Home Blog Page 3788

Supreme Court Rejects Facebook Appeal in $15 Billion Lawsuit

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Facebook that requested the court intervene in a $15 billion class-action lawsuit alleging the firm illegally tracked the online activities of its users when they are not on the platform, thereby violating the federal Wiretap Act law.

“Facebook’s user profiles would allegedly reveal an individual’s likes, dislikes, interests, and habits over a significant amount of time, without affording users a meaningful opportunity to control or prevent the unauthorized exploration of their private lives,” the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a ruling (pdf) last year, saying that Facebook users suffered a clear invasion of privacy.

The “Plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged a clear invasion of the historically recognized right to privacy,” the court ruled at the time. “Therefore, Plaintiffs have standing to pursue their privacy claims under the Wiretap Act, [the Stored Communications Act], and [the Children’s Internet Protection Act], as well as their claims for breach of contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.”

On Monday, the Supreme Court denied Facebook’s appeal, meaning the suit can go forward.

The lawsuit alleged that the Menlo Park, California-based tech giant had secretly tracked users’ visits to websites that use Facebook’s features such as the “like” or “share” buttons, even if the users did not click on either of the two buttons.

The litigation also accuses the company of violating the privacy rights of its users under California law, but Facebook’s appeal to the Supreme Court involved only the Wiretap Act. The 1968 law has also been invoked in lawsuits against Google and Microsoft.

Four individuals filed the proposed lawsuit in California federal court seeking $15 billion in damages for Facebook’s actions between April 2010 and September 2011. The company stopped its nonconsensual tracking after it was exposed by a researcher in 2011, court papers said. They further argued that Facebook unjustly collected the data and sold it to advertisers for a profit.

Facebook, in response, said it maintained privacy standards and should not be penalized for communications that users partake in, saying that the data was collected to show users better content and more targeted ads on its platform. It has further said the data was not collected in an unfair manner.

“Facebook was not an uninvited interloper to a communication between two separate parties; it was a direct participant,” the company said in a legal filing.

Facebook now discloses that it collects data when people visit websites with the firm’s plug-ins. It reached a settlement over its practices with the Federal Trade Commission about a decade ago.

The case is Facebook v. Davis, 20-727.

Want a Job? Get a Shot!: Ron Paul

Covid oppression will worsen if vaccine passports become more widely required.

Mask tyranny reached a new low recently when a family was kicked off a Spirit Airlines flight because their four-year-old autistic son was not wearing a mask. The family was removed from the plane even though the boy’s doctor had decided the boy should be exempted from mask mandates because the boy panics and engages in behavior that could pose a danger to himself when wearing a mask.

Besides, four-year-olds do not present much risk of spreading or contracting coronavirus. Even if masks did prevent infections among adults, there would be no reason to force children to wear masks.

Mask mandates have as much to do with healthcare as Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screenings have to do with stopping terrorism. Masks and TSA screenings are “security theater” done to reassure those frightened by government and media propaganda regarding coronavirus and terrorism that the government is protecting them.

Covid oppression will worsen if vaccine passports become more widely required. Vaccine passports are digital or physical proof a person has taken a coronavirus vaccine. New York is already requiring that individuals produce digital proof of taking a coronavirus vaccine before being admitted to sporting events.

Imagine if the zealous enforcers of mask mandates had the power to deny you access to public places because you have not “gotten your shot.” Even worse, what if a potential employer had to ensure you were “properly” vaccinated before hiring you? This could come to pass if proponents of mandatory E-Verify have their way.

E-Verify requires employers to submit personal identifying information — such as a social security numbers and biometric data — to a government database to ensure job applicants have federal permission to hold jobs.

Currently, E-Verify is only used to assure a job applicant is a citizen or legal resident. However, its use could be expanded to advancing other purposes, such as ensuring a potential new hire has taken all the recommended vaccines.

E-Verify could even be used to check if a job applicant has ever expressed, or associated with someone who has expressed, “hate speech,” “conspiracy theories,” or “Russian disinformation,” which is code for facts embarrassing to the political class.

Many employers will be reluctant to hire such an employee for fear their businesses will become the next targets of “cancel culture.” Those who doubt this should consider how many businesses have folded under pressure from the cultural Marxists and fired someone for expressing an “unapproved” thought.

