Big Brother News Watch
Facial Recognition Is Expanding Its Watchful Eye but Suffers From Notable Fails + More
Facial Recognition Is Expanding Its Watchful Eye but Suffers From Notable Fails
The use of facial recognition technology, a form of biometric artificial intelligence, is growing across the U.S. as an efficient security system that can identify people based on measuring facial features but has been hit with some notable criticisms.
Today, machine learning algorithms — a subset of artificial intelligence that uses data and algorithms to mimic how humans learn — have fine-tuned the technology. The tech can measure and identify facial measurements in a photo or video, and cross-analyze whether two photos or videos show the same person, or even pick a person out in a crowd of people, Amazon Web Services explains.
The tech is being used to patrol for fraud, where some companies have users verify their identity with their face, to ATMs using the tech to authenticate customers or even for doctors accessing patient records. While a New York City supermarket rolled out the tech to patrol for shoplifters, and Madison Square Garden Entertainment has used the recognition software to identify and boot event-goers from venues such as Radio City or Madison Square Garden.
For police departments, the use of the tech is widespread, with the CEO of facial recognition firm Clearview AI telling the BBC last month that police departments in the U.S. have used its software nearly 1 million times. Facial recognition technology, however, has come under scrutiny by some local leaders and civil liberties groups with accusations it violates people’s privacy and civil liberties.
TikTok’s Algorithm Keeps Pushing Suicide to Vulnerable Kids
TikTok’s algorithm doesn’t know Chase Nasca is dead. More than a year after Nasca killed himself at age 16, his account remains active. Scroll through his For You feed, and you see an endless stream of clips about unrequited love, hopelessness, pain and what many posts glorify as the ultimate escape: suicide.
Two weeks after his death, his mother, Michelle, started searching his social media accounts, desperate for answers. When she opened the TikTok app on his iPad, she found a library of more than 3,000 videos her son had bookmarked, liked, saved or tagged as a favorite. She could see the terms he’d searched for: Batman, basketball, weightlifting, motivational speeches. And she could see what the algorithm had brought him: many videos about depression, hopelessness and death.
At a congressional hearing in March, a representative brought up Nasca’s death, showing TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Chew some of the clips the app had sent the boy and asking if Chew would let his own children watch such content. That same month, Nasca’s parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit in New York state court against TikTok, ByteDance and the railroad.
TikTok’s original recommendation algorithm was designed by a team of engineers in China, working for ByteDance. But while the app was made in China, it’s used most everywhere except China. It can’t even be downloaded in its homeland. TikTok says its algorithm is now maintained by engineers around the world, with teams based in North America, Europe and Asia contributing. But more than a dozen former employees from the company’s trust and safety team who were interviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek say executives and engineers in Beijing still hold the keys.
CDC Director Walensky Says Vaccines Don’t Stop Transmission. Why Does Maine Still Mandate the Shot for Healthcare Workers?
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky testified in Congress Wednesday that the mRNA injections marketed as COVID-19 vaccines do not stop the spread of the virus. Walensky’s comments contradict repeated claims during the pandemic that urged people to get the vaccines because doing so would reduce transmission of the virus.
On Wednesday, she claimed those previous statements were true at the time, but since then, there has been an “evolution of the science” and now the vaccine no longer stops transmission.
While there may have been an “evolution of the science,” there has not been an “evolution of the policy,” especially when it comes to the Mills Administration’s mandate that healthcare workers receive the vaccine. Whether or not the vaccines stop or slow the transmission of the virus is central to the controversial mandate policies.
In Maine, Gov. Janet Mills enacted one of the harshest vaccine mandates in the country against healthcare workers. The mandate does not include philosophical or religious exemptions. As a result of the mandate, thousands of healthcare workers have left the field — or the state — creating a worker shortage for hospitals and emergency service providers.
Yet Maine’s vaccine mandate for all healthcare workers remains in effect despite the highest-ranking official in American disease prevention admitting Wednesday that those mandates were enacted on false premises.
City Went Too Far in Worker Crackdown Over COVID Vaccines, Judge Rules
Unionized City of Chicago employees fired or disciplined for violating COVID-19 vaccination requirements must be reinstated and repaid for any loss of wages or benefits, a state hearing officer has ruled.
The decision in a case before the Illinois Labor Relations Board applies to city workers represented by trade unions or by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The unions banded together to challenge regulations Mayor Lori Lightfoot imposed starting in 2021.
Administrative Law Judge Anna Hamburg-Gal said the city violated the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act by not bargaining in good faith over vaccine requirements and changes in sick leave policies. Her ruling, issued Wednesday, requires the city to “make whole” workers who lost pay and benefits, plus 7% annual interest.
