Tag: corporations

Emotion-Tracking – AI on the job: Workers Fear Being Watched – and Misunderstood.

We have heard the warnings from Yuval Noah Harari, that if we don’t figure out how to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) human brains will be hacked soon,” a statement that arguably speaks to humanity’s worst fears about AI. This may be especially so, when hearing from Schwab’s advisor Harari that to “hack a human being is to get to know that person better than they know themselves,” which can enable those who own the technology to increasingly manipulate us.

We may believe this extreme threat to our privacy will occur some time in the future, but, the hacking Harari is describing is more proverbial than literal, and has already been occuring in environments like Facebook and YouTube where we are led to view content that the algorithms have deemed to be of interest to us. It now would appear that many have gradually become desensitised to it the “hacking” and manipulation allowing it to increase without too much protest.

But how would you feel if your workplace was tracking how you feel? asks Nazanin Andalibi who is Assistant Professor of Information at the University of Michigan. and in the article below dissuses emotion AI which is already being used in the workplace.

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THE FEDS ARE COMING FOR “EXTREMIST” GAMERS

GAMING COMPANIES ARE coordinating with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to root out so-called domestic violent extremist content, according to a new government report. Noting that mechanisms have been established with social media companies to police extremism, the report recommends that the national security agencies establish new and similar processes with the vast gaming industry.

The exact nature of the cooperation between federal agencies and video game companies, which has not been previously reported, is detailed in a new Government Accountability Office report. The report draws on interviews conducted with five gaming and social media companies including Roblox, an online gaming platform; Discord, a social media app commonly used by gamers; Reddit; as well as a game publisher and social media company that asked the GAO to remain anonymous.

The Intercept reached out to the companies identified in the GAO report for comment, but none responded on the record at time of publication.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have mechanisms to share and receive domestic violent extremism threat-related information with social media and gaming companies,” the GAO says. The report reveals that the DHS intelligence office meets with gaming companies and that the companies can use these meetings to “share information with I&A [DHS’s intelligence office] about online activities promoting domestic violent extremism,” or even simply “activities that violate the companies’ terms of service.” Through its 56 field offices and hundreds of resident agencies subordinate field offices, the FBI receives tips from gaming companies of potential law-breaking and extremist views for further investigation. The FBI also conducts briefings to gaming companies on purported threats.

The GAO warns that FBI and DHS lack an overarching strategy to bring its work with gaming companies in line with broader agency missions. “Without a strategy or goals, the agencies may not be fully aware of how effective their communications are with companies, or how effective their information-sharing mechanisms serve the agencies’ overall missions,” the GAO says. The report ends with a recommendation that both agencies develop such a strategy — a recommendation that DHS concurred with, providing an estimated completion date of June 28 this year. 

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The North Face offers 20% discount for completion of racial inclusion and allyship course

Outdoor clothing and gear giant The North Face is offering customers a 20% discount if they complete a digital course on racial inclusion and allyship.

Titled “Allyship in the Outdoors,” the course seeks to help customers all over the world understand the challenge people of color face when it comes to “accessing the outdoors” and offer them training on how to become a “better ally and to make the outdoors a safer and more welcoming place for everyone.”

“At The North Face, we believe in the power of exploration. As individuals, professionals and companies who share a love for the outdoors and exploration, we also have a responsibility to support spaces where everyone feels like they belong,” a course description reads.

“The course focuses on perspective of race and racism in Europe, and we acknowledge that the experiences of people of colour around the globe differs. It will also provide training and resources, through 4 interactive modules, to help you be a better ally and to make the outdoors a safer and more welcoming place for everyone.”

Intended for people who work and operate in the outdoor industry, the training lasts an hour.

During the training, one learns about the limitations people of color face when it comes to enjoying the outdoors, the impact of events such as the death of George Floyd, and the aim of creating an “equitable outdoors for everyone.”

