Big Brother News Watch
COVID Shots: Two if by Land, None if by Sea + More
COVID Shots: Two if by Land, None if by Sea
The Wall Street Journal reported:
Novak Djokovic isn’t playing at the Miami Open this week. The Serbian tennis star is unwelcome in the U.S. because he hasn’t been vaccinated against COVID. Although he had the virus in 2020, he was famously deported from Australia in January 2022 for the same reason — but he claimed the men’s singles title in this year’s Australian Open.
The U.S. is alone among developed countries in continuing to demand proof of COVID vaccination from visitors. Mr. Djokovic, who would also have needed a visa to enter the U.S., opted not to play in Miami when the Biden administration refused his request for an exemption from the vaccine requirement.
But there appears to be a way visitors can avoid the vaccine mandate. “It is not clear to me why, even by the terms of your own proclamation, Mr. Djokovic could not legally enter this country via boat,” Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote in a March 7 letter to Mr. Biden. Ferries from the Bahamas run to seaports in South Florida, and the website of Fort Lauderdale-based Balearia Caribbean declares: “Currently, no COVID test or vaccination is required to enter Florida when traveling by ferry.”
Mr. DeSantis asked for confirmation “that this method of travel into Florida would be permissible.” His press secretary, Bryan Griffin, says the governor received no answer.
Mr. Biden’s proclamation never made sense. By October 2021 it was clear that the shots don’t stop the viral spread. Foreigners are no more infectious than citizens and green-card holders, who weren’t subject to the mandate and have faced no COVID travel restrictions since June. The policy also hampers tourism, which was down 35% in 2022 compared with 2019. In Europe, which lifted restrictions last year, the decline was only 21%.
Lenient Rules for Biotech Research Put the World at Risk. Will AI Do the Same?
I offer this advice from personal experience. Two decades ago, I was a top official in the George W. Bush White House when another world-changing technology — genetic manipulation — transformed our future. Like generative AI, this new biotechnology was a once-in-a-generation advance that inspired both excitement and fear. In the years since biotechnology delivered many benefits, but it has also put the world at great risk — in part because of insufficient oversight.
All innovations have the potential to provide benefits and cause harm — what has been called “dual use” technology. For some people, generative artificial intelligence is an exciting and pivotal moment in technology, with far-reaching implications. For others, it portends a future of dangerous silicon-based sentient life forms making decisions over our lives that we can’t control or stop.
The risk of accidentally starting a pandemic must have seemed rather abstract to most Americans back then. No more. Today, polls show that many people believe that a laboratory manipulation of coronaviruses resulted in the creation of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
The community of AI researchers, entrepreneurs and regulators would do well to heed the lessons of biotech. My plea to them is to start thinking about safety now. Don’t wait for the first big problem of malfeasance or unintended consequences. Get ahead by planning for coordinated oversight, and continue to modify these plans as the technology moves forward.
Politics Aside, Did Indoor Vaccine Mandates Work?
Those who fail to learn from history, Winston Churchill warned in the aftermath of World War II, are doomed to repeat it. As the pandemic recedes and a sense of normalcy returns to our lives, those words are as relevant as ever. We are all eager to put three years of isolation, loss and hardship behind us. But unless we draw thoughtful lessons from our pandemic response, we leave ourselves just as vulnerable to the next crisis.
Governments at all levels took extraordinary steps to mitigate COVID-19’s impact. Among the most restrictive were rules requiring proof of vaccination to enter indoor venues like restaurants, gyms and event centers. From the summer of 2021 to the spring of 2022, nine major U.S. cities (New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco and Washington, DC) adopted these mandates, affecting tens of millions of Americans.
Now, a rigorous analysis of these policies has failed to detect any positive impact.
Across all nine major cities, indoor vaccine mandates had an insignificant effect on COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths. Moreover, the effect of the mandates on vaccination rates was also statistically negligible. In short, these policies did little, if anything, to blunt the pandemic.
