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Tag: lawsuits and claims

  • Attorneys for Keenan Anderson’s estate file $50 million claim of damages against city of Los Angeles | CNN

    Attorneys for Keenan Anderson’s estate file $50 million claim of damages against city of Los Angeles | CNN

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    Los Angeles
    CNN
     — 

    Attorneys representing the estate of Keenan Anderson, who died from cardiac arrest after he was repeatedly tased by Los Angeles Police Department officers, filed a $50 million claim of damages against the city of Los Angeles for his death, they announced in a news conference Friday. 

    The claim is the first step needed to file a lawsuit against the city, attorney Carl Douglas said.

    The claim requests $35 million due to damages against Anderson’s son and $15 million for Anderson’s estate, saying the city “failed to properly train the involved officers” who ultimately used “unreasonable deadly force.” 

    Anderson, who is the cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, was tased repeatedly as officers struggled to arrest him at the scene of a traffic collision on January 3, edited body-worn camera footage released by police shows.

    The English teacher from Washington, DC was in Los Angeles visiting family.

    The Los Angeles city attorney’s office told CNN it has no comment on the lawsuit, and the Los Angeles Police Department said it does not comment on pending litigation. CNN also has reached out to the Los Angeles mayor’s office.  

    The city has 45 days to either accept or deny the claim, Douglas said, and if it denies the claim the estate’s legal team will move forward with a state lawsuit. The lawsuit would claim wrongful death and negligence, among other claims, the filing says.

    The edited video from body-worn cameras shows Anderson at first talking with one officer, and when the video resumes, he jogs into the street as the officer pursues him and orders him to lay down on his stomach.

    Anderson does not appear to comply immediately, and two other officers arrive and move him to lie prone on his stomach on the street, telling Anderson to “relax.” As officers struggle on top of him, Anderson can be heard screaming, “Help, they’re trying to kill me” and “Please, don’t do this.”

    Then, an officer deploys a taser multiple times on Anderson, who says, “I’m not resisting.”

    Later in the video, the Los Angeles Fire Department places Anderson, who appears conscious, onto a gurney near an ambulance. Police said in a news release that Anderson was given medical care at the scene before being transported to a local hospital.

    “While at the hospital, Anderson went into cardiac arrest and was pronounced deceased,” the release says. 

    A preliminary toxicology-blood screen of Anderson’s blood samples tested positive for cocaine and marijuana, police said, adding the Los Angeles County coroner’s office was expected to conduct its own independent toxicology tests.

    “Having to hear Keenan cry out for help the way he did and to watch him be hurt by the very people who are supposed to protect him is something I will never get over,” Gabrielle Hansell, the administrator of Anderson’s estate and the mother of Anderson’s 5-year-old son, said at the news conference announcing the legal action on Friday.

    Since Anderson was “an African American man,” the claimants in this case “believe that because of implicit bias, each of the unknown involved police officers assumed Mr. Anderson presented a serious threat to someone’s safety, and then assaulted, battered and tased him at least six times in response,” the claim says. 

    “Mr. Anderson had not posed any objectively reasonable threat to anyone, but was grabbed, compressed against the hardened surface, and repeatedly tased on account of his African American race,” the claim adds.  

    “We will make sure that Keenan Anderson’s name will not go away in vain,” Douglas said during the news conference.  

    The legal team is also planning to request that the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division investigate the case, attorney Benjamin Crump said.

    Anderson’s death is the third officer-involved death in Los Angeles this year.

    Detectives from the police department’s Force Investigation Division responded to the scene where Anderson was taken into custody and are investigating the use of force, police said.

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  • Getty Images suing the makers of popular AI art tool for allegedly stealing photos | CNN Business

    Getty Images suing the makers of popular AI art tool for allegedly stealing photos | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Getty Images announced a lawsuit against Stability AI, the company behind popular AI art tool Stable Diffusion, alleging the tech company committed copyright infringement.

    The stock image giant accused Stability AI of copying and processing millions of its images without obtaining the proper licensing, according to a press release issued Tuesday. London-based Stability AI announced it had raised $101 million in funding for open-source AI tech in October and released version 2.1 of its Stable Diffusion tool in December.

    “Getty Images believes artificial intelligence has the potential to stimulate creative endeavors. Accordingly, Getty Images provided licenses to leading technology innovators for purposes related to training artificial intelligence systems in a manner that respects personal and intellectual property rights,” Getty wrote in the statement. “Stability AI did not seek any such license from Getty Images and instead, we believe, chose to ignore viable licensing options and long standing legal protections in pursuit of their stand-alone commercial interests.”

    Getty declined to comment further on the suit to CNN, but said that it requested a response from the AI firm before taking action. Stability AI did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    AI art and traditional media suppliers have struggled to coexist in recent months as computer-generated images grow more available and advanced, using human-created images and art as data training.

    Once available only to a select group of tech insiders, text-to-image AI systems are becoming increasingly popular and powerful. These systems include Stable Diffusion and DALL-E, from OpenAI.

    Shutterstock, a Getty Images competitor and fellow stock image platform, announced plans in October to expand its partnership with OpenAI, the company behind DALL-E and viral AI chat bot ChatGPT, and enhance AI-generated content while launching a fund to compensate artists for their contributions.

    These tools, which typically offer some free credits before charging, can create all kinds of images with just a few words, including those that are clearly evocative of the works of many, many artists, if not seemingly created by them. Users can invoke those artists with words such as “in the style of” or “by” along with a specific name. Current uses for these tools can range from personal amusement and hobbies to more commercial cases.

    In just months, millions of people have flocked to text-to-image AI systems which are already being used to create experimental films, magazine covers and images to illustrate news stories. An image generated with an AI system called Midjourney recently won an art competition at the Colorado State Fair, creating an uproar among artists, who are concerned that their art can be stolen by these systems without due credit.

    “I don’t want to participate at all in the machine that’s going to cheapen what I do,” Daniel Danger, an illustrator and print maker who learned a number of his works were used to train Stable Diffusion, told CNN in October.

    Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque told CNN Business in October via email that art is a tiny fraction of the LAION training data behind Stable Diffusion. “Art makes up much less than 0.1% of the dataset and is only created when deliberately called by the user,” he said.

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  • Elon Musk’s Twitter accused of unlawful staff firings in the UK | CNN Business

    Elon Musk’s Twitter accused of unlawful staff firings in the UK | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    A law firm representing dozens of former UK Twitter employees is accusing the company of “unlawful, unfair and completely unacceptable treatment” of workers following recent mass layoffs, which the firm referred to as a “sham redundancy process.”

    In a letter sent to the company on Monday, law firm Winckworth Sherwood alleged that Twitter violated UK law by cutting off terminated employees’ access to internal systems without engaging in the required warning and consultation period. The letter also said Twitter has failed to provide information about the selection criteria used to determine the layoffs.

    The letter states that 43 affected UK employees are prepared to take the issue to an Employment Tribunal, a UK system for employees to bring legal disputes against their employers, if the company does not agree to cooperate with negotiations over the layoff process.

    The warning marks the latest challenge to Twitter from former employees affected by mass layoffs that took place after Elon Musk acquired the company in October. Twitter laid off half of its global staff in early November, and has continued to fire and push out additional employees in the months since, including through an ultimatum to work “hardcore.”

    More than 300 former US employees have filed demands for arbitration against the company, according to attorneys representing them. Twitter is also facing four proposed class action lawsuits in the United States related to the layoffs. Now, the backlash to the layoffs may be escalating in the UK.

    “Our clients have been aghast at the direction taken by their employer, whose mission they have genuinely believed in and, in a number of cases, whose growth and transformation they have supported for many years,” lawyers for Winckworth Sherwood wrote in the letter. “They remain resolved to protect their positions, professional reputations and legal claims against the Company should it now proceed to dismiss them unlawfully and unfairly.”

    Twitter, which cut much of its public relations team as part of the layoffs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.

    UK trade union Prospect, which represents more than 100 UK Twitter employees, also wrote to the company this week raising concerns about its layoff process, including claims that Twitter is “choosing not to honor” its promise that employees laid off following Musk’s acquisition would receive severance with terms no less favorable than prior to his takeover.

    Prospect also said the company has given workers “an arbitrary date to sign their rights away” in order to receive better separation terms, although negotiations over the layoffs are ongoing. (Typically, negotiations over mass layoffs by UK companies involve discussions of the reasons for terminations and how to minimize their size and impact.)

    “It is to be celebrated that in the UK it is not possible to simply fire employees en masse at will as Twitter has done in other countries,” Prospect, said in the letter. “Rest assured, Prospect will continue to lobby the Government and raise public awareness about employers who treat their workers like commodities to be discarded on a whim.”

