09.09.15

Benoît Battistelli and His Goons From Control Risks (CRG) Try to Crush Unions, Not Just Journalism

Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Illegal Union Firing

Summary: The EPO’s shameless assault on staff unions reaches an all-time high (or all-time low in terms of ethical standards) as voices of legitimate concern grow louder inside the organisation, whose employees are increasingly fed up with the management’s attitude and blatant disregard for European laws

WHEN Benoît Battistelli signed the Control Risks (CRG) contract, despite CRG being a Military-industrial Complex firm, he served to seriously discredit his entire organisation. We strongly encourage all of our readers to learn about how union busting is done (it’s extremely ugly and unethical, sometimes even illegal and literally murderous) in order to better grasp what Battistelli is up to. Another suicide at the EPO became just a matter of time and the frequency of suicides recently accelerated [1, 2, 3, 4] . For Battistelli, this is war. Here is a letter sent to the Administrative Council (largely Battistelli-occupied by now). Notice the number of signatures, some from high-level employees who are brave enough to add their names, despite the known hostilities and the union-busting spirit of Battistelli, not to mention that of his right-hand man Željko Topić).

To Heads of the Delegations
of the Administrative Council
of the European Patent Organisation

Fifth suicide since 2012

Dear Sir, Dear Madam,

We regret to have to inform you that another colleague, a married man, 42 years old and father of two, committed suicide at the end of August on the last day of his holidays. If our thoughts go in the first place to his family and friends, this tragedy also compels us to
recall some other recent tragic events.

This is the fifth suicide at the EPO in 39 months, and the third one in Patent Administration (DG2). This latest suicide puts the EPO statistically on a level with the infamous France Telecom.

The EPO has a duty of care towards its staff. While the circumstances of this tragedy are still being looked into, we must nevertheless ask ourselves whether there is anything the
Office could or indeed should have done that might have prevented it. It cannot be ignored that Patent Administration is the area most affected by constant restructuring as well as swingeing staff reductions imposed by Mr Battistelli since his arrival at the EPO.

Staff representatives have repeatedly warned both the Administration and the Council that a combination of too high work demands coupled with hasty reforms and brutal management methods have generated what we consider a toxic work environment, not just in Patent Administration, but Office-wide. Not only have these warnings been ignored, but also letters sent to you by the Central Staff Committee (CSC) on the following dates remain unanswered:

- 5 December 2013 (sc13181cl),
- 16 September 2014 (sc14193cl)
- 17 April 2015 (sc15164cl)

We herein restate the content of those letters and reiterate the requests made in them. We also remark that to date the EPO continues to prevent independent inspection of the EPO premises by national authorities. Furthermore, the Administration has yet to give the

“green light” to allow staff representatives to again organise an independent staff survey by Technologia, an external body trusted by staff.

A quick glance at the attached correspondence should suffice for you to understand how unwilling the President and his close associates are to tackle these issues promptly. Meanwhile and contrary to the “lip service” paid by the Administration in referring to a “renewed social dialogue”, the reality is that the working climate within the EPO has further deteriorated.

In the light of all the above issues, we urge you to ensure that the Organisation discharges faithfully and fully its obligations towards staff.

Yours sincerely

The SUEPO Central Bureau

Joachim Michels
Chair SUEPO Central

Elizabeth Hardon
Vice-Chair SUEPO Central
Chair SUEPO Munich

Alain Rosé
Vice-Chair SUEPO Central
Chair SUEPO The Hague

Wolfgang Manntz
Vice-Chair SUEPO Central
Chair SUEPO Berlin

David Dickinson
Vice-Chair SUEPO Central
Chair SUEPO Vienna

Annex 1: Letter of Alain Rosé to Mr Battistelli, 26 August 2015
Annex 2: Answer of Mr Battistelli, 28 August 2015
Annex 3: Letter of Alain Rosé to Mr Battistelli, 1 September 2015

Benoît Battistelli and his goons From Control Risks (CRG) respond with great force, quite frankly as usual.