A U.S. Agency Rejected Face Recognition — and Landed in Big Trouble
In June 2021, Dave Zvenyach, director of a group tasked with improving digital access to U.S. government services, sent a Slack message to his team. He’d decided that Login.gov, which provides a secure way to access dozens of government apps and websites, wouldn’t use selfies and face recognition to verify the identity of people creating new accounts. “The benefits of liveness/selfie do not outweigh any discriminatory impact,” he wrote, referring to the process of asking users to upload a selfie and a photo of their ID so that algorithms can compare the two.
Zvenyach’s rejection of face recognition, detailed in a report this month by the Office of the Inspector General of the General Services Administration, the agency that houses Login.gov, saw a government official draw a line in the sand in order to protect citizens from discrimination by algorithms. Face recognition technology has become more accurate, but many systems have been found to work less reliably for women with dark skin, people who identify as Asian, or people with a nonbinary gender identity.
The inspector general’s report finds that the GSA misled 22 agencies paying for use of Login.gov by claiming its service was fully compliant with National Institute of Standards and Technology requirements when it was not. An official from one federal agency told OIG investigators that Login.gov not complying with the standard left their agency at greater risk of fraud. Zvenyach did not respond to questions from WIRED about the report.
Lawmakers Blast TikTok in Hearing With CEO, Citing ‘Life and Death’ Issues
TikTok‘s CEO Shou Zi Chew is defending the company Thursday from charges that it poses a national security threat in front of a group of lawmakers who advocated for banning the popular short-video app.
Why it matters: The White House and TikTok’s critics in Congress say the app, which has 150 million U.S. users, puts their data at risk because TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company.
The big picture: The House Committee on Energy and Commerce members made it unequivocally clear they view TikTok as a dangerous social media app and a national security threat. Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Ca.) at one point cited “life and death” issues connected to the app.
Chew repeatedly downplayed its connections to China and referenced TikTok’s “unprecedented” data security practices compared to unnamed social media competitors. The committee didn’t care.
Lawmakers challenged Chew on the same issues that plague all social media platforms, including privacy, impact on children’s mental health and addiction.
In Congressional Hearing, TikTok Commits to Deleting U.S. User Data From Its Servers ‘This Year’
The plan is one part of TikTok’s larger agenda to stop the popular video entertainment app from being banned by the U.S. government over national security concerns. The company also aims to convince Congress that it has a number of protections included in its app designed to keep younger users safe, and is heavily relied on by both U.S.-based creators and small businesses to generate income, among other things.
With Project Texas, however, TikTok’s mission is focused on what CEO Shou Zi Chew referred to as a “firewall” that would seal off protected U.S. user data from unauthorized foreign access — meaning, of course, the CCP. In a bit of good branding, the name “Texas” refers to where Oracle is headquartered.
Tech Guru Jaron Lanier: ‘The Danger Isn’t That AI Destroys Us. It’s That It Drives Us Insane’
Is AI really capable of outsmarting us and taking over the world? “OK! Well, your question makes no sense,” Jaron Lanier, the godfather of virtual reality and the sage of all things web, says in his gentle sing-song voice. “You’ve just used the set of terms that to me are fiction. I’m sorry to respond that way, but it’s ridiculous … it’s unreal.” This is the stuff of sci-fi movies such as The Matrix and Terminator, he says.
Lanier doesn’t even like the term artificial intelligence, objecting to the idea that it is actually intelligent, and that we could be in competition with it. “This idea of surpassing human ability is silly because it’s made of human abilities.” He says comparing ourselves with AI is the equivalent of comparing ourselves with a car. “It’s like saying a car can go faster than a human runner. Of course, it can, and yet we don’t say that the car has become a better runner.”
But he doesn’t want us to get complacent. There’s plenty left to worry about: human extinction remains a distinct possibility if we abuse AI, and even if it’s of our own making, the end result is no prettier.
Although a tech guru in his own right, his mission is to champion the human over the digital — to remind us we created the machines, and artificial intelligence is just what it says on the tin. In books such as You Are Not a Gadget and Ten Reasons For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts, he argues that the internet is deadening personal interaction, stifling inventiveness and perverting politics.