    In the United States, there have also been concerns among Twitter employees after they began receiving their severance packages last weekend. The offers promise one month’s pay in exchange for agreeing to various terms, including a non-disparagement agreement and waiving the right to take any legal action against the company, according to Lisa Bloom, a lawyer representing dozens of former Twitter employees affected by the layoffs.

    Many were dissatisfied by the offer, according to public posts and attorneys representing ex-employees, raising concerns about the terms and saying it falls short of what the company has previously promised to provide to affected employees.

    The amount is also significantly less than provided at rivals like Facebook-parent Meta, which laid off thousands of workers around the same time and guaranteed them 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for each year they were employed at the company.

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  • Another ‘radical’ change to the Voting Rights Act could reach the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

    Another ‘radical’ change to the Voting Rights Act could reach the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal appeals court appears open to further shrinking the scope of the Voting Rights Act in a case that could lead to another major Supreme Court showdown over voting rights.

    The 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals at a hearing on Wednesday considered whether private entities – and not just the US Justice Department – can bring lawsuits under a key provision of the law. Two of the three members of the appellate panel asked questions suggesting they were leaning against the idea that the provision, known as Section 2, could be enforced with private lawsuits.

    If those seeking a narrowing of the VRA are successful, it would significantly diminish the use of the law to challenge ballot regulations and redistricting maps that are said to be racially discriminatory.

    A vast majority of the cases that are brought under the Voting Rights Act – which prohibits election rules that have the intent or effect of discriminating on the basis of race – are brought by private plaintiffs, with the Justice Department facing strained resources and other considerations that limit the number of VRA cases it files to, at most, a few each year.

    Last year, however, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Arkansas – running counter to decades of legal practice – said that private parties do not have the ability to sue under the Section 2.

    During arguments Wednesday about whether the judge’s ruling should be upheld, Circuit Judges Raymond Gruender and David Stras questioned the attorney arguing in favor of a so-called private cause of action whether the parts of Supreme Court and 8th Circuit opinions that her clients were leaning on were “dicta,” i.e. statements that are not binding on lower courts.

    “I am dubious whether that is a holding,” Gruender, an appointee of former President George. W. Bush, said of an 8th Circuit case that ACLU attorney Sophia Lin Lakin argued pointed to the more robust interpretation of VRA enforcement.

    Stras, a Trump-appointee, grilled Lakin on more recent cases from the Supreme Court that scaled back private causes of action in other laws.

    A decision that blocked private parties’ path to court under the VRA would be a “radical” one, said David Becker, an alum of the Justice Department’s voting section who now leads the Center for Election Innovation & Research.

    “It absolutely means it’s more likely that there will be potential partisan mischief that could negatively impact the voters who are protected by the Voting Rights Act,” Becker, who signed a friend-of-the court brief favoring the broader interpretation, told CNN.

    A decision from the 8th Circuit is unlikely to come for at least several weeks.

    The February 2022 ruling by US District Judge Lee Rudofsky that private parties could not sue under Section 2 is believed to be a first-of-its-kind decision. It emerged from a VRA challenge brought by the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP to Arkansas’ state House map.

    Critics of Rudofsky’s ruling noted that it flew in the face of decades of judicial practice – including in multiple Supreme Court cases – where courts considered and decided Section 2 cases brought by private parties. They point to a 1996 Supreme Court case where five justices sanctioned the practice. They also stress that, since it was passed in 1965, the Voting Rights Act has been reauthorized and amended numerous times, and never once has Congress weighed in to say that courts were getting it wrong by hearing Section 2 lawsuits brought by private individuals and organizations.

    However, those in favor of reading the VRA more narrowly have seized on a concurrence by Justice Neil Gorsuch in a 2021 VRA case that called it an “open question” whether the provision has a private cause of action. Only Justice Clarence Thomas signed on to Gorsuch’s concurrence, but it provided Rudofsky with a jumping off point to conclude the answer was no.

    The office of Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who is defending Rudofsky’s ruling, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. Her briefs argue that Congress intended only for attorney general to bring Section 2 lawsuits and there is a lack of textual support in the Voting Rights Act for a private cause of action for the provision.

    “Despite what the practice has been, when you look at the text of the statute there is a real question as to whether there is a private right of action,” Jason Torchinsky – a GOP election law attorney who represented Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton in a friend-of-the-court brief arguing against a private cause of action – told CNN.

    At Wednesday’s 8th Circuit hearing, Circuit Judge Lavenski Smith – a George W. Bush appointee who is the chief judge of the appellate court – showed the most skepticism of Arkansas’ arguments against a private cause of action, though Stras also pushed back on some of the more sweeping claims made by Arkansas Solicitor General Nicholas Bronni.

    Those against a private cause of action argue the current interpretation of the law has spawned an ever-increasing amount of private VRA litigation that is overburdening election administrators and injecting chaos into their planning.

    “Courts have essentially assumed that there is this private right of action,” Honest Election Project executive director Jason Snead told CNN.

    “But it’s never actually been determined that there is, and in the absence of the expressed decision by Congress to create a private right of action and put it in the text of the law, courts are not empowered to create one,” said Snead, whose group favors stricter voting laws and filed a friend of the court brief supporting Arkansas.

    Without a private cause of action, enforcement of the Voting Rights Act would shrink drastically. Over the last four decades, private litigation has consistently made up the bulk of the successful Section 2 lawsuits, according to briefs filed in the case, and the number of Section 2 cases brought by the DOJ has trended downward, with the Trump administration bringing just one new lawsuit under the provision.

    Even as the judiciary – and particularly the US Supreme Court – was yanked further to the right under Trump’s makeover of the federal bench, many legal experts are viewing Arkansas’ arguments as a longshot. That the argument is being put forward is nonetheless a sign of how far conservative opponents of the VRA are willing to push the envelope in this legal environment, according to Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA School of Law.

    “In any fair reading of the Voting Rights Act, this argument is an easy loser, but we’ll see,” Hasen told CNN. “I don’t count anything out these days.”

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Lovie Smith said the NFL had ‘a problem’ about Black coaches. A year later he was fired and the league is being criticized yet again about its lack of diversity | CNN

    Lovie Smith said the NFL had ‘a problem’ about Black coaches. A year later he was fired and the league is being criticized yet again about its lack of diversity | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    When Lovie Smith was hired by the Houston Texans in February 2022 as the team’s new head coach, he said the NFL had “a problem” with hiring Black coaches and diversity.

    “I realize the amount of Black head coaches there are in the National Football League,” Smith told reporters just under a year ago.

    “There’s Mike Tomlin and I think there’s me, I don’t know of many more. So there’s a problem, and it’s obvious for us. And after there’s a problem, what are you going to do about it?”

    Smith was fired Monday at the end of his one and only season at the helm of the Texans, finishing with a record of 3-13-1.

    Smith is the second Black coach in two years to be relieved of his duties by the Texans, which fired David Culley at the end of the 2021 season.

    Smith’s time in charge wasn’t full of wins and high points – though his parting gift to the organization was a last-minute Hail Mary victory over the Indianapolis Colts, which saw them relinquish the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NFL draft to the Chicago Bears. But his Texans team showed togetherness and competence, traits often desired by outfits undergoing a rebuild.

    Houston general manager Nick Caserio said Smith’s firing was the best decision for the team right now.

    “On behalf of the entire organization, I would like to thank Lovie Smith for everything he has contributed to our team over the last two seasons as a coach and a leader,” Caserio said in a statement.

    “I’m constantly evaluating our football operation and believe this is the best decision for us at this time. It is my responsibility to build a comprehensive and competitive program that can sustain success over a long period of time. We aren’t there right now, however, with the support of the McNair family and the resources available to us, I’m confident in the direction of our football program moving forward.”

    But the firing of the 64-year-old coach, the Texans organization as a whole, and the measures implemented by the league to promote diversity have been heavily criticized by former players and TV pundits.

    “The Houston Texans have fired Lovie Smith after 1 year. Using 2 Black Head Coaches to tank and then firing them after 1 year shouldn’t sit right with anyone,” former NFL quarterback Robert Griffin III tweeted Sunday, when news of Smith’s firing broke.

    On ESPN, Stephen A. Smith and NFL Hall of Famer Michael Irvin also condemned the decision. Smith called the Texans organization an “atrocity.”

    “They are an embarrassment. And as far as I’m concerned, if you’re an African American, and you aspire to be a head coach in the National Football League, there are 31 teams you should hope for. You should hope beyond God that the Houston Texans never call you,” Smith said.

    Irvin said Black coaches are being used as “scapegoats” by the Texans.

    “It’s a mess in Houston and they bring these guys in and they use them as scapegoats. And this is what African American coaches have been yelling about for a while and it’s blatant, right in our face,” he said.

