“Policymakers and the public are in the dark about what social media and video streaming services do to capture and sell users’ data and attention. It is alarming that we still know so little about companies that know so much about us.”
Perhaps they shouldn't have turned a blind eye for so long then.
I suppose the question is, "Do we trust Google?" to which I would say no.
As RSS posts do not preview the feed, perhaps a good idea would be to use the rating system to encourage people to post the contents of the article. For instance here https://iriscafe.net/topic/41/it-s-not-section-230-president-trump-hates-it-s-the-first-amendment there is the URL of the posts and then I have posted the contents of the article after it in the first comment.
If people could upvote users who do this then it might be an easy way to earn rating points so you can post more often and also a helpful way for the more privacy (or lazy 
) minded of us not to have to visit the sites.
Launching today, the Freedom of Thought Report 2020 by Humanists International, now in its ninth annual edition, examines the legal and human rights situation for humanists, atheists and the non-religious around the world.
The report finds that humanists are discriminated against in 106 countries across the globe through a combination of the following....
President Trump’s recent threat to “unequivocally VETO” the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) if it doesn’t include a repeal of Section 230 may represent the final attack on online free speech of his presidency, but it’s certainly not the first. The NDAA is one of the “must-pass” bills that Congress passes every year, and it’s absurd that Trump is using it as his at-the-buzzer shot to try to kill the most important law protecting free speech online. Congress must reject Trump’s march against Section 230 once and for all.
Under Section 230, the only party responsible for unlawful speech online is the person who said it, not the website where they posted it, the app they used to share it, or any other third party. It has some limitations—most notably, it does nothing to shield intermediaries from liability under federal criminal law—but at its core, it’s just common-sense policy: if a new Internet startup needed to be prepared to defend against countless lawsuits on account of its users’ speech, startups would never get the investment necessary to grow and compete with large tech companies. 230 isn't just about Internet companies, either. Any intermediary that hosts user-generated material receives this shield, including nonprofit and educational organizations like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive.
Section 230 is not, as Trump and other politicians have suggested, a handout to today’s dominant Internet companies. It protects all of us. If you’ve ever forwarded an email, Section 230 protected you: if a court found that email defamatory, Section 230 would guarantee that you can’t be held liable for it; only the author can.
If you’ve ever forwarded an email, Section 230 protected you.
Two myths about Section 230 have developed in recent years and clouded today’s debates about the law. One says that Section 230 somehow requires online services to be “neutral public forums”: that if they show “bias” in their decisions about what material to show or hide from users, they lose their liability shield under Section 230 (this myth drives today’s deeply misguided “platform vs. publisher” rhetoric). The other myth is that if Section 230 were repealed, online platforms would suddenly turn into “neutral” forums, doing nothing to remove or promote certain users’ speech. Both myths ignore that Section 230 isn’t what protects platforms’ right to reflect any editorial viewpoint in how it moderates users’ speech—the First Amendment to the Constitution is. The First Amendment protects platforms’ right to moderate and curate users’ speech to reflect their views, and Section 230 additionally protects them from certain types of liability for their users’ speech. It’s not one or the other; it’s both.
We’ve written numerous times about proposals in Congress to force platforms to be “neutral” in their moderation decisions. Besides being unworkable, such proposals are clearly unconstitutional: under the First Amendment, the government cannot force sites to display or promote speech they don’t want to display or remove speech they don’t want to remove.
It’s not hard to ascertain the motivations for Trump’s escalating war on Section 230. Even before he was elected, Trump was deeply focused on using the courts to punish companies for insults directed at him. He infamously promised in early 2016 to “open up our libel laws” to make it easier for him to legally bully journalists.
No matter your opinion of Section 230, we should all be alarmed that Trump considers a goofy nickname a security threat.
Trump’s attacks on Section 230 follow a familiar pattern: they always seem to follow a perceived slight by social media companies. The White House issued an executive order earlier this year that would draft the FCC to write regulations narrowing Section 230’s liability shield, though the FCC has no statutory authority to interpret Section 230. (Today, Congress is set to confirm Trump’s pick for a new FCC commissioner—one of the legal architects of the executive order.) That executive order came when Twitter and Facebook began to add fact checks to his dubious claims about mail-in voting.
But before, Trump never took the step of claiming that “national security” requires him to be able to use the courts to censor critics. That claim came on Thanksgiving, which also happened to be the day that Twitter users starting calling him “#DiaperDon” after he snapped at a reporter. Since then, he has frequently tied Section 230 to national security. The right to criticize people in power is one of the foundational rights on which our country is based. No matter your opinion of Section 230, we should all be alarmed that Trump considers a goofy nickname a security threat. Besides, repealing Section 230 would do nothing about the #DiaperDon tweets or any of the claims of mistreatment of conservatives on social media. Even if platforms have a clear political bias, Congress can't enact a law that overrides those platforms’ right to moderate user speech in accordance with that bias.