Panera Bread Is Letting Customers Pay With Amazon’s Palm Reading Tech + More
Panera Bread Is Letting Customers Pay With Amazon’s Palm Reading Tech
Panera Bread isn’t telling its legion of customers to shove their hands directly into their broccoli and cheese bread bowl, but a few Missouri franchisees are letting their customers know they can throw their palms onto the kiosk to pay for their meal. It’s not the first time Amazon’s palm-reading payment tech has been seen outside an Amazon-owned business, though it shows that biometric scanners may be even more prevalent in the near future.
On Wednesday, Panera Bread announced it was deploying the Amazon One palm payment system to two of its shops in the company’s hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. The company said it plans to add even more to its restaurants in the coming months. First-time Amazon One users can pre-enroll online or sign up while placing their order.
Of course, it’s currently opt-in only, and customers don’t have to swipe in when they go to order. Amazon maintains its keeping customer’s biometric data secure and encrypted and has previously claimed it doesn’t store purchase information and only collects minimal data on where users shop. The company has said customers can delete their biometric data through the Amazon One portal.
However, now it’s clear that the Amazon partners themselves don’t have to necessarily abide by that same arrangement. Panera Bread said in its press release it knows what your typical purchase is. Furthermore, it wants to have employees offer you “recommendations” based on your profile.
The Spy Law That Big Tech Wants to Limit
Top tech companies are mounting a push to limit how U.S. intelligence agencies collect and view texts, emails and other information about their users, especially American citizens.
The companies, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Meta Platforms Inc. and Apple Inc., want Congress to limit Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as they work to renew the law before it expires at the end of the year, according to three people familiar with the discussions.
There is a growing bipartisan consensus in Congress to not only renew the law but to make changes in response to a series of reports and internal audits documenting abuses. That’s left the tech industry optimistic that broader reforms will get through Congress this time, according to two lobbyists who asked not to be identified relaying internal discussions.
Social media companies and technology firms have an economic incentive to seek restraints on what the government can force them to do, as their relationship with U.S. agencies was criticized after former government contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed how immense the global spying apparatus had become during the Obama administration.
Tech companies and their lobbying organizations want the ability to publicly disclose more information about how many times the government requests information about their users and customers and what kind of data they are being forced to hand over. They also want to restrict the government’s ability to use the information, such as requiring the FBI to obtain a warrant supported by probable cause before searching the Section 702 database for information on U.S. citizens.
Bill Gates Says ‘The Age of AI Has Begun’
In an op-ed titled “The Age of AI has Begun” on “The Blog of Bill Gates,” Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates discussed the upcoming paradigm shift in technology. Having been instrumental in developing personal computers several decades ago, the billionaire seems to know a thing or two about technological innovation. He believes that OpenAI’s language generation artificial intelligence tools will be at the forefront of the next technological revolution.
Gates has emerged as a significant player in the AI arms race, as Microsoft, the company he founded, has pledged over $10 billion in funding to OpenAI. Even the co-creator of ChatGPT warned that the world might not be “that far away from potentially scary” AI.
And what’s disturbing is if AI is programmed to enforce the truths determined by figures like Gates, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and the federal government.
While Gates expresses enthusiasm about the potential of AI to be game-changing for humans, there is a flip side to it. The technology could become a tool for extreme censorship, which could make the Twitter censorship program seem trivial in comparison.
Ted Cruz Introduces Bill Blocking Fed From Adopting Central Bank Digital Currency
Senate Republicans are introducing a bill to block the Federal Reserve and the Biden administration from moving forward with a central bank digital currency.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced the bill, which would prohibit the Federal Reserve System from moving forward with a direct-to-consumer central bank digital currency (CBDC) that would effectively be a dollar-based cryptocurrency. The federal government has been researching the possibility of a U.S. CBDC under an executive order President Joe Biden signed in March 2022.
Cruz explained in a press release that unlike decentralized cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, digital currencies created by the government are centralized and could be more vulnerable to cyber attacks or even used as a tool to surveil Americans’ private transactions. The bill is cosponsored by Sens. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
TikTok Trackers Found on Multiple U.S. Government Websites
A new report by Canadian cybersecurity firm Feroot Security has found tracking pixels belonging to TikTok across numerous websites including U.S. government pages. The study looked at over 3,500 organization and government websites during the first two months of 2023 and found TikTok tracking pixels on 30 U.S. state government websites in 27 states.
