News Round-Up: Widespread Facial Recognition, US Financing New mRNA vaccines and Germany Awarding Citizenship To Record Number of Immigrants
News Round-Up: Widespread Facial Recognition, US Financing New mRNA vaccines and Germany Awarding Citizenship To Record Number of Immigrants
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
UK: facial recognition systems becoming widespread – and the problem is not that they make mistakes.
The United States is spending tens of millions on trials of a new mRNA vaccine.
Germany awarding citizenship to a record number of immigrants in the midst of a brutal migrant related crime wave.
The United States postpones its coal phase-out: AI needs electricity.
Scotland: 95% of schools allow children to 'self-identify their gender'.
UK: facial recognition systems becoming widespread – and the problem is not that they make mistakes
In the UK, the reality today is that facial recognition systems are being used by police, shops, and all sorts of other businesses. In some cases, the system misidentifies the person, but the authorities or shopkeepers still confront them and put them in an unpleasant situation.
In a recent BBC report, for example, a woman called Sara went into a store to buy chocolate. Less than a minute after entering the store, a worker came up to her and told her she was a thief. The store's Facewatch facial recognition system had recognised her as someone else. The technology is used by several large chain stores in the UK. Sara's bag was searched and she was forced to leave the shop. She was told she was banned from all stores using the technology. Facewatch later wrote to Sara and acknowledged it had made an error.
Another example cited by the BBC is the use of the system by the police. British police have buses with cameras on the roof which can film the surrounding area. In the area in which the bus operates, facial images of thousands of people passing by are captured and compared in real time with photographs of individuals in databases. If any of the passers-by happen to get flagged by the system as persons on the police watchlist, officers will approach them and, if necessary, arrest them. On the day the BBC accompanied the police, six people were arrested directly from the street using this technology. In total, 192 arrests have been made this year. However, the police also make mistakes when the technology misidentifies someone. One in 40 alerts so far this year has been a false positive.
On the other hand, the problem with such technologies is not really that they make such mistakes. They may work flawlessly, but the real concern is the mass surveillance of people and the control that such a system ultimately gives to the authorities. The issue is not just the individual's right to privacy and not to have the state poking its nose unnecessarily into the lives of citizens, but also the consequent potential negative scenarios whereby the authorities will increasingly expand the scope of such technologies and use them to control and restrict people's freedoms. As is well known, today's Chinese dictatorship is at the forefront of mass surveillance of people, and the widespread use and authorisation of such technologies could also tilt us towards a similar society with more drastic restrictions on freedoms.
Here, for example, is a journalistic review by Vice of China's developments in facial recognition technology, originally published in 2018:
Right in the footsteps of China, the use of facial recognition technology is now gaining momentum in Europe. To give an example from the UK: between 2020 and 2022, the Metropolitan Police used facial recognition technology in this way on nine occasions; in 2023 it was used 23 times and this year it has been used 67 times.
The United States is spending tens of millions on trials of a new mRNA vaccine
The US government is poised to announce an agreement with vaccine manufacturer Moderna to fund human trials of the company's experimental mRNA-based bird flu vaccines. The US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is contributing tens of millions of dollars to the trials. The aim is to successfully complete the trials and produce a large number of vaccines against H5N1 bird flu for the national stockpile.
In this way, the US government is preparing for a new pandemic, as there is talk of the possibility that bird flu, which is currently spreading widely among domestic birds and animals and causing deaths, could also spread rapidly among humans and cause a new pandemic.
Some health officials say this is very good news. Jeremy Farrar, chief scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO,) said investing in mRNA jabs for H5N1 was 'an important step forward', while Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said it demonstrated 'active pandemic preparedness' on the part of the Americans. The recent progress of H5N1 into US cattle was 'concerning,' she added.
However, neither mentioned the very serious problems associated with the same mRNA technology. As is well known by now, there are adverse reactions associated with Covid vaccines based on the same technology, which can cause permanent injury and even death in humans. So the products cannot be considered safe though it was widely propagated as such. Another selling point of Covid vaccines was that they were highly effective in combating the disease. That this claim was not true was something we experienced already during the Covid crisis – whether they could prevent infection and transmission was not even tested in the trials, and we could witness how they failed in real time. We have reported on this extensively in various articles and analyses. E.g., you can read more about this here.
