Big Brother News Watch
Can the U.S. Ban TikTok? Here’s What Would Happen If They Tried + More
Can the U.S. Ban TikTok? Here’s What Would Happen If They Tried
The U.S. should take steps to ban the social media platform TikTok, according to comments made by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner Brendan Carr. Questions have been raised on how this could be done and what roadblocks may prevent the U.S. from being able to do this, however.
Carr cited recent revelations about how TikTok and ByteDance handle U.S. user data. He warned there should be concern about data from U.S. companies flowing back to China.
Despite the calls for TikTok to be banned, a recent Tech Crunch report highlighted why this is unlikely to happen, and how it would prove to be difficult to enforce. “It would be tremendously unpopular. The disaffected-youth vote is supremely important right now, and any President, Senator or Representative who supports such a ban would be given extreme side-eye by the youth,” the report said.
One of the other roadblocks that would likely occur is how would a ban be implemented. The FCC would have no jurisdiction on the matter. Even with a supposed national security threat, the Pentagon again would have no international jurisdiction, according to the report. Both Apple and Google can’t be forced to by Congress as they are protected by the First Amendment.
In addition to these reasons, an attempt at a ban would quickly become a messy, drawn-out contested legal battle with no guarantees of success, according to Tech Crunch. The report went on to suggest rather than a ban, the U.S. should focus on making it difficult for TikTok to operate in the country.
SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher Celebrates Disney Dropping Vaccine Mandates on 12 Shows
The Hollywood Reporter reported:
The president of Hollywood’s largest union is celebrating Disney ending vaccine mandates on several U.S.-based TV shows.
“@Disney pulls the plug on vaccine mandates! Way to go Mickey!!!” the leader of the performers’ union SAG-AFTRA and former The Nanny star Fran Drescher tweeted on Saturday. In an attached video, Drescher voiced her opposition to these mandates. “To think that every human on the planet can take one vaccine is ludicrous,” she said. “And to make that one vaccine the criteria for who is allowed to work, travel, dine, go to the theater, et cetera, is an infringement on the Disabilities Act, the freedom of religion act and body sovereignty.”
Disney recently dropped vaccine mandates on 12 TV productions on which it is the lead studio, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed on Monday. The productions were notified last week that vaccines were no longer required on “Zone A” of the production.
Deadline, which was the first to report the news on Saturday, noted that ABC’s The Rookie and The Rookie: Feds still require vaccines for Zone A, and Disney is not the lead studio on those productions.
Berkshire Health System Relents, Withdrawing Booster Mandate to 3,000 Employees
Berkshire Health Systems will no longer require its 3,000-member workforce to receive the bivalent booster against the coronavirus, ending a mandate that drew resistance, including an online petition signed by 890 people that accused the company of bullying workers.
The nonprofit announced Monday it had dropped the booster mandate. In a statement, BHS said that while data on the effectiveness of the booster shows it to be effective at greatly reducing the severity of illness, “it may be less effective at preventing transmission of the virus.”
After the mandate was announced, opposition quickly arose. One BMC nurse told The Eagle that the requirement to receive the booster, by Dec. 15, had prompted her to look for a new job.
The company said that the reality of a booster that is less helpful in preventing transmission led to its change in policy.
Faculty and Staff Not Required to Receive New Booster Shot
While students will be required to get a second booster shot before returning for the spring semester, the same mandate will not apply to faculty and staff.
Announced Oct. 27, the booster shot requirement was directed towards undergraduate, graduate and professional students in line with CDC recommendations. In order to be considered “up to date” via CDC guidelines, one must receive a primary vaccine series along with the “bivalent” booster. The new booster protects against both the original virus and several variant strains of the COVID-19 virus, which has “changed over time.”
Yet faculty and staff are not required to be “up to date” in order to work in the spring.
Yale had previously mandated an original COVID-19 vaccine series for faculty, staff and postdoctoral trainees for those returning to the University in August 2021. Last December, the University required faculty and staff to receive a booster shot as soon as they were eligible.
Lexington TV Station, Parent Company Face Lawsuit Over COVID Vaccine Mandate
Lexington Herald-Leader reported:
Two former employees of Lexington-based news station WKYT and parent company Gray Media are suing both the station and the company after they were allegedly fired for not getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
DeAnn Stephens Cox and Ashley Landis filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court last week. Cox held a variety of positions at WKYT for 27 years. Landis is a former national sales manager for the company. Cox and Landis allege in the suit that the media outlet violated the Title VII Civil Rights Act for sex and religious discrimination, the American Disabilities Act, the Kentucky Civil Rights Act and the Kentucky Wage and Hour Act after both women were fired in October 2021.
Both Cox and Landis are seeking compensatory and actual damages including past and future pay and benefits, compensatory damages for emotional distress and mental anguish, equitable relief, punitive damages and an award of attorney fees.
Residents Clash With Chinese Authorities Over COVID Rules
Police in northeastern China said that seven people have been arrested following a clash between residents and authorities enforcing COVID-19 quarantine restrictions.