While tracking pixels — or web beacons — are typically used for collecting data to better target audiences with relevant ads, concerns have been raised about the information collected and how it may be used by the Chinese company and other entities in the country.
Feroot Security CEO Ivan Tsarynny explained that the pixels “can be watching and recording you when you’re renewing your driver’s license, paying your taxes or filling out doctors’ forms” (via Wall Street Journal).
Some state government websites were also found to be housing tracking pixels from other Chinese-owned companies, including Tencent and Alibaba. Another country on the tip of many governments’ tongues, Russia, was found to have web beacons on some government pages, too.
Missouri House Advances Measure Limiting Vaccines
St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported:
The Missouri House approved an anti-vaccination measure Tuesday that could tie the hands of health professionals to address future pandemics.
The proposal, sponsored by Republican Rep. Bill Hardwick of Waynesville, would bar governments from being able to mandate a COVID-19 vaccine or future potential medical technologies like microchips placed under someone’s skin.
The measure would require private employers, including small business owners, to provide exemptions to any vaccination requirements if an employee has a “sincere” religious belief about the health benefits of a vaccine.
Hardwick, who is among a number of Republicans who complained about personal freedom during the height of the local, state and national response to a rapidly spreading disease, also said children would not have to be vaccinated in order to go to school under his legislation. There also would be exemptions for healthcare workers and facilities if approved.
In San Francisco, Some People Wonder When A.I. Will Kill Us All
Audrey Kim is the curator and driving force behind the Misalignment Museum, a new exhibition in San Francisco’s Mission District displaying artwork that addresses the possibility of an “AGI,” or artificial general intelligence. That’s an AI so powerful it can improve its capabilities faster than humans are able to, creating a feedback loop where it gets better and better until it’s got essentially unlimited brainpower.
If the super powerful AI is aligned with humans, it could be the end of hunger or work. But if it’s “misaligned,” things could get bad, the theory goes. Or, as a sign at the Misalignment Museum says: “Sorry for killing most of humanity.”
“AGI” and related terms like “AI safety” or “alignment” — or even older terms like “singularity” — refer to an idea that’s become a hot topic of discussion with artificial intelligence scientists, artists, message board intellectuals and even some of the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley.
All these groups engage with the idea that humanity needs to figure out how to deal with all-powerful computers powered by AI before it’s too late and we accidentally build one.
Ron DeSantis Said Google Should Be Broken up
The loudest voice calling for dramatic Big Tech break up in the upcoming 2024 presidential election might not come from President Joe Biden or progressive lefties, but rather, from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
The conservative governor and probable presidential candidate revealed his views at a private event caught on video, where he said dominant tech firms like Google and Meta are “ruining our country” and should be broken up. In his view, Big Tech behemoths are worse for society than Standard Oil and other monopolistic industry titans from the Gilded Age, he said.
“I do think companies like Google should be broken up,” DeSantis said during a 2021 invite-only retreat at the ultra-conservative Teneo Network. “They’re just too big and they have too much power.”
Fauci, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser Rejected Trying to Sell Vax Door-to-Door in Awkward Video + More
Fauci, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser Rejected Trying to Sell Vax Door-to-Door in Awkward Video
Dr. Anthony Fauci and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser got roundly rejected when they went door to door pitching the COVID-19 vaccine at the height of the pandemic, newly unearthed video shows.
A clip from the upcoming episode of PBS’ “American Masters” series shows Fauci, 82, and the Democratic mayor making the rounds in the Anacostia neighborhood in June 2021, Fox News reported. “They’re sort of the disenfranchised group that we’ve got to reach out to,” Fauci says to the camera, referring to the residents of the historically black neighborhood where vaccination rates were low.
One man greeted the duo with a heavy dose of skepticism. “So, I’m not going to be lining up taking a shot on a vaccination for something that wasn’t clear in the first place,” he tells the top doc and Bowser. “Nine months is definitely not enough for nobody to be taking no vaccination that you all came up with,” he says when Fauci tells him how long it took to develop the jab.
He remains unconvinced and expresses misgivings about various incentives that were offered at the time to people who agreed to be vaccinated. “When you start talking about paying people to get vaccinated, when you start talking about incentivizing things to get people vaccinated, it’s something else going on with that,” he says.