SUEPO published the letter addressed to the Administrative Council of the EPO the day before yesterday or the day before that (it got leaked to us). “Investigations at the EPO,” told us a source, are not subjected to scrutiny. Things must change. “Here is the latest SUEPO publication on investigations by Control Risks,” told us one person. “It is self-explanatory.”

Here is an HTML version of the original PDF [PDF], which is suitably redacted:

From: Claudio Zanghi
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2015 4:30 PM
To: ██████████
Cc: ██████ ██████@controlrisks.com); ███████@controlrisks.com
Subject: Confidential document for your attention: case C-071

Dear

With this email, I am sending you a notification of allegations of harassment raised against you.

Please also find attached information relating to the process, your rights, obligations, and the expectations towards you. Kindly read this information carefully, and let me know if you have any questions. Our reference case number for this matter is C-071; please include this in any correspondence.

You are hereby invited to meet with the Investigative Unit for an interview, to which you may be accompanied by an Office employee of your choice not connected to the matter (see attached notification § 4), on:

Thursday 10 September 2015, at 13:30 hrs. in the Munich Isar building, room 126.

The interview is scheduled to take place in your preferred official language. Kindly inform us if you wish to hold the interview in a different official language of the Office.

As indicated in the attached notification, pursuant Art. 4 of Circ. No. 341 and 342 we have to inform you of the obligation to maintain strict confidentiality on the matter, including the present communication.

Sincerely

Claudio Zanghi
Head of Investigative Unit | Dep. 0.6.1.1
European Patent Office
Bob-van-Benthem-Platz 1 | 80469 Munich | Germany
Tel. +49 (0)89 2399 1607
Mobile +49 151 54404184
czanghi@epo.org
www.epo.org

Recall what CRG has been doing so far. We wrote about some of their abusive behaviour in articles such as:

EPO staff needs to support this union, which has been sacrificing personal calm and definitely work security for the betterment of working conditions and the welfare of fellow workers. Look how these people are treated merely for combating corruption and trying to uphold the law. █

Links 9/9/2015: Steam for GNU/Linux Rising, Plasma 5.4.1 is Out

Posted in News Roundup at 11:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) for the Unix shell

    When I first got involved in Unix and open source, I was choosing a pseudonym for a little podcast that I do called GNU World Order. I naively thought that in a community that values technology and, frequently, speculative fiction, the name “Klaatu” would be a quaintly obscure reference to my favorite movies. Of course, I have since learned that “Klaatu” as your handle in the tech community is rather like “Bob Smith” in the real world, so online I am also sometimes known as “notKlaatu” to set me apart from the other Klaatus.

  • Events

    • Birthday party at Endocode in Berlin: 30 years Free Software Foundation

      On 3 October 2015 Free Software Foundation Europe invites you for the 30th birthday party of the Free Software Foundation. While the main event will take place in Boston/USA, there will be several satellite birthday parties around the world to celebrate 30 years of empowering people to control technology, and one of them will be at Endocode in Berlin.

    • Lightning Fast

      For the last two years, we had only lightning talks & workshops at the ownCloud Contributor Conference. This is an exceptionally good model for creation-type events like ours and your event might benefit from it, too.

    • Looking Ahead to New Linux/FOSS Promotional Events

      While the FOSS/Linux expo season is winding down – Ohio Linux Fest, All Things Open and the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference (SeaGL) next month, and Fossetcon in November in sunny Florida, before we ramp up for the first-of-the-year 2016 event at SCALE 14x in January – thoughts wander to other events that could possibly take place sometime in the future, with a little imagination.