The violence comes as China reports new cases nationwide, with 2,230 cases reported Tuesday in the southern manufacturing and technology hub of Guangzhou.
While the numbers remain relatively low, China has relentlessly pursued its strict “zero-COVID” policy of quarantines, lockdowns and daily or near-daily compulsory testing.
Anti-pandemic measures have prompted backlashes across the country, forming a rarely-seen challenge to Communist Party authority. It wasn’t immediately clear who was arrested after the clash. News of the arrests appeared on social media Tuesday morning but was erased by the country’s censors before noon.
China’s Digital Yuan Works Just Like Cash — With Added Surveillance
Visa has long paid to be the sole payment processor at the Olympic Games. But at the Winter Olympics in Beijing earlier this year it had competition — from the Chinese government.
Visitors could, after scanning their passports, exchange foreign bills for eCNY, a new digital currency being rolled out by the country’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China. Visitors could splash their digital cash by using a card or mobile app to pay for things around the Olympic Village.
China launched its first pilots of digital cash in 2019, but the eCNY’s appearance at the Olympics was part of a project with global ambitions. As the first major country to roll out an official digital currency at scale, China is far ahead of the U.S. and other countries, where the concept of an official form of digital cash is only in the discussion phase.
The hope for government-sanctioned digital currencies is that they will improve efficiency and spur innovation in financial services. But tech and China experts watching the country’s project say that eCNY, also known as the electronic Chinese yuan or digital yuan, also opens up new forms of government surveillance and social control. The head of U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ, Jeremy Fleming, warned in a speech last month that Beijing could use its digital currency to monitor its citizens and eventually evade international sanctions.
TikTok’s Ties to China: Why Concerns Over Your Data Are Here to Stay
In 2021 Android phone users around the world spent 16.2 trillion minutes on TikTok. And while those millions and millions of users no doubt had an enjoyable time watching clips on the addictive social video app, they also generated a colossal amount of data. TikTok collects information on how you consume its content, from the device you are using to how long you watch a post for and what categories you like, and uses that information to fine-tune the algorithm for the app’s main feed.
For anyone with a passing knowledge of how platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Google function — or who has read Shoshana Zuboff’s Age of Surveillance Capitalism — this data harvesting is not revelatory. However, when it comes to TikTok, the question that consumes many politicians and skeptics is where that data goes. More specifically: does all that information end up being accessed by the Chinese state?
TikTok has disputed both the accusations that it collects more data than other social media companies and that Chinese authorities could access data from its users.
As TikTok’s influence grows, and geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China remain, concerns about data and privacy are likely to stay.
Ransomware Gang Threatens to Publish Thousands of Australians’ Health Data
A ransomware group with suspected links to the notorious Russia-speaking REvil gang has threatened to release the personal information of millions of Medibank customers after the Australian private health insurance giant pledged it would not pay the cybercriminals’ ransom demand.
Medibank, Australia’s largest health insurance provider, first disclosed a “cyber incident” on Oct. 13, saying at the time that it detected unusual activity on its network and took immediate steps to contain the incident. Days later, the company said that customer data might have been exfiltrated.
In an update posted this week, the Melbourne-based Medibank admitted that the attackers accessed roughly 9.7 million customers’ personal information, including names, birth dates, email addresses and passport numbers.
The cybercriminals also accessed health claims data for almost 500,000 customers, including service provider names and locations, where customers received certain medical services and codes associated with diagnosis and procedures administered. For 5,200 users of Medibank’s My Home Hospital app, the cybercriminals accessed some personal and health claims data and, for some, next of kin contact details.
Instagram’s Video Selfie Age Verification System Goes Live in the U.K.
Instagram’s video selfie age verification system for teens went live this week in the United Kingdom, around six months after the company began testing the tool.
The verification method, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) identification tools from U.K.-based technology firm Yoti, will apply to U.K. users who try to edit their date of birth from under 18 years of age to over 18 years of age. Users altering their date of birth can alternatively opt to submit a photo of a driver’s license or other accepted ID in lieu of the selfie verification.
The tools are an attempt to assuage child safety advocates who have called on tech firms to do more to properly identify younger users on their sites but could simultaneously draw scrutiny from privacy advocates wary of Meta’s collecting of biometric identifiers.
Stalking Fears Over PimEyes Facial Search Engine
Privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch has made a complaint against the face recognition search engine PimEyes. PimEyes enables people to look for faces in images that have been posted publicly on the internet.
Big Brother Watch claims it facilitates stalking and has complained to the U.K. data and privacy watchdog. But PimEyes’ chief executive Giorgi Gobronidze says it poses fewer risks related to stalking than social media or other search engines. Big Brother Watch’s complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) claims that PimEyes has enabled “surveillance and stalking on a scale previously unimaginable.”
Starting with a person’s picture, PimEyes finds other photos of them published online. This could include images on photo-sharing sites, blog posts and news articles and on websites. Big Brother Watch says that by piecing together information associated with these images — for example, the text of a blog post, or a photo on a workplace website — a stalker could work out a person’s “place of work, or indications of the area in which they live.”