At least 60,000 DC residents contracted COVID-19 despite getting the shot, according to the city’s website.
Social Media Is Devastating Teens’ Mental Health. Here’s What Parents Can Do.
If we are serious about addressing the alarming worsening of teens’ mental health, we must reduce their social media use.
The connection is well-established. Abundant research has linked depression and self-harm to the frequency of social media use. And a new study from the American Psychological Association shows that cutting back helps teens feel better. Companies are aware of this; Facebook executive-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed that the company’s own research found that the use of their platforms was linked to anxiety, depression and body image issues in teens.
Indeed, social media is creating a “perfect storm” for girls, Jelena Kecmanovic, a psychotherapist and adjunct psychology professor at Georgetown University, told me. “Their tendency to be a perfectionist and hard on themselves during their tween and teen years gets magnified thousands of times in the online culture of comparison,” she said.
Pediatrician Michael Rich, who co-founded and directs the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital, explained to me that he treats teens who “struggle with physical, mental and social health issues” from excessive social media use. He has seen straight-A students’ grades plummet and young adults struggle to forge relationships after entering college.
Democratic Senator Presses Tech Companies About AI’s Threat to Teens
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) has written a letter to the executives of major tech firms raising concerns about the danger artificial intelligence technology poses to younger users and asking for more information about safety features after a series of disturbing reports.
Bennet noted that social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Google and Snap are moving quickly to harness generative artificial intelligence by developing AI personas and exploring how to fuse AI into texting and image-sharing apps.
Bennet acknowledged what he called the technology’s “enormous potential,” but warned, “the race to integrate it into everyday applications cannot come at the expense of younger users’ safety and wellbeing.”
His letter comes at a time when a growing number of lawmakers in both parties are paying more attention to the potential dangers posed by social media platforms such as TikTok, a popular video service that some policymakers want to ban entirely.
DeSantis Unveils Plan to Battle Biden’s ‘Efforts to Inject a Centralized Bank Digital Currency’
Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) revealed a proposal on Monday meant to combat the possible implementation of a central bank digital currency by the Federal Reserve and the Biden administration.
Critics of a potential central bank digital currency note that the asset, which would be managed by the Federal Reserve and tethered to the value of the dollar, would create opportunities for government surveillance and control of private citizens.
DeSantis proposed legislation that would ban the recognition of central bank digital currencies, whether from the federal government or an overseas central bank, as money under Florida’s Uniform Commercial Code. “The Biden administration’s efforts to inject a Centralized Bank Digital Currency is about surveillance and control,” DeSantis said in a press release.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said that his “mind is open” to a central bank digital currency and added that he was “legitimately undecided” on whether the “benefits outweigh the costs.” Monetary policymakers recently conducted a simulation with Citi, Mastercard, BNY Mellon, and other companies to determine the “feasibility of payments between financial institutions” using the technology.
New York School Vaccination Rules Left Intact by Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider forcing New York to give more children medical exemptions from the state’s school vaccine requirements. The justices, without comment, turned away an appeal by parents who claimed the state violated their constitutional rights when it put in place stricter rules for medical exemptions in 2019.
The new rules require exemptions to be based on a nationally recognized standard of care, such as those contained in guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly turned away challenges to state and local vaccine mandates for schoolchildren and government workers.
Bill Gates Plots a Global Pandemic Prison State
An epic disaster like the COVID response, one might suppose, should inspire some humility and rethinking on how public health could have gone so wrong. They had their run at it but created a global disaster for the ages.
This is more than obvious to any competent observer. The next step might be to see if there are any places where matters went rather well, and Sweden comes first to mind. The educational losses were non-existent because they didn’t close schools. In general, life went on as normal and with very good results.
One might suppose the Swedish way would be vindicated. Sadly, our leaders care nothing for evidence, apparently. Their concern is for power and money at any cost. As a result, we are witnessing a concerted effort not only to double down on errors the next time but make them even worse.
The top two exhibits emerged over the weekend. New York Times: “We’re Making the Same Mistakes Again” by Bill Gates. Wall Street Journal: “What Worked Against COVID: Masks, Closures and Vaccines” by Tom Frieden (former head of CDC).