    When CNN contacted the Texans for comment, the team highlighted the moment at Monday’s news conference when Caserio was asked why any Black coach would consider working for the team, and his response was that individual candidates would have to make their own choices.

    “In the end it’s not about race. It’s about finding quality coaches,” the general manager said. “There’s a lot of quality coaches. David (Culley) is a quality coach. Lovie (Smith) is a quality coach.

    “In the end, each coach has their own beliefs. Each coach has their own philosophy. Each coach has their comfort level about what we’re doing. That’s all I can do is just be honest and forthright, which I’ve done from the day that I took this job, and I’m going to continue to do that and try to find a coach that we feel makes the most sense for this organization. That’s the simplest way I can answer it, and that’s my commitment.

    “That’s what I’m hired to do, and that’s what I’m in the position to do. At some point, if somebody feels that that’s not the right decision for this organization, then I have to respect that, and I have to accept it.”

    CNN has reached out to Lovie Smith for comment.

    At the beginning of the 2022 season, NFL.com reported Smith was one one of just six minority head coaches in the NFL, a low number in a league where nearly 70% of the players are Black.

    Since Art Shell was hired by the Los Angeles Raiders in 1989 as the first Black head coach in modern history, there have been 191 people hired as head coaches, but just 24 have been Black.

    However, the NFL has taken steps to increase diversity in the coaching ranks.

    Notably, in 2003, the NFL introduced the Rooney Rule to improve hiring practices in a bid to “increase the number of minorities hired in head coach, general manager, and executive positions.”

    But the Rooney Rule hasn’t been an unqualified success.

    In 2003, the Detroit Lions were fined $200,000 for not interviewing any minority coaches before hiring Steve Mariucci as their new head coach.

    In response to criticism, the NFL announced it was setting up a diversity advisory committee of outside experts to review its hiring practices last March. Teams would also be required to hire minority coaches as offensive assistants.

    Despite changes to the rule being implemented in recent years to strengthen it, a 2022 lawsuit alleges that some teams have implemented “sham” interviews to fulfill the league’s diversity requirements.

    Last February, former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores filed a federal civil lawsuit against the NFL, the New York Giants, the Denver Broncos and the Miami Dolphins organizations alleging racial discrimination.

    Flores, who is Black, said in his lawsuit that the Giants interviewed him for their vacant head coaching job under disingenuous circumstances.

    Two months after submitting the initial lawsuit, Flores added the Texans to it, alleging the organization declined to hire him this offseason as head coach “due to his decision to file this action and speak publicly about systemic discrimination in the NFL.”

    In response to the lawsuit, the Texans said their “search for our head coach was very thorough and inclusive.”

    The NFL called Flores’ allegations meritless.

    “The NFL and our clubs are deeply committed to ensuring equitable employment practices and continue to make progress in providing equitable opportunities throughout our organizations,” the league said in response to the lawsuit.

    “Diversity is core to everything we do, and there are few issues on which our clubs and our internal leadership team spend more time. We will defend against these claims, which are without merit.”

    But 12 months after firing their last Black head coach, the Texans have fired another one.

    “How do you hire two African Americans, leave them one year and then get rid them?” questioned NFL Hall of Famer Irvin.

    “You know the mess that Houston is,” Irvin added. “We get the worst jobs and we don’t get the opportunity to fix the worst jobs, just like this.

    “I don’t know any great White coach that would take the (Texans) job unless you give them some guarantees. ‘You’re going to have to guarantee me four years to turn this place around.’ But the African American coaches can’t come in with that power because Lovie wouldn’t have got another job.

    “This was his last chance to get back into the NFL and you have to take what’s on the table to try to change that.”

    The Texans are now searching for a new head coach under general manager Caserio. The new appointment will be Caserio’s third coach in the role: It is almost unprecedented for a general manager to get the opportunity to hire a third head coach with the same team.

    Texans chairman and CEO Cal McNair said he would take on a more active role in the hiring process. The next head coach will be the organization’s fourth in three years.

    According to the NFL, the Texans have requested to speak to five candidates already about filling Smith’s position, a list that includes two Black coaches.

    After Smith was hired in March 2021, McNair said: “I’ve never seen a more thorough, inclusive, and in-depth process than what Nick (Caserio) just went through with our coaching search.”

    At that introductory news conference, Smith spoke candidly about how to bring greater diversity to the NFL coaching ranks.

    “People in positions of authority throughout – head coaches, general managers – you’ve got to be deliberate about trying to get more Black athletes in some of the quality control positions just throughout your program. If you get that, they can move up, that’s one way to get more.”

    Smith continued: “It’s not just an interview, if you’re interviewing a Black guy. It’s about having a whole lot of guys to choose from that look like me. And it’s just not about talk. You look at my staff, that’s what I believe in. And letting those guys show you who they are. That’s how we can increase it, then it’s left up to people to choose. We all have an opportunity to choose, and that’s how I think we’ll get it done.”

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  • Seattle public schools sue social media companies for allegedly harming students’ mental health | CNN Business

    Seattle public schools sue social media companies for allegedly harming students’ mental health | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Seattle’s public school system on Friday filed a lawsuit against several Big Tech companies alleging their platforms have a negative impact on students’ mental health and claiming that has impeded the ability of its schools “to fulfill its educational mission.”

    The lawsuit was filed against the parent companies of some of the most popular social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube.

    The school district, which is the largest in the state of Washington with nearly 50,000 students, alleges in the suit that the companies “have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth” to maximize how much time users spend on their platforms in order to boost profits. The actions taken by the platforms, according to the suit, have “been a substantial factor in causing a youth mental health crisis, which has been marked by higher and higher proportions of youth struggling with anxiety, depression, thoughts of self-harm, and suicidal ideation.”

    The school district said students experiencing anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues perform worse in school, are less likely to attend school, more likely to engage in substance use, and to act out. The district said it continues to take additional steps to train teachers and screen students for mental health symptoms who may need further support but it needs a comprehensive, long-term plan and funding amid the growing mental health crisis today’s “youth are experiencing at [the companies’] hands.”

    The school district is seeking unspecified monetary damages.

    The lawsuit comes more than a year after executives from social media platforms faced tough questions from lawmakers during a series of congressional hearings over how their platforms may direct younger users – and particularly teenage girls – to harmful content, damaging their mental health and body image. While a growing number of families have filed lawsuits against social media companies for their alleged impact on the mental health of their children, it’s unusual to see a school district take such a step.

    In a statement sent to CNN on Monday, Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of safety, said it continues to pour resources into ensuring its young users are safe online. She said the platforms have more than 30 tools to support teens and families, including supervision tools that let parents limit the amount of time their teens spend on Instagram, and age verification technology that helps teens have age-appropriate experiences.

    “We’ll continue to work closely with experts, policymakers and parents on these important issues,” she said.

    The other companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    In the past year, a number of prominent social media platforms have introduced more tools and parental control options aimed at better protecting younger users amid mounting scrutiny.

    TikTok, which has faced pressure from lawmaker both for its potential impact on younger users and its ties to China, announced in July that it would introduce new ways to filter out mature or “potentially problematic” videos. The added safeguards allocate a “maturity score” to videos detected as potentially containing mature or complex themes. TikTok also rolled out a tool that aims to help people decide how much time they want to spend on the app.

    Snapchat, meanwhile, has introduced a parent guide and hub aimed at giving guardians more insight into how their teens use the app. That includes more information about who their kids have been talking to over the last week, without divulging the content of those conversations.

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  • Two months after mass Twitter layoffs, affected employees still waiting for severance offers | CNN Business

    Two months after mass Twitter layoffs, affected employees still waiting for severance offers | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Two months after Elon Musk laid off half of Twitter’s workforce, some employees affected say they have yet to receive any formal severance offer or separation agreement.

    One former Twitter employee told CNN that they had expected to receive some information from the company by Wednesday, the last official employment date for many workers affected by the first wave of layoffs under Musk based on state and federal notice period regulations.

    As of early Thursday, however, the former employee said they had yet to receive any documents related to a severance agreement or offer. Other laid-off employees tweeted similar remarks this week, including one who said they had “never even seen a severance letter let alone been offered severance.”

    A spokesperson for Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney representing hundreds of former Twitter employees, confirmed that her clients who were hit by the Twitter layoffs in early November also had yet to receive any severance information as of Thursday. “There was some anticipation that they would be sent yesterday, but we haven’t seen that,” Kevin Ready, the spokesperson, said of the severance agreements.

    “Yesterday was the official separation date for thousands of Twitter employees, and after months of chaos and uncertainty created by Elon Musk, these workers remain in the lurch,” Liss-Riordan said in a Thursday statement.