The campaigners accuse PimEyes of unlawfully processing the biometric data of millions of U.K. citizens — arguing it does not obtain permission from those whose images are analyzed.
Newsom Sued Over COVID ‘Misinformation’ Law That Doctors Say Tramples First Amendment Rights + More
Newsom Sued Over COVID ‘Misinformation’ Law That Doctors Say Tramples First Amendment Rights
A group of California physicians is suing Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration over a state law that empowers the Medical Board of California to discipline physicians who espouse opinions about COVID-19 that are not in line with the mainstream.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, five doctors asked a district court in California to prevent the law from taking effect and said it violates their First Amendment rights and constitutional right to due process. The doctors are represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a nonpartisan civil rights firm.
The law is set to take effect on January 1, 2023. It would allow the Medical Board of California and the Osteopathic Medical Board of California to discipline physicians who “disseminate” information about COVID that departs from the “contemporary scientific consensus.”
The doctors, who treat patients on a regular basis, say the California law violates their First Amendment rights because “it impedes their ability to communicate with their patients in the course of treatment.” The doctors are asking that the court stop the law from taking effect in January while they battle the state in court in hopes that the “unconstitutional” law ultimately be struck down.
School Closures Didn’t Reduce the Number of Child COVID Deaths, Data Indicates
States that engaged in prolonged school closures didn’t seem to have fewer children die with COVID than those who kept schools open, a Daily Wire analysis of new federal data shows.
The District of Columbia had the highest number of children who died with coronavirus per capita (12 deaths equating to 95 deaths per million children), even though its schools were almost completely closed for the 2020-2021 school year, with its school coronavirus policies arguably the most draconian in the nation. Wyoming, which has a nearly identical population size to DC and whose schools remained open more than any other state, had the fewest deaths per capita (zero).
Wyoming was one of only three states that, by May 2020, had not ordered schools closed for the remainder of the 2019-20 year. By contrast, very few DC students attended a significant number of hours of in-person learning even in the following school year, and DC pledged to prohibit students from returning to school this year unless they had been vaccinated, though it ultimately delayed that requirement.
Across the country, COVID was a negligible cause of child mortality, the data shows: For every child that died with COVID, nearly 50 died for other reasons.
Algorithms Quietly Run the City of DC — and Maybe Your Hometown
Washington, DC, is the home base of the most powerful government on earth. It’s also home to 690,000 people — and 29 obscure algorithms that shape their lives. City agencies use automation to screen housing applicants, predict criminal recidivism, identify food assistance fraud, determine if a high schooler is likely to drop out, inform sentencing decisions for young people and many other things.
That snapshot of semiautomated urban life comes from a new report from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). The nonprofit spent 14 months investigating the city’s use of algorithms and found they were used across 20 agencies, with more than a third deployed in policing or criminal justice.
For many systems, city agencies would not provide full details of how their technology worked or was used. The project team concluded that the city is likely using still more algorithms that they were not able to uncover.
TSA to Continue Requiring COVID Vaccine Proof for Non-U.S. Citizens to Enter Country
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has extended its COVID-19 vaccine proof requirement for non-U.S., nonimmigrant citizens flying to enter the United States, making the United States the only western country and among the few remaining countries in the world still to require such proof for entry.
The latest TSA security directive states that effective to at least Jan. 8, 2023, aircraft operators must require each non-U.S., nonimmigrant citizen to present a paper or digital documentation for “proof of being fully vaccinated against COVID-19,” or documentation proving the person is excepted from taking the vaccine, before boarding a flight to the United States.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), being fully vaccinated means having had an accepted single-dose vaccine or a second dose of an accepted 2-dose series at least 14 days ago. A booster dose is not needed to meet the requirement.
It comes after the Biden administration in June dropped its requirement for air travelers entering the United States to test negative for COVID-19, meaning a person with the disease would still be allowed into the country, provided they have proof of vaccination.
Walt Disney Drops COVID Vaccination Mandate From Many TV Shows as Shutdown Fears Recede
Walt Disney told a string of its TV shows Friday that it will no longer require cast and crews to be vaccinated against COVID-19 as hospitalizations wane. Productions, including the first-responder drama “9-1-1,” will no longer require workers in front of and behind the camera in the most high-risk areas of their sets to be vaccinated, said people with knowledge of the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.
The use of vaccination mandates was agreed to by unions and producers as part of the so-called Return to Work agreement last year. About a dozen shows are affected and other protocols including masking and testing will remain in place, a person close to the matter said. Disney may still require vaccines for some productions.
The Burbank-based entertainment giant is among the first major studios to remove vaccination mandates from such a large number of shows, in a sign of the declining risk of virus outbreaks that caused costly production shutdowns. Some other studios also are no longer mandating vaccinations for cast and crew.
Vaccine mandates have been controversial in some quarters of Hollywood. Some actors have strongly opposed mandatory vaccinations, sparking a rift within SAG-AFTRA.
Joe Rogan Laughs at Leftists Declaring They’ll Leave Twitter Over Lack of Censorship as Biden Gets Fact-Checked
Joe Rogan, host of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” laughed at leftists during a new episode this week over their claims that they will leave Twitter over a lack of censorship.