The ruling is a broad rebuke of Lightfoot’s get-tough policies on city workers who resisted vaccine mandates, but it’s not known how many employees were penalized. One source said a few dozen employees may be directly affected by the decision.
U.S. Homeland Security Chief Creating Artificial Intelligence Task Force
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday that the agency would create a task force to figure out how to use artificial intelligence to do everything from protecting critical infrastructure to screening cargo to ferreting out products made with slave labor.
While artificial intelligence isn’t new, the sudden popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in recent months has sent officials around the world scrambling to see how they can best use the technology for good and prevent it from turbocharging disinformation and criminal activity.
Mayorkas said the technology would “drastically alter the threat landscape,” adding: “Our department will lead in the responsible use of AI to secure the homeland and in defending against the malicious use of this transformational technology.”
Consumer Protection Bureau Staffer Sent 256,000 People’s Data to Personal Account
A former employee of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, also known as the CFPB, sent personal data for hundreds of thousands of people to a personal email account, the agency confirmed this week.
The since-dismissed staffer for the agency, which is responsible for protecting consumers in the financial sector, made an unauthorized transfer of records for 256,000 customers of an unnamed financial institution, as well as confidential information for 45 other institutions, an agency spokesperson confirmed with The Wall Street Journal. The spokesperson clarified that most of the records were linked to consumers at one institution, although personal data from consumers from seven other unnamed firms were implicated.
CFPB officials informed the House Financial Services Committee about the “major incident” on March 21, according to a letter that Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Bill Huizenga (R-MI) sent the agency. The lawmaker said the transfer, which occurred through 65 emails, contained attachments, names, and account numbers for the 256,000 individuals.
TikTok’s CEO Breaks Silence After Brutal Congressional Hearing
On Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew give his first interview since sparring with House lawmakers in a testy hearing back in March. Chew is one of dozens of business leaders speaking at the TED2023 “Possibility” conference held in Vancouver, Canada. In a softball discussion that saw the interviewer praising Chew and asking for a selfie, the embattled CEO reiterated the ways TikTok is addressing public criticisms and explained why his app is good for America and the world.
Chew’s brief interview marks his first major public appearance since a five-hour-long, mostly-bad-faith grilling from lawmakers sitting on the House Energy and Commerce Committee in March. When Chew could (occasionally) get a word in, he tried to paint a picture of TikTok as a safe, “sunny corner of the internet” used by some 150 million Americans, close to half of the country, according to the company.
Lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle were unconvinced. Instead, many railed against TikTok for allegedly catalyzing harmful misinformation and dangerous health trends while another more raucous cohort demanded Chew prove TikTok couldn’t be used by the Chinese government as a surveillance tool. Exasperated, Chew told one lawmaker he felt like he was being faced with the impossible task of proving a negative.
As Japan’s Population Drops, One City Is Turning to ChatGPT to Help Run the Government
In the five months since its launch, ChatGPT has been used to generate student essays, write wedding vows and compose rousing sermons for pastors and rabbis. Now, a Japanese city is turning to the AI chatbot for something else: helping to run the government.
Yokosuka City, in Japan’s central Kanagawa prefecture, announced this week that it will begin using ChatGPT to help with administrative tasks. A news release on the municipal government’s website said all employees could use the chatbot to “summarize sentences, check spelling errors and create ideas.”
With ChatGPT handling rote administrative tasks, “staff can focus on work that can only be done by people, pushing forward an approach that brings happiness for our citizens,” said the news release.
But not every government has been as welcoming to ChatGPT. There have been widespread data privacy concerns, prompting Italian regulators to issue a temporary ban on the chatbot last month as they investigate how its parent company uses data.
Biden’s COVID Vaccine Rule for Federal Contractors Was Valid, U.S. Court Rules + More
Biden’s COVID Vaccine Rule for Federal Contractors Was Valid, U.S. Court Rules
President Joe Biden had the power to require employees of federal contractors to receive COVID-19 vaccinations, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Wednesday, throwing out a judge’s ruling that had blocked the mandate in Arizona.
A panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the 2021 mandate that applied to millions of workers nationwide fell under the broad powers granted by the Federal Procurement Act, which enables the president to adopt rules that promote economy and efficiency in federal contracting.
The court reversed a federal judge in Phoenix who blocked the mandate in Arizona last year. The judge had said allowing the vaccine requirement would grant the president “a breathtaking amount of authority.”
The decision creates a split with three other appeals courts that have said Biden, a Democrat, likely exceeded his authority and blocked the vaccine mandate in 13 Republican-led states.