    • Inkscape Workshop at Smallworld

      Last weekend, I had the first Inkscape workshop at smallworld. It was very successful, we had 13 participants.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla pays it forward

        Mozilla and seven other organizations will be participating in the Grace Hopper Open Source Day codethon taking place during the main conference event, on October 14. Emma Irwin is a Community Education Lead with Mozilla, and talks to me about why Mozilla is involved in the codethon, what she gets out of it, and what participants learn from it.

      • Bugzilla Bug Tracker Was Key to Recent Firefox Security Snafu

        The Bugzilla bug tracker has been a major part of how Mozilla has kept Firefox secure and stable for a long time, but according to the company, it was also the key to a recent attack on Firefox browser users. “An attacker was able to break into a privileged user’s account and download security-sensitive information about flaws in Firefox and other Mozilla products,” Mozilla said Friday in an FAQ about the security snafu (PDF doownload available). “Information uncovered in our investigation suggests that the user re¬used their Bugzilla password with another website, and the password was revealed through a data breach at that site.”

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

  • Education

    • Linux and Python education for students in Israel

      Now entering its third year, the ROSE (Red Hat Open Source for Education) Project is a cross-community effort that brings students from Tira together with students from Yonatan Middle School in Ra’anana to the Red Hat offices in Israel to learn about the Linux operating system and Python programming. The students spent six months on a weekly basis working and learning together. At the graduation ceremony executive members of both municipalities were present and awards were given to the students including two special achievement awards.

    • Apps, bots, drones, and 3D printers: Coming to a school near you?

      I work at a university, in the computer science department, and my college-age students have access to all this technology and more. Imagine the things they’re able to do and create—better yet, imagine the things they’ll be able to do and create in five years with the next generation of all these technologies in the workplace and at home.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • The Free Software Foundation: 30 years in

      We’re also endorsing hardware that respects users’ freedoms. Hardware distributors whose devices have been certified by the FSF to contain and require only free software can display a logo saying so. Expanding the base of free software users and the free software movement has two parts: convincing people to care, and then making it possible for them to act on that. Through this initiative, we encourage manufacturers and distributors to do the right thing, and we make it easy for users who have started to care about free software to buy what they need without suffering through hours and hours of research. We’ve certified a home WiFi router, 3D printers, laptops, and USB WiFi adapters, with more on the way.

  • Public Services/Government

    • UK government publishes ODF guidance

      The UK government on 7 September published recommendations and guidelines on the use and implementation of ODF, the Open Document Format. The compendium is authoritative, from its general introduction to the recommendations on procurement, a guide on integration of ODF with enterprise software, software that allows collaborating on documents and a review of ODF’s change tracking features.

    • Munich Becomes A Big Contributor To Open-Source

      The arguably best town in the world is now even better! The beautiful city of Munich has become “a major contributor to open-source.”

    • After Ditching Microsoft, the City of Munich Is Now an Open Source Contributor

      The city of Munich became famous in the open source community by ditching its dependency on Microsoft products and adopting open source. This, in turn, is having a secondary effect on the community because the developers working with the city are now contributing code back.

    • Belgian HR agency promoting use of open badges

      Selor, the recruitment and selection agency for the Belgian public administration, is encouraging the use of Mozilla’s open badges, aiming to make the recognising of skills and achievements interoperable across organisations and systems. The HR agency is one of the organisers of the first Belgian workshop on Open Badges on 26 November.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • 15 open web advocates to follow on Twitter

      Working on the Open Web is a niche area of the greater open source community. Usually the work does not get the same level of fanfare of other areas of open source, but the work is very important.

      Here, I’ve compiled a list of 15 people helping move the Open Web forward you should follow on Twitter. All of them are doing amazing work and have great content to share and will help keep you up to date on important things happening on the Open Web.

    • Every Lesson Is an Experiment with ‘Open Source’ Science Class

      If you ask Rosalind Poon about the science class of yester-year — the kind my generation, my parents’ generation and their parents’ generation attended, where the entire class follows the same instructions for an experiment like it was a recipe for baking cookies — it doesn’t explain how real science happens.