Rogan made the remarks while talking to musician Suzanne Santo about Elon Musk becoming the social media company’s new CEO after his acquisition was finalized last week.
“Have you been paying attention to Twitter, how Twitter’s now fact-checking all Biden statements?” Rogan said. “Every time Biden says something and posts it on Twitter, Twitter’s like nope, actually, that’s not true. Like this is, this is inaccurate.”
“What I cannot understand is people being like, I’m leaving Twitter because without censorship this will be the death of democracy,” Santo responded.
Social Media Users Spend Less Time and Lose Trust in Platforms When They Encounter Censorship: Study
A recent study found the majority of social media users trust an app less if they encounter censorship, and nearly a third of people who have encountered blocked or labeled content have reduced the amount of time they spend on the platform.
The First and Fourteenth Institute, a non-partisan organization that advocates for free speech, free press and due process, conducted the national research between Sept. 27 and Oct. 4 by phone and online among 1,100 people who have at least one social media account.
The research found that 49% of people with social media accounts have seen blocked or labeled content, with 53% saying such censorship causes them to trust the app less. For Facebook users specifically, 58% of those surveyed said they trust the platform less after encountering blocked or labeled content.
New Study Delves Into Censorship During COVID Era
A new scientific study published in the sociological journal Minerva details how medical professionals with views contradicting the mainstream narrative on COVID-19 were censored and suppressed. The study, titled “Censorship and Suppression of COVID-19 Heterodoxy,” also covers how medical professionals pushed back against censorship.
The study was co-authored by a group of scholars from Australia and Israel, and the Yaffa Shir-Raz of the University of Haifa, who leaked a video of an internal meeting at the ministry of health in Israel about how some findings on the relatively rare adverse effects of the Pfizer vaccine were hidden.
On Substack, Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Josh Guetzkow, one of the authors of the study, explained how the study was conducted. The study is “based on in-depth interviews with scientists and doctors around the world who have faced censorship and suppression due to their views on COVID-19.”
The summary of the report states that “the emergence of COVID-19 … led to numerous controversies over COVID-related knowledge and policy” and a “perceived threat from doctors and scientists who challenge the official position of governmental and intergovernmental health authorities.”
Beijing Marathon Returns but China Sticks to ‘Zero-COVID’
Thousands of runners took to the streets of China’s capital on Sunday for the return of the Beijing marathon after a two-year COVID-19 hiatus, even as another death blamed on China’s strict pandemic controls generated more public anger.
Authorities are trying to restore a sense of normalcy while sticking to a “zero-COVID” strategy that locks down neighborhoods when any virus cases are found and quarantines everyone arriving from overseas in hotels for seven to 10 days.
A simmering public frustration, which has grown as the rest of the world opens up, has been fueled by a series of tragic incidents — in several cases because people were denied timely care for non-COVID-19 medical emergencies.
Clearview Stole My Face and the EU Can’t Do Anything About It
Matthias Marx says his face has been stolen. The German activist’s visage is pale and wide, topped with messy, blond hair. So far, these features have been mapped and monetized by three companies without his permission. As has happened to billions of others, his face has been turned into a search term without his consent.
In 2020 Marx read about Clearview AI, a company that says it has scraped billions of photos from the internet to create a huge database of faces. By uploading a single photo, Clearview’s clients, which include law enforcement agencies, can use the company’s facial recognition technology to unearth other online photos featuring the same face.
Across Europe, millions of people’s faces are appearing in search engines operated by companies like Clearview. The region might boast the world’s strictest privacy laws, but European regulators, including in Hamburg, are struggling to enforce them.
Like other privacy activists, Marx does not believe it’s technically possible for Clearview to permanently delete a face. He believes that Clearview’s technology, which is constantly crawling the internet for faces, would simply find and catalog him all over again. Clearview did not reply to a request to comment on whether it is able to permanently delete people from its database.
Apple Says iPhone Supplies Hurt by Anti-Virus Curbs in China
Apple Inc. is warning customers they’ll have to wait longer to get its latest iPhone models after anti-virus restrictions were imposed on a contractor’s factory in central China.
The company’s announcement Sunday gave no details but said the factory operated by Foxconn in the central city of Zhengzhou is “operating at significantly reduced capacity.”
Foxconn Technology Group said earlier it imposed anti-virus measures on the factory in Zhengzhou following virus outbreaks. Apple and Foxconn previously hadn’t responded to questions about how iPhone production might be affected.
Their Children Went Viral. Now They Wish They Could Wipe Them From the Internet.
Many in the movement argue that children can’t consent to being online and that they may not have a choice in growing up in the spotlight. Publicly documenting a child’s life can pose higher safety concerns. As social media usership increases — especially on video platforms like TikTok — the potential viewership of every video is limitless. Going viral, whether intentionally or accidentally, isn’t uncommon.
