Author: April Cowels

The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that new medical codes for COVID-19 vaccination status are used to track users. The agency confirmed the use of the codes to track people in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by The Epoch Times. The new International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes, which were introduced in April 2022, are aimed at tracking people who are partially vaccinated and those who are not vaccinated. The CDC, which introduced the codes, says it does not track people but that health care systems do track people. View the released documents here. “The ICD codes were implemented in April 2022, however the CDC does not have any data on the codes and does not track this information,” the agency wrote in an email. It added that the codes’ purpose is “to enable healthcare providers to track within their practices.” When the codes were first proposed in 2021, CDC medical officer Dr. David Berglund said: “There has been interest expressed in being able to track people who are not immunized or who are only partially immunized.” Healthcare providers supported the proposal and even made submissions on how the codes would be used. In a joint letter to the CDC, senior vice president of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), Danielle Lloyd, and senior vice president of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, said that the codes “will help health insurance providers identify emollees [sic] who may benefit from outreach and further education about…Freedom of information request reveals more about the CDC tracking the unvaccinated

Telesign, the company that’s had a big role in two-factor identification (2FA) is now looking to move to developing accurate global digital identity solutions using “AI.” Telesign CEO Joe Burton revealed that he believes it can be powered by what a report refers to as “fuzzy AI” – at the intersection of “AI” and statistical analysis. Speaking for TechRepublic, Burton appears to suggest that this is meant to carve up a more sizable market share for Telesign, which, despite its 2FA claim to fame, makes incomparably less money from that tech than the likes of OpenID, LastPass, etc. Now, Telesign is turning to “AI” as a way to make itself competitive, primarily via the Communications Platform-as-a-Service, which has been in the works for four years now. And the key to this is to get rid of passports and use people’s phone numbers for both ID verification, and data modeling, as well as “customized communications.” When referencing “AI,” Burton, like so many before him, is actually speaking about machine learning (ML), and has among other things told the publication about the ways Telesign wants to use it to analyze locations and network activity of billions of unique phone numbers. He provided some concrete numbers: 5 billion numbers in 195 countries going through the data company’s system each month, and this is visible to Telesign “on behalf” of 3,000 businesses. “We are looking at 2,200 different attributes on your phone usage patterns, and are using all of that to train a machine-learning…Two-factor pioneer looks toward using AI to identify individuals

https://video.reclaimthenet.org/platform/FBI-Terms-extrem-99825383532.mp4   If you use the terms “red-pilled,” “based,” “looksmaxxing,” and even names like “Chad” and “Stacey,” you may just be a violent extremist. At least, that’s according to the FBI. It turns out, the FBI has a secret list of flagged terms that it uses internally to possibly indicate an individual’s involvement in “violent extremism,” This was revealed in documents obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. It’s not just specific phrases that the FBI is watching out for, but also certain words like “cel,” which is short for “incel” or “involuntary celibate.” According to the FBI, this online community of men believes that they can’t attract women, and as a result, they’re involuntarily celibate. The FBI’s glossary of words also indicates “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism” and a list of “key terms” about “involuntary celibate violent extremism.” The Oversight Project has tweeted about the FBI’s documents, expressing concern about how the FBI equates protected online speech to violence. According to the FBI, using common online terms like “based” or “redpilled” are signs of “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism.” Here are some highlights of the common internet terms the FBI thinks could be a sign of extremism. “Red pilled” is an idea taken from the popular Matrix movies refers to someone taking a path of truth. But, according to the FBI, it could indicate someone who has racist, or fascist beliefs. The FBI thinks the term “Chad” is a “Race-specific term used to describe an idealized version…If you use the terms “red-pilled,” “based,” and “Chad,” you could be an extremist, the FBI says

Anika Collier Navaroli is currently a Practitioner Fellow at Stanford University. She previously worked in senior content policy positions inside Trusty & Safety departments at Twitter and Twitch and within research think tanks and advocacy non-profit organizations. This piece is cross-published at Just Security. Over the past few weeks, major social media companies including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube reinstated former President Donald Trump’s social media accounts and privileges. Now, in the aftermath of his indictment in Manhattan’s Criminal Court and likely future indictment elsewhere, their decisions will be put to the test.  After his day in court, Trump was back at Mar-a-Lago, where he addressed the media and streamed his remarks on Facebook Live. He used his platform to lay out a list of grievances against his perceived political opponents, including doubling down on unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and framing his legal troubles as “political persecution” designed to “interfere with the upcoming 2024 election.” As a whistleblower from inside one of those major social media companies, I can say with conviction that the path we are on is dangerous. I know first hand. As I testified to Congress, while an employee at Twitter I spent months warning the company’s leadership that the coded language Trump and his followers were using was going to lead to violence on Jan. 6, 2021. I am also the person who argued to Twitter executives that they would have more blood on their hands if they did not follow my team’s recommendation…Trump’s Reinstatement on Social Media Platforms and Coded Forms of Incitement

I really respect and enjoy Louis Rossmann’s perspective about this sort of thing, but for those who want an article here’s a special report from Reuters. The class action lawsuit alleges that Tesla employees are secretly sharing intimate customer images taken by the cars’ cameras. Reportedly most of the footage recorded by Tesla is relatively harmless, however some video captured nudity, and other bits of personal life recorded after the owner’s turned off the car. The post Tesla Class Action Lawsuit Over Creepy Surveillance appeared first on Mason Pelt.Tesla Class Action Lawsuit Over Creepy Surveillance