Gates deploys his privileged place at the New York Times to agitate once again for a Global Health Emergency Corps, ensconced at the World Health Organization and managed by the same people who created the pandemic response this time around. In other words, it would be the core of the global government pushing more lockdowns for the world — lockdowns to wait for another round of vaccines.
Perhaps the Most Disruptive Technology in History Is Coming and It’s Expected to Change Everything. Businesses and Marketers Need to Get Quantum Ready.
Quantum computing involves the transfer and computation of information at the sub-atomic level. According to a January 2023 article in Time Magazine as well as other sources, quantum computers can calculate millions of times faster than a personal computer.
Quantum is expected to dramatically increase the capabilities of artificial intelligence. It can process many different scenarios simultaneously, to optimize solutions to problems. Vs. today’s computer algorithms, quantum algorithms can be trained faster, you can run more hypotheses, and it’s better at determining correlations from massive amounts of data. Complex problems that would take several years for classical computers to figure out, can be solved in seconds with quantum.
The World Economic Forum estimated global public spending on quantum technology was $30 billion in 2022, with China making up approximately half, the European Union almost another quarter, and the remaining quarter spread primarily among nine countries, including the U.S., Canada, Japan, the U.K., Singapore and Israel.
In terms of private investment, the U.S. and EU lead, with 59 and 53 quantum computing startups respectively. There were only two startups in all of South America, and none in Africa.
Google Rolls Out Its Bard Chatbot to Battle ChatGPT
Google isn’t used to playing catch-up in either artificial intelligence or search, but today the company is hustling to show that it hasn’t lost its edge. It’s starting the rollout of a chatbot called Bard to do battle with the sensationally popular ChatGPT.
Bard, like ChatGPT, will respond to questions about and discuss an almost inexhaustible range of subjects with what sometimes seems like humanlike understanding. Google showed WIRED several examples, including asking for activities for a child who is interested in bowling and requesting 20 books to read this year.
Google says it has made Bard available to a small number of testers. From today anyone in the U.S. and the U.K. will be able to apply for access.
Bard and ChatGPT show enormous potential and flexibility but are also unpredictable and still at an early stage of development. That presents a conundrum for companies hoping to gain an edge in advancing and harnessing the technology. For a company like Google with large established products, the challenge is particularly difficult.
Texas Bill Limiting Power to Impose Mask, Vaccine Mandates Moves Forward
Senate Bill 29 now moves ahead in the Texas Senate. Lawmakers voted 7 to 3 to send it to the full Senate floor. The bill prohibits mask and vaccine mandates, and local governments from shutting down businesses and schools.
“The short answer is it only applies to COVID-19 and its subordinate variants. It does not apply to any future unknown virus,” said State Rep. Brian Birdwell (R-Granbury).
“I want to get the principles straight for the future so that lockdowns and mandates and vax mandates never again are visited upon the people of Texas,” said Tom Glass, Texas Constitutional Enforcement Group.
An identical bill was filed in the Texas House. Both must be passed in order for the legislation to make it to the governor’s desk.
NC House Bill Takes First Step That Would Prevent Some Government Agencies From Mandating COVID Vaccines
Winston-Salem Journal reported:
The intense debate over whether to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for certain government agencies and political subdivisions resurfaced during Tuesday’s first N.C. House committee hearing.
House Bill 98, titled “Medical Freedom Act, cleared the House Health committee after nearly 25 minutes of debate. Its next stop is House Judiciary 1 committee. Biggs presented HB98 as a bill that “gives voice to the voiceless,” particularly individuals and parents who believe or feel the COVID-19 vaccine development has been rushed and remains incomplete.
The bill would prohibit city, county and state government agencies and certain political subdivisions from requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for employees.
The bill, however, does not affect other required vaccinations for K-12 public school students, including diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, red measles (rubeola) and rubella.
Novak Djokovic to Miss Miami Open, Denied COVID Vaccine Exemption + More
Novak Djokovic to Miss Miami Open, Denied COVID Vaccine Exemption
Tennis star Novak Djokovic will miss the Miami Open after failing to get an exemption under coronavirus vaccine rules to enter the United States. The world No. 1, who is not vaccinated against the coronavirus, had hoped U.S. authorities would grant him an exemption so he could play at Indian Wells and the Miami Open. The Transportation Security Administration requires proof of vaccination from air travelers under a rule in place through at least April 10.