      “If you think about champagne or penicillin,” said Poon, teacher consultant with the Richmond School District and a trained biology teacher, “a lot of our discoveries are discovered by mistake.”

    • Three New Experiments in Science Education
    • A closer look at the world’s first open digital cinema camera

      The journey of the AXIOM camera began years ago with simple, small devices, and then gained suuport in 2014 with a successful Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign that exceeded its funding goal. A couple months later, a grant from the European Union gave the project the financial momentum it needed to move forward.

    • Open Data

      • Reedsy Launches Open Source Author Survey

        How much money do authors typically make? And how much does it cost an author to self-publish a book?

        Questions like these are part of a new author survey launched by Reedsy, an all-encompassing self-publishing platform.

      • Open Data: ‘civic engagement’ is on the cusp

        Mark Headd is the key guy when it comes to developer evangelism at Accela — the firm provides cloud-based ‘civic engagement’ solutions for government.

    • Open Access/Content

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Tuesday
    • SELinux insides – Part2: Neverallow assertions
    • Researchers have disclosed severe security flaws within the firm’s products over the holiday weekend.

      Ormandy’s disclosures were made at the same time another researcher’s findings, Kristian Erik Hermansen, were posted online. Hermansen publicly disclosed a zero-day vulnerability within cyberforensics firm FireEye’s security product, complete with proof-of-concept code.

    • Seagate drives at risk of data theft over hidden ‘root’ account

      A public vulnerability disclosure warns that an attacker could remotely download files from an affected hard drive, thanks to the hard-coded default password.

    • HP Drops Support For Hacking Competition As Wassenaar Arrangement Continues To Make Computing Less Safe

      An international agreement to treat certain software as weaponized is well on its way towards making computing less safe. Recent changes to the Wassenaar Arrangement — originally crafted to regulate the sale of actual weapons — have targeted exploits and malware. The US’s proposed adoption of the Arrangement expands on the definitions of targeted “weapons,” threatening to criminalize the work done by security researchers. While the Arrangement will likely have little effect on keeping weaponized software out of the hands of blacklisted entities, it could easily result in a laptop full of security research being treated like a footlocker full of assault weapons.

    • Duo Security Research Reveals Half of Apple iPhones on Corporate Networks Run Out-of-Date Versions of iOS

      Duo Security, a cloud-based access security provider protecting the world’s largest and fastest growing companies, today announced results from a Duo Labs research study focusing on mobile devices on corporate networks. Unpatched and end-of-life devices that are no longer supported by the manufacturer are much more prevalent than expected and create significant risk for corporate networks. The Duo Labs research draws on data gathered from thousands of customer deployments in more than 150 countries worldwide.

    • TSA Master Keys

      Someone recently noticed a Washington Post story on the TSA that originally contained a detailed photograph of all the TSA master keys. It’s now blurred out of the Washington Post story, but the image is still floating around the Internet. The whole thing neatly illustrates one of the main problems with backdoors, whether in cryptographic systems or physical systems: they’re fragile.

    • A Tale of Three Backdoors

      The tale of three backdoors: TSA locks, the CALEA interface, and the Dual_EC PRNG, all amply illustrate the dangers posed by backdoors in systems. For backdoors may fail catastrophically, degrade national security, and can potentially be used against those who demanded the backdoors in the first place. The scars born by the security field in dealing with failed backdoors provides ample illustration why we find the idea of backdoors troubling and dangerous.

    • reproducible builds are a waste of time

      Yesterday I read an article on Motherboard about Debian’s plan to shut down 83% of the CIA with reproducible builds. Ostensibly this defends against an attack where the compiler is modified to insert backdoors in the packages it builds. Of course, the defense only works if only some of the compilers are backdoored. The article then goes off on a bit of a tangent about self propagating compiler backdoors, which may be theoretically possible, but also terribly, unworkably fragile.