    The employee concerns come as Musk scrambles to cut costs at the company he bought in October for $44 billion, including a significant amount of debt. After laying off half the company in early November, Musk continued cutting and pushing out additional employees, including by requiring anyone who remained to sign a pledge committing to “hardcore” work.

    The company was recently sued by a commercial landlord and a private flight company alleging Twitter has failed to pay bills. And The New York Times last month reported that Twitter was considering denying laid off employees their severance as a cost-cutting measure, citing people familiar with the talks among company leadership, adding to the sense of uncertainty for affected workers.

    Twitter, which cut much of its public relations department as part of the layoffs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the claims it has not offered or paid any severance. At the time of the layoffs, Musk promised that “everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance,” a time period that appears to include the 60-days advanced notice Twitter was obligated to provide.

    A report by Fortune on Thursday afternoon, citing an unnamed source familiar with the situation and screenshots viewed by the publication, said that Twitter planned to send severance agreements to affected employees on Thursday, although it was unclear exactly when they would go out. The severance agreements were set to provide laid off US employees with one month’s base pay and would include a provision requiring employees to waive participation in pending lawsuits against the company, according to the report.

    Liss-Riordan has filed four proposed class action lawsuits against Twitter on behalf of employees affected by layoffs, with claims including that Twitter backtracked on promises to allow remote work and consistent severance benefits, as well as complaints related to alleged disability and gender-based discrimination. She has also filed three claims against Twitter with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of former employees. Liss-Riordan said Thursday that she has also filed another 100 demands for arbitration against Twitter on behalf of former employees, after filing an initial 100 last month.

    Last month, the employees represented by Liss-Riordan scored an early win in court when a judge ordered Twitter to inform laid-off employees of the pending lawsuits before asking them to sign any separation agreements that include a release of legal claims.

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  • Justice Department sues pharmaceutical company for allegedly failing to report suspicious opioid sales | CNN Politics

    Justice Department sues pharmaceutical company for allegedly failing to report suspicious opioid sales | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department on Thursday alleged that the AmerisourceBergen Corporation, one of the country’s largest pharmaceutical distributors, and two of its subsidiaries failed to report hundreds of thousands of suspicious prescription opioid orders to pharmacies across the country.

    The lawsuit, which spans several states, alleges that AmerisourceBergen disregarded its legal obligation to report orders of controlled substances to the Drug Enforcement Agency for nearly a decade. The company ignored “red flags” that pharmacies in West Virginia, New Jersey, Colorado and Florida were diverting opioids into illegal drug markets, the suit says.

    “The Department of Justice is committed to holding accountable those who fueled the opioid crisis by flouting the law,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement Thursday.

    “Companies distributing opioids are required to report suspicious orders to federal law enforcement. Our complaint alleges that AmerisourceBergen – which sold billions of units of prescription opioids over the past decade – repeatedly failed to comply with that requirement,” she added.

    If AmerisourceBergen is found liable at trial, the company faces billions of dollars in financial penalties, the Justice Department said.

    Lauren Esposito, a spokesperson for AmerisourceBergen, countered on Thursday in a statement that said the Justice Department’s complaint rested on “five pharmacies that were cherry picked out of the tens of thousands of pharmacies that use AmerisourceBergen as their wholesale distributor, while ignoring the absence of action from former administrators at the Drug Enforcement Administration – the DOJ’s own agency.”

    She added: “With the vast quantity of information that AmerisourceBergen shared directly with the DEA with regards to these five pharmacies, the DEA still did not feel the need to take swift action itself – in fact, AmerisourceBergen terminated relationships with four of them before DEA ever took any enforcement action while two of the five pharmacies maintain their DEA controlled substance registration to this day.”

    Yet AmerisourceBergen was allegedly aware that in two of the pharmacies, drugs it distributed were likely being sold in parking lots for cash, the Justice Department said. In another pharmacy, the company was allegedly warned that patients likely suffering from addiction were receiving opioids, including some people who later died of a drug overdose.

    The Justice Department also noted in its lawsuit that AmerisourceBergen’s reporting systems for suspicious opioid orders were deeply inadequate, and that the company intentionally changed its reporting systems to reduce the number of orders flagged as suspicious amid the opioid epidemic.

    Even when orders were flagged as suspicious, AmerisourceBergen often didn’t report those orders to the DEA, according to the complaint.

    Opioids are involved in the vast majority of drug overdose deaths, though synthetic opioids – particularly fentanyl – have played an outsized role. Synthetic opioids – excluding methadone – were involved in more than 72,000 overdose deaths in 2021, about two-thirds of all overdose deaths that year and more than triple the number from five years earlier.

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  • Meta agrees to pay $725 million to settle lawsuit over Cambridge Analytica data leak | CNN Business

    Meta agrees to pay $725 million to settle lawsuit over Cambridge Analytica data leak | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Facebook parent company Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a longstanding class action lawsuit accusing it of allowing Cambridge Analytica and other third parties to access private user information and misleading users about its privacy practices.

    The proposed settlement would end the legal battle that began four years ago, shortly after the company disclosed that the private information of as many as 87 million Facebook users was obtained by Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that worked with the Trump campaign. The data leak sparked an intense international scandal for Facebook, drawing the scrutiny of regulators on both sides of the Atlantic.

    The lawsuit involved obtaining millions of pages of documents from Facebook and other related parties and hundreds of hours of depositions, including dozens of current and former Facebook employees.

    The users settling with Facebook called the agreement the “largest recovery ever achieved in a data privacy class action and the most Facebook has ever paid to resolve a private class action” in a motion to approve the settlement filed Thursday. They estimated that between 250 and 280 million people may be eligible for payments as part of the class action settlement.

    The settlement is pending approval from a judge, who will hear the motion in March.

    “We pursued a settlement as it’s in the best interest of our community and shareholders,” Meta spokesperson Dina Luce said in a statement. “Over the last three years we revamped our approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy program. We look forward to continuing to build services people love and trust with privacy at the forefront.”

    Meta did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement. In the motion to approve the settlement, the users who brought the suit pointed to changes Facebook has made in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica breach, including restricting third-party access to user data and improving communications to users about how their data is collected and shared.

    The Cambridge Analytica leak began with a psychology professor who harvested data on millions of Facebook users through an app offering a personality test, then gave it to a service promising to use vague and sophisticated techniques to influence voters during a high-stakes election where the winning presidential candidate won narrowly in several key states.

    A 2020 report by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office later cast significant doubt on Cambridge Analytica’s capabilities, suggesting many of them had been exaggerated. But the improper sharing of Facebook data triggered a cascade of events that has culminated in investigations and lawsuits.

    The scandal prompted a global outcry that led to hearings, an apology tour from Zuckerberg and various changes to the platform. Facebook agreed in 2019 to a $5 billion privacy settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission over the privacy breach, and to a $100 million settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission over claims that it misled investors about the risks of misuse of user data.

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  • Twitter hit by legal complaints from 100 former employees following Musk’s layoffs | CNN Business

    Twitter hit by legal complaints from 100 former employees following Musk’s layoffs | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Twitter has been hit with allegations from 100 former employees affected by mass layoffs at the company, including that it unfairly laid off more women than men, terminated employees who were actively on medical or parental leave and reneged on promises related to severance pay.

    The allegations were included as part of the former employees’ demands for arbitration against the company, according to a statement on Tuesday by attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan.

    Liss-Riordan is the same attorney who has brought four proposed class action lawsuits against Twitter by former employees affected by Elon Musk’s takeover. The arbitration demands are meant to help workers who can’t participate in that litigation because of contracts they signed with the company.

    Claims in the arbitration demands mirror those in the lawsuits. Some also claim that Musk placed “unreasonable demands” on Twitter’s workforce in an effort to shrink its staff, according to the statement.

    “The conduct of Twitter since Musk took over is incredibly egregious, and we will pursue every avenue to protect workers and extract from Twitter the compensation that is due to them,” Liss-Riordan said in the statement. She added that her firm has heard from hundreds of former Twitter employees and has filed only the “first wave” of arbitration demands.

    “We are ready to fight them one by one, on behalf of potentially thousands of employees if that becomes necessary,” she said.

    Liss-Riordan previously brought three proposed class action suits on behalf of female employees, disabled employees and contractors who were laid off. Another suit was filed by a group of former employees who accuse Twitter of breach of contract because it allegedly failed to follow through on promises to allow remote work and provide consistent severance benefits after the acquisition.

    Twitter, which recently laid off much of its communications department, did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the arbitration demands. Twitter has denied the breach of contract allegations in the lawsuit brought by former employees about remote work and severance, and it has not responded to the claims in the three other suits.