After completing modules, participants must answer questions such as, “Why should we aim to achieve equity in the outdoors?”

When it comes to allyship, participants listen to testimonials and are taught that “white privilege” means “your race and skin colour can give you access to the outdoors when others can be excluded because of historic, enduring racism and biases.”

They are also encouraged to reflect on times they have felt excluded and how it made them feel.

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Amazon’s Ring is the largest civilian surveillance network the US has ever seen

In a 2020 letter to management, Max Eliaser, an Amazon software engineer, said Ring is “simply not compatible with a free society”. We should take his claim seriously.

Ring video doorbells, Amazon’s signature home security product, pose a serious threat to a free and democratic society. Not only is Ring’s surveillance network spreading rapidly, it is extending the reach of law enforcement into private property and expanding the surveillance of everyday life. What’s more, once Ring users agree to release video content to law enforcement, there is no way to revoke access and few limitations on how that content can be used, stored, and with whom it can be shared.

Ring is effectively building the largest corporate-owned, civilian-installed surveillance network that the US has ever seen. An estimated 400,000 Ring devices were sold in December 2019 alone, and that was before the across-the-board boom in online retail sales during the pandemic. Amazon is cagey about how many Ring cameras are active at any one point in time, but estimates drawn from Amazon’s sales data place yearly sales in the hundreds of millions. The always-on video surveillance network extends even further when you consider the millions of users on Ring’s affiliated crime reporting app, Neighbors, which allows people to upload content from Ring and non-Ring devices.

Then there’s this: since Amazon bought Ring in 2018, it has brokered more than 1,800 partnerships with local law enforcement agencies, who can request recorded video content from Ring users without a warrant. That is, in as little as three years, Ring connected around one in 10 police departments across the US with the ability to access recorded content from millions of privately owned home security cameras. These partnerships are growing at an alarming rate.

Data I’ve collected from Ring’s quarterly reported numbers shows that in the past year through the end of April 2021, law enforcement have placed more than 22,000 individual requests to access content captured and recorded on Ring cameras. Ring’s cloud-based infrastructure (supported by Amazon Web Services) makes it convenient for law enforcement agencies to place mass requests for access to recordings without a warrant. Because Ring cameras are owned by civilians, law enforcement are given a backdoor entry into private video recordings of people in residential and public space that would otherwise be protected under the fourth amendment. By partnering with Amazon, law enforcement circumvents these constitutional and statutory protections, as noted by the attorney Yesenia Flores. In doing so, Ring blurs the line between police work and civilian surveillance and turns your neighbor’s home security system into an informant. Except, unlike an informant, it’s always watching.

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Media Claims “Right Wing Activists” Got Doritos’ Trans Brand Ambassador Fired

Oily GMO tortilla chip brand Doritos has fired a non-binary transgender ‘brand ambassador’ who previously posted horrible tweets, some of which seemed to express a desire to carry out sexual abuse on children, prompting some legacy media outlets to claim that “right wing activists” were behind the backlash.

As we highlighted last week, the ‘transgender artist’ Samantha Hudson, formally known as Iván González Ranedo, was given the role for Doritos in Spain and featured in sponsored programming.

It quickly emerged that Hudson holds some vile views in general, including apparent hatred for female victims of sexual abuse, and also previously posted crazy statements to social media wishing to anally rape a 12-year-old girl.

Following obvious backlash, Doritos terminated the agreement with the person, noting in a statement to NBC News “We [Doritos Spain] recently created a content series with Samantha Hudson, a local influencer. After the campaign started, we were made aware of Samantha’s deleted Tweets from around 2015.”

“We have ended the relationship and stopped all related campaign activity due to the comments,” the statement continues.

While the pedophilic tweets were not specifically mentioned, the statement also said “We strongly condemn words or actions that promote violence or sexism of any kind.”

Hudson claimed Wednesday that the tweets were all jokes and that they were taken out of context.