Children “don’t know about the internet,” said Sarah Adams, a creator who runs the TikTok account Mom Uncharted, which posts videos about the ethics of parents’ content that revolves around children. “They don’t know about social media. They don’t know that their images are being blasted worldwide to billions of people, many of whom are predatory toward children. They don’t know that their images are going to live on forever.”
NYC Firefighters, Teachers Ask Supreme Court to Pause COVID Mandate That Cost Them Their Jobs + More
NYC Firefighters, Teachers Ask Supreme Court to Pause COVID Mandate That Cost Them Their Jobs
New York City firefighters, teachers, police officers, sanitation workers and others who lost their jobs after the city rejected their request for a religious exemption to the COVID vaccine mandate are appealing to the Supreme Court, and saying the city discriminated against them while letting unvaccinated strippers and athletes keep their jobs.
Lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a civil rights law firm representing the workers, said in their filing that while they await a decision from the Second Circuit, their clients “are suffering the loss of First Amendment rights, are facing deadlines to move out of homes in foreclosure or with past-due rents, are suffering health problems due to loss of their city health insurance and the stress of having no regular income and are resorting to food stamps and Medicaid just to keep their families afloat.”
ADF said those dire conditions warrant an emergency decision by the Supreme Court to pause the decision to fire the workers. The workers asked the court to pause enforcement of the city’s mandate while their lawsuit makes its way through the Second Circuit, a process that could take months. Their request was sent directly to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who presides over the Second Circuit.
The Supreme Court has so far declined prior requests for emergency action in cases connected with COVID vaccine mandates, but this case appears to be the first that has been already fully adjudicated on the merits in lower courts, which could help the NYC workers.
Lawmakers Press Apple and Google Over TikTok’s Keystroke Tracking Ability
Two members of Congress have sent letters to the chief executives of Apple and Google accusing them of failing to act on security weaknesses and surveillance threats posed by apps on their app stores: most notably, TikTok’s ability to monitor keystrokes on outside websites through its in-app browser.
The letters, viewed by Forbes ahead of being sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook and his counterpart at Google Sundar Pichai, asked whether or not Apple and Google, as gatekeepers of their app markets, would either ban or take other punitive actions against apps like TikTok that have been accused of infringing on users’ privacy with such features.
In August, Forbes was the first to report on TikTok’s potential keystroke monitoring through the web portal built into its app, based on findings from researcher Felix Krause. He found that the company could track keystrokes by injecting lines of code into outside websites that could alert TikTok to what people were doing on those pages.
The tracking, if the data were collected or stored, would make it possible for TikTok to capture a user’s credit card information or password, Krause said. While the code could be used for those data collection purposes, there is no evidence TikTok is actually doing so. But the capability has worried security and privacy experts concerned about the potential for abuse.
Pfizer, Audi, Mondelez Join Growing List of Companies Pausing Ads on Twitter
America’s woke, politically correct corporations are taking aim at Twitter in hopes of starving it of cash, nevermind that its traffic is orders of magnitude greater than such socialist-endorsed, mind-numbingly boring propaganda websites and TV channels as MSNBC, CNN, Vox, The Atlantic and everything else that desperately relies on implicit advertiser subsidies to survive.
According to the WSJ, food giant General Mills, Oreo maker Mondelez, pandemic profiteers Pfizer and Volkswagen’s Audi are among a growing list of brands that have “temporarily” paused their Twitter advertising in the wake of the takeover of the company by Elon Musk. General Motors paused its spending on the social media platform last week.
Kelsey Roemhildt, a spokeswoman for General Mills, whose brands include Cheerios, Bisquick and Häagen-Dazs, confirmed the company has paused Twitter ads. “As always, we will continue to monitor this new direction and evaluate our marketing spend,” she said.
Some advertisers are concerned that Mr. Musk could scale back content moderation, which they worry would lead to an increase in objectionable content on the platform, which should answer Elon Musk’s question about what advertisers prefer: free speech or political correctness.
Data Shows COVID Restrictions Were Ineffective and Based on Wrong Assumptions: Data Analyst
Severe measures imposed on society in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were based on wrong assumptions and, as it turned out later, were ineffective in stopping the spread of the coronavirus, said Justin Hart, chief data analyst and founder of RationalGround.com.
During the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially after Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated a high COVID-19 mortality rate in his testimony before Congress, Hart was looking at the pandemic statistics and did not find the data as alarming as it was officially presented.
Hart saw an article by John Ioannidis, a professor of medical sciences at Stanford University and one of the most-cited scientists worldwide. Hart learned from Ioannidis’s study that the risk of dying from COVID-19 for people under the age of 65 is about the same as dying on their commute to work, and the risk for anyone over the age of 65 is about the risk that a professional truck driver faces.
A recent paper co-authored by Ioannidis assessed that during the pre-vaccination era, the median infection fatality rate of COVID-19 was 0.035 percent for people under 60 years old and 0.095 percent among people under 70. When those estimates are taken into consideration, Hart said, “people pause and say, ‘well, why did we do a one-size-fits-all quarantine, social distancing, school closures, business closures, lockdowns?’ It made no sense.”
The Checkup With Dr. Wen: Should the Unvaccinated Be Excluded From Family Gatherings?