      I think the idea is that if I’m worried about the CIA tampering with Debian, I can rebuild everything myself from source. Because there’s no way the CIA would be able to insert a trojan in the source package. Then I check if what I’ve built matches what they built. If I were willing to do all that, I’m not sure why I need to check that the output is the same. I would always build from scratch, and ignore upstream entirely. I can do this today. I don’t actually need the builds to match to feel confident that my build is clean. Perhaps the idea is that a team of incorruptible volunteers will be building and checking for me, much like millions of eyeballs are carefully reviewing the source to all the software I run.

      The original source document doesn’t actually mention deployment of the whacked SDK, just research into its development. Perhaps they use it, perhaps they rejected it as being too difficult and risky. Tricking a developer into using a whacked toolchain leaves detectable traces and it’s somewhat difficult to deny as an accident. If we assume that the CIA has access to developer’s machines, why not assume they have access to the bug database as well and are mining it for preexisting vulnerabilities to exploit? Easy, safe, deniable.

    • Debian Reproducible Builds to Detect Spyware

      Debian has been getting a lot of attention the last couple of days for Jérémy Bobbio’s work on Reproducible Builds. Bobbio has been working on this idea and implementation for a couple of years now, but after a presentation at Chaos Communication Camp last month it’s come back into focus. In other Debian news, updates 8.2 and 7.9 were released.

    • Debian Linux versus the CIA

      Hidden backdoors into software have long been a concern for some users as government spying has increased around the world. Now the Debian project has taken aim at the CIA and other government spy agencies with reproducible builds that aim to stop hidden backdoors.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Operation Flavius and the Killer Cameron

      Exactly twenty years ago the European Court of Human Rights found that the British Government had acted illegally in shooting dead three IRA members in Gibraltar, even though the court accepted that the government had a genuine belief that they were planning a bombing attack. Indeed the court accepted the victims were terrorists, and refused compensation to their families on those grounds. But the court refused to accept there was no possibility of foiling the plot through methods other than summary execution.

  • Finance

    • Has the CETA free trade deal run into more trouble?

      The EU/Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CETA) may have run into more trouble following news that the EU trade commissioner, Cecilia Malmström, has indicated that that there are now “no plans” to change the initialed agreement containing a rejected ISDS clauses – as she had previously said would happen.

      The Investor State Settlement clauses – which allow secret courts to adjudicate on disagreements between companies and sovereign states and on the ability of companies to sue sovereign countries at the ISDS court if they believe a country has taken actions which effect their profits or interests – have been holding up what the commission has described as “legal scrubbing” – tidying up the legal language and drafting errors.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • 6,000 drop in number of UK journalists over two years – but 18,000 more PRs, Labour Force Survey shows

      Government statistics suggest the number of employed journalists has declined by 6,000 from a peak of 70,000 in 2013.

      The latest figures, for the year to June 2015, estimate that 64,000 people in the UK describe themselves as “journalists, newspaper and periodical editors”.

      This is a slight increase on the figure for the year to June 2014 of 60,000, but still a decline on the 2013 total.

      Meanwhile, the number describing themselves as “public relations professionals” as risen sharply from 37,000 in 2013 to 55,000 in the last data.

  • Privacy

    • IBM just signed a brilliant deal with ARM to ‘watch’ billions of devices on the Internet

      IBM has scored a sweet new partnership with ARM, the company best known for designing the chips that power our smartphones and tablets. This deal will let IBM’s cloud watch and analyze data from billions of devices on the internet.

      The Internet of Things is the trend of adding chips and sensors to everyday items (from dishwashers to thermostats) and connecting them to the internet.

      Sensors will do everything from monitor the health of industrial equipment to monitor your medical issues in a fitness device.

    • Apple and Other Tech Companies Tangle With U.S. Over Data Access

      In an investigation involving guns and drugs, the Justice Department obtained a court order this summer demanding that Apple turn over, in real time, text messages between suspects using iPhones.