    Liss-Riordan has also filed three complaints against Twitter with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of employees affected by the layoffs.

    The mounting claims by former employees come after Twitter terminated about half of its staff in a mass layoff last month shortly after Musk’s takeover. Musk later pushed out hundreds of additional employees, including by requiring them to agree to an ultimatum to work “extremely hardcore” or leave the company.

    The former employees suing Twitter scored an early win last week when a judge ruled in favor of their motion ordering the company to alert all laid-off employees of the pending lawsuits before requiring them to sign severance agreements waiving their rights to litigation.

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  • Stephen Miller led-group emerges as top legal foe of Biden initiatives | CNN Politics

    Stephen Miller led-group emerges as top legal foe of Biden initiatives | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A conservative legal group led by former top Trump aide Stephen Miller has emerged as a frequent opponent to several Biden administration initiatives by mounting court challenges, succeeding in blocking policies they say are examples of reverse discrimination.

    Miller touts America First Legal as “the long-awaited answer to the (American Civil Liberties Union),” and his group has garnered several legal victories against the Biden administration in the past few weeks and months, most notably on issues of racial discrimination.

    The group has aired advertisements criticizing the Biden administration’s policies on LGBTQ rights and has filed a class-action lawsuit against Texas A&M University, claiming the college has “engaged in a discriminatory hiring practice, choosing which candidates to hire based on their race or sex.” That lawsuit is ongoing.

    In 2021, America First Legal was also successful in halting some Covid-19 relief funds under the Small Business Administration’s Restaurant Revitalization Fund to women, veterans and minority business owners who could apply for grants during a priority period in its initial rollout, a move Miller argued was an “unconstitutional and racially discriminatory scheme.”

    Perhaps most notably, the organization was involved in legal challenges that forced the Biden administration to create a work-around on getting debt relief for farmers of color. An effort passed as part of the Covid-19-related American Rescue Plan in 2021 was challenged in court by a litany of lawsuits by some White farmers who complained that the effort to remedy longstanding inequities by wiping the debt of only farmers of color was itself discriminatory.

    America First Legal filed a lawsuit against the effort, representing Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and a group of White farmers in the state who also argued that the program is unconstitutional because of racial discrimination. The lawsuits led to an injunction that blocked the debt relief payments.

    Attorneys argued that the USDA’s definition of “socially disadvantaged farmer and rancher” that excludes Whites is “patently unconstitutional.” They also said the agency was violating the Constitution by “discriminating on the grounds of race, color, and national origin” in the program and that the court should prohibit the clause from being enforced.

    Ultimately, the administration abandoned the effort and quietly tucked a couple provisions into the Inflation Reduction Act that passed over the summer to allocate debt relief that is eligible to farmers of all backgrounds, regardless of race.

    CNN has reached out to America First Legal for comment.

    Several Black farmers and social justice advocates have said Miller’s actions are harmful.

    “I want to set the record straight – no one is against White farmers in this country,” John Boyd Jr., 57, a fourth-generation farmer who is founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association, told CNN. He added that what Miller is doing to Black farmers through the legal challenges is “humiliating and the worst thing you can do for race-relations in this country.”

    Dorian Spence, a lawyer whose firm represented the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a group of southern cooperatives that has been advocating for Black farmers in litigation brought by White farmers, told CNN that Miller’s group uses “grievance politics through the rule of law to try to exclude people of color broadly, but in certain pockets Black people specifically from areas of opportunity.”

    “America First sees an America that is increasingly White, White male-driven,” Spence said.

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  • Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend reaches $2 million settlement with City of Louisville | CNN

    Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend reaches $2 million settlement with City of Louisville | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker III, has reached a $2 million dollar settlement with the City of Louisville, resolving lawsuits Walker filed in response to “the unlawful police raid that led to Ms. Taylor’s death,” a news release from Walker’s legal team says.

    Breonna Taylor, 26, was shot and killed by Louisville Metro Police Department officers on March 13, 2020, as they executed a search warrant as part of a narcotics investigation in the early morning hours.

    Just before 1 a.m., officers battered down the door of Taylor’s apartment. The officers said they announced their presence before entering.

    Walker later said he and Taylor yelled to ask who was at the door, but they did not get a response. Believing police to be intruders, Walker grabbed a gun he legally owned and fired a shot when the officers broke through the door, CNN previously reported.

    Walker was accused of shooting Louisville Metro Police Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly in the leg and was charged at first with attempted murder of a police officer and first-degree assault, but prosecutors later decided to drop the charges.

    Walker filed a lawsuit in state court in September 2020, followed by a federal civil rights lawsuit in March 2021. Both lawsuits named as defendants the Louisville Metro Government and some of the individual officers involved in obtaining a “materially false” search warrant and Taylor’s fatal shooting.

    The settlement resolves both lawsuits, the news release says.

    “While this tragedy will haunt Kenny for the rest of his life, he is pleased that this chapter of his life is completed. He will live with the effects of being put in harm’s way due to a falsified warrant, to being a victim of a hailstorm of gunfire and to suffering the unimaginable and horrific death of Breonna Taylor,” Steve Romines, one of the attorneys representing Walker, said in the release.

    The statement does not indicate whether the agreement included an admission of wrongdoing by the defendants.

    CNN has reached out to the city for comment but has not yet received a response.

    About six months after Taylor was killed, the city paid a historic $12 million settlement to her family to settle a wrongful death lawsuit. At the time, Mayor Greg Fischer said the agreement did not include an admission of wrongdoing.

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  • Biden administration urges Supreme Court to narrow Big Tech’s liability shield in pivotal Google case | CNN Business

    Biden administration urges Supreme Court to narrow Big Tech’s liability shield in pivotal Google case | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    The Biden administration has told the US Supreme Court that social media platforms ought to be potentially liable for recommendations made by their AI-driven content algorithms, weighing in against Google in a pivotal case on digital speech and content moderation.

    In a filing to the Court Wednesday evening, the administration argued federal law does not immunize tech platforms from lawsuits that zero in on recommendation algorithms, even when the same law shields the companies from suits about decisions to host or remove actual user content.

    The legal brief could prove instrumental in a closely watched case about the regulation of digital platforms, and reflects longstanding calls by President Joe Biden to roll back liability protections for companies such as Facebook and Google.

    The case in question, Gonzalez v. Google, offers the Supreme Court its first opportunity to rule on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the liability shield many websites have used to nip content moderation lawsuits in the bud. Several Supreme Court justices, including most vocally the conservative Clarence Thomas, have expressed interest in hearing a case that may allow the Court to narrow Section 230’s broad protections.

    Section 230 has been called “the 26 words that created the internet,” and was passed by Congress in 1996 as a way to shield all websites, not just social media platforms, from lawsuits over third-party content. But in recent years it has come under fire from members of both parties, with Democrats arguing it has enabled platforms to escape accountability for facilitating hate speech and misinformation, and Republicans arguing it shields platforms from claims of political discrimination.

    Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The US government’s brief addresses Google-owned YouTube’s recommendation of videos produced by the terrorist group ISIS. The plaintiffs in the case — the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, who was killed in a 2015 ISIS attack in Paris — have alleged, among other things, that Google violated a US antiterrorism law with its content algorithms by recommending pro-ISIS videos to users.

    Google has argued Section 230 protects the company’s ability to organize and curate content, and that a ruling against it could hurt efforts to remove terrorist content. An earlier appellate court ruling had sided with Google.

    “Undercutting Section 230 would make it harder, not easier, to combat harmful content,” José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson, has previously said, “making the internet less safe and less helpful for all of us.”

    According to the Biden administration, Section 230 does protect Google and YouTube from lawsuits “for failing to remove third-party content, including the content it has recommended.”

    But, the government’s brief argued, those protections do not extend to Google’s algorithms because they represent the company’s own speech, not that of others.

    “The effect of YouTube’s algorithms is still to communicate a message from YouTube that is distinct from the messages conveyed by the videos themselves,” the filing said. It added: “Even if YouTube plays no role in the videos’ creation or development, it remains potentially liable for its own conduct and its own communications.”

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  • DC attorney general sues Amazon for allegedly misusing driver tips | CNN Business

    DC attorney general sues Amazon for allegedly misusing driver tips | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    Amazon faces a new lawsuit from the attorney general of Washington, D.C. that alleges the e-commerce giant used customer tips meant for delivery drivers to reduce what it owed in driver wages.

    The lawsuit by Attorney General Karl Racine further claims that Amazon covered up the practice, which allegedly began in 2016. The allegations are virtually identical to those leveled previously by the Federal Trade Commission, which announced a settlement with Amazon on the matter in 2021.