What would happen if Section 230 were repealed, as the president claims to want? Online platforms would become more restrictive overnight. Before allowing you to post online, a platform would need to gauge the level of legal risk that you and your speech bring on them—some voices would disappear from the Internet entirely. It’s shocking that politicians pushing for a more exclusionary Internet are doing so under the banner of free speech; it’s even more galling that the president has dubbed it a matter of national security.
Our free speech online is too important to be held as collateral in a routine authorization bill. Congress must reject President Trump’s misguided campaign against Section 230.
The Privacy Foundation New Zealand has reviewed the updated Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) from the Ministry of Health (MOH) that addresses the extension of the Covid-19 App’s function into the use of Bluetooth[1]. The Foundation endorses the privacy focused approach to the technology and highlights the following privacy points:
The problem is COVID-19. Contact tracing is like the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. It is still very important, but people still need to think about self-protection from COVID-19 like washing hands, use of hand sanitiser, use of face masks, coughing and sneezing into elbows, and reporting to their doctor if they develop COVID-19 symptoms.
A PIA on new technologies or new processes which involve people’s personal information is essential. In particular, government agencies must be transparent about the thinking round privacy including identifying any risks and steps taken to mitigate those risks. The MOH has approached the extension of the App into Bluetooth appropriately with an updated PIA. This was finalised on 4 December 2020 and there is no apparent reason why this could not have been released at that time instead of 24 hours before the implementation of the technology.
There are some excellent privacy enhancing responses to the development of the App[2]. The use of the App is voluntary, and the information recorded is under the control of the user. The Bluetooth add-on is anonymised. The MOH’s privacy policy applies to the App. The MOH is publishing the source code so that the technology is transparent, and people can check that the App delivers what is promised. Apple and Google have said they have incorporated privacy into the technology including their intention to stop the use of the exposure network framework as soon as it is no longer needed for COVID-19 tracing.
The PIA clarifies the uncertainty around how an individual who has tested positive for COVID-19 could send out an anonymous notice to other users of the App. It initially seemed that there was nothing to prevent a prankster issuing a false notice. The PIA explains that a person who tests positive for COVID-19, receives a text from a contact tracer with a code which they can choose to input into the App. From there, all the Bluetooth keys which have been collected by their App are uploaded which creates a list for all users’ apps to check and a notification comes up if there is a match.
This development is not the total solution to contact tracing but a helpful addition to the solution for those that can, and choose to, use it. The App and use of Bluetooth is not grounds for complacency. Not everyone has access to the technology and with only 2.4 million New Zealanders having downloaded the App, there needs to be equal emphasis on other strategies for contact tracing. Further, Bluetooth is generally secure (by way of encryption and frequency hopping) and reliable but it is not infallible. It involves wireless technology and hacking can occur if Bluetooth is on and there is connection with a short-range device that is designed to access data or send messages such as advertising. Like any technology, it can malfunction.
To minimise security issues with Bluetooth, people should take steps such as updating phone systems including security patches and using security recommendations for their phone; securing passwords; backing up data regularly; and being wary of the consequences of any data hack such as emails or calls from unknown sources, particularly if the sender or caller is seeking bank a/c details or other personal information.
With this pandemic hopefully winding down in the foreseeable future given the introduction of vaccines, the solutions which have been developed now and in a reactive way are likely to become the foundation for templates for future pandemics. There needs to be rigorous assessment, documentation, and review in a transparent way with public consultation to ensure we have got this right and we are ready when a pandemic happens again.
The Privacy Foundation remains committed to being vigilant about technology developments that may turn into the “thin edge of the wedge”. It would not take much to have Bluetooth data converted into shared information with government, including identifying information. It is important this Bluetooth addition to the COVID-19 app remains voluntary and data anonymised, and it is switched off when this pandemic is over.
[1] The use of Bluetooth in the Covid-19 App is to create an anonymised alert system for people who contract Convid-19 and wish to let others who have been near them know that someone in their vicinity has contracted Covid-19 and they should contact the MOH. What happens is that the App (using Apple and Google’s exposure notification framework) creates a signal or beacon from a user phone which connects with other phones that have the same Bluetooth signal enabled and both phones collect the “key” sent by the other device. The key is a random set of numbers. There is no personal information shared and no personal information retained. Everyone’s “key” updates every 10 – 20 minutes to avoid hacking.
You can see what he is getting at. CC that is. What has happened in the US has just taken it back to a status quo that was dire to start with. 