The posts had previously surfaced in 2021, and Hudson claimed “I didn’t even remember having written such atrocities. At that time At that time I dedicated myself to saying stupid things, the heavier the better, because I believed that ‘dark humor’ was fun. Logically, I don’t think that way anymore.”

‘Joke’ or not, this person saying they wish to sexually abuse children is certainly not a good look for Doritos or its parent company PepsiCo.

Reporting on the development, however, some news outlets including NBC News and the BBC have claimed that the backlash against Hudson and Doritos was “led by right wing activists.”

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Doritos FIRES trans activist TWO DAYS after bringing her in as a brand ambassador after being alerted to sick tweets about doing ‘depraved things’ to a 12-year-old

Doritos has fired a trans artist that appeared in one of its promotional videos after being alerted to her old tweets, including one where she wrote about doing ‘depraved things’ to a 12-year-old.

Singer and activist Samantha Hudson, 24, appeared in a new partnership with Doritos Spain through a 50-second video called ‘Crunch Talks that has now been deleted from the brand’s Instagram.

Doritos told Rolling Stone on Tuesday it would no longer work with Hudson, saying they were unaware of her previous inappropriate posts.

The decision follows massive backlash on social media, as users posted grabs of Hudson’s old writings.

Born Iván González Ranedo, Hudson has identified herself as ‘anti-capitalist’ and ‘Marxist’ in interviews, and claimed in one video to be for ‘the abolition of [and to] destroy and annihilate the traditional monogamous nuclear family.’ As a teen, she has also tweeted about wanting to do ‘depraved things’ to a minor.

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Doritos Spain Hires “Trans” Pedo to Peddle Chips, Boycott Begins

It appears that Doritos Spain has made the same mistake as Bud Light. It has hired a “transgender girl” to peddle its products, and this one might be a worse pick than the beer brand’s Dylan Mulvaney.

Samantha Hudson hates the traditional family and has mocked rape victims. And, his X feed shows, he fantasizes about sex with little girls. That makes him a pedophile.

And already the boycott has begun.

The End Wokeness X feed summarized the case against Hudson:

“Doritos just picked Samantha Hudson as their brand ambassador in Spain,” the post says:

Samantha Hudson:

-Admitted to being a pedophiIe

-Identifies as a non-binary trans girl

-Openly mocked victims of child r*pe

-An advocate for “annihiIating, completely destroying, and abolishing the traditional family”

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50 Years of Fraud: Big Oil, Plastics Industry Lied About Recycling, Documents Reveal

Plastic makers and petrochemical industry players have engaged in a decades-long fraud aimed at deceiving the public about plastic recycling, according to a new report that spotlights freshly uncovered industry communications and internal documents.

The report comes as the global plastic waste crisis deepens, and as environmental advocacy organizations are increasingly calling for major fossil fuel and petrochemical companies to be held responsible for plastic pollution that poses a threat to human and planetary health.

“Despite their long-standing knowledge that recycling plastic is neither technically nor economically viable, petrochemical companies — independently and through their industry trade associations and front groups — have engaged in fraudulent marketing and public education campaigns designed to mislead the public about the viability of plastic recycling,” asserts the new report, released by the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) on Feb.15.

In detailing the plastics industry’s campaign of deception that dates back more than 50 years, the report reveals how the industry deployed a familiar strategic playbook to push back on threats of regulation by promoting a misleading narrative and false claims about plastics and recycling, despite knowing all along that plastics’ recyclability was more of a public relations message than an effective solution to the waste management problem.

“This evidence shows that many of the same fossil fuel companies that knew and lied for decades about how their products cause climate change have also known and lied to the public about plastic recycling,” CCI President Richard Wiles said in a statement.

“When corporations and trade groups know that their products pose grave risks to society, and then lie to the public and policymakers about it, they must be held accountable.”