But Miami Open tournament director James Blake said that while they had tried to secure entry for the 35-year-old Serbian star, “that wasn’t able to happen.”
Politicians including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) have recently urged President Biden to exempt the top-ranked player so he could compete in the Miami Open, set to take place March 19 to April 2 in Miami Gardens, Fla. Florida’s two Republican senators had also asked Biden to accept the request for a vaccine waiver.
The athlete’s unvaccinated status amid coronavirus restrictions left him unable to play in last year’s U.S. Open. He was deported from Australia in January last year in a saga that divided his fans and detractors as health officials globally encouraged vaccination to fight the spread of the deadly virus. A mandatory vaccine requirement did not apply for entry to Britain, and Djokovic went on to successfully defend his men’s singles title at Wimbledon last July.
Schools Sue Social Media Companies Over Youth Mental Health Crisis
School districts across the country are increasingly taking on social media, filing lawsuits that argue that Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube have helped create the nation’s surging youth mental health crisis and should be held accountable.
The legal action started in January, with a suit by Seattle Public Schools, and picked up momentum in recent weeks as school districts in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida have followed. Lawyers involved say many more are planned.
San Mateo County, home to 23 school districts and part of the Silicon Valley in northern California, filed a 107-page complaint in federal court last week, alleging that social media companies used advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to create addictive platforms that cause young people harm.
“The results have been disastrous,” the filing asserts, saying more children than ever struggle with their mental health amid excessive use of the platforms. “There is simply no historic analog to the crisis the nation’s youth are now facing,” it said.
Private-Federal Censorship Machine Targeted TRUE ‘Misinformation’
Did you make any “worrisome jokes” about the Biden administration’s proposal to send agents door-to-door to browbeat people to get COVID vaccines? Then you were a public enemy guilty of spreading dangerous disinformation.
Did you ask questions about COVID policy? You were guilty of a tactic “commonly used by spreaders of misinformation to deflect culpability.” Did you complain to anyone that vaccine passports violated your liberty? You were deluded, if not depraved, and guilty of propelling a deceptive “anti-vaccination narrative about the loss of rights and freedoms.”
Your tax dollars at work: These are the bizarre revelations from the latest and perhaps funniest Twitter Files from Matt Taibbi. Now, Taibbi has settled scores with “The Great COVID-19 Lie Machine,” exposing the machinations of federal contractors spurring social-media companies to censor Americans who doubted COVID decrees.
The latest Twitter Files installment focuses on Stanford University’s Virality Project, which federal agencies bankrolled to engage in “detecting and mitigating the impact of false and misleading narratives related to COVID-19 vaccines.” The Virality Project, partnering with other federal contractors, sent weekly “anti-vax disinformation” reports to Twitter and other social media companies.
Washington Prepares for War With Amazon
The Biden administration is planning to take action soon on at least three of its half-dozen investigations of Amazon — moves that could lead to a blitz of litigation to rein in the iconic tech-industry giant.
The FTC has been investigating the internet titan on multiple fronts dating at least back to 2019, looking into its abuse of power within its online marketplace, as well as potential consumer-privacy violations connected to its Ring cameras and Alexa digital assistant.
The agency is also reviewing Amazon’s purchase of robot vacuum maker iRobot.
Although Amazon has already been hit by local antitrust suits in Washington, DC, and California, the coming federal cases would be the most significant challenges to the global company yet. The exact timing of any cases or settlements is unknown.
The Case for Slowing Down AI
Progress in artificial intelligence has been moving so unbelievably fast lately that the question is becoming unavoidable: How long until AI dominates our world to the point where we’re answering to it rather than it answering to us?
First, last year, we got DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion, which can turn a few words of text into a stunning image. Then Microsoft-backed OpenAI gave us ChatGPT, which can write essays so convincing that it freaks out everyone from teachers (what if it helps students cheat?) to journalists (could it replace them?) to disinformation experts (will it amplify conspiracy theories?). And in February, we got Bing (a.k.a. Sydney), the chatbot that both delighted and disturbed beta users with eerie interactions. Now we’ve got GPT-4 — not just the latest large language model, but a multimodal one that can respond to text as well as images.
