. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. For Amazon Go to successfully track its customers and the items they take, it has to continuously monitor their bodies, the lawsuit says.
“To make this ‘Just Walk Out’ technology possible, the Amazon Go stores constantly collect and use customers’ biometric identifier information, including by scanning the palms of some customers to identify them and by applying computer vision, deep learning algorithms, and sensor fusion that measure the shape and size of each customer’s body to identify customers, track where they move in the stores, and determine what they have purchased,” it says.
COVID and Kids’ Mental Health: Financial Hardship Took a Big Toll
It’s well-known that COVID-19 protocols caused financial hardship — particularly among lower- and middle-class families — and now a new study highlights the toll those struggles took on children’s mental health.
A new study led by researchers from Columbia University and Weill Cornell Medicine, both in New York, suggests that family economic hardship was the biggest driver of “stress, sadness and COVID-related worry” among kids.
Researchers analyzed data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health. That study surveyed 6,030 children between 10 and 13 years old in 21 U.S. cities between 2020 and 2021.
Dr. Michael Roeske, a licensed clinical psychologist and senior director of the Newport Healthcare Center, which is headquartered in California, was not involved in the study but said he was not surprised that financial struggles impacted kids’ mental health.
Your Brain May Not Be Private Much Longer
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are working on brain-computer interfaces that could pick up thoughts directly from your neurons and translate them into words in real time, which could one day allow you to control your phone or computer with just your thoughts.
Some of these technologies can offer very valuable help to people who need it. Brain-computer interfaces, for example, are already helping some paralyzed people. But neurotechnology can also seriously threaten privacy and freedom of thought. In China, the government is mining data from some employees’ brains by having them wear caps that scan their brainwaves for anxiety, rage or fatigue.
Lest you think other countries are above this kind of mind-reading, police worldwide have been exploring “brain-fingerprinting” technology, which analyzes automatic responses that occur in our brains when we encounter stimuli we recognize. The claim is that this could enable police to interrogate a suspect’s brain; his brain responses would be more negative for faces or phrases he doesn’t recognize than for faces or phrases he does recognize.
The tech is scientifically questionable, yet India’s police have used it since 2003, Singapore’s police bought it in 2013, and the Florida State Police signed a contract to use it in 2014.
‘I’m Not a Doctor Just FYI’: The Influencers Paid to Hawk Drugs on TikTok
A young TikTok user has long wavy hair, glowing makeup and a radiant smile. She’s slim and wants you to know exactly why: she’s using Wegovy, a prescription drug originally developed to treat diabetes that’s become a popular drug for weight loss.
She’s what’s called a patient influencer. They have no medical training and claim that they’re simply sharing their personal experiences with their TikTok and Instagram followers. But in this quickly growing and largely unregulated arena, it’s gotten harder to tell when influencing crosses legal and ethical lines.
In exchange for hawking a health product or service, a patient influencer can expect to earn anywhere from “the low hundreds to a few thousand dollars” per social media post, depending on the health condition and the size of their online following, according to Amrita Bhowmick, the chief community officer at Health Union, a marketing firm that bought Wego in 2021.
Patient influencers can do this thanks to some of the world’s most permissive laws on prescription drug marketing. The U.S. is one of two countries (the other is New Zealand) that allow direct-to-consumer (DTC) ads for prescription drugs.
DeSantis Says He Prevented ‘Faucian Dystopia’
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Thursday touted his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that his willingness to buck the advice of federal health officials in some of the darkest days of the outbreak prevented his state from becoming a “Faucian dystopia.”
“I think we were one of the first states to see the experts were getting it wrong, and we resolved to charge a different course,” he continued. “We are not going to let this state descend into a Faucian dystopia, not on our watch.”
While he ordered a statewide lockdown shortly after the onset of the pandemic in 2020, he eventually carved out a national reputation as a fierce critic of many of the COVID-related restrictions pushed by federal health officials like Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Speaking alongside state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on Thursday, DeSantis rehashed his long-running beef with the federal response to the outbreak, proclaiming that the “experts that designed” many of the pandemic-era policies — school and business closures, mask mandates and the like — “were wrong about almost everything.”
Parents Group Demands Meeting With Meta and TikTok Over Child Suicide
A family advocacy group called Parents Together published an open letter Thursday demanding a meeting with the heads of Meta and ByteDance, arguing that the companies knowingly expose children to a variety of dire threats, including the risk of suicide, and that they refuse to address these problems in lieu of growth and profit.
The open letter describes a number of horror stories from families who say their children fell victim to the harms posed by social media, including suicides, accidental deaths from viral “challenges,” hospitalizations from eating disorders, sexual abuse, and more.
Meta and ByteDance, the parent companies of Facebook and TikTok, respectively, “have imposed on unwitting children and families — anxiety and depression, cyberbullying, sexual predators, disordered eating, dangerous challenges, access to drugs, addiction to your platforms, and more — every single day,” Parents Together Action said in the letter. The companies “have chosen your profits, your stockholders, and your company over children’s health, safety, and even lives over and over again.”