Maia Levy Daniel is a tech policy and regulation specialist and a research affiliate at the Center of Technology and Society (CETyS) at Universidad de San Andrés in Argentina. Cartagena, Colombia. Felipe Ortega Grijalba/Wikimedia Every day we see more and more uses of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and related technologies in numerous fields. Healthcare, education, and work are only a few of the many areas that are allegedly being improved by the implementation of these technologies. Now, the Colombian judiciary has joined this technosolutionist trend.  In one case (Case 1), in January 2023, a judge used ChatGPT to support his composition of a decision to waive medical fee payments for the treatment of a child with autism. In another case (Case 2), in February 2023, a judge conducted a hearing in the so-called ‘metaverse,’ and used ChatGPT to understand and explain how identities could be verified in the metaverse. This was a traffic-related case, in which the petitioner requested the use of a virtual venue for the hearing and the defendant agreed. The hearing was streamed on YouTube. The use of technologies in these two cases raises several problems and questions–some of which I discussed in a previous piece for Tech Policy Press on the use of AI by the public sector. Here, I focus on two main critical topics, and analyze specific arguments provided by the judges in the Colombian cases, which reflect generalized concerns on the use of technology in the public domain. 1. How the public sector…The Technosolutionism Trap: The Risky Use of Tech by the Colombian Judiciary

 Jenna Burrell is Data & Society’s director of research. Shutterstock With the release of GPT-4, writers are faced with a fresh indignity amid ongoing, sweeping changes to their industry and job stability: a tool trained on human writing that seems poised to replace human writers. The global archive of human expression that is the internet — from old digitized books and song lyrics, to mundane chat posts, to articles researched and written by journalists — has trained ChatGPT to predict what words go together and what phrases make sense in response to a given prompt, spitting out replies that seem uncannily apt.  Because of this, ChatGPT and similar tools commit a highly sophisticated form of plagiarism. For journalists and other writers who publish their work online, there is presently no way to opt out of having the fruits of their labor sucked into these models. The same applies to artists whose work is used to train similar tools, such as Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, which produce digital art from text prompts. Consider that OpenAI, the company that built ChatGPT, has a current valuation of $29 billion. It’s a Marxist nightmare: the work of millions accruing to a few capitalist owners who pay nothing at all for that labor. But if you write for a living, spend an afternoon playing around with the tool: it might set your mind at ease. Pretty quickly, you’ll see that ChatGPT tends to write in broad cliches, going for the predictable rather than…ChatGPT and Copyright: The Ultimate Appropriation

Judge Edward Davila has denied a request by Elizabeth Holmes to stay out of prison on bail as she appeals her case. She has been ordered to surrender to prison. Her 11-year sentence will start April 27. Holmes, who is a Forbes ’30 Under 30′ Alumni was found guilty on four fraud charges as the founder of Theranos. She’s one of the many frauds Forbes props up with listicles. United States District Court, Northern District of California Case No. 5:18-cr-00258-EJD-1 The post Elizabeth Holmes Will Stay In Prison While Appealing Her Case appeared first on Mason Pelt.Elizabeth Holmes Will Stay In Prison While Appealing Her Case

Get woke go broke, rhymes. It is, however, a stupid criticism nearly every time I’ve heard it applied to a company’s advertising. The exceptions are when the criticism of wokeness is a criticism of the messaging and placement. Or when a company is truly ideologically motivated, but the latter is rare. In almost every example of ad people call “woke,” the business has no company-wide ideology. People at companies have ideologies and may push a firm toward their morality. But Disney or Procter & Gamble are too large and complex as organizations, having too many moving parts to be truly ideological. When a publicly traded company, with a board of directors and many layers of executives, does something, it’s generally smoothed into whatever the decision-makers believe benefits them. Their incentives are aligned with the company making money to pay out shareholder dividends. Charitably this is an imperfect system, but it also means any perceived ideology, woke or otherwise, is a hollow commitment. Target Pride Month is June. For the last few years that means each June, Target will greet everyone with a display for cardboard rainbows holding forth gay apparel, fa la la la, la la, la la. Target has LGBTQ+ employees and allies up and down the org chart. But the pride displays are because the items sell at a profit. It’s a sign of cultural acceptance that the LGBTQ+ market segments are so far out of the closet they can be openly catered to by a company that…Get Woke, Gain Earned Media Coverage

The Indian government amended its IT Law of 2021 to ban social media platforms from publishing and hosting “misleading” or “false information” about the government and to require them to rely on the government’s own fact-checking unit for authentic information. Non-compliance with the law will result in a platform losing its safe harbor protections in the country. The law, which was first proposed in January, will see the creation of a “fact-checking” unit of the government that will have arbitrary and over-broad powers to determine what information is authentic. According to digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation, headquartered in New Delhi, the law bypasses natural justice principles. “The notification of these amended rules cement the chilling effect on the fundamental right to speech and expression, particularly on news publishers, journalists, activists, etc. The fact check unit could effectively issue a takedown order to social media platforms and even other intermediaries across the internet stack, potentially bypassing the process statutorily prescribed under the Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000,” added the Internet Freedom Foundation. The amendment also cracks down on online games that allow betting. Platforms will be required to ban apps that allow betting or wagering of any kind, including fantasy sports gaming. Amid concerns over the fact-check rules, Union Electronics and Information Technology Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has ignored the criticism, labeling it as “deliberate misinformation” that the rules are “draconian.” However, he also said, “social Media intermediaries will have the option to follow or disregard fact checking finding….India to require US social media platforms to abide by government-run fact-checker