    The business practice at issue involved Amazon’s public claims that it would pay Amazon Flex delivery drivers a rate of at least $18 per hour, plus 100% of any tips that customers contributed. According to the FTC, and now Racine, Amazon in 2016 changed its payment model without notifying drivers or customers. The new model allegedly used a portion of customer tips to subsidize Amazon’s own labor costs, and tried to hide the change from drivers by reporting their tips and wages as a combined figure.

    Racine’s office said Tuesday it is bringing the new complaint because the FTC settlement, although it involved Amazon agreeing to pay drivers a total of $61.7 million to make them whole, did not impose any fines on the company.

    Amazon “has thus far escaped appropriate accountability, including any civil penalties, for consumer harm,” Racine’s office said in a release. It added that the DC lawsuit seeks civil penalties “for every violation” of DC’s consumer protection law stemming from the practice and a court order barring Amazon from such violations in the future.

    In a statement responding to Racine’s suit, Amazon spokesperson Maria Boschetti said the company revised its payment model for delivery drivers in 2019. In its earlier allegations, the FTC said Amazon only changed its payment model after the company learned that federal regulators were investigating the practice. (The 2019 changes, the FTC said at the time, appeared to largely revert the 2016 changes and provided more transparency to drivers about their earnings.)

    “This lawsuit involves a practice we changed three years ago and is without merit,” Boschetti said. “All of the customer tips at issue were already paid to drivers as part of a settlement last year with the FTC.”

    As part of the 2021 FTC settlement, Amazon agreed on a nationwide basis not to mislead drivers about their earnings, including tipped earnings, and to seek drivers’ explicit consent before changing how much of the customer tips they actually receive.

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  • Video: Apple AirTags were used for stalking on CNN Nightcap | CNN Business

    Video: Apple AirTags were used for stalking on CNN Nightcap | CNN Business

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    CNN’s Sam Kelly talks to Nightcap’s John Sarlin about the lawsuit filed against Apple by two women alleging their exes used AirTags to stalk them. For more, watch the full Nightcap episode here.

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  • Indiana Attorney General files lawsuits against TikTok | CNN Business

    Indiana Attorney General files lawsuits against TikTok | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita on Wednesday announced he has filed two separate lawsuits against TikTok, which accuse the company of making false claims about the safety of user data, and age-appropriate content.

    “The TikTok app is a malicious and menacing threat unleashed on unsuspecting Indiana consumers by a Chinese company that knows full well the harms it inflicts on users,” Rokita said in a statement. “With this pair of lawsuits, we hope to force TikTok to stop its false, deceptive, and misleading practices, which violate Indiana law.”

    The lawsuits mark the most serious action taken yet by a state against TikTok, amid increasing attention to and concern about TikTok from state and federal officials in recent months. Also on Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered state agencies to ban TikTok use on government-issued devices, citing the threat of “gaining access to critical U.S. information and infrastructure,” following the lead of several other states, including South Dakota and Maryland.

    TikTok does not comment on pending litigation, but said, “the safety, privacy and security of our community is our top priority,” according to a statement from a company spokesperson.

    “We build youth well-being into our policies, limit features by age, empower parents with tools and resources, and continue to invest in new ways to enjoy content based on age-appropriateness or family comfort,” the spokesperson said. “We are also confident that we’re on a path in our negotiations with the U.S. Government to fully satisfy all reasonable U.S. national security concerns, and we have already made significant strides toward implementing those solutions.”

    The first lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday, alleges that TikTok lures children onto the platform by falsely claiming it is friendly for users between 13 to 17 years old.

    American teens spend an average of 99 minutes per day on the app, the lawsuit claims, and in that time they’re exposed to content that can contain drug and alcohol use, nudity and intense profanity.

    The suit claims this exposure can negatively influence the behaviors of minors.

    A second lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, alleges that TikTok has “reams” of highly sensitive data and personal information about consumers in Indiana and that the company “has deceived those consumers to believe that this information is protected from the Chinese government and Communist Party,” the media release said.

    The lawsuit claims that TikTok’s European privacy policy has been updated “to clearly state that it permits individuals outside of Europe, including China, to access European user data,” while the company has “made no such update to its U.S privacy policy, which applies to Indiana consumers, explicitly informing them that their data is accessed by individuals and entities in China.”

    In both suits, monetary civil penalties against TikTok, along with injunctive relief are being sought.

    TikTok has for years grappled with bipartisan concerns in Washington about the possibility that US user data could find its way to the Chinese government and be used to undermine US interests, thanks to a national security law in that country that compels companies located there to cooperate with data requests. And there has been renewed criticism of TikTok this year, stemming from a Buzzfeed News report in June that said some US user data has been repeatedly accessed from China. The reporting cited leaked audio recordings of dozens of internal TikTok meetings, including one where a TikTok employee allegedly said, “Everything is seen in China.”

    In a response to the report, TikTok previously said it “has consistently maintained that our engineers in locations outside of the US, including China, can be granted access to US user data on an as-needed basis under those strict controls.” The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a multi-agency government body charged with reviewing business deals involving foreign ownership, has spent months negotiating with TikTok on a proposal to resolve concerns that Chinese government authorities could seek to gain access to the data TikTok holds on US citizens.

    A TikTok executive testified before a Senate panel earlier this year that it doesn’t share information with the Chinese government and that a US-based security team decides who can access US user data from China, but stopped short of committing to cut off flows of US user data to China.

    The popular video-based app has also faced questions about the safety of young users after rocketing to popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year, TikTok’s Head of Public Policy Michael Beckerman joined executives from Snap and YouTube in a Senate hearing about children’s safety, during which he said TikTok is working to “keep its platform safe and create age appropriate experiences” but added “we do know trust must be earned.”

    And earlier this year, a group of state attorneys general announced an investigation into TikTok’s impact on young Americans focused on the app’s user engagement techniques and alleged risks that the platform may pose to the mental health of children. (At the time, TikTok said that it limits its features by age, provides tools and resources to parents, and designs its policies with the well-being of young people in mind.)

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  • Video: ‘Swifties’ take on Ticketmaster, new AI chatbot coming for your job and Apple sued for AirTag stalking on CNN Nightcap | CNN Business

    Video: ‘Swifties’ take on Ticketmaster, new AI chatbot coming for your job and Apple sued for AirTag stalking on CNN Nightcap | CNN Business

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    The AI chatbot coming for your job, ‘Swifties’ take on Ticketmaster, and Apple sued for AirTag stalking

    Nightcap’s Jon Sarlin talks to futurist Amy Webb about the implications for ChatGPT, the next-gen AI tool that’s blowing everyone’s minds. Plus, Morgan Harper of the American Economic Liberties Project on whether Ticketmaster has met its match in Taylor Swift and her legion of devoted fans. And CNN’s Sam Kelly on the lawsuit filed against Apple by two women alleging their exes used AirTags to stalk them. To get the day’s business headlines sent directly to your inbox, sign up for the Nightcap newsletter.


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  • The latest on Donald Trump’s many legal clouds | CNN Politics

    The latest on Donald Trump’s many legal clouds | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump has been campaigning in between his many different court appearances for much of the year.

    But his decision to attend the first day of his $250 million civil fraud trial in New York created another opportunity to appear on camera from inside a courtroom when the judge allowed photographers to document the moment before proceedings got underway.

    Keeping track of the dizzying array of civil and criminal cases is a full-time job.

    He is charged with crimes related to conduct:

    • Before his presidency – a hush money scheme that may have helped him win the White House in 2016.
    • During his presidency – his effort to stay in the White House by overturning the 2020 election.
    • After his presidency – his treatment of classified material and alleged attempts to hide it from the National Archives.

    Trump denies any wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty in all of the criminal cases. He alleges a “witch hunt” against him. But each trial has its own distinct storyline to follow.

    Here’s an updated list of developments in Trump’s very complicated set of court cases, beginning with the one playing out in Manhattan this week.

    The civil fraud trial, unlike Trump’s multiple criminal indictments, does not carry the danger of a felony conviction and jail time, but it could very well cost him some of his most prized possessions, including Trump Tower.

    New York Attorney General Letitia James brought the $250 million lawsuit in September 2022, alleging that Trump and his co-defendants committed repeated fraud in inflating assets on financial statements to get better terms on commercial real estate loans and insurance policies.

    Judge Arthur Engoron has already ruled that Trump and his adult sons are liable for fraud for inflating the value of his golf courses, hotels and homes on financial statements to secure loans.

    The trial portion of the case, playing out in court in Manhattan, will assess what damages will be levied against Trump and how Engoron’s decision to strip Trump of his New York business licenses will play out.

    In May, a federal jury in Manhattan found Trump sexually abused former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the mid-1990s and awarded her about $5 million.