Over the past several months, many readers have asked a version of this question: Should they continue to ask that everyone gathering with them be vaccinated and perhaps even up-to-date with their booster shots?
Circumstances have changed. We now know that while being up-to-date with boosters continues to protect against severe disease, immunity against infection wanes in a matter of weeks. In addition, the Omicron subvariants are partially immune-evasive, and the effectiveness against symptomatic infection is not high even during the period of optimal vaccine protection.
One study, published in JAMA in May, found that during the time of Omicron predominance, vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection after two months was only 29% in children ages 5 to 11. It was just 17% in adolescents.
Another study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in July, reported that there was essentially no difference in protection against infection between unvaccinated adults and people who received two vaccine doses six or more months prior. A third dose restored effectiveness to 52%, but, as other studies have demonstrated, this protection is likely short-lived.
There’s another reason the likelihood of infection is no longer so different between the unvaccinated and the vaccinated: A large majority of both groups have had COVID.
Humans May Have Abnormalities in the Future Due to Excessive Use of Technology, Research Claims
According to a study commissioned by TollFreeForwarding, excessive use of technology can lead to abnormalities. Researchers worked with a 3D designer to produce images of a “future human” with physical problems brought on by regular technological use. Scientists gave the 3D model the moniker “Mindy.”
As reported first by Interesting Engineering, the team examined scientific studies and professional viewpoints on the subject, focusing on the detrimental impacts technology can have on the human body, particularly over an extended length of time.
According to the researchers, Mindy would eventually develop a bent back. This resulted from people using modern technology devices excessively, which changed the way they stood and sat. They claim that looking down at a smartphone or up at a computer screen all the time could cause tension on various body components, causing an arched back and spinal misalignment.
The study further claimed that future humans would have stronger skulls to shield their brains from radiation from smartphones and second eyelids to protect their eyes from strain and an excess of blue light from screen exposure.
Amazon’s Worker Surveillance ‘Leads to Extreme Stress and Anxiety’
At its best technological advancement can free workers from mundane, repetitive tasks and allow them to concentrate on more cognitively challenging and creative ones. Concerns remain, however, around the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and connected products to monitor people in the workplace.
Major concerns include unethical data collection and privacy intrusion; constant surveillance and the resulting impact on mental health; and how the advancement of this tech might displace people from their jobs.
Amazon’s patented design for a connected wristband that can track warehouse workers’ locations and “nudge” them in the direction of their next assignment was highlighted in the committee session. An Amazon spokesperson told Spotlight the company has since “abandoned” this patent.
Dr. Matthew Cole, a postdoctoral researcher at the Fairwork Project, an initiative within the Oxford Internet Institute that researches working conditions at digital platforms, said that constant surveillance and reduced autonomy were detrimental to employees’ health. “Overwhelmingly, the evidence shows that the technologies that Amazon uses are not empowering,” he said. “They lead to overwork, extreme stress and anxiety and health problems such as joint problems. Amazon is not the leader to see how tech can benefit workers.”
Democrats Press YouTube Over Spanish-Language Disinformation
YouTube is facing renewed pressure to crack down on Spanish-language disinformation in a letter sent to the tech giant Friday by Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.), Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.).
The Democrats told YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki they have “serious concern with the continued lack of action and transparency” from the company in regard to the spread of false narratives, especially in Spanish, as it related to the upcoming midterm election, according to a copy of the letter exclusively shared with The Hill.
The lawmakers asked YouTube to provide them with details about the steps the company is taking to combat the spread of mis- and disinformation in non-English languages, including how many content moderators the company has designated to review non-English language content.
YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez told The Hill in a statement that the company has more than 20,000 people globally, “including many with Spanish language expertise,” who work to review and remove content that violates YouTube’s misinformation policies.
The NYPD Has Joined Amazon’s Ring Neighbors Surveillance Network
The New York Police Department has joined Ring Neighbors, the neighborhood surveillance network built around Amazon’s Ring security cameras. The partnership, announced yesterday, means the NYPD will view people’s posts on Neighbors and be able to post directly to it, including requests for public health on “active police matters.”
Neighbors is a Nextdoor-like extension of Ring’s security camera business, allowing residents of a neighborhood to discuss crime and safety as well as post footage from their cameras. While many law enforcement departments have joined Neighbors in recent years, this marks its adoption by America’s largest police force. (Police could separately request Ring footage for criminal investigations without the app.) It’s part of an increasingly tight integration between Amazon and police — one that’s raised both concerns about privacy and questions about its crime-solving value.
Amazon’s capacity for widespread monitoring has alarmed civil liberties advocates — especially because citizen reports can reflect racial biases about “suspicious” residents. The NYPD, meanwhile, remains shadowed by an invasive decade-long surveillance campaign against Muslim residents. The collaboration between the two will begin in the coming week.
Elon Musk Has Fired Twitter’s ‘Ethical AI’ Team
Not long after Elon Musk announced plans to acquire Twitter last March, he mused about open-sourcing “the algorithm” that determines how tweets are surfaced in user feeds so that it could be inspected for bias.
