CrimsonPhantom
CUSA Curator
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RE: Orwellian Descent
Oregon nurse suspended after showing “indifference” to COVID on TikTok
Quote:A nurse from Salem, Oregon, has been put on administrative leave for what the Salem Health hospital said was her “indifference” towards restrictive coronavirus measures online.
In a statement on Facebook, the hospital called a TikTok video that the nurse, Ashley Grames, posted on the @Loveiskind05 account a demonstration of “cavalier disregard” for how serious the coronavirus pandemic is.
The short video shows a woman in medical gear with a shocked expression on her face, and is captioned by suggesting this is how her coworkers react “when they find out I still travel, don’t wear a mask when I’m out and let my kids have play dates.”
It turned out that the hospital only found out about this when Facebook users reported the nurse in the comments left on the health institution’s page, warning in a dramatic tone that their staff may not believe in science, does not understand basic protocols, and even questioned how sanitary the facility is.
Others wanted to see the nurse fired rather than suspended, referring to her TikTok as proof of “incredibly” irresponsible behavior and urging the hospital to pay closer attention to whom it hires.
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UK towns use coronavirus to justify mass surveillance of residents’ personal details
Quote:Xantura, a private data analytics company, has signed highly lucrative and by the looks of things highly privacy-invasive deals with local governments in British towns, whose goal is to spy on residents who might be breaking Covid rules.
The profiling program, dubbed OneView, is supposed to track people in order to predict who is most likely to get infected with the virus by not obeying lockdown rules.
Xantura boasted that it had millions of pieces of data collected during its previous 12 years of working with local councils – and that this is now a set big enough to make its algorithms “incredibly accurate.”
But an investigation by the Daily Mail shows there is concern that Xantura is harvesting massive amounts of sensitive personal information, and doing it for no good reason.
This data comes from local councils and the algorithms seem to be attempting to build a complete profile of an individual’s personality and circumstances, in order to predict how they might react to Covid restrictions.
Among the pieces of sensitive data that have been harvested so far, said to now be reaching millions of details, is information about people’s family debt, income, living arrangements, and even school absences. In addition Xantura tracks “unfaithful and unsafe sex, emotional health and wellbeing, sleep issues and dangerous pets, anger management issues and socially unacceptable behavior,” the report said.
Privacy groups like Big Brother Watch but also some British MPs fail to understand why so much detailed private data is needed to achieve the goal of predicting the spread of Covid, and also want to see more transparency around the whole controversy.
Big Brother Watch see this case as evidence that the pandemic has given rise to widespread mass surveillance that is now becoming a trend, adding that local authorities are handling this amount of personal data in a nontransparent fashion, without allowing people to know how it is used and how it might affect their lives.
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Facebook deleted account of grieving mother, denying her access to photos of her late son
Quote:Facebook has deleted the account of a mother, causing her to lose videos and photos of her son who died seven years ago.
Facebook said that she breached community standards but did not specify the policies she violated.
Nicky Massey, a UK Labour Party councilor from Cambridge, realized she could not log into her Facebook account last Monday. She said, “It said my account had been blocked and I need to find some identification.”
“When I went to try and do it, it said my account had been basically deleted, deactivated due to breach of community standards and it’s not reversible,” she added.
She explained that she first thought that she had been hacked. It would not be the first time. 10 years ago, she was hacked and lost all photos of her son when he was in the hospital.
Her late son Ethan was born in 2009, 16 weeks premature. His premature birth led to health complications and he died in 2013, before his fourth birthday, due to a lung infection.
She was not the only one that lost her account around the same time. Her fellow moderators of the Facebook page of National Save Our Children’s Centres, an organization fighting budget cuts at kids’ centers, also lost their Facebook accounts.
Massey said that the removal of their accounts “was not connected to that page.”
“All of us have behaved to our best standards, as you would imagine, so we don’t understand the reasoning,” she explained.
Massey was devastated at the removal of the account because she lost memories of her son.
“I took a Facebook live video of my son Ethan, his first steps. We were told he wasn’t going to walk and he amazed us all by walking.
“That’s gone. It’s the whole story – my announcement that I was pregnant with Ethan, my announcement that I had him early, and then of course as he got sicker, those updates.
“Although they’re not nice memories, they are memories that pull you back to that time of when he was here, and they’re gone,” she said.
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UK citizens will have to show digital passport and vaccination status to get access to public life
Quote:In the UK, people might soon not be able to access public spaces such as restaurants, sports stadiums, and movie theaters without proof of coronavirus vaccination through an app. So, while the vaccine could be optional, Britons who choose not to take it might face major restrictions in access to public life if they can’t produce the app when requested.