    A separate civil defamation lawsuit will only need to decide how much money Trump has to pay her. That case for January 15 – the same day Iowa Republicans will hold their caucuses, the first date on the presidential primary calendar.

    In August, Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the aftermath of the 2020 election. The former president was arraigned in a Washington, DC, courtroom, where he pleaded not guilty.

    The case is based in part on a scheme to create slates of fake electors in key states won by President Joe Biden.

    In late September, Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected Trump’s request that she recuse herself from the case. Chutkan, a Barack Obama appointee, has overseen civil and criminal cases related to the January 6, 2021, insurrection and has repeatedly exceeded what prosecutors have requested for convicted rioters’ prison sentences.

    Chutkan set the trial’s start date for March 4, 2024, the day before Super Tuesday, when the largest batch of presidential primaries will occur. The trial marks the first of Trump’s criminal cases expected to proceed.

    Trump has been charged in Manhattan criminal court with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to his role in a hush money payment scheme involving adult film actress Stormy Daniels late in the 2016 presidential campaign.

    The former president pleaded not guilty at his April arraignment in Manhattan.

    Prosecutors, led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, accuse Trump of falsifying business records with the intent to conceal $130,000 in payments to Daniels made by former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen to guarantee her silence about an alleged affair.

    Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels.

    The trial was originally scheduled to begin in late March 2024, but Judge Juan Merchan has suggested the date could move. The next court date is scheduled for February.

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is using racketeering violations to charge a broad criminal conspiracy against Trump and 18 others in their efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia.

    The probe was launched in 2021 following Trump’s call that January with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the president pushed the Republican official to “find” votes to overturn the election results.

    The August indictment also includes how Trump’s team allegedly misled state officials in Georgia; organized fake electors; harassed an election worker; and breached election equipment in rural Coffee County, Georgia.

    One co-defendant, bail bondsman Scott Hall, has pleaded guilty to five counts in the case.

    Fulton County prosecutors have signaled they could offer plea deals to other co-defendants.

    Willis this week issued a subpoena to former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, a Trump ally, who in turn demanded an immunity deal in exchange for testimony.

    Trial for two co-defendants is expected to begin this month and could last three to five months. A trial date has not been set for Trump, who has pleaded not guilty.

    Federal criminal court in Florida: Mishandling classified material

    Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 federal charges brought by Smith over his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Smith added three additional counts in a superseding indictment.

    The investigation centers on sensitive documents that Trump brought to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida after his White House term ended in January 2021.

    The National Archives, charged with collecting and sorting presidential material, has previously said that at least 15 boxes of White House records were recovered from Mar-a-Lago, including some classified records.

    Trump was also caught on tape in a 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where the former president discussed holding secret documents he did not declassify.

    Smith’s additional charges allege that Trump and his employees attempted to delete Mar-a-Lago security footage sought by the grand jury investigating the mishandling of the records.

    Trial is not expected until May, after most presidential primaries have concluded.

    There are other cases to note:

    Trump’s namesake business, the Trump Organization, was convicted in December by a New York jury of tax fraud, grand larceny and falsifying business records in what prosecutors say was a 15-year scheme to defraud tax authorities by failing to report and pay taxes on compensation provided to employees.

    Manhattan prosecutors told a jury the case was about “greed and cheating,” laying out a scheme within the Trump Organization to pay high-level executives in perks such as luxury cars and apartments without paying taxes on them.

    Former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg pleaded guilty to his role in the tax scheme. He was released after serving four months in jail at Rikers Island.

    Several members of the US Capitol Police and Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police are suing Trump, saying his words and actions incited the 2021 riot.

    The various cases accuse Trump of directing assault and battery; aiding and abetting assault and battery; and violating Washington laws that prohibit the incitement of riots and disorderly conduct.

    In August, Trump requested to put on hold the lawsuit related to the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, citing his various criminal trials. The estate of Sicknick, who died after responding to the attack on the Capitol, is suing two rioters involved in the attack and Trump for his alleged role in egging it on.

    Other lawsuits have been put on hold while a federal appeals court considers whether Trump had absolute immunity as the sitting president.

    Former top FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, who was fired in 2018 after the revelation that he criticized Trump in text messages, sued the Justice Department, alleging he was terminated improperly.

    In summer 2017, former special counsel Robert Mueller removed Strzok from his team investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election after an internal investigation revealed texts with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page that could be read as exhibiting political bias.

    Strzok and Page were constant targets of verbal attacks by Trump and his allies, part of the larger ire the then-president expressed toward the FBI during the Russia investigation. Trump repeatedly and publicly called for Strzok’s ouster until he was fired in August 2018.

    Trump is set to be deposed this month as part of the case, according to Politico.

    A federal judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, several ex-FBI officials and more than two dozen other people and entities that he claims conspired to undermine his 2016 campaign with fabricated information tying him to Russia.

    “What (Trump’s lawsuit) lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances,” US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks wrote.

    Trump appealed the decision, but Middlebrooks also ruled that the former president and his attorneys are liable for nearly $1 million in sanctions for bringing the case.

    Trump launched a Hail Mary bid in July to revive the sprawling lawsuit, relying on a recent report from special counsel John Durham that criticized the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe.

    Trump’s former lawyer Cohen sued Trump, former Attorney General William Barr and others, alleging they put him back in jail to prevent him from promoting his upcoming book while under home confinement.

    Cohen was serving the remainder of his sentence for lying to Congress and campaign violations at home, due to Covid-19 concerns, when he started an anti-Trump social media campaign in summer 2020. Cohen said that he was sent back to prison in retaliation and that he spent 16 days in solitary confinement.

    A federal judge threw out the lawsuit in November. District Judge Lewis Liman said he was empathetic to Cohen’s position but that Supreme Court precedent bars him from allowing the case to move forward.

    Trump sued journalist Bob Woodward in January for alleged copyright violations, claiming Woodward released audio from their interviews without Trump’s consent.

    Woodward and publisher Simon & Schuster said Trump’s case is without merit and moved for its dismissal.

    Woodward conducted several interviews with Trump for his book “Rage,” published in September 2020. Woodward later released “The Trump Tapes,” an audiobook featuring eight hours of raw interviews with Trump interspersed with the author’s commentary.

    Trump-filed lawsuits: The New York Times, Mary Trump and CNN

    The former president is suing his niece and The New York Times in New York state court over the disclosure of his tax information.

    A New York judge dismissed The New York Times from Trump’s lawsuit regarding disclosure of his tax returns and ordered Trump to pay the newspaper’s legal fees. Trump is still suing his niece Mary Trump for disclosure of the tax documents. She had tried to sue him for defrauding her out of millions after the death of his father, but the suit was dismissed.

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  • Apple sued by two women alleging their exes used AirTags to stalk them | CNN Business

    Apple sued by two women alleging their exes used AirTags to stalk them | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Apple has been sued by two women who allege their previous romantic partners used the company’s AigTag devices to track their whereabouts, potentially putting their safety at risk.

    The proposed class action lawsuit was filed in federal court in San Francisco on Monday on behalf of one woman from Texas and another in New York. They are seeking unspecified monetary damages.

    One of the women said her ex-boyfriend allegedly placed an AirTag – a small tracking device, slightly larger than a quarter and intended to help locate lost items – into the wheel well of a tire on her car. The device was allegedly colored with a sharpie marker and tied up in a plastic baggie to disguise it.

    The other woman, named in the lawsuit as Jane Doe, said her ex-husband, who had been harassing her and challenging her about her whereabouts, found an AirTag in her child’s backpack, the lawsuit said. Though she attempted to disable it, another one soon showed up in its place, according to the complaint.

    “Ms. Doe continues to fear for her safety—at minimum, her stalker has evidenced a commitment to continuing to use AirTags to track, harass, and threaten her, and continues to use AirTags to find Plaintiff’s location,” the lawsuit said. “[She] seeks to bring this action anonymously due to the real risk that being identified would expose her to increased risk of harassment and/or physical harm.”

    Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

    In 2021, Apple

    (AAPL)     launched the AirTag, a $29 Tile-like Bluetooth locator that attaches to and helps users find items such as keys, wallets, laptops or even a car by giving nearly anything a digital footprint, enabling it to be found on a map. But soon after its launch, some experts warned that the devices could be used to track individuals without their consent.

    This isn’t the first time AirTags have allegedly been used for unwanted tracking. In June, a woman from Indiana allegedly used one to track and ultimately murder her boyfriend over an alleged affair, according to reports. They’ve also allegedly been used to steal cars.

