The U.S. is distributing more vaccines and the population is gradually becoming vaccinated. Returning to regular means of activity and movement has become the main focus for many Americans who want to travel or see family. An increasingly common proposal… Read More ›
Tag Archive for ‘COVID-19 and Digital Rights’
Online-Only Vaccine Distribution Will Leave Too Many Behind
As the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has begun across the U.S., there have been numerous reports of people having trouble getting it—not just because of its limited availability, but also because some counties and states have chosen to require computer… Read More ›
Vaccine Passports: A Stamp of Inequity
A COVID vaccine has been approved and vaccinations have begun. With them have come proposals of ways to prove you have been vaccinated, based on the presumption that vaccination renders a person immune and unable to spread the virus. The… Read More ›
CA Notify App Is A Useful Arrow in the Fight Against COVID-19
Today California joined dozens of other states and countries in launching its COVID-19 exposure notification app, CA Notify, built on Google and Apple’s Exposure Notification API. Google and Apple’s API is already used in 20 other U.S. states, as well… Read More ›
Governor Cuomo: Keep Police and ICE Away from Our Contact Tracing Data
New York State lawmakers unanimously passed legislation (A10500C/S8450C) to protect New Yorkers cooperating with contact tracing efforts from having their data used against them in court proceedings or administrative hearings. Once enacted, the law will also ban police and immigration… Read More ›
End University Mandates for COVID Tech
Since the COVID-19 crisis began, many universities have looked to novel technologies to assist their efforts to retain in-person operations. Most prominent are untested contact tracing and notification applications or devices. While universities must commit to public health, too often… Read More ›
Why Open Access Is Necessary for Makers
This is an Open Access Week guest post by Jordan Bunker, prototype engineer and open access advocate. After the world went into lockdown for COVID-19, Makers were suddenly confined to their workshops. Rather than idly wait it out, many of… Read More ›
Open Access Must Be the Rule, Not the Exception
Not Just for COVID-19, But for the Next Crisis Too The COVID-19 pandemic demands that governments, scientific researchers, and industry work together to bring life-saving technology to the public regardless of who can afford it. But even as we take… Read More ›
Facebook’s Most Recent Transparency Report Demonstrates the Pitfalls of Automated Content Moderation
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, many social media platforms shifted their content moderation policies to rely much more heavily on automated tools. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube all ramped up their machine learning capabilities to review and identify flagged… Read More ›
Exposing Your Face Isn't a More Hygienic Way to Pay
A company called PopID has created an identity-management system that uses face recognition. Their first use case is as a system for in-store, point of sale payments using face recognition as authorization for payment. They are promoting it as a… Read More ›