Parents Together Action says it wants to bring Meta and TikTok together for a meeting with the parents whose children fell victim to social media harm, resulting in emotional trauma, dangerous eating disorders, and even death by suicide.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Says AI Will Reshape Society, Acknowledges Risks: ‘A Little Bit Scared of This’
The CEO behind the company that created ChatGPT believes artificial intelligence technology will reshape society as we know it. He believes it comes with real dangers, but can also be “the greatest technology humanity has yet developed” to drastically improve our lives.
“We’ve got to be careful here,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. “I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this.” Altman sat down for an exclusive interview with ABC News’ chief business, technology and economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis to talk about the rollout of GPT-4 — the latest iteration of the AI language model.
In his interview, Altman was emphatic that OpenAI needs both regulators and society to be as involved as possible with the rollout of ChatGPT — insisting that feedback will help deter the potential negative consequences the technology could have on humanity. He added that he is in “regular contact” with government officials.
GPT-4 is just one step toward OpenAI’s goal to eventually build Artificial General Intelligence, which is when AI crosses a powerful threshold that could be described as AI systems that are generally smarter than humans.
Private Company NewsGuard on Defense in GOP Crackdown on Big Tech Censorship
The Washington Times reported:
Republican lawmakers probing Big Tech censorship say one of their next targets must be NewsGuard, an operation that bills itself as an “anti-misinformation” warrior but which conservatives say is another avenue for silencing voices on the right.
NewsGuard is one of a web of private companies that purports to police the news business, delivering verdicts on which publications can be trusted and which cannot. It bills its work as “apolitical,” but critics say it consistently finds fault with reporting done by news outlets seen as conservative while excusing similar reporting by liberal outlets.
The New York-based company came under new scrutiny after witnesses told a House hearing this month that NewsGuard had collected nearly $750,000 from the Pentagon for its work.
Use of Meta Tracking Tools Found to Breach EU Rules on Data Transfers
Austria’s data protection authority has found that the use of Meta’s tracking technologies violated EU data protection law as personal data was transferred to the U.S. where the information was at risk from government surveillance.
The finding flows from a swathe of complaints filed by European privacy rights group noyb, back in August 2020, which also targeted websites’ use of Google Analytics over the same data export issue. A number of EU DPAs have since found the use of Google Analytics to be unlawful — and some (such as France’s CNIL) have issued warnings against the use of the analytics tool without additional safeguards. But this is the first finding that Facebook tracking tech breached the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
All the decisions follow a July 2020 ruling by the European Union’s top court that struck down the high-level EU-US Privacy Shield data transfer agreement after judges once again identified a fatal clash between U.S. surveillance laws and EU privacy rights. (A similar finding, back in 2015, invalidated Privacy Shield’s predecessor: Safe Harbor.)
We’re About to Find Out Whether AI Might Replace Those 200,000 Laid-off Tech Workers as Silicon Valley Prioritizes Efficiency
The biggest cull of workers in the tech industry’s history, combined with big leaps forward in the development of artificial intelligence means we’ll soon have an answer to a pressing question: Whether AI will replace jobs and make a bunch of us kind of … redundant at work.
There’s also the rise of rich, influential CEOs saying a bunch of these redundant folks just did “fake work” and should never have been hired. And tech leaders are weighing up the potential of AI to be a technological panacea, one that could solve the problems of a bloated workforce.
Certainly, techies are thinking about what this means for humanity. GPT-4’s release immediately hit the top of the techie forum Hacker News. One top commenter wrote: “… It’s essentially a consultant that works for pennies per hour.” Another commented that the tool, right now, could replace junior lawyers, who are often given repetitive reading and summarizing tasks. (Others, it should be noted, were very skeptical that the model can replicate human quality.)
This confluence of factors may see the 200,000 or so highly paid humans who just lost their jobs in tech fully or partially replaced by machines. There are clear signs that this is going to happen as AI creeps into our daily lives.
New Zealand to Ban TikTok From Government Devices
New Zealand’s parliament will ban TikTok from all parliamentary devices, amid mounting international security concerns surrounding the app.
The country’s MPs were informed by the parliamentary service on Friday that the Chinese-owned video-sharing app would be blocked from all parliamentary devices at the end of the month, and were told via email that “the Service has determined that the risks are not acceptable in the current New Zealand parliament environment.”
New Zealand’s decision follows similar rulings by some of its major western allies. Earlier in the week, the U.K. government announced that TikTok would be banned, effective immediately, from ministers’ and civil servants’ mobile phones. The U.S., Canada, and the European Commission already had a ban in place.
OpenAI’s GPT-4 Is Closed Source and Shrouded in Secrecy + More
OpenAI’s GPT-4 Is Closed Source and Shrouded in Secrecy
OpenAI released a 98-page technical report on Tuesday to accompany its unveiling of its latest large language model, GPT-4. Among the hype surrounding the model’s new capabilities, such as its ability to pass the bar exam, is growing criticism from AI researchers who point out that the paper is not transparent or “open” in any meaningful way.