Department of Homeland Security’s COVID Censorship Problem
In 2002, Congress established the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to the 9/11 attacks to centralize and consolidate homeland security efforts to prevent terrorist attacks. In the 20 years since its creation, DHS has departed from its original mission and used its expansive authority and funding to impede on the rights of American citizens.
What should terrify every American is that the full extent of DHS’s abuse of its power against its own citizens is still largely unknown. The public is only recently learning the degree to which the Department’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was employed to surveil and censor American citizens’ social media for what it concluded to be “misinformation” and “disinformation.”
What was the result? Statements about COVID-19 that are now supported by evidence were flagged as disinformation. Statements including my own, that our government once labeled as “disinformation,” such as the efficacy of masks, naturally acquired immunity and the origins of COVID-19, are now supported by evidence.
In 2021, DHS even put out a video encouraging people “to report their own family members to Facebook for �?disinformation’ if they challenge U.S. government narratives on COVID-19.” In reality, the most significant source of disinformation during the pandemic, with the most influence and greatest impact on people’s lives, was the U.S. government.
Judge: Mississippi Must Give Religious Exemption on Vaccines
Mississippi must join most other states in allowing religious exemptions from vaccinations that children are required to receive so they can attend school, a federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Sul Ozerden handed down the decision Monday in a lawsuit filed last year by several parents who say their religious beliefs have led them to keep their children unvaccinated and out of Mississippi schools. According to the lawsuit, some of the plaintiffs are homeschooling their children, while others have family or work connections in Mississippi but live in other states that allow religious exemptions for childhood vaccinations.
Ozerden set a July 15 deadline for the Mississippi State Department of Health to allow religious exemptions. The state already allows people to apply for medical exemptions for a series of five vaccinations that are required for children to enroll in public or private schools. The immunizations are against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis; polio; hepatitis; measles, mumps and rubella; and chickenpox. Mississippi does not require COVID-19 vaccinations.
The only states without religious or personal belief exemptions for school immunization requirements are California, Connecticut, Maine, Mississippi, New York and West Virginia, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Employer COVID Vax Mandates: Still Legal, but for How Long?
While the clamor for vaccine mandates has subsided, many employers remain committed to having their employees fully up to date with their COVID-19 boosters. But will they be able to enforce such a policy? The answer is: It depends.
Employer authority to implement mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policies never derived from federal or state public health emergency declarations, so the lifting of those declarations do not directly impact an employer’s ability to require vaccination. However, employers should remain mindful of individual state laws.
Generally speaking, private employers can continue to require COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of employment, except in states that have placed restrictions on employer vaccine mandates. Certain state bans allow healthcare employers to continue to require vaccination.
Still, other states require vaccination in limited circumstances, such as healthcare settings. Many states have outlawed public sector mandates altogether.
Oversight Board Urges Meta to Keep COVID Rules in Place, for Now
Meta’s oversight board is recommending that the social media giant “maintain” its current policies against COVID-19 misinformation as long as global health authorities deem it an international health emergency, according to an advisory opinion released Thursday.
But the board is also urging the Facebook and Instagram parent company to revisit which misleading claims it will remove going forward and to open that debate to a broader audience.
It marks the first time the group has directly weighed in on Meta’s rules governing pandemic-related content, which sparked heated debate in Washington over whether platforms were doing too much or too little to police harmful posts.
The board called on the company to launch a “transparent and inclusive review” of the list of 80 misleading or false claims it takes action against.
Alex Berenson Says Lawsuit Against Biden, Pfizer Could Reveal Internal Communications About COVID Vaccine
Journalist Alex Berenson believes his First Amendment rights were violated when he was banned from Twitter for expressing concerns about the COVID vaccine, and a lawsuit against President Biden, White House officials and Pfizer honchos who allegedly pushed for his removal could expose their internal communications about the polarizing jab.
“People may remember that in 2021, the White House was very, very vocal publicly about, you know, quote-unquote, disinformation. Anybody who raised questions about the vaccines, they were trying to get social media companies to take action broadly against them,” Berenson told Fox News Digital.
“What I didn’t know until last year [was] that they had specifically targeted me,” he continued. “So, this lawsuit basically aims to hold these people accountable for what they did for violating my First Amendment rights.”
Berenson believes his lawsuit might be the only opportunity for Americans to learn the truth about internal communications between vaccine makers and government officials. Did Pfizer executives express concern about the effectiveness of the jab? Did the White House look the other way? These questions can potentially be answered if Berenson’s suit reaches the discovery phase.
Because of this, Berenson assumes the White House and Pfizer will first try to get the suit dismissed. “They don’t want me to be able to do the same kind of discovery that I did with Twitter,” he said. “I have to believe that they’re not going to want that information to be public.”