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Biden To Give $850 Million to a Chinese-Owned Battery Company

Last summer, the Biden administration announced an $850 million conditional loan to a company called KORE Power to build a battery production plant in Arizona. The purpose was to decrease the United States’ reliance on China’s batteries, but KORE Power has enlisted its co-owner, a Chinese battery maker, to help build the taxpayer-funded facility, according to court filings.

The Biden administration touted the project as a way to “strengthen the domestic battery supply chain” and combat China’s grip on the global market. KORE, with its Idaho headquarters and small staff of around 150 employees, seemed to have the perfect all-American background for the job.

But that backstory conflicts with court documents and corporate disclosure filings, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, which outline the company’s extensive roots in China.

The records reveal that KORE is 14 percent co-owned by Do-Fluoride New Materials (DFD), a Chinese battery manufacturer led by Chinese Communist Party official Li Shijiang. One of KORE’s directors is Li Shijiang’s daughter, Li Lingyun, who also serves as vice chair of DFD and as vice president of China’s state-supervised Patent Protection Association.

The KORE loan is the latest example of how the Biden administration’s green energy funding is benefiting China due to the country’s dominance in the global market. Last year, the Department of Energy was forced to cancel a $200 million grant to the battery maker Microvast, after the Free Beacon reported that the company operated primarily from China.

In a court filing in November, KORE disclosed that DFD New Energy, a China-based subsidiary of Do-Fluoride New Materials, will help it build the Arizona battery plant.

“The facility is under construction at present and DFD New Energy will assist in the buildout,” said KORE’s CEO Lindsay Gorrill.

The Department of Energy confirmed to the Free Beacon that DFD will help KORE build the Arizona facility by providing intellectual property, research and development, and engineering capabilities. The department said it conducted “extensive due diligence” of the arrangement, adding that KORE has been working to reduce its Chinese ownership, with the goal of eventually becoming completely independent of Chinese technology.

“The partnership with DFD provides KORE with access to proven IP and an experienced team—experience that does not currently exist at [that] scale [in] the United States, but through this partnership will be transferred to American workers and to an American company,” said the Department of Energy.

Some links between KORE and DFD have previously been reported. In June, the Department of Energy’s loan director, Jigar Shah, said the Idaho company would rely on “technology from a Chinese company, DFD, to manufacture battery cells in Arizona.” Shah’s comments were reported by the Daily Caller, which also noted DFD’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party.

In October, the inspector general for the Department of Energy told Congress that KORE’s use of technology from DFD “clearly does not support the legislation’s goals of U.S. technology development since this project deploys Chinese intellectual property.”

But the extent of the relationship between the two companies—including DFD’s ownership stake in KORE and its involvement in building the Arizona plant—has not previously been reported.

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Fascism: Liberal Policies Transferring Taxpayer Money to Corporations

Liberal policies meet the definition of Fascism: Money for migrants, vaccine requirements, and diversity, equity, and inclusion are government policies that enrich a small number of favored and obedient private companies at taxpayers’ expense.

Liberals call everyone they hate a fascist. However, fascism is a form of state capitalism and is much closer to liberal policies than conservative ones. Conservatives advocate for more individual choice and fewer government regulations in commerce and private life. On the other hand, liberals seek more government intervention, increased spending, free money, and greater compliance.

Conservatives effectively say, “Eat what you want, but you pay for it.” Liberals say, “The government will pay for it, but you have to eat what we tell you.” The government gets to pick which restaurants receive the tax dollars paying for the meal and who gets to eat the meal, but all working people have to pay for the meal through taxes, whether they eat or not.

Some states and municipalities are mandating that students have COVID shots as a requirement for attendance. The parents pay school taxes (property tax), but the children can be barred if they do not comply with COVID and vaccine requirements. The vaccines are distributed by for-profit, private companies selected by the government. And the program is ultimately paid for by taxpayers. Ironically, a parent can pay both the school tax and the income tax funding the vaccine requirements and still have their children excluded from school because they refused to comply.

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