The report, whose sole author is listed as the company rather than specific researchers, explicitly says, “Given both the competitive landscape and the safety implications of large-scale models like GPT-4, this report contains no further details about the architecture (including model size), hardware, training compute, dataset construction, training method.”
This means that OpenAI did not disclose what it used to train the model or how it trained the model, including the energy costs and hardware used for it, making GPT-4 the company’s most secretive release thus far. As Motherboard has noted before, this is a complete 180 from OpenAI’s founding principles as a nonprofit, open-source entity.
AI researchers are warning about the potential consequences of withholding this information. Emily M. Bender, a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington, tweeted that this secrecy did not come as a surprise to her. “They are willfully ignoring the most basic risk mitigation strategies, all while proclaiming themselves to be working towards the benefit of humanity,” she tweeted.
California School Board Sues TikTok, Snap, Google Over Youth Mental Health Crisis
A California school board is suing giant social media companies for allegedly creating a “destructive environment for children” and leaving parents and educators to deal with what they deemed is a growing mental health crisis among the youth.
The 107-page lawsuit, filed Monday in Northern California on behalf of the San Mateo County Board of Education and the San Mateo County Superintendent of Schools Nancy Magee, names some of the biggest names in social media, including YouTube, Google, Snap Inc. and TikTok.
The suit alleges the companies use artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver harmful content to children.
The lawsuit said the tech companies have knowingly created an “unprecedented mental health crisis” in pursuit of profit by purposefully designing their platforms to be addictive and to deliver harmful content to young users.
Silicon Valley Bank Collapse Produces an Early Winner: Digital Banks
The deluge of new account requests began hitting San Francisco-based Mercury last Thursday morning, the day after Silicon Valley Bank announced that it had sold $21 billion in securities at a $1.8 billion loss and needed to raise more capital.
Over the weekend, as federal bank regulators scrambled to make sure SVB’s failure didn’t set off a broader bank run, Mercury’s workers scrambled too; its normal account-opening staff was doubled to 60, as risk and compliance pros, plus volunteer software engineers and salespeople (who got a crash course in how to verify and approve new customers), pitched in.
In both cases, the extraordinary measures seem to have paid off–for now, at least. Regional banks have stabilized. And according to venture capitalists, Mercury has likely been the biggest winner so far among the fintech digital banks.
Immad Akhund, Mercury’s 38-year-old CEO and cofounder reports that in just six days his 470-person company has added more than $2 billion in deposits and thousands of customers to the 100,000 accounts it had before. He started Mercury six years ago, he says, precisely because he believed a technology-based banking platform could provide better service to startups than SVB. “I had a lot of respect for [SVB]. I used them at my previous company,’’ he says. “I’m sad about it personally. It’s been a real mix of emotions.”
Biden Admin Demands TikTok’s Chinese Owner Sell Stakes or Risk Being Banned: Official
The Biden administration is demanding TikTok’s Chinese owner sell its stake in the app or risk getting banned, the company and a U.S. official told ABC News.
TikTok confirmed to ABC News on Wednesday that it was recently contacted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS). The company said CFIUS prefers for ByteDance to sell its stake in TikTok, rather than reach an agreement with the U.S. government over national security concerns.
This move is an escalation and comes as the administration has been publicly hardening its stance against TikTok. Last week, the White House came out in support of bipartisan legislation that could be used to ban TikTok.
In a statement to ABC News, TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said: “If protecting national security is the objective, divestment doesn’t solve the problem: a change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access. The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, U.S.-based protection of U.S. user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting and verification, which we are already implementing.”
W.H.O. Do You Trust?
Trust in public health has been shattered — half of America has lost faith in the scientific community altogether. Apparently blind to that loss of trust and the urgent need for transparency, our current government is doubling down on World Health Organization (WHO) decrees that directly circumvent public oversight.
The WHO has drafted a new global Pandemic Accord. Before seeing anything final in what will be legally binding, the U.S. ambassador to the WHO, Pamela Hamamoto, on February 27 imprudently promised “The United States is committed to the Pandemic Accord.”
Americans should be concerned that the latest WHO agreement in progress is not classified as a treaty. America’s treaties require congressional approval. That’s key to a representative government — the public gets input into how they are governed. But executive-signed “accords” circumvent the authority of the people. After all the public has endured in this pandemic at the hands of the government, is there any doubt that health emergency powers must have full, public vetting?
Despite protestations to the contrary, all signers of the Pandemic Accord clearly relinquish critical autonomy to the WHO. Most ominous is that WHO defines “public health emergency” on its own terms — giving it full leeway to determine the fundamental justification for public restrictions. We already know there is ambiguity within the U.S. on that definition. When you’re going to invoke emergency measures, there must be clarity on the terms and time limits of the emergency. Why should any sovereign nation allow a third party to legally define and impose such a critical state?