Billionaire Li Ka-Shing Backs Biocomputing Startup That Takes On AI With Lab-Grown Brain Cells
Cortical Labs, an Australian startup developing a new type of artificial intelligence that combines lab-grown human brain cells with computer chips, has raised $10 million in a funding round led by Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm of Hong Kong’s richest person, Li Ka-shing.
Blackbird Ventures, Australia’s leading venture capital fund, has also taken part in the financing round, Cortical Labs said in a statement on Wednesday. Other investors include In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as U.S.-based LifeX Ventures and Australia-headquartered Radar Ventures, among others.
“The possibilities that a hybridized AI meets synthetic biology model can unlock are limitless, accelerating the possibilities of digital AI in a more powerful and more sustainable way,” Hon Weng Chong, founder and CEO of Cortical Labs, said in the statement. “Our technology will shape and drive the next frontier of AI.”
The startup said pharmaceutical companies are likely to be the first to adopt its biological computer chips for use in the testing of new drugs and therapies. However, such innovation might also raise ethical concerns, including whether it can develop consciousness.
George Santos Unveils MINAJ Act to Limit Vaccine Mandates
Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) is giving a nod to Nicki Minaj’s famous COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, appearing to name a new bill after the rapper.
The “Medical Information Nuanced Accountability Judgement Act,” or MINAJ Act, H.R. 2631, introduced Tuesday by Santos, would prohibit the federal government from imposing “any mandate requiring an individual to receive a vaccine that has not been authorized for marketing for at least ten years unless a public health emergency is declared.”
In 2021, Minaj made headlines and was widely mocked after sharing on social media that her cousin’s account of his friend’s vaccination played a part in her decision not to receive a shot to protect herself against the coronavirus.
“I urge my colleagues to join me in this mission to block tyrannical and draconian measures from being utilized by the Federal Government,” Santos said.
How Facebook Users Can Apply for a Share of $725 Million Settlement
Five years after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, millions of Facebook users may be able to get money back from the social media company for their troubles.
Facebook, which is owned by Meta, reached a $725 million class-action settlement this week over claims it shared users’ data without their consent. Millions of people can fill out a claim form to get a slice of the settlement amount.
If you are a current or former Facebook user, here’s how to get started. Anyone who used Facebook between May 24, 2007, and Dec. 22, 2022, can submit a claim, even if you no longer have a Facebook account. Political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica was accused of improperly using a quiz app on the social media site to access the personal data of 87 million Facebook users without their consent.
The biggest payout from the settlement will go to legal fees for the lawyers behind it. They can claim up to 25% of the $725 million, or a little over $180 million. There are eight named plaintiffs in the case, and they could receive up to $15,000 each. The rest of the pool will be divided up between affected Facebook users.
Screen Time and Suicide: There Is a Connection, and We All Need to Be Concerned
The Dallas Morning News reported:
The rise of technology has brought many benefits, including improved communication, enhanced learning and entertainment. However, as we increasingly rely on screens in our daily lives, there is growing concern about the impact of screen time on mental health, particularly among children and adolescents. Recent studies have shown that excessive screen time is linked to an increase in suicidality, among other negative consequences.
A 2023 study published in Preventive Medicine found that there is a clear correlation between screen time and suicidality among young people. The study determined that each additional hour of daily screen time was associated with a 9% increase in the odds of suicidal behavior. This follows a recent rise in suicide ideation, which was observed in a 2020 study by Ivey-Stephenson and others. Likewise, an article of Michael A. Lindsey and others stated that suicide attempts among high school students increased from 6.3% in 2009 to 7.9% in 2019.
The link between screen time and suicidality is concerning, and parents and caregivers should take steps to set consistent limits on screen time, establish parental controls on devices, and have open and honest conversations with young people about the dangers of excessive screen time. By taking these steps, we can help their kids develop healthy habits around screen time and ensure their mental health and well-being.
The Rise of AI Will Only Make Big Tech More Powerful, NYU Researchers Warn
AI is expensive. The data models that underpin the whole affair are intensive to develop, requiring sophisticated and powerful calculations to be made useful.
The good news is that the tools, resources, and raw computing power to build those data models are readily available to pretty much anybody — leading to the recent explosion in AI tools, from OpenAI‘s famed ChatGPT to Runway‘s text to video editor.
The bad news, say some advocacy groups, is that the boom is just contributing to the power and influence of the relatively few companies with the infrastructure and capabilities to support those intensive AI applications. Just about every AI tool you can think of relies on clouds like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud, or some combination of the three.