But today, as part of an aggressive plan to trim costs that involves firing thousands of Twitter employees, Musk’s management team cut a team of artificial intelligence researchers who were working toward making Twitter’s algorithms more transparent and fair.
Rumman Chowdhury, director of the ML Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability (META — no, not that one) team at Twitter, tweeted that she had been let go as part of mass layoffs implemented by new management — although it hardly seemed that she was relishing the idea of working under Musk.
As more and more problems with AI have surfaced, including biases around race, gender and age, many tech companies have installed “ethical AI” teams ostensibly dedicated to identifying and mitigating such issues.
U.S. Court Split in Challenge to COVID Vaccine Mandate for Federal Workers + More
U.S. Court Split in Challenge to COVID Vaccine Mandate for Federal Workers
A U.S. appeals court panel seemed divided on Wednesday over whether a civilian Navy employee can challenge President Joe Biden‘s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal workers in court or must first go through an administrative process.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit heard arguments in a bid by the worker, Jason Payne, to revive his lawsuit claiming the requirement to receive the vaccine or face termination violates federal employees’ constitutional rights.
A federal judge in Washington, DC, ruled in May that because Payne’s claims related to workplace conditions, he was required to go through an administrative complaint process for federal civil servants before taking the case to court.
Circuit Judge Justin Walker, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, seemed more sympathetic to Payne’s lawyer, Gene Hamilton’s arguments. Walker repeatedly pressed Daniel Winik of the U.S. Department of Justice, who is defending the vaccine mandate, on whether federal workers have any ability to challenge policies that violate their rights before they take effect.
White House Insists It’s Not Using Facebook Censorship Portal Despite Jen Psaki’s ‘Flagging’ Admission
The White House doesn’t use a secretive Facebook portal to request the removal of alleged “misinformation,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday when asked about a bombshell report laying out how government officials get tech firms to squelch online speech — despite her predecessor Jen Psaki saying last year the White House was “flagging” Facebook posts it didn’t like.
When pressed by The Post, Jean-Pierre said firmly that “no,” the White House does not use the recently exposed portal to request the removal of Facebook or Instagram posts.
The Intercept on Monday revealed the existence of the portal — facebook.com/xtakedowns — through which users with a government or law enforcement email address can submit content for deletion.
The revelation prompted outrage from civil libertarians who said the mechanism violated the spirit — if not the letter — of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.
Soccer Fans, You’re Being Watched
This fall, more than 15,000 cameras will monitor soccer fans across eight stadiums and on the streets of Doha during the 2022 World Cup, an event expected to attract more than 1 million football fans from around the globe. Qatar’s World Cup organizers are not alone in deploying biometric technology to monitor soccer fan activity. In recent years, soccer clubs and stadiums across Europe have been introducing these security and surveillance technologies.
In Denmark, Brøndby Stadium has been using facial recognition for ticketing verification since 2019. In the Netherlands, NEC Nijmegen has used biometric technology to grant access to Goffert Stadium. France’s FC Metz briefly experimented with a facial recognition device to identify fans banned from Saint-Symphorien Stadium. And the U.K.’s Manchester City reportedly hired Texas-based firm Blink Identity in 2019 to deploy facial recognition systems at Etihad Stadium.
So how accurate are these systems? Over the years, there have been cases where things have gone wrong. In 2017, facial scanning technology mistakenly identified more than 2,000 people as possible criminals at the 2017 Champions League final in Cardiff, U.K. The system was scrapped following a court decision, only to be redeployed earlier this year.
Slowly but steadily, ubiquitous biometric technology systems have come to represent a new normal for stadium infrastructure in which “health securitization” is incorporated into systems for public safety and marketing.
Some Universities Require Bivalent COVID Booster — Harvard and Yale Are Among the Few Schools That Make Latest Booster Mandatory
As the U.S. braces for the possibility of a winter surge in COVID-19 cases, some colleges and universities are requiring their students to receive the new bivalent booster shot.
Among those schools are Harvard University, Tufts University, and Wellesley College in Massachusetts; Yale University in Connecticut; and Fordham University in New York City.
Notably, there have been reports of pushback regarding bivalent booster requirements at colleges and universities, according to Inside Higher Ed. It also appears that few other institutions have enacted such a requirement.
These Cruise Lines Just Dropped Their COVID Testing Rules
Several major cruise lines have dropped COVID-19-related testing protocols ahead of the holiday season, returning to what it was like before the pandemic swept the world.
Starting this month, cruise lines including Disney Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean and Virgin Voyages have simplified or removed COVID-19-related pre-boarding rules entirely, joining a growing trend in the cruise industry. It comes weeks after Norwegian Cruise Line became one of the first cruise lines to eliminate pandemic-related rules entirely, including for testing, vaccines, and masks.
This month, Disney will drop the requirement for travelers to get tested for COVID-19, regardless of their vaccination status, according to the company. Currently, the cruise line requires all unvaccinated guests to get tested one to two days before they sail. The new rule will go into effect starting Nov. 14.