FCC Officials Owned Stock in Comcast, Charter, AT&T and Verizon, Watchdog Says
The Federal Communications Commission should be investigated for letting employees own stock in Comcast, Charter, AT&T, and Verizon, nonprofit watchdog group Campaign Legal Center told government officials.
“Federal law specifically bans FCC employees from owning ‘any stocks, bonds, or other securities of [any company] significantly regulated by the Commission,'” the nonprofit group said last week in a letter and detailed report sent to FCC Acting Inspector General Sharon Diskin. “Despite this ban, the most recent financial disclosures publicly available show that ethics officials allowed multiple FCC employees to own stock in telecommunications and other companies that appear to fall under the prohibition.”
Citing the most recent financial disclosure reports, which cover the Chairman Ajit Pai-era years of 2018 and 2019, the Campaign Legal Center report said FCC official Rosemary Harold owned Comcast stock with a value between $3,003 and $45,000. Harold was the FCC Enforcement Bureau chief during that time and is now a deputy chief with the FCC Media Bureau. The report also said former FCC official Lisa Hone, then a deputy bureau chief, owned Charter Communications stock worth between $4,004 and $60,000.
Parents Fed up as Hundreds of Colleges Still Mandate COVID Vaccines: ‘Laboratory of Guinea Pigs’
Parents and students alike are still battling vaccine mandates at colleges nationwide more than three years after the pandemic first began.
Kristina Kristen, whose son attends the University of California-Irvine, is one of those parents. Even though her son was granted a religious exemption from the mandate, she said she is still “concerned” about the unknowns surrounding the shot.
She joined “Fox & Friends First” on Wednesday to discuss her angst surrounding the vaccine’s potential long-term side effects, and her broader scrutiny of the mandate. “They are creating a laboratory of guinea pigs by making our students take these shots without knowing the long-term effects,” she continued.
According to No College Mandates, there are at least 800 colleges that require the primary COVID vaccine, at least 250 that require a booster shot, and at least 25 that mandate a bivalent shot.
“We have to emphasize the fact that the COVID shots do not stop transmission or infection,” Kristen said. “Therefore, they serve no public health purpose, period, and this fact was known by vaccine makers very early on through their trials.”
CDC Bought Phone Data to Monitor Americans’ Compliance With Lockdowns, Contracts Show
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) purchased data from tracking companies to monitor compliance with lockdowns, according to contracts with the firms. The CDC paid one firm $420,000 and another $208,000. That bought access to location data from at least 55 million cellphone users.
The contracts, approved under emergency review due to the COVID-19 pandemic, were aimed at providing the CDC “with the necessary data to continue critical emergency response functions related to evaluating the impact of visits to key points of interest, stay-at-home orders, closures, re-openings and other public health communications related to mask mandate, and other merging research areas on community transmission of SARS-CoV-2,” the contracts, obtained by The Epoch Times, state.
While the data is deanonymized, it can be used to identify people, researchers have shown.
“It remains unclear why the CDC tracked millions of Americans during the pandemic and whether it continues to do so. In response to COVID-19, the CDC should have been prioritizing the development of treatments, effective testing and vaccine safety rather than tracking Americans’ daily lives,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) wrote to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
Meta’s ‘Single Largest Investment’ Is Now AI, Not the Metaverse
In stark contrast to its promise to deliver on the metaverse that led it to change its name at the end of 2021, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta has announced an unsurprising shift in direction.
In a letter to employees, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company’s “single largest investment” is now in advancing its AI strategy.
While artificial intelligence will undoubtedly find itself heavily integrated into the metaverse, the company’s sudden change of direction and heavy investment in AI begs the question of whether it’s seeking a short-term fix to the economic challenges that it’s very clearly facing.
OpenAI Checked to See Whether GPT-4 Could Take Over the World
As part of pre-release safety testing for its new GPT-4 AI model, launched Tuesday, OpenAI allowed an AI testing group to assess the potential risks of the model’s emergent capabilities — including “power-seeking behavior,” self-replication and self-improvement.
While the testing group found that GPT-4 was “ineffective at the autonomous replication task,” the nature of the experiments raises eye-opening questions about the safety of future AI systems.
“Novel capabilities often emerge in more powerful models,” writes OpenAI in a GPT-4 safety document published yesterday. “Some that are particularly concerning are the ability to create and act on long-term plans, to accrue power and resources (“power-seeking”), and to exhibit behavior that is increasingly ‘agentic.'” In this case, OpenAI clarifies that “agentic” isn’t necessarily meant to humanize the models or declare sentience but simply to denote the ability to accomplish independent goals.
Over the past decade, some AI researchers have raised alarms that sufficiently powerful AI models, if not properly controlled, could pose an existential threat to humanity (often called “x-risk,” for existential risk). In particular, “AI takeover” is a hypothetical future in which artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and becomes the dominant force on the planet. In this scenario, AI systems gain the ability to control or manipulate human behavior, resources, and institutions, usually leading to catastrophic consequences.