      Apple’s response: Its iMessage system was encrypted and the company could not comply.

    • US claim on the world’s servers at a crossroads

      The Obama administration on Wednesday will argue to a US appeals court that companies operating in the US must comply with valid warrants for data—even if that data is stored on overseas servers.

    • Facebook’s Way Past Friends—It Wants to Be Your Whole World

      Facebook doesn’t just want to be a social network. It wants to be your world.

      At an event at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters today, Facebook said that 45 million small businesses worldwide are now using Pages as their digital storefronts. And Facebook wants to make it even easier for you to find businesses, and for businesses to serve you, all within its app.

      [...]

      The crux of these new updates comes down to the increasing power of your phone. As more and more users gravitate to mobile, businesses are hoping to reach users where they are. But according to a recent Forrester study, 85 percent of time spent on smartphones happens within apps, not web pages. That’s a problem not just for small businesses but larger businesses, too, says Benji Shomair, Facebook’s product marketing director for Pages. Apps are difficult and expensive to build—plus most users wouldn’t want, say, a company-specific app anyway.

  • Civil Rights

    • Right Wing’s False Narrative on Scott Walker Probe Fueling Attack on Election Watchdog

      Newly-released emails from the now-halted campaign finance investigation into Scott Walker and his allies are being touted by right-wing media as proof of the probe’s partisan motivations.

      Yet in many ways, the documents show the opposite.

      The Wall Street Journal editorial board trumpeted the two emails, sent between two lawyers in 2013, claiming that they demonstrate “that partisanship drove Wisconsin’s John Doe.” Wisconsin Watchdog calls the emails “explosive,” which “expose the regulator as hyper-partisan.”

      In truth, the emails demonstrate that prosecutors had a stated goal of not influencing the gubernatorial election, and show a career federal prosecutor leaning over backwards to avoid doing so, ultimately erring on the side of helping Walker and undercutting claims of his opponent.

    • Commission won’t ask EU judges to decide on legality of ISDS

      The European Commission will not ask EU judges to decide on the legality of the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism in free trade agreements such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

    • European migrant crisis: Top UN official urges ‘global response’ for asylum seekers; Germany calls for joint system

      The United Nations’ top official in charge of migration says that the crisis rocking Europe needs a “global response” amid a warning from the European Union that the situation could last for years.

    • Cautious on Syria war, Obama now cautious on refugee crisis

      During the past four years, 4 million Syrians have fled their country’s civil war. The US has accepted just over 1,500 refugees, so far allowing Europe to take the lead on the issue.

    • Confidential Informants: Inherently Trustworthy Until They’re Not

      The Tampa Police Department has suddenly been put in a very uncomfortable situation. On May 27, officers executed a raid on an alleged drug dealer. By the time it was done, one suspect had been killed by the SWAT team and only $2 worth of marijuana — 0.2 grams — had been recovered.

      It was a righteous kill. Letting themselves in through an unlocked door after no one answered their knock, the SWAT team came across Jason Westcott in his bedroom. Westcott had a gun (a legally-owned one) which he raised when the cops came crashing through the door. He was shot multiple times. Open/shut. Officers in danger, suspect with weapon, etc.

    • As Systems Collapse, Citizens Rise

      As we see pictures of German citizens cheering tens of thousands refugees arriving from Syria and other war zones, we may be witnessing an emerging pattern of the years to come: bureaucracy is failing (EU), systems collapsing (millions of Asylum seeking refugees in urgent need of helping hands) — AND: citizens rising to the occasion!