In practical terms, it means that even the AI startups competing with those Big Tech giants are, in a very real way, simultaneously contributing to their respective bottom lines. And the more those startups use those major cloud platforms, the more they pay to their much larger competitors.
This dynamic shows that the rise of AI will only make Big Tech more powerful and entrenched in several industries, even as worries about their potential for monopolistic practices peak.
13-Year-Old Ohio Boy Dies After Attempting the TikTok �?Benadryl Challenge,’ His Parents Say + More
13-Year-Old Ohio Boy Dies After Attempting the TikTok �?Benadryl Challenge,’ His Parents Say
The parents of a 13-year-old boy who died doing the TikTok “Benadryl Challenge” are warning other parents about the dangerous social media trend.
Jacob Stevens died after nearly a week on a ventilator after consuming 12 to 14 pills of the over-the-counter antihistamine in an attempt to induce hallucinations, his family told ABC6.com.
Jacob’s father, Justin Stevens, told ABC6 that Jacob and his friends were filming him as he attempted the social media challenge when his body began seizing.
The tragedy has inspired Jacob’s family to warn other parents to monitor their children’s online activity to avoid anyone else attempting the challenge. His father has also contacted local lawmakers about enacting an age restriction on buying medicine like Benadryl.
Alaska Airlines Kills the Check-in Kiosk, Brings in Face Scanners
Alaska Airlines is flying forward into the future. Or, trying to do something like that at least. The company announced a suite of changes, soon to be coming to airport lobbies, in a Tuesday press release.
For one, Alaska Airlines has proclaimed there will be no more check-in kiosks. Instead, customers will have to check in prior to arriving at the airport on their phones, personal computers, or with a gate agent in person. iPads that print bag tags will supplant kiosks. This transition will be complete at most Alaska Airlines airport locations by the end of 2023. The change will probably result in a significant user surge of the company’s smartphone app, which is probably bad for customer privacy. But don’t worry — it gets much worse.
In a single line buried towards the bottom of the news statement, the airline noted that the bag-check process will eventually involve having your full face scanned.
Facial scanning and biometric tech aren’t at all new to airports. Alaska Airlines is just the latest company to get in on the trend. But still, it’s a worrying continuation of the march towards eliminating all privacy in the name of “convenience,” which airports have been at the front lines of. There are few rules that limit where the biometric data collected at airports ends up. The facial scan data market is a largely unregulated wild west. Then, there are issues of cybersecurity, inaccuracy, and baked-in biases.
The RESTRICT Act Will Usher in a New Era of Censorship Under the Guise of �?National Security’
Forty-five days after 9/11, the United States government passed the PATRIOT Act — a chilling law that used the guise of “national security” to greatly expand the federal government’s secret surveillance powers.
Almost 23 years later, another far-reaching bill, the “Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act,” better known by its acronym, the RESTRICT Act, is using the same national security talking point to justify further federal government encroachment on Americans’ rights.
Although the bill doesn’t mention TikTok, its authors, Democratic Senator Mark Warner and Republican Senator John Thune, have framed it as “the best way to counter the TikTok threat.” However, the impact of the bill extends far beyond TikTok and gives the U.S. government sweeping powers to ban a wide range of apps and services.
The bill also has the full support of the Biden White House which has already demonstrated that it’s no fan of free speech and is currently being sued for alleged First Amendment violations.
If the RESTRICT Act passes, the Biden admin and any future pro-censorship administrations will be handed new powers to continue their crackdowns on online speech.
Elon Musk Confirms Development of Non-Woke AI Bot �?TruthGPT’ to Rival Microsoft and Google
In an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday evening, Elon Musk discussed the potential threats artificial intelligence poses to humanity. He expressed concerns over AI chatbots being developed with liberal bias and shared plans to create a non-woke chatbot.
Musk was an early donor of OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT and expressed concerns over the direction of AI development. He told Carlson that large-language models were being trained to be “politically correct.”
“I’m going to start something which I call TruthGPT,” Musk said, “or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.”
Last month, Musk created a new AI company called X.AI Corp, according to the state of Nevada filings. In the same month, he signed an open letter, along with hundreds of other tech experts, urging for an immediate pause of any new chatbots from OpenAI.
Musk has rolled Twitter into X as his plans to create a so-called “everything app” could soon be a reality. This latest revelation comes after reports of Musk purchasing 1000s of GPUs (critical infrastructure for AI development).
Texas Bill Could Hand Vaccine Decisions in Schools Over to Lawmakers
A bill described as “anti-vaccine” is moving through the Texas legislature and could give lawmakers the power to make decisions about vaccines in schools rather than doctors or administrators.