The U.K. Joins Other Countries in Banning TikTok From Government Devices
The U.K. has become the latest jurisdiction to ban the social video app TikTok from government devices, confirming reports that surfaced earlier this week.
The ban follows a security review ordered by U.K. ministers looking to establish whether government data could be compromised from social networks installed on work devices. Indeed, the review did include other social media apps, but the government has decided on a “precautionary ban” for TikTok only — likely because its use is limited in governmental roles, compared to something like Twitter. There is nothing to indicate that the Government has found any specific security concerns unique to TikTok.
However, the government has said that employees can still use TikTok on personal devices, while it will consider exemptions for work devices on a case-by-case basis.
Google Flexes Its Healthcare AI Muscle + More
Google Flexes Its Healthcare AI Muscle
Google showed off an array of new artificial intelligence (AI)-driven healthcare tools on Tuesday, from a souped-up chatbot that can shed light on your medical symptoms to enhanced search features that tell you if a doctor takes Medicaid.
Why it matters: There’s an arms race among big tech companies to infuse their products with AI — but the results, particularly in healthcare, can have unwanted consequences or pitfalls, like racial bias, privacy concerns and ethical problems.
Driving the news: The “large language model” that Google has been building for the medical world — an AI chatbot called Med-PaLM 2 — now consistently passes medical exam questions with a score of 85%, placing it at “expert” doctor level, the company said.
A rival generative AI tool, ChatGPT, also passed the medical exams — but just barely. (ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, just released a new, more powerful version of its underlying tech.)
Moody’s Cuts Outlook on U.S. Banking System to Negative, Citing ‘Rapidly Deteriorating Operating Environment’
In a harsh blow to an already-reeling sector, Moody’s Investors Service cut its view on the entire banking system to negative from stable. The firm, part of the big three rating services, said Monday it was making the move in light of key bank failures that prompted regulators to step in Sunday with a dramatic rescue plan for depositors and other institutions impacted by the crisis.
“We have changed to negative from stable our outlook on the U.S. banking system to reflect the rapid deterioration in the operating environment following deposit runs at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank (SNY) and the failures of SVB and SNY,” Moody’s said in a report.
The moves are important because they could impact credit ratings and thus borrowing costs for the sector. In its downgrade of the entire sector, the rating agency noted the extraordinary actions taken to shore up impacted banks. But it said other institutions with unrealized losses or uninsured depositors still could be at risk.
When ‘Scary Good’ AI Gets Even Better
With Tuesday’s release of OpenAI’s new GPT-4, generative AI just got a lot more powerful — and we got a fresh reminder of just how unprepared we are to deal with these new machines. Why it matters: The amazing computer systems that can now ace standardized tests and maybe even do your taxes are still disturbingly prone to errors, bias and hallucinations.
Details: GPT-4 is an updated, significantly more powerful version of the engine that powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While ChatGPT could score in the 10th percentile on the standard bar exam taken by lawyers, OpenAI says GPT-4 can score in the 90th percentile. GPT-4 is also able to pass most AP exams, OpenAI said.
Between the lines: AI is barreling forward even as society is still trying to come to grips with both its promise and the potential pitfalls.
That’s all leading some critics to sound alarm bells. Tristan Harris, the former Googler who now runs the Center for Humane Technology, is warning against making the same mistakes with the current generation of AI that were made in the early days of social media.
Do COVID Vaccine Mandates Still Make Sense?
Visitors to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, DC, receive a clear reminder that 3 years after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 10 March 2020, it’s far from over. Before entering, they must show a guard proof that they have been vaccinated against COVID-19.
Such demands were common around the world a year ago, with wide support from infectious disease scientists and public health researchers. But by now, almost everyone has had natural infections with SARS-CoV-2 or been vaccinated against the coronavirus — sometimes both — and it’s become clear that vaccine-induced immunity quickly loses its ability to prevent infection and spread of the latest variants. Some now say the mandates are outdated.
The persistent requirements are “baffling, to say the least,” says Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and director of the Vaccine Confidence Project. She spoke at a major infectious disease meeting this year that required all attendees to show they had had two doses of a vaccine — with no need for a recent booster. “It’s not like it’s going to mitigate the spread.”
Compared with Europe and Asia, the United States appears to be holding on to vaccine mandates more tightly. Many U.S. scientific groups, including NAS and AAAS (publisher of Science), still require their employees and all attendees at events and meetings to be vaccinated. Many universities continue to require vaccination or booster shots for students, staff, or both.
Maura Healey Ending COVID Public-Health Emergency, Vaccine Mandate in May
Gov. Maura Healey is ending the state’s COVID-19 public-health emergency and vaccine mandate on May 11, coinciding with the feds’ corresponding move.
Healey said in a press release Wednesday morning that the announcement two months in advance “allows additional time for impacted organizations to prepare for the end of the public health emergency.”
Notably among the changes that will come on May 11 is the vacating of Executive Order No. 595, which required state employees to get vaccinated. The administration touted the policy, which had been challenged in court, as having achieved its aims.