What if researchers succeed in creating AI that matches or surpasses human capabilities not just in one domain, like playing strategy games, but in many domains? What if that system proved dangerous to us, not because it actively wants to wipe out humanity but just because it’s pursuing goals in ways that aren’t aligned with our values?
So AI threatens to join existing catastrophic risks to humanity, things like global nuclear war or bioengineered pandemics. But there’s a difference. While there’s no way to uninvent the nuclear bomb or the genetic engineering tools that can juice pathogens, catastrophic AI has yet to be created, meaning it’s one type of doom we have the ability to preemptively stop.
U.S. Companies Must Stop Enabling Mass DNA Collection in Tibet
The Chinese government is so innovative in applying advanced technology for repression, sometimes it is hard to keep track. Beijing’s latest, horrible abuse of the Tibetan people is to forcibly collect their DNA, their last remaining vestige of privacy. What’s worse, U.S. companies are still working with the authorities perpetrating these atrocities. They should cut that out right now.
There is overwhelming evidence that Chinese authorities are using mass forced DNA collection in many parts of China — but Tibet is an especially cruel case. Human rights groups report that police are taking blood samples from men, women and children, with no legitimate justification, in all seven prefectures in the Tibetan autonomous region, often showing up at kindergartens. There’s zero indication Tibetans can refuse.
Chinese police in Tibet aren’t exactly hiding the practice; they posted a public request for bids to build a huge DNA database online. In one municipality, an official report said police were instructed “not to miss a [single] village or monastery, and not to miss a [single] household or person,” according to Human Rights Watch. The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab estimated in September that one-quarter to one-third of Tibetans had been compelled to hand over DNA samples.
Chinese authorities’ sweeping collection of DNA is just one piece of one of the most comprehensive and intrusive surveillance and monitoring systems on Earth. The Chinese government is leveraging technology, including artificial intelligence and big data, to identify people by their faces, their voices, their individual styles of walking and, now, even their cellular makeup.
100,000 Newborn Babies Will Have Their Genomes Sequenced in the U.K. It Could Have Big Implications for Child Medicine
The U.K. is set to begin sequencing the genomes of 100,000 newborn babies later this year. It will be the largest study of its kind, mapping the babies’ complete set of genetic instructions, with potentially profound implications for child medicine.
The £105 million ($126 million) Newborn Genomes Programme will screen for around 200 rare but treatable genetic conditions, with the aim of curtailing untold pain and anxiety for babies and their families, who sometimes struggle to receive a diagnosis through conventional testing. By accelerating the diagnostic process, earlier treatment of infants could prevent many severe conditions from ever developing.
The study would see roughly one in 12 newborn babies in England screened on a voluntary basis over two years. It will operate as an extension of current newborn testing, with the findings intended to inform policymakers, who could pave the way for sequencing to become more commonplace.
Nevertheless, the project has raised many longstanding ethical questions around genetics, consent, data privacy and priorities within infant healthcare. Genome sequencing has raised many philosophical and ethical questions. If you could have aspects of your medical future laid ahead of you, would you want that? What if you were predisposed to an incurable disease? Could that knowledge alone impact your quality of life?
The BBC, Which Has 4 Million Followers on TikTok, Tells Employees Not to Download TikTok
The BBC has 4.4 million followers on TikTok, and it posts new videos every couple of hours on its main account. If you work at the venerable British broadcaster, however, the organization says you shouldn’t watch those TikToks. The BBC sent its employees a memo on Sunday, urging them not to download the world’s scariest Chinese app.
“We don’t recommend installing TikTok on a BBC corporate device unless there is a justified business reason,” the BBC wrote to staffers, according to Bloomberg. “If you do not need TikTok for business reasons, TikTok should be deleted.”
TikTok and the BBC are competitors. The BBC is an entertainment company and is therefore fighting for the same eyeballs as TikTok. Whether or not espionage fears are real, the admonition on downloading the app may be motivated by business concerns.