    Earlier this year, Apple added more safeguards to the AirTag to cut down on unwanted tracking. In a blog post, Apple said it has worked with safety groups and law enforcement agencies to identify more ways to update its AirTag safety warnings, including alerting people sooner and louder if the small Bluetooth tracker is suspected to be tracking someone.

    “We’ve become aware that individuals can receive unwanted tracking alerts for benign reasons, such as when borrowing someone’s keys with an AirTag attached, or when traveling in a car with a family member’s AirPods left inside,” the company said in a statement at the time. “We also have seen reports of bad actors attempting to misuse AirTag for malicious or criminal purposes.”

    “We condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products,” the company said.

    But the new lawsuit alleges those safeguards have done little to protect victims. “While Apple has built safeguards into the AirTag product, they are woefully inadequate, and do little, if anything, to promptly warn individuals if they are being tracked,” it said.

    It added that the women wanted to file the lawsuit on behalf of those “who have been and who are at risk of stalking via this dangerous product.”

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  • Around 10 of the women who accused Deshaun Watson of sexual misconduct will attend his Cleveland Browns debut vs. Houston, attorney says | CNN

    Around 10 of the women who accused Deshaun Watson of sexual misconduct will attend his Cleveland Browns debut vs. Houston, attorney says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Around 10 of the more than two dozen women who accused Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson of sexual misconduct will be attending his game in Houston on Sunday, according to their attorney.

    Watson will return to the field for his first NFL regular season game in two years to play against his former team, the Houston Texans, after serving an 11-game suspension without pay following sexual misconduct allegations.

    “They thought it important to make clear that they are still here and that they matter. I was proud of them for that,” Tony Buzbee, the lawyer representing the accusers attending the game, told CNN in a statement. “I have made that opportunity available to them. I haven’t been to a Texans game in many years. But, because they are going, I will go too.”

    Before his suspension, 24 civil lawsuits were filed on behalf of women alleging Watson sexually harassed or assaulted them during private massage appointments during his time with the Houston Texans. Watson denied wrongdoing in those cases, and 23 of the lawsuits were settled confidentially. Two grand juries declined to charge Watson criminally.

    Less than two months after settling the lawsuits, a new civil suit was filed by another woman in October, alleging that Watson pressured her into sexual activity during a professional massage session. Despite the new lawsuit, the NFL said his status would remain “unchanged.”

    Watson has repeatedly denied the allegations against him and said he has no regrets about any of his actions. He spoke to the media for the first time Thursday since returning from suspension, declining to answer any non-football questions that were asked.

    “I understand you guys have a lot of questions, but with my legal team and my clinical team, there is only football questions that I can really address at this time,” Watson told reporters, adding that he was “excited” to be back with his team and thanked those who stood by his side.

    “I also want to thank the Browns organization, the ownership, my teammates in that locker room and all of the coaching staff for all of the support that they had for me, especially my time away,” he said.

    Watson violated the NFL’s personal conduct policy in private meetings with massage therapists while he was with the Houston Texans, according to the initial ruling by Sue L. Robinson, a judge jointly appointed by the NFL and the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) to decide on Watson’s punishment.

    Watson’s “pattern of conduct is more egregious than any before reviewed by the NFL,” Robinson said in her ruling, adding that Watson’s “lack of expressed remorse” was a factor in the discipline that she chose.

    When Watson plays at NRG Stadium in Houston against his former team on Sunday, among those watching him from the sidelines will be women who he allegedly sexually harassed and assaulted.

    “I think it’s important to note each of these women is different. You can’t paint them with a broad brush. I would never encourage any of them to attend,” Buzbee said. “Some never want to hear Watson’s name again. Others have put it in the past. Some are still angry. Others are defiant. Makes me proud they want to stand up and be counted rather than quietly go away.”

    The NFL and the Cleveland Browns did not respond to CNN’s request for comment regarding the accusers’ attendance.

    Despite denying the allegations, Watson, who started the preseason game against the Jacksonville Jaguars in August, said that he is “truly sorry to all of the women that I have impacted in this situation” during a pregame interview shared by the Browns on Twitter

    “My decisions that I made in my life that put me in this position I would definitely like to have back, but I want to continue to move forward and grow and learn and show that I am a true person of character and I am going to keep pushing forward,” Watson said.

    Women’s movement organizations and nonprofits dedicated to protecting victims of sexual assault and harassment have applauded the accusers for attending the game.

    “I’m proud of them for being strong enough to try and take some of the power back. Even today when survivors hear stories like this, they are triggered by it,” Donisha Greene, spokeswoman for local advocacy group the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center (RCC), told CNN. “By attending the game, the accusers are saying they are not willing to suffer in silence. What that says to other survivors is that you don’t have to suffer in silence either.”

    Christian Nunes, the president of women’s rights grassroots group National Organization for Women (NOW), echoed Greene’s sentiments.

    “What happens so often is people try to shame, victim blame, silence, and erase victims and survivors of violence and abuse,” Nunes told CNN. “For them to show up and say no, you wont erase me, is so powerful. I give them so much respect and admiration for standing up against him, letting him know nothing, including money, can or will silence them.”

    Despite Cleveland’s love for its NFL team, Greene says many in the local community have increased their support for advocacy organizations like the Cleveland RCC that support sexual abuse and rape survivors, promoting healing and prevention, and increasing education.

    “It’s a tough place to be in. We’re a huge football town, folks here have been lifelong fans of the Cleveland Browns,” Greene said. “It’s a big deal to try and straddle that fence between your fandom and recognizing you’re not comfortable with the story of Deshaun Watson.”

    Even with dozens of sexual misconduct allegations, the Browns traded three first-round picks with the Texans for Watson, then signed him to a 5-year, fully guaranteed $230 million contract, the most guaranteed money in NFL history.

    “It’s just like a big ‘screw you,’” Ashley Solis, one of Watson’s accusers, told HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” following the news of his signing. “That’s what it feels like. That we don’t care. He can run and throw, and that’s what we care about.”

    The decision triggered outrage and inspired many to get involved, Greene said, adding that the Cleveland RCC received over $120,000 donations specifically related to Watson.

    “For those who are struggling with wanting to speak up for victims but also cheer for the Browns and find a medium can get involved with our work and mission,” she added. “Our place is with the survivors, We believe you, we hear you, we see you. Your stories and your experiences matter.”

    While the league has faced scrutiny in the past for its handling of sexual misconduct accusations, this was the NFL’s harshest punishment for someone accused of sexual assault.

    The NFL initially asked for a suspension covering its 17-game regular season and playoffs, but Robinson ruled on August 1 that Watson would receive a six-game suspension.

    No player accused of non-violent sexual assault, as Watson has been, has received a suspension longer than three games, Robinson said in her ruling, and the most common discipline for domestic or gendered violence and sexual acts is a six-game suspension.

    Unlike in the past, however, the NFL pushed for more – appealing the decision and seeking a full-season suspension. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell called Watson’s behavior “egregious” and “predatory.”

    When asked why the league continued to seek a harsher punishment for Watson, Goodell said: “Because we’ve seen the evidence. (Robinson) was very clear about the evidence, she reinforced the evidence that there was multiple violations here and they were egregious and it was predatory behavior.”

    Later that month, the NFL and NFLPA agreed to suspend Watson for 11 regular season games and fine him $5 million, plus an extra $1 million each from both the league and the Browns to go towards nonprofit organizations working to prevent sexual assault, support survivors and educate youth on healthy relationships.

    “We as an organization and as individuals, we have tremendous empathy for the women involved and we have an opportunity to make a difference in this community,” Susan “Dee” Haslam, co-owner of the Browns, said in August.

    Watson also underwent “a professional evaluation by behavioral experts” and followed their ” treatment program,” according to the agreement.

    Women advocacy groups argue none of that is enough.

    The NFL has issued longer suspensions for violations including alleged drug use and gambling – and under his latest contract with the Browns, the suspension will not cost much of his guaranteed money, according to ESPN.

    “His punishment is not enough,” Nunes said, arguing that Watson should be banned entirely from the league. “Although they’ve done all this performative work, essentially they’re saying they will choose profit over actually protecting women and survivors.”

    Jimmy Haslam, Dee Haslam’s husband and Browns co-owner, said, “People deserve second chances.”

    “Is he never supposed to play again? Is he never supposed to be part of society? Does he get no chance to rehabilitate himself? And that’s what we’re going to do,” he said, referring to Watson. “That doesn’t mean we don’t have empathy for people affected and we will continue to do so. We believe that Deshaun Watson deserves a second chance.”

    The team’s “refusal to prioritize protecting women sends a disgusting message” to survivors of sexual assault, Nunes said.

    “The fact that Watson can continue working, with no real accountability, is outrageous,” she said. “The NFL needs to stop harboring abusers and sexual predators.”

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