Germany awarding citizenship to a record number of immigrants in the midst of a brutal migrant related crime wave
According to the German Federal Statistical Office, 200 000 immigrants became German citizens last year, the highest number in 25 years, Remix News reports. By far the largest group of new citizens are Syrians – 75 485. The average age of new Syrian citizens is 24.5 years and 64% of them are men. They have already been in Germany for an average of 6.8 years, which means that most of them arrived during the refugee crisis between 2014 and 2016.
In second place were people from Turkey, of whom 10 735 became German passport holders last year. Iraq came third in terms of the country of origin of new citizens with 10 710 people. They were followed by Romanians, Afghans, Iranians, Ukrainians and Poles.
German is spending about €36 billion a year on immigration related costs, with millions of immigrants unemployed or holding underemployed jobs. Immigration is also putting pressure on Germany's education system, with an explosion in school violence.
The brutal violence associated with immigrants, including rape and other forms of sexual assault, is also a major problem for the society as a whole. For example, we recently drew attention to the fact that there has been a sharp increase in crime, including sexual crime, on the German rail network. However, the law enforcement authorities and public prosecutors are clearly not up to the task of protecting public order and preventing rape. For example, a Syrian immigrant sexually assaulted a 78-year-old woman in Berlin and was arrested, but the prosecutor released him. A few hours later, the man raped a 23-year-old woman.
A law adopted this year will also make it easier for immigrants to become German citizens, significantly shortening the time and procedures for obtaining a German passport.
The United States postpones its coal phase-out: AI needs electricity
The new generation of technologies will require a lot of energy, which is why the United States is delaying the closure of coal plants, reports the Financial Times. Since coal plants, unlike wind and solar power, can provide stable electricity generation that can keep the grid running, there is no choice but to keep them in operation as things stand. This, of course, goes against the declared objectives of the US President Joe Biden's administration to reduce coal-fired power generation in the name of the CO2 turnaround. The White House has pledged to produce electricity without CO2 emissions by 2035.
The development of artificial intelligence (AI), an area in which the United States wants to be at the forefront, is particularly energy-intensive. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that AI uses almost 10 times more electricity than Google's search engine. Energy demand in the country will grow by 4.7% over the next five years.
An estimated 54GW of US coal assets, about 4 per cent of the country’s total electricity capacity, is expected to retire by the end of the decade, as a 40 per cent downward revision from last year. At the same time, coal-fired power generation in the United States has already been sharply reduced in the past. Last year, it accounted for 16% of total power generation, compared with 40% in 2014.
While the demand for coal in the US has shrunk, coal exports have grown strongly. For example, 32.5 million tonnes of coal were exported last year, the highest figure in the last five years. The biggest buyer was India, which has been developing coal energy vigorously.
Scotland: 95% of schools allow children to 'self-identify their gender'
According to a survey published by women's rights group For Women Scotland, the majority of schools in Scotland allow pupils to self-identify their gender, reports The Telegraph. In a report, the women's rights group revealed that nine out of ten schools were teaching children that people have a gender identity that may be different from their biological sex.
Just to give an example: if a boy, or a young man if we talk about older classes, identifies as a girl, 95.4% of schools in Scotland will accept this. Acceptance is not just a matter of words, but has practical consequences – young men who identify as girls are allowed to take part in female sport classes and share toilets and changing rooms with girls in a majority of high schools, the report warns.
It is also important to note that only 4% of schools report a child's gender confusion to parents.
The so-called 'health services' associated with transideology, and gender reassignment in particular, have come under intense criticism in the UK following a report by Dr Hilary Cass. The report highlights a number of disturbing aspects of what gender reassignment medicine for children really is. It is stated that as there were a large number of referrals, the staff of the gender reassignment clinic tried to prescribe medical interventions for the child as quickly as possible. These intervention include puberty blockers and hormone treatment, and even surgeries as children grow. For example, it emerged that puberty blockers and hormones were given to children as young as 12. When the children turned 17, many were referred to the adult gender service for surgical interventions such as mastectomies. Of course, blockers, hormones and surgeries cause irreversible damage to the health of children and young people. The report called for such methods to be discontinued, as there is no evidence of their effectiveness, among other reasons, and many whose health is damaged in this way later experience traumas and regret everything.
The Scottish National Party (SNP), the ruling party in Scotland, was also forced to respond to the report by banning puberty blockers, and this was partly the reason why their alliance with the Greens collapsed and First Minister Humza Yousaf resigned. However, a guide for the schools, for example, which calls on teachers to “be affirming” to children who say they are trans and endorses “social transition”, is still there.