SB 1024, which was recently passed by a Senate committee — and will soon be voted on by the Texas Senate and the House — could limit schools and local health departments from being able to require or recommend immunizations.
While the proposed legislation mainly focuses on ending COVID-19 restrictions and barring COVID-19 vaccine requirements, public health experts say it could have implications for any kind of vaccine.
Bills to Make ‘Vaccine Passport’ Ban Permanent, Access Vaccine Data Go to Burgum
The Bismarck Tribune reported:
Two bills on their way to Gov. Doug Burgum would make permanent the state’s “vaccine passport” ban and ease access to certain federal vaccination data.
The North Dakota Senate on Tuesday concurred with House amendments to Senate Bill 2274 by Sen. David Clemens, R-West Fargo, and passed the bill in a 29-17 vote. The state House of Representatives last week passed it, 87-3.
The bill would make permanent the 2021 ban on so-called “vaccine passports,” which is set to expire on Aug. 1. The ban prohibits state and local governments and businesses from requiring vaccination documents for access, funds or services. The bill would add vaccination status for a vaccine under federal emergency use authorization to the state’s ban.
The 2021 Legislature passed the law amid opposition to potential, government-mandated COVID-19 vaccinations. The ban applies to state and local government entities and private businesses but has many exceptions to its provisions, such as for healthcare and long-term care providers, correctional facilities, colleges and universities.
�?Shut It off Immediately’: The Health Industry Responds to Data Privacy Crackdown
A series of federal data privacy crackdowns is complicating how healthcare companies market their services online. The Federal Trade Commission has led the way in the new enforcement push, fining telehealth companies for violating their customers’ privacy and barring them from doing so in the future. The director of HHS’ Office for Civil Rights said her staff has launched its own investigation, calling online health data collection “problematic” and “widespread.”
The agency also recently sought to update health data privacy protections to bar providers and insurers from releasing information about a patient seeking or obtaining a legal abortion.
That’s upending longstanding business practices and sending the healthcare industry scrambling. Firms are in some cases cutting ties with tech giants like Google and Facebook as they try to understand the regulatory landscape and measure the fallout to their bottom lines.
For consumers, healthcare industry experts said, the shift offers more privacy, but could also make it more difficult to find primary care, mental health and other medical services online.
The backdrop for this new concern is a rising trend of Americans receiving information or services from mental health apps, telehealth services and hospital websites. People may not know these services are capturing detailed personal information that is then used for marketing and advertising.
Social Media Is Fueling Enthusiasm for New Weight Loss Drugs. Are Regulators Watching?
Suzette Zuena is her own best advertisement for weight loss. But she’s not just spreading her message in person. She’s also doing it on Instagram. And she’s not alone. A chorus of voices is singing these drugs’ praises. Last summer, investment bank Morgan Stanley found mentions of one of these drugs on TikTok had tripled. People are streaming into doctors’ offices to inquire about what they’ve heard are miracle drugs.
What these patients have heard, doctors said, is nonstop hype, even misinformation, from social media influencers. “I’ll catch people asking for the skinny pen, the weight loss shot, or Ozempic,” said Priya Jaisinghani, an endocrinologist and clinical assistant professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.
Competition to claim a market that could be worth $100 billion a year for drugmakers alone has triggered a wave of advertising that has provoked the concern of regulators and doctors worldwide. But their tools for curbing the ads that go too far are limited — especially when it comes to social media. Regulatory systems are most interested in pharma’s claims, not necessarily those of doctors or their enthused patients.
Social media users and influencers — whether with white coats or ordinary patients — are hopping on every platform to spread the news of positive weight loss outcomes. There are those, for instance, who had gastric bypass surgery that didn’t work and are now turning to TikTok for guidance, support and hope as they begin taking a GLP-1. There’s even a poop-centric Facebook group in which people discuss the sometimes fraught topic of the drugs’ effect on their bowel movements.
WhatsApp and Signal Unite Against Online Safety Bill Amid Privacy Concerns
The rival chat apps WhatsApp and Signal have joined forces in a rare show of unity to protest against the online safety bill, which they say could undermine the U.K.’s privacy and safety.
In an open letter signed by the heads of both organizations as well as five other encrypted chat apps, the executives say the bill could be used to in effect outlaw end-to-end encryption, which prevents anyone but the intended recipient of a message from seeing its contents.
“In short, the bill poses an unprecedented threat to the privacy, safety and security of every U.K. citizen and the people with whom they communicate around the world while emboldening hostile governments who may seek to draft copycat laws.”
Last month, WhatsApp’s chief, Will Cathcart, said the app would leave the U.K. rather than submit to a requirement to weaken encryption.