Trudeau Is Crushing Free Speech in Canada. Let It Be a Warning to the U.S.
Americans must have breathed a huge sigh of relief last year when the Biden administration announced they were pausing plans for a “disinformation governance board.” As a Canadian, I’m here to warn you against getting too comfortable.
Canadians made the mistake of taking free speech for granted. Now, President Biden’s friend, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is close to having new laws in place that would expand government regulation of online speech in Canada. In fact, Biden will be traveling to Canada later this month on an official state visit. For the sake of the United States, here’s hoping that Biden doesn’t get any ideas from Trudeau.
The Canadian legislation in question is known as Bill C-11, or the Online Streaming Act. Ostensibly a way to prioritize the “needs and interests” of Canadians, the Trudeau administration claims the act will ensure online algorithms promote Canadian content on social media and streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify. Yet when a multi-partisan group of Canadian Senators proposed an amendment to the legislation to protect what individual citizens say on social media from government oversight and regulation, the Trudeau administration rejected the amendment.
Taking these aspects of the legislation together, the Trudeau administration is asking the Canadian public to trust them with an unprecedented amount of control over the internet. As currently written, the law would grant federal government bureaucrats the power to deem a student’s YouTube channel insufficiently diverse, or to find a rapper’s music guilty of spreading “disinformation.” Everyday Canadians could have their social media and streaming accounts shut down or shadowbanned for creating content that’s rejected by a government-controlled algorithm.
Snapchat Adds New Parental Controls That Block ‘Sensitive’ and ‘Suggestive’ Content From Viewing by Teens
Snapchat launched parental controls on its app last year through the new ‘Family Center’ feature. Today, the company announced through a post on its online Privacy and Safety Hub it will now add content filtering capabilities that will allow parents to restrict teens from being exposed to content identified as sensitive or suggestive.
To enable the feature, parents can toggle on the “Restric Sensitive Content” filter in Snapchat’s Family Center. Once enabled, teens will no longer see the blocked content on Stories and Spotlight — the platform’s short video section. The text under the toggle specifies that turning on this filter won’t have an impact on content shared in Chat, Snaps and Search.
The changes come long after a 2021 Congressional hearing where Snap was grilled about showing adult-related content in the app’s Discover feed such as invites to sexualized video games, and articles about going to bars or porn. As Senators rightly pointed out, Snap’s app was listed as 12+ in the App Store but the content it was sharing was clearly intended for a more adult audience. Even the video games it advertised, in some cases, were rated as being aimed at older users.
TikTok Reportedly Considers Breaking off From ByteDance if the Bans Continue
The ByteDance-owned TikTok is facing a metric ton of western scrutiny over how much user data might be seen by Chinese government officials in Beijing. How best to proceed? One new report suggests TikTok may act like a wounded animal and gnaw off its own supports if it can’t fly free of government crackdowns.
On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported based on anonymous sources that TikTok’s internal leadership has discussed breaking off from China-based ByteDance. This would either result in the company going public or a sale to the highest bidder. TikTok is worth a pretty penny, nearly $50 billion by some estimates. At the same time, ByteDance is priced at around $220 billion, according to Bloomberg citing a recent private market investment.
Of course, such a desperate act would only take place if it can’t shake off the attention of government officials calling for bans. TikTok has been trying to fight off reports that it monitors the personal location of specific U.S. citizens. The company is working on “Project Texas,” which is an effort to move all U.S. user data to servers hosted by Oracle. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a multi-agency national security panel, is supposed to investigate how secure U.S. user data actually is, but Bloomberg reported that TikTok’s leadership is concerned that the review process has stalled out.
U.K. Expected to Ban TikTok From Government Mobile Phones
Britain is expected to announce a ban on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok on government mobile phones imminently, bringing the U.K. in line with the U.S. and European Commission and reflecting deteriorating relations with Beijing.
The decision marks a sharp reverse from the U.K.’s previously relaxed position, but some critics and experts said Britain should also extend the ban to cover personal phones used by ministers and officials — and even consider a complete ban.
Zuckerberg Was Warned on Social Media Addiction + More
Zuckerberg Was Warned on Social Media Addiction, Filing Says
Employees at Meta Platforms Inc. and ByteDance Inc. were aware of the harmful effects of their platforms on young children and teenagers but disregarded the information or in some cases sought to undermine it, according to claims in a court filing.
The revelations were disclosed in a lawsuit over social media addiction that had been filed previously but with key portions sealed from public view. An unredacted version filed over the weekend in federal court in Oakland, California, offers details about how much engineers and others, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, knew about the harms of social media and their misgivings about it.
The case in Oakland comprises a collection of scores of complaints filed across the U.S. on behalf of adolescents and young adults who allege that Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Google’s YouTube caused them to suffer anxiety, depression, eating disorders and sleeplessness. More than a dozen suicides also have been blamed on the companies, based on claims that they knowingly designed algorithms that drew children down dangerous and addictive paths. Several public school districts have filed suits, too, alleging they can’t fulfill their educational mission while students are coping with mental-health crises.