Politicians and bureaucrats have used overblown fear of coronavirus to justify the largest infringement of individual liberty in modern times. Covid tyranny has been aided by many Americans who are not just willing to sacrifice their liberty for phony security, but who help government take away liberty from their fellow citizens.

The good news is that, as it becomes increasingly clear that there was no need to shut down the economy, throw millions out of work, subject children to the fraud of “virtual” learning, and force everyone to wear a mask, more people are turning against the politicians and “experts” behind the lockdowns and mandates. Hopefully, these Americans will realize that, in addition to coronavirus lockdowns and mandates, the entire welfare-warfare-fiat money system is built on a foundation of lies.

This article first appeared at RonPaulInstitute.org.

Biden’s Woke Pentagon Considers Scrapping Gender-Neutral Fitness Test After Disastrous Results

A physical fitness test hailed by the Army as gender-neutral has produced, according to documents obtained by Democrat senators, a 65 percent fail rate for women and a 10 percent fail rate for men.

Conclusion: Gender neutrality isn’t woke enough.

In proof that nothing will convince some liberals that there are physical differences between the genders and that this could have consequences for military readiness, Task & Purpose reported last month the military is considering changes to the Army Combat Fitness Test, unveiled just three years ago, that would score individuals by gender percentile instead of against the entire field.

The ACFT was designed to replace the decades-old Army Physical Fitness Test, according to Stars and Stripes, which included age and gender in scoring. That was supposed to make it more gender-neutral while still better preparing troops for the physical demands of the battlefield.

There are six events in the ACFT: A deadlift, a standing power throw (tossing a medicine ball behind you), hand-release push-ups, a shuttle run in which weight must be dragged, a leg-tuck test and a two-mile run.

An individual’s performance in the test wasn’t going to be used as part of the process in deciding promotions until mid-2022, according to Stars and Stripes. However, Congress ordered the Army to stop administering the test until it could be reviewed in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, which became law on Jan. 1 over then-President Donald Trump’s veto.

Now, slides describing “ACFT 3.0” have leaked on social media and were obtained by Task & Purpose. While Army brass had said that there would be adjustments to the ACFT over the next few years, the direction of the test seems to be going from gender-neutral to readiness-irrelevant.

Among the proposed changes in the “pre-decisional” slides are, according to Task & Purpose, “eliminating competition between genders and scoring men and women in percentiles of their gender. Another proposal includes removing numerical fitness test scores from soldiers’ files for promotion boards in favor of color codes symbolizing their percentile in an effort to remove bias.”

“We know there is a physiological difference between men and women,” one slide said.

The World Health Organization’s ‘Independent Investigator’ Keeps Hyping Chinese Communist Propaganda Outlets

Peter Daszak, an American investigator on the World Health Organization’s recent mission to China, has repeatedly hyped Chinese state-run media outlets on Twitter.

The promotion of outlets that function as part of the Chinese government’s self-avowed “propaganda” campaign further calls into question Daszak’s impartiality as a World Health Organization (WHO) investigator.

The outlet Daszak most heavily shares and praises is China Global Television Network (CGTN) – described by the Freedom House think tank as “a long-standing weapon in Beijing’s arsenal of repression” whose “mission is to attack designated enemies of the Communist Party.”

Daszak has praised CGTN hosts as “sharp,” interviews as “fantastic” and “honest,” and programming as “great“:

Beyond praising the network, he has also uncritically shared articles from the site, amplifying claims that the Wuhan Institue of Virology has “never had a leakage or anyone infected.”

Lawyer for Cuomo accuser says governor is interfering with sexual harassment investigation

Will justice be done?

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) is allegedly trying to interfere with the state attorney general’s investigation into several women’s claims of sexual harassment, a lawyer for one of the women said Monday.

CNBC News reports Debra Katz, an attorney representing former Cuomo staffer Charlotte Bennett, wrote a letter to Attorney General Letitia James objecting to a report that Cuomo’s office had staff meet with “in-house attorneys” before they were questioned by investigators.

“It is my understanding that these attorneys are also ‘debriefing’ staffers after their interviews with investigators,” wrote Katz.

“This is highly improper and we object in the strongest possible terms to this obvious interference with what you have stated would be a ‘thorough and independent’ investigation.”

She charged that Cuomo’s in-house lawyers “will almost certainly deter those with relevant information about” the allegations of sexual harassment made by Bennett and others from coming forward.