There’s Another Pandemic Raging. It’s Targeting the Young and Online. + More
There’s Another Pandemic Raging. It’s Targeting the Young and Online.
A pandemic rages uncontrolled, a damaging and even deadly plague sweeping across a wide swath of society. The scientific evidence of its dangers is massive and irrefutable. Its worst harm is inflicted on the young, who are the most vulnerable to its contagion, and whose injuries may well prove irreversible with time.
The last time the nation faced such a threat, leaders panicked and overreacted, understandably at first. But then they failed to course-correct even as the scientific data plainly guided them to do so. Consequently, enormous and tragic collateral damage occurred in the form of other health risks left untreated, more than a year of vital learning lost by schoolchildren, increases in mental illness, drug abuse and suicide, not to mention the destruction of countless businesses and economic livelihoods.
In the current pandemic, we are committing the opposite mistake. As social media — “antisocial media” would be more accurate — permeates society, wreaking proven, ruinous damage on the emotional health of children, the trust of Americans in their institutions, the ability of those institutions to act against daunting national challenges, even the ability to sort truth from often malicious fiction, we are doing … nothing.
Elon Musk Claims the U.S. Government Had �?Full Access’ to Private Twitter DMs
Twitter CEO Elon Musk claimed in an interview that the U.S. government has “full access” to users’ private direct messages, saying knowing that information blew his mind.
In an excerpt of his Fox News interview with host Tucker Carlson, Musk told Carlson that he was shocked to find out about the government’s ability to read users’ direct messages on his platform.
“The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind,” Musk, who recently founded an artificial intelligence company called X.AI, told Carlson in the interview set to air on Tuesday. “I was not aware of that.”
“Would that include people’s DMs?” Carlson asked Musk. “Yes,” Musk replied to Carlson.
How This New Banking Trojan Can Steal Your Financial Information
Yet another Android banking trojan is hiding among other apps, and this one is super dangerous. A recent report from Cyble is warning all Android users to be on the lookout and to be extra careful when it comes to protecting their data.
According to the report, this new banking trojan is capable of changing its app icon and stealing your passwords, text messages and other sensitive data. Because it can change itself, researchers have named this new trojan “Chameleon.” The Chameleon has been active since January 2023, and it can abuse the Android operating system’s Accessibility Services to completely take over devices, just like many other smartphone malware campaigns can.
What makes the Chameleon Trojan stand out (no pun intended), however, is the way that it pretends to be other apps while it’s performing these malicious acts. That’s not something that I’ve heard of before, as it can even change its icon so that you think it’s just another commonly used app on your phone.
Some of the other capabilities it has include keylogging, launching overlay attacks, harvesting SMS text messages, preventing itself from being uninstalled, stealing cookies and automatically uninstalling itself, which is pretty impressive considering it’s only been around since January.
While this trojan is currently spreading through Australia and Poland, it’s a matter of time before it spreads globally, so be sure to take precautions to keep yourself safe.
The Crackdown on Pixel Tracking in Telehealth Is a Warning for Every Startup
Healthcare startups are scrambling to reassess how their websites and apps are built, and how third parties may, inadvertently or not, be putting patients’ protected health information at risk.
In March, U.S. mental health startup Cerebral admitted it shared the private health information of more than 3 million users with Facebook, Google, TikTok and other ad giants via so-called tracking pixels. These near-invisible bits of code are typically embedded in web pages to share information about users’ activity, often for analytics. Cerebral said these trackers inadvertently collected sensitive user data since it began operating in October 2019.
This data lapse is the third-largest breach of health data in 2023, according to the HHS, which is investigating the breach. However, while Cerebral’s lapse ranks among the most serious and damaging, the breach is just one of many currently being investigated by HHS — and this list is likely to grow.
Last year, a joint investigation by STAT and The Markup found that dozens of hospital websites and telehealth startups were sharing patients’ medical information with advertisers and tech giants.
COVID Exposure Apps Are Headed for a Mass Extinction Event
Within a week of COVID-19 shutting down the world in 2020, teams at archrivals Apple and Google partnered on a rare joint project. They developed a way to log people’s proximity using Bluetooth chips in iPhones and Android phones, enabling the creation of apps that let someone who tested positive for the virus anonymously notify fellow users whom they’d been near in the preceding few days. Those alerted to the exposure could then isolate, test, and quarantine, hopefully slowing the spread of COVID.
COVID is still around, but the grand experiment in semi-automated contact tracing by smartphone is now nearing its end in the U.S., following similar shutdowns in many other countries as concerns about the virus have eased.
On May 11, the Biden administration will stop paying for the two cloud servers that underpin the U.S. system and power exposure-tracking apps offered by individual states. States will now have to boot up their own servers, and in many cases redesign their apps, if they want to keep the alerts flowing.