“These never-before-seen documents show that social media companies treat the crisis in youth mental health as a public relations issue rather than an urgent societal problem brought on by their products,” according to a statement by the three plaintiffs’ lawyers leading the lawsuit, Lexi Hazam, Previn Warren and Chris Seeger. “This includes burying internal research documenting these harms, blocking safety measures because they decrease ‘engagement,’ and defunding teams focused on protecting youth mental health.”
U.S. Government Agencies May Have Been Double Billed for Projects in Wuhan, China, Records Indicate; Probe Launched
The U.S. government may have made duplicate payments for projects at labs in Wuhan, China, through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), according to records reviewed by CBS News.
“What I’ve found so far is evidence that points to double billing, potential theft of government funds. It is concerning, especially since it involves dangerous pathogens and risky research,” said Diane Cutler, a former federal investigator with over two decades of experience combating white-collar crime and healthcare fraud.
Cutler found evidence of possible double payments as she investigated U.S. government grants that supported high-risk research in China leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. She was hired by Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, who took her records to USAID and the internal watchdog at USAID, which launched a new probe, details of which have not been previously reported.
Cutler said she has viewed over 50,000 documents, and that the U.S. government may have made duplicate payments for possible medical supplies, equipment, travel and salaries. Sources told CBS News that tens of millions of dollars could be involved.
Tech Investor David Sacks Predicts Next Stage of Silicon Valley Bank Crisis
Tech investor David Sacks has warned that regional banks will suffer from the ripple effects of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) as deposits will be moved to banks that are “too big to fail.”
Talking about the meltdown of the 40-year-old, California-headquartered bank on The Megyn Kelly Show, Sacks said: “It’s not about SVB anymore. It’s about the 20 banks and the cascade that comes next.”
Sacks claimed that JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the U.S. and currently the world’s largest bank by market capitalization, will benefit from the shake-up of the financial market which is likely to follow the meltdown of SVB. “Do you know where all these deposits are going from all these regional banks? They are flooding into the top four banks,” he said.
“If the Fed is not being clear that your deposits are safe, if you have any doubt about that, if there is a one percent chance that you might lose your money, why wouldn’t you go to a ‘too big to fail’ bank? This is the problem.”
Senators Unconcerned Over Economic Impact as They Move Toward TikTok Ban
As the Senate moves closer toward providing the Biden Administration with the power to ban Chinese-owned TikTok over national security concerns with the wildly popular visual social media app, an effort first initiated in the twilight of Donald Trump‘s presidency, there seems to be little concern in the upper chamber over the impact such a ban could have on U.S. commerce.
TikTok boasts more than 100 million American users — nearly one-third of the total population. And with this popularity, it has emerged as a prominent fixture within the American economy. According to a May 2021 Adweek-Morning Consult survey, 49% of TikTok users said they have purchased a product or service after seeing it promoted, advertised or reviewed on the app.
Newsweek asked members of the 12-person bipartisan group drafting the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act how they’re weighing the economic considerations of users who do business on TikTok as they move forward with the bill.
“Remove the platform, and other platforms will step up to the plate,” Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a member of the working group, told Newsweek. “We have to have American control.” Manchin’s opinion on the matter mirrored that of other lawmakers: National security concerns posed by TikTok outweigh its role in the U.S. economy, and other American social media platforms should have the ability to fill a TikTok void.
Michigan Governor Admits COVID Lockdowns Went Too Far
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) admitted on Sunday that her administration’s pandemic-era lockdown policies went too far, such as her April 2020 executive order barring most stores from selling gardening supplies, including seeds and plants, to Americans who wanted to grow their own fruits and vegetables.
“People said ‘oh, she’s outlawed seeds.’ It was February in Michigan, no one was planting anyway,” she continued (except it was in April). “But that being said, some of those policies I look back and think, you know, maybe that was a little more than what we needed to do.”
Whitmer’s office even published a list of prohibited items deemed “not necessary to sustain or protect life,” which couldn’t be sold during the height of the pandemic, and which required that businesses physically restrict customers from certain areas of stores, or remove nonessential items — including gardening items, flooring materials, furniture and paint.
Whitmer’s order even banned travel from one residence to another, including vacation properties, rental properties, or second homes within the state.
Law Group Alleges Stanford Fired Doctor for Criticizing COVID Policies: ‘Engaged in Employment Discrimination’
In Santa Clara, California, the Dhillon Law Group on Thursday filed a complaint against Stanford Health Care alleging that a doctor’s resignation was forced due to criticizing COVID-19 policies such as school closures, mask mandates and vaccine mandates.
Dhillon Law Group said further that Dr. Ram Duriseti made the decision not to get a COVID booster shot based on his analysis of the vaccine trial data, prior infection and pre-existing medical conditions.
The law group also claims that Stanford Health Care overlooked Dr. Duriseti’s non-compliance with its booster requirement, allowing him to continue to work in the pediatric emergency room.