China Officials Admit Fault for Boy’s Death as Anger at Lockdown Mounts
Chinese health officials released a statement on Thursday apologizing for the death of a 3-year-old boy whose father wasn’t able to get him to a hospital during a COVID-19 lockdown.
The boy’s father wrote in a social media post on Wednesday that he had been unable to leave his housing compound in Lanzhou because of the country’s strict coronavirus restrictions, according to the Agence France-Presse. He claimed that it took over an hour to break out of his housing compound and get his son, who had carbon monoxide poisoning, to a hospital via taxi.
“We sincerely accept criticism and supervision from the media and netizens, and are determined to rectify [mistakes],” the officials said, reportedly admitting that it took 90 minutes for an ambulance to be sent after the boy’s father called first responders.
The outlet reported that the incident sparked a backlash against China’s COVID policies online with the statement “three years of the COVID pandemic have been his entire life,” spreading widely on the Chinese social media site Weibo.
Chinese COVID Testing Firms Report Big Profits as Virus Fight Intensifies
Several of China’s largest medical testing companies have posted big increases in profit for the first three quarters of the year, as the country’s strict zero-COVID policy boosts spending in a minority of sectors while depressing the broader economy.
Over the past two weeks, at least six such companies have reported a soaring jump in earnings. Shanghai Labway (301060.SZ) reported a 241% year-on-year increase in net profit between January and September to 604 million yuan ($82.70 million) while Guangdong Hybribio (300639.SZ) recorded a 130% increase over that same period to 1.49 billion yuan, according to stock exchange statements.
TikTok Makes Clear European Data Can Be Accessed by China-Based Employees
TikTok updated its privacy policies for European users on Tuesday, adding explicit disclosures that personal data from the app may be viewed by employees in China.
The update aligns with what TikTok executives have said publicly. But the addition reflects the intense scrutiny TikTok has faced over its international data flows.
The announcement, which TikTok said was aimed at providing greater transparency, applies to users in the European Economic Area, the U.K. and Switzerland — not the United States, though TikTok said it does store European users’ data in the U.S. and in Singapore.
U.S. policymakers have grown increasingly vocal about concerns the Chinese government could pressure TikTok or its parent company, ByteDance, to hand over users’ personal data under the country’s national security laws.
Meta Is the S&P 500’s Worst Performer of 2022 as Losses Near 75%
Shares of Facebook parent Meta overtook the dubious honor as the biggest loser on the S&P 500 this week as the Silicon Valley giant bleeds money to fund its CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse vision and underscores big tech’s 2022 downfall.
Meta stock has faltered all year but crashed 25% last Thursday after reporting concerning quarterly earnings and is down a further 11% this week to a seven-year low of below $90. The social media titan is down 73.7% year-to-date and nearly 80% from its 2021 high of $384.
Musk Agrees to Restore Twitter Content-Moderation Tools This Week
Twitter Inc.’s new owner Elon Musk promised civil rights leaders he will restore content moderation tools that had been blocked for some staff by the end of the week, according to three leaders who met with Musk on Monday.
Musk made the commitment during a Zoom meeting with the heads of some of the country’s leading racial justice organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Color of Change and the Anti-Defamation League.
The civil rights groups had raised concerns about Musk’s plans to relax speech protections on the platform and restore the accounts of users who had been removed. Last week, Twitter dramatically limited the number of people with access to the dashboard of tools that allow Twitter’s Trust and Safety team uses to enforce policy actions, Bloomberg reported.
TikTok Glorifies Weight Loss Among Teens, Young Adults: Study
Health and dieting trends on TikTok glorify weight loss and may contribute to disordered eating behaviors and body dissatisfaction, particularly in adolescent and young users, according to a University of Vermont study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS One.
Why it matters: It is the first study to assess content related to nutrition and body image at scale on the social app for short video.
What they’re saying: “Each day, millions of teens and young adults are being fed content on TikTok that paints a very unrealistic and inaccurate picture of food, nutrition and health,” Lizzy Pope, the senior researcher of the study and an associate professor at the University of Vermont, said in a statement.
“Getting stuck in weight loss TikTok can be a really tough environment, especially for the main users of the platform, which are young people,” she added.
‘Unleash All This Creativity’: Google AI’s Breathtaking Potential
Google‘s research arm on Wednesday showed off a whiz-bang assortment of artificial intelligence (AI) projects it’s incubating, aimed at everything from mitigating climate change to helping novelists craft prose.
Why it matters: AI has breathtaking potential to improve and enrich our lives — and comes with hugely worrisome risks of misuse, intrusion and malfeasance, if not developed and deployed responsibly.
Driving the news: The dozen-or-so AI projects that Google Research unfurled at a Manhattan media event are in various stages of development, with goals ranging from societal improvement (such as better health diagnoses) to pure creativity and fun (text-to-image generation that can help you build a 3D image of a skirt-clad monster made of marzipan).
The big picture: Fears about AI’s dark side — from privacy violations and the spread of misinformation to losing control of consumer data — recently prompted the White House to issue a preliminary “AI Bill of Rights,” encouraging technologists to build safeguards into their products.