Katz demanded that James order Cuomo’s office “to cease this highly improper practice.”

She further said that having Cuomo’s office’s lawyers accompany staff to interviews “will have a chilling effect on potential witnesses or other accusers” who may otherwise cooperate with the probe. These staffers may “fear job-related retaliation if they tell the investigators about the Governor’s sexual harassing behavior and misconduct of those around him.”

According to Katz, several witnesses have already admitted to fear of retaliation should they fail to cooperate with Cuomo’s lawyers.

“We believe this offer of counsel constitutes a deliberate attempt by the Governor to interfere with your office’s investigation,” Katz wrote.

The New York State Attorney General’s Office has hired independent lawyers to investigate claims by Bennett and several other women that Cuomo sexually harassed them with inappropriate touching or comments. The most serious accusation comes from an unidentified current aide to the governor who says Cuomo, 63, reached underneath her blouse and groped her while they were alone in the governor’s mansion last March.

Most recently Alyssa McGrath, a current Cuomo staffer and friend of the women who claims Cuomo groped her, came forward Sunday and accused the governor of “ogling her body, remarking on her looks, and making suggestive comments to her and another woman in his office.”

Governor Cuomo has vigorously denied all the accusations made against him and has insisted that people wait for the investigators’ report to be completed before drawing conclusions from the accusations.

Multiple state Democratic leaders, including a majority of the New York Democratic congressional delegation, have demanded that Cuomo resign.

The governor has steadfastly refused to resign.

State Assembly Democrats have opened an impeachment inquiry against the governor.

Unintended consequences: Dems rush to fix mistakes in relief package

President Biden says “the devil is in the details” of his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. Turns out, there are a lot of details.

Mr. Biden and his team spent last week touting the benefits of the legislation. They will now have to fix some of the unintended consequences, which include looming Medicare cuts, a child credit that the IRS says it will struggle to implement on schedule, and language limiting states’ ability to cut taxes that has already triggered at least one lawsuit.

“I can’t give you a specific explanation as to how it got put in other than that kind of thing happens — always — when massive legislation like this is being crammed down without going through the committee,” Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, told The Washington Times.

Mr. Crapo was referring to language Senate Democrats added to the bill that bars states from using the $350 billion in state and local aid to offset revenue losses that result from tax cuts.

The Treasury Department said the language doesn’t infringe on states’ ability to cut taxes in general.

That wasn’t good enough for Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. He sued, saying the language is an unconstitutional attack on states’ rights.

Other Republican attorneys general have threatened similar action.

FACT CHECK: Biden Says His Family Weren’t Involved In Govt During The Obama Admin. That’s Not True.

President Biden promised that “no one” from his “family and extended family” would be involved with his White House, pointing to the days of the Obama administration as an example.

The pledge – praised by establishment media outlets as a refreshing change from the Trump administration – was announced via a recent interview conducted by People magazine.

Sitting next to his wife, Biden professed:

“We’re going to run this like the Obama-Biden administration. No one in our family and extended family is going to be involved in any government undertaking or foreign policy. And nobody has an office in this place.”

But Biden’s claim that no one from his family worked in the Obama administration is patently false.

At age 26, Biden’s niece Casey Owens worked at the Treasury Department as a Special Assistant to the Senior Coordinator for China in the Obama administration.

She wielded considerable influence over the direction of U.S.-China relations between 2009 and 2011, as she described her team as “advising” former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and responsible for “coordinat[ing] the priorities within the agenda for the Dialogue” and “spearhead[ing] the negotiations of proposals.”

What’s more, an unearthed cable reveals Owens was part of the elite Strategic and Economic Dialogue II planning trip to Beijing as part of an economic with senior State and Treasury officials. And despite being out of the administration for five years, she attended the Obama administration’s final state dinner.

Trump: America No Longer Has a ‘Free Press’

Former President Donald Trump, in an interview on Monday morning, decried the media landscape in the United States saying it no longer has a “free press.”

Using the current border crisis as an example of a lack of proper coverage, Trump said that “this is not a free press,” according to his interview on Lisa Boothe’s podcast on Monday morning.  “This is a press that we have to be very, very smart to get around, but they don’t cover bad things if it happens to be bad for Democrats. It’s pretty amazing. You take a look at some of the coverage and some of the travesty that’s taking place at the border, and the coverage is not commensurate.”

