Miss a day, miss a lot. Subscribe to The Defender's Top News of the Day. It's free.
High Court Rejects COVID Shot Mandate Case From New York
The Supreme Court declined on Thursday to take up a case involving a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for healthcare workers in New York that does not offer an exemption for religious reasons.
The court’s action follows a decision in December in which the justices declined an emergency request to halt the requirement. At the time, doctors, nurses and other medical workers who said they were being forced to choose between their jobs and religious beliefs.
Three conservative justices — Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — dissented earlier and did so again Thursday.
New York is one of three states, along with Maine and Rhode Island, that do not accommodate healthcare workers who object to the vaccine on religious grounds.
More Than 500 Flights Across the U.S. Are Canceled Today as Pilots Blame ‘Staff Shortage’ on COVID Vaccine Mandate
As Americans prepare for a patriotic Fourth of July weekend, they can expect airline delays and cancelations; critics blame the pilot shortage on vaccine mandates as travel chaos continues for the second week in a row. More than 500 flights have already been canceled and more than 2,000 delayed in the U.S. on Wednesday, with New Jersey‘s Newark Liberty topping the American list with 45 flights canceled.
A total of 1,800 flights have been canceled so far this week in the U.S., according to The Hill, and between June 16 and 20, there were more than 5,300 flights canceled, according to CBS News.
Pilots have also slammed airlines for creating a chaotic travel season due to COVID vaccine mandates. One Southwest pilot said during a protest — which saw 1,300 Southwest employees picketing outside of Dallas Love Field Airport earlier this month — that he thought the mandate was the main cause.
“I believe it’s because of the COVID vaccines — they’re still requiring the vaccination for all new applicants and if the new applicants say they’re not going to get vaccinated, their application is passed over,” Pilot Tom Bogart told News Nation.
New York School Districts Plan Facial Recognition Security Despite Ban
A moratorium on the use of facial recognition in New York State schools has not prevented a pair of districts from receiving approval to deploy systems that use the technology, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU). The New York State Education Department (NYSED) was barred from contracting for facial recognition until July 2022 or the completion of a study on the impact of such systems on student privacy.
The Locust Valley and Thousand Islands school districts each sought and have received approval, however, to contract with surveillance camera supplier Verkada to deploy video security with biometric tools.
The Locust Valley project, according to the document requesting funds under the NYSED Smart Schools Investment Plan, puts cameras in all elementary schools and administration buildings.
Verkada’s People Analytics capabilities include face detection and searching based on face biometrics. Those features are turned off by default in Texas and Illinois, the NYCLU writes, due to biometrics regulations in those states. Not in New York.
School Surveillance Will Never Protect Kids From Shootings
If we are to believe the purveyors of school surveillance systems, K-12 schools will soon operate in a manner akin to some agglomeration of Minority Report, Person of Interest and Robocop. “Military-grade” systems would slurp up student data, picking up on the mere hint of harmful ideations, and dispatch officers before the would-be perpetrators could carry out their vile acts.
In the unlikely event that someone was able to evade the predictive systems, they would inevitably be stopped by next-generation weapon-detection systems and biometric sensors that interpret the gait or tone of a person, warning authorities of impending danger.
Not only is this not our present, it will never be our future — no matter how expansive and intricate surveillance systems become.
Much like policing itself, every failure of a surveillance or security system most typically results in people calling for more extensive surveillance. If danger is not predicted and prevented, companies often cite the need for more data to address the gaps in their systems — and governments and schools often buy into it.
Google Sign-Up ‘Fast Track to Surveillance,’ Consumer Groups Say
A Google account is essential in order to use a number of its products and services. But the coalition alleges the sign-up process steers users towards options that collect more data.
The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC), which coordinates the coalition, claims the language Google uses in the registration process is “unclear, incomplete and misleading” leading many consumers to pick options that are less privacy-friendly.
As a result “tens of millions of Europeans have been placed on a fast track to surveillance when they signed up to a Google account” BEUC claims.
Amazon Is Introducing New Tech to Monitor Shoppers in Its Grocery Stores and Share Data With Advertisers
Amazon has launched a new data tracking program for its physical grocery stores to mine data on shoppers’ behavior, the company announced in a blog post on Wednesday.
Store Insights, rolled out to all Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores with the Dash Cart or Just Walk Out technology in the U.S., will feed data back to brands on shoppers’ interests — similar to data collection on e-commerce sites. The data collection and analytics aim to provide brands insights and feedback on their promotions and advertising strategies, the company said.
Amazon’s cashier-less stores themselves operate through a complex system of shopper surveillance, including AI-powered cameras that follow shoppers and weight sensors on carts. Amazon has made major investments in its cashier-less stores in the U.S. and has plans for global expansion in 2022 and 2023, according to internal documents seen by Insider.
But Amazon has also come up against privacy scandals in the past. The company’s delivery van surveillance cameras closely monitor workers down to their hand movements and facial expressions, which made some workers feel paranoid.
Facebook Could Be Sued for Addicting Children Under California Bill
Before the summer ends, California may pass the first U.S. bill that would hold social media companies liable for product features that research has found are harmful to children. If passed, the law could have far-reaching consequences, potentially impacting how kids throughout the U.S. use social media sites like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.
On Tuesday, the bill — the Social Media Platform Duty to Act — cleared what The Wall Street Journal called “a crucial vote in the State Senate.”
Although much of prior reporting on the bill focused on its earlier goal to grant a parent’s right to sue over harm to individual children, WSJ reports that the amended version of the bill would instead “permit the state attorney general, local district attorneys and city attorneys in California’s four largest cities to sue social media companies” for unfair business practices known to harm children.
BetterMe’s ‘Childhood Trauma Test’ Is All Over TikTok. Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Take It.
TikTokkers have been sharing their results of the “Childhood Trauma Test” from BetterMe, a Ukrainian subscription-based behavioral healthcare platform, but the site’s privacy policy reveals that the test is a data collection tool.
The Childhood Trauma Test asks a series of invasive questions including, “were you often punished in childhood” and “do you easily make negative assumptions about what others are thinking about you and your actions?”
Then, in order to receive your results, you have to give the platform your email address. Your results show your levels of rejection trauma, abandonment trauma, betrayal trauma and injustice trauma. But there is no information on how the test was designed and if it’s been vetted by the mental health community. It proceeds to offer you a customized healing plan that you have to pay for, of course.
BetterMe’s privacy policy indicates that the test collects a lot of your personal data.
Congress Is Trying to Rein in Big Tech. This Lawmaker Could Stand in Their Way.
It’s hard to find lawmakers willing to publicly side with the big tech companies these days. But Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have a powerful champion left on Capitol Hill: Democratic Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington state.
And as Congress gets increasingly close to a vote on an anti-monopoly bill that would rein in the tech titans’ power, the lawmaker from Amazon and Microsoft’s home state could be a major reason that it fails.
DelBene has used her perch as chair of the business-friendly New Democrats caucus to push back on some of the most aggressive efforts to regulate or restrain Silicon Valley, which she claims would hurt the economy and hamstring the tech industry.
Planned Parenthood Could Share Personal Data Like the ZIP Codes of Abortion Seekers With Google and Facebook, Report Says
Detailed data on abortion seekers who use Planned Parenthood’s health-center search on its website could be shared with Facebook, Google, TikTok and Hotjar, according to an investigation by privacy app Lockdown Privacy reported by The Washington Post.
Data shared with Google from Planned Parenthood’s website can include the IP address, approximate ZIP codes, the type of abortion sought and the particular clinic used by someone seeking an abortion.