Nadhim Zahawi, a member of parliament who was recently tasked with the deployment of the coronavirus vaccine, warned that businesses would require proof of COVID-19 vaccination from customers before they enter, similar to the current QR code scanning for contact tracing. In other words, once a vaccine is approved, Britons will require “immunity passports.”
Zahawi confirmed that the department of health was looking to develop immunity passports.
“We are looking at the technology,” he said speaking to the BBC. He added that such technology would be “a way of people being able to inform their GP (physician) that they have been vaccinated.”
“But I also think you’ll probably find that restaurants and bars and cinemas and other venues, sports venues, will probably also use that system – as they have done with the app.”
Zahawi also confirmed the vaccine would not be compulsory but hinted that those who choose not to might face many restrictions.
“I think it is right that it is voluntary. People have to be allowed to decide for themselves whether they want to be vaccinated or otherwise. But, I think the very strong message that you will see, this is the way we return the whole country, and so it’s good for your family, it’s good for your community, it’s good for your country to be vaccinated. And, ultimately people will have to make a decision,” he explained.
The head of the NHS Test and Trace system, Baroness Dido Harding who was CEO of the communications group TalkTalk during one of the biggest data breaches in UK history, said that her team was working on updating the app so that it could show the vaccination status.
Speaking to the Times, she said that she was hoping that “in the future to be able to have a single record as a citizen of your test results and whether you’ve been vaccinated.”
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Australian citizen finally released from jail after Egypt arrest for hitting “like” on a political post
Quote:An Australian citizen has finally returned home after spending 10 months in a prison in Cairo over a Facebook post. The Egyptian government continues to ignore human rights and is notorious for arbitrarily detaining human rights activists and critics.
Early this year, in January, Waled Youssef visited his family in Cairo. However, he did not get to spend time with family as planned as he was arrested and sent to Tora Prison in Cairo.
Youssef was detained by local police while sightseeing with his family. The officers went through his belongings and scrolled through his Facebook timeline. He was then accused of being a member of a banned political group because he had liked a post by a former presidential candidate, who has been in prison since the last election.
However, according to the lawyers of the 45-year-old Youssef, he has never belonged to any Egyptian political party, let alone a banned political group. But the Egyptian authorities were having none of it and denied appeals and even prevented him from getting visitors.
As a result, Youssef’s lawyers had to lobby the Australian government and the United Nations to intervene. Eventually, an Egyptian court ordered his release on October 14. He was released from the prison, where he was sharing a small cell with about a dozen other prisoners, 12 days later. He then had to wait several weeks for a flight back home to Australia.
In a statement released by his lawyers on his return home, he expressed his relief at being back home finally.
“I never would have expected a trip to visit my family would see me thrown into Tora prison. It was the most harrowing experience 10 months of my life. I just want to heal and recover from this unbelievable and horrendous experience,” he said.
The Egyptian government does not take kindly to criticism, especially on its stand on human rights. About two weeks ago, at least two members of the human rights advocacy group Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) were arrested for attending a meeting with diplomats from Europe. The charges were, among others, “spreading false news” and “joining a terror group.”
Even private citizens of other nations could be jailed if they like posts from opponents of the Egyptian government.
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Could “fact checkers” be coming to streaming services? UK culture secretary lashes out at “The Crown” accuracy
Quote:“Fact-checking” could be coming to TV drama – lest viewers start thinking they are watching a documentary, or perhaps a news program.
In particular, many who are currently up in arms in the UK over what they say is inaccurate portrayal of the royal family in the Netflix series, The Crown, seem to have little faith that viewers will be able to tell the difference on their own.
For that reason, UK Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has joined those who want Netflix to make it absolutely clear that this work of fiction is just that, fearing that otherwise, the perception of the royal family might suffer irreparable consequences by people taking every twist of plot and dialogue as factual representation of what had happened.
A part of the problem seems to be that the series’ screenwriter, Peter Morgan, is seen as a proponent of republicanism (i.e., anti-monarchy) in the UK, and that his script shows it. A friend of Prince Charles has been quoted making this statement, while Charles himself is seen as the one whose reputation would be damaged the most from any wrong perceptions stemming from this TV drama.
Viewers are variously described as “being lured” and “manipulated.” One example is the claim in the series that Charles continued his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles during his marriage to Diana, which critics say is false, even though he admitted it in 1994.
Among those calling for facts to be established and labels and disclaimers placed on the TV series are the Mail on Sunday, Margret Thatcher’s allies, Navy commanders who participated in the Falklands war, but also Diana’s brother Earl Spencer, while some conservative politicians are looking for ways to “punish” Netflix by exploring why it pays corporate tax on UK subscriptions in the Netherlands (where the streaming service is based in Europe).
On the other hand, what’s particularly concerning to those critical of Netflix here is the huge audience the series has had so far – 29 million in the first week, more than half a million more than tuned in to watch the Charles and Diana wedding.
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