The former commander-in-chief remarked: “If you look at NBC, ABC, CBS, and of course CNN and MSNBC, and see—if you look at some of those networks—it’s just not covered. It’s covered so little. It’s amazing. And it’s a massive story because it’s going to destroy—it’s going to destroy our country.”

Throughout his presidency, Trump decried the “fake news” media, using the pejorative to describe outlets that he believed promoted certain narratives that went against him or his policies while generally promoting his opponents or critics. The former president also repeatedly panned MSNBC, the New York Times, and CNN—saying these outlets are essentially wings of the Democratic Party.

Over the weekend, one longtime Getty photojournalist, John Moore, called on the Biden administration to allow media workers to observe U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents operate as a massive surge of illegal immigrants arrives at the Southern Border.

“I respectfully ask US Customs and Border Protection to stop blocking media access to their border operations,” Moore wrote on Twitter Friday. “I have photographed CBP under Bush, Obama and Trump but now—zero access is granted to media. These long lens images [were] taken from the Mexican side.”

“There’s no modern precedent for a full physical ban on media access to CBP border operations,” Moore added in another Twitter comment. “To those who might say, cut them some slack—they are dealing with a situation, I’d say that showing the U.S. response to the current immigrant surge is exactly the media’s role.

Recent polls have suggested that Americans are largely distrustful of corporate, mass media. A Gallup poll released last year showed that only 9 percent of Americans trust the media “a great deal” and 31 percent trust it a “fair amount.” Meanwhile, 33 percent have “no trust” at all in the media and 27 percent don’t trust the media “very much,” according to the survey. In other polls, a significant number of Americans have blamed mass media for exacerbating the political divide in the U.S.

Psaki Says Biden Fell Repeatedly Because Air Force One Steps Are ‘Tricky’ And Difficult To Climb (video)

Biden is the only President to repeatedly fall on the allegedly “tricky” Air Force One steps

White House spokesperson Jen Psaki placed blame for President Joe Biden’s repeated falls while attempting to board Air Force One last Friday on the aircraft’s boarding stairs, stating, “I don’t know if you’ve been up those steps, they’re a little tricky sometimes.”

When asked if Biden was okay following the repeated tumbles, Psaki said, “He’s a hundred percent fine, I don’t know if you’ve been up those steps, they’re a little tricky sometimes, but he’s doing great.”

Though multiple elected officials, such as former Presidents Gerald Ford and Barack Obama and former Vice President Mike Pence, have lost their footing on the Air Force One staircase, Biden is the only person to repeatedly fall over and over again while attempting to board the aircraft.

“Um, I’m not aware of that being required, there’s of course a doctor who travels with the President, any President of the United States,” Psaki said in response to a question about whether Biden, 78, had received medical attention, adding, “but, um, I’m not aware of it needing actual extensive medical attention.”

Microsoft to Ease Workers Back to the Office Starting Next Week

Here’s what you need to know:

Microsoft announced Monday that it would begin allowing more workers back into its headquarters in Redmond, Wash., starting on March 29.

In this stage of reopening, which Microsoft described as Step 4 in a six-step “dial,” the Redmond campus will give nonessential on-site employees the choice to work from the office, home or a combination of both. Microsoft will also continue to require employees to wear masks and maintain social distancing.

Microsoft plans to open its office without restrictions only once the virus acts “more like an endemic virus such as the seasonal flu,” wrote Kurt DelBene, an executive vice president at the tech giant. But even then, office life for Microsoft’s 160,000 employees is not likely to look like what it did before the pandemic.

“Once we reach a point where Covid-19 no longer presents a significant burden on our communities, and as our sites move to the open stage of the dial, we view working from home part of the time (less than 50 percent) as standard for most roles,” Mr. DelBene wrote on the company blog.

Microsoft also released on Monday the results of a survey of that it says shows the work force has changed after a year of working remotely. In the survey of more than 30,000 full-time and self-employed workers, 73 percent said they wanted flexible remote work options to continue, and 46 percent said they were planning to move this year now that they could work remotely.

“There are some companies that think we’re just going to go back to how it was,” Jared Spataro, the corporate vice president for Microsoft 365, said in an interview. “However, the data does seem to indicate that they don’t understand what has happened over the last 12 months.”