Though a few, including California, are considering the idea, it remains to be seen whether any will follow through. California’s Department of Public Health did not provide comment for this story by publication time.
Elon Musk Founds New Artificial Intelligence Company Called X.AI
Twitter owner Elon Musk has founded a new artificial intelligence company named X.AI, according to a Nevada business filing from last month. The filing, dated March 9, lists Musk as the company’s sole director and Jared Birchall, who manages Musk’s family office, as its secretary.
Musk has been publicly skeptical of the future of artificial intelligence in the past and has even called for a complete AI development pause, citing “risks to society” he says the technology poses.
In an interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson that will air next week, Musk warned that “AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production.”
“In the sense that it has the potential — however, small one may regard that probability, but it is non-trivial — it has the potential of civilization destruction,” he said.
Alphabet Loses $55 Billion in Market Value After Samsung Reportedly Considers Replacing Google With Bing in Its Phone
Alphabet stock slid as much as 4% on Monday, erasing about $55 billion in market value after a report from The New York Times suggested that competition is heating up in the mobile search market.
The report said that Samsung is considering replacing Google as the default search engine across its lineup of devices in favor of Microsoft’s Bing Search, which could put about $3 billion in annual revenue at risk for Alphabet.
A similar contract between Alphabet and Apple, which is worth about $20 billion in annual revenue to Alphabet, is due for renewal later this year.
Google employees were shocked when they learned in March that Samsung was considering replacing Google, and internal messages of Alphabet employees reviewed by The New York Times showed “panic” among staff.
Montana Passes TikTok Ban: Here’s Why It’s Probably Unenforceable
The Montana House voted Friday to approve a bill banning TikTok in the state, the first of its kind in the U.S. — though it’s unclear how the state would be able to ever enforce such a ban.
Montana’s Republican-led House voted 54-43 to approve the bill and send it to Gov. Greg Gianforte (R), who is expected to sign the bill after claiming last year that TikTok posed a “significant threat” to state security and data privacy.
The bill prohibits mobile app stores from allowing Montana residents to download TikTok effectively on January 1, 2024 — though it does not specify how the state would enforce or monitor aspects of the ban.
The Corrupted Science Behind Biden’s COVID Vaccine Mandates
President Joe Biden decreed on Sept. 9, 2021, that more than 100 million Americans must get COVID-vaccine injections. But newly disclosed emails show that the Food and Drug Administration finding behind that order, an official certification of the jabs as “safe and effective,” was the result of a bureaucratic bait-and-switch.
The FDA had approved COVID vaccines on an emergency-use basis in December 2020, before Biden even took office. The White House assumed that was the silver bullet to enable Biden to save Americans from COVID.
But it soon became clear that many Americans were hesitating to get jabbed, in part because the FDA approval was solely for emergency use. “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,” he insisted in a July 21, 2021, CNN town hall. Biden’s claim was false, spurred by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision to ignore any “breakthrough” COVID infections that did not result in death or hospitalization.
Newly released emails reveal that Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock was concerned because “states cannot require mandatory vaccination” without FDA final approval, according to the chief of FDA’s vaccine-review office, Marion Gruber.
Gruber warned that a thorough evaluation was needed due to “increasing evidence of association of this vaccine and development of myocarditis (especially in young males).” The White House arm-twisting spurred a “mutiny” at the FDA, as Politico put it: Gruber and her top deputy resigned in protest.
We’re Not Ready to Be Diagnosed by ChatGPT
AI may not care whether humans live or die, but tools like ChatGPT will still affect life-and-death decisions — once they become a standard tool in the hands of doctors. Some are already experimenting with ChatGPT to see if it can diagnose patients and choose treatments. Whether this is good or bad hinges on how doctors use it.
GPT-4, the latest update to ChatGPT, can get a perfect score on medical licensing exams. When it gets something wrong, there’s often a legitimate medical dispute over the answer. It’s even good at tasks we thought took human compassion, such as finding the right words to deliver bad news to patients.
These systems are developing image processing capacity as well. At this point you still need a real doctor to palpate a lump or assess a torn ligament, but AI could read an MRI or CT scan and offer a medical judgment. Ideally, AI wouldn’t replace hands-on medical work but enhance it — and yet we’re nowhere near understanding when and where it would be practical or ethical to follow its recommendations.
And it’s inevitable that people will use it to guide their own healthcare decisions just the way we’ve been leaning on “Dr. Google” for years. Despite more information at our fingertips, public health experts this week blamed an abundance of misinformation for our relatively short life expectancy — something that might get better or worse with GPT-4.