Dhillon Law Group said that Stanford Health Care terminated Dr. Duriseti’s employment by “unilaterally converting his status to voluntary resignation” based on a “late and selective” enforcement of its booster mandate.
Here Are the Stadiums That Are Keeping Track of Your Face
In recent months, Madison Square Garden earned headlines for using facial recognition technology to ban or kick out people with tickets to their events. A Long Island attorney was removed from a Knicks game in December after getting flagged by the software. In January, a loyal Rangers fan was barred from watching his beloved team.
The use of facial recognition technology at sports stadiums goes far beyond MSG. I’ve tracked at least 20 other venues and stadiums across the country — including college sports venues — that have used this technology on their attendees, usually to admit them through the gates, although it’s unclear just how broadly this technology can be used by venues if they are inclined.
There are almost certainly many more, according to experts who say the lack of transparency about the use of technology has obscured its spread. It represents an extension of the surveillance network in private spaces that helps to amplify the power of law enforcement.
Privacy experts are also worried about the way data can be shared with law enforcement and the expanding surveillance network it creates. “It’s harder [for law enforcement] to set up in private locations, but the companies are kind of doing it for them,” said Katie Kinsey, chief of staff of the Policing Project at NYU Law. “Oftentimes, law enforcement only needs to ask these companies to hand it over; there’s no process that is required.”
It’s Been 3 Years Since COVID Lockdowns. But We Still Haven’t Learned From These 3 Mistakes
As the COVID pandemic reaches the three-year mark, and the public perception of a pandemic mindset finally fades, it is high time to review the mistakes that were made. We can find a pattern to learn from, especially as it applies to the government’s reaction. Themes that unfortunately characterize the response are dogma, dictum, mandate, censorship and so-called misinformation, as well as insensitivity to the collateral damage of interventions.
I have had unfettered access to Dr. Robert Redfield, former CDC director and one of the top virologists in the U.S. throughout the pandemic via multiple interviews and conversations. Redfield was curious about the possibility of a lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 from the beginning.
I wrote about the limited effectiveness of masks for the Wall Street Journal back in May 2020. Even in the OR, where they are used routinely, the proof is scant. But as the pandemic wore on, studies from Mass General Hospital, Bangladesh, and elsewhere, did show some effectiveness of masks in population control of viral spread. The Department of Defense used a simulation study to show they decreased spread on planes. But there were limitations.
As I wrote in USA Today in January 2021, the U.S. was an outlier when it came to not counting immunity from infection as a form of protection. In fact, Israel and the European Union allowed proof of infection (as well as vaccination) as a pass for entry to crowded places for six months afterward.
The Possibility of the Digital Euro
We have seen the emergence of cryptocurrencies from private actors and the concept of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) take hold globally. In this context, we need to consider how best to ensure our common currency — the euro — can keep pace with these developments and continue to meet the needs of our citizens and businesses. Hence, the possibility of the digital euro.
For many observers, the central question is: What makes a digital euro any different, or better, than the many innovative digital solutions already available? And the answer to this lies in “central bank money” — or “fiat currency.”
So, at the heart of the digital euro project is the objective to maintain the link between citizens and central bank money. For as a CBDC, the digital euro would be central bank money, convertible, one-to-one, with euro banknotes.
This conversation around a digital euro, which began in earnest when the ECB launched its investigation in 2021, has quickly moved from being a possibility to a probability. And while a final decision on whether to launch won’t be made for several years, it’s increasingly looking like a case of not if but when.
China to Reopen to Tourists, Resume All Visas Wednesday
China will reopen its borders to tourists and resume issuing all visas Wednesday as it tries to revive tourism and its economy following a three-year halt during the COVID-19 pandemic.
China is one of the last major countries to reopen its borders to tourists. The announcement Tuesday came after it declared a “decisive victory” over COVID-19 in February.
All types of visas will resume from Wednesday. Visa-free entry also will resume at destinations such as Hainan island as well as for cruise ships entering Shanghai that had no visa requirement before COVID-19.
Google Is About to Unleash AI for Gmail and Google Docs
Google announced it’s finally unleashing its generative AI tools Tuesday, bringing a set of features to Gmail and Google Docs that will automatically create drafts based on simple prompts. Google will also add new AI capabilities to its business products, including Google Cloud and a new API for developers
There’s no question AI is going to change the world, the only question is how much. Google CEO Sundar Pichai once offered a preview of his thinking. “AI is one of the most important things humanity is working on,” Pichai said in 2018. “It is more profound than, I dunno, electricity or fire.”
The heads of giant tech companies often make big, meaningless statements, but Pichai isn’t one of them. Where Tim Cook might tell you a shiny new iPad screen is going to change the world, Google’s CEO tends to be pretty reserved.
Pichai has been less hyperbolic as his company’s AI work shifts in the direction of actual products, but as Google focuses on technology that its leader compares to the invention of fire, it’s worth pausing to consider what that actually means. That’s especially true when Google is in a better position than any other company to introduce AI on a massive scale.