  • DRM

    • Here’s Why Netflix Won’t Let You Download Movies

      Now that some Amazon Prime subscribers are able to download movies and TV shows for offline viewing, rival streaming company Netflix has been left to defend its reasoning for not offering a similar service.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • IP Enforcement Czar Wants To Hear From You About Government’s IP Enforcement Plan

      It’s that time again. The White House’s IP Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) — often called the IP Czar — is asking for public input on the upcoming “Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement” that it will be releasing next year. The Joint Strategic Plan comes out every three years and is supposed to guide the federal government in how it handles priorities around intellectual property enforcement. Now, I recognize that the cynical among you will already be insisting that there is no value in responding to this, because the government is going to simply repeat the arguments of the legacy industries and its copyright extremists. However, in the past, these open comment periods have actually helped, and the two previous Joint Strategic Plans have not been as bad as expected. In 2010, we sent in our feedback and was pleasantly surprised that at least some of it was reflected in the plan. It recognized the importance of fair use and encouraging innovation. It also admitted that most studies on the impact of intellectual property on the economy were bogus.

    • Copyrights

      • Minding the gap in research and policy

        Opening keynote speaker Julia Reda, MEP for the German Pirate Party, started the debate by calling for more and better evidence. Recounting a number of tales of poor stats, she warned that industry lobbyists are quick to fill the evidence void.

        [...]

        Closing keynote speaker Pamela Samuelson, Berkeley, encouraged academics to write more for non-academic audiences. She recounted her great fear that she would never be taken seriously again after penning an article for WIRED on the ‘Copyright Grab.’ Her fears were unfounded, but it does touch on a key point – there is a cultural taboo associated with non-academic publishing within academia. (Aha! That explains the slight terror I have every time I click the Blogger ‘publish’ button.)

      • Kim Dotcom Seeks Delay of 10th Scheduled Extradition Hearing

        Kim Dotcom and his former business partners want to delay an extradition hearing scheduled to take place in two weeks’ time. The U.S. government wants Dotcom to face the largest copyright infringement trial in history but the Megaupload defendants say a fair hearing will be impossible if they aren’t able to fund expert witnesses outside New Zealand.

      • Police Raid Fails to Dent UK Top 40 Music Piracy

        A raid last week by the UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has done little to reduce the availability of packs containing the country’s most popular music tracks. Aside from the disappearance of the torrents usually uploaded by the individual who was arrested, it was very much business as usual during last Friday’s global release day.

      • Getty Images Goes Copyright Trolling After A Meme Penguin

        Getty Images has a bit of a reputation for being a ridiculous copyright troll at times — sending out threatening letters demanding large sums to “settle” for people who use an image from Getty’s database. But, now, it appears to have taken the trolling to a new level, as the German blog GetDigital.de revealed last week when it reported that Getty had demanded nearly $1,000 for one year’s use of an image of a penguin that is actually part of a semi-popular meme, better known as the Socially Awkward Penguin.

EPO Management May Not Have Resigned (Yet), But the Rest of the Staff is Leaving in Droves

Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

EPO has gone militant

Investigation Unit

Summary: Several independent reports of ‘BRAIN DRAIN at the EPO’, including so-called ‘interrogations’ of staff which make it no wonder that some people die

A TRULY TOXIC work environment is what the European Patent Office (EPO) became quite a long time ago. Employees have to cope with terrible, merciless rulers and give up many of their basic rights. Sick leave is the least of the problems, though media under the influence of EPO (like “media partners” [1, 2]) helps the management paint the situation and frame staff demands like this, essentially portraying the staff as arrogant and spoiled (the same media strategy the City of London used when Tube workers went on strike several times this past summer). The EPO’s management simply breaks some fundamental laws, ignores court rulings, and even bullies staff. People don’t want to work there and it’s easy to see why. Some want change, but some have given up. Some decide to go on strike, but some decide to just walk out the door for good. To use the words of one source of ours, the EPO Investigation Unit “illustrates the work sphere.” It’s like the Stasi, maybe worse, and it extends well beyond Munich (it is Office-wide across Europe). The Investigation Unit is international and it is aided by spies who even work outside of Europe. Good use of taxpayers’ money clearly it is not.

“The Investigation Unit is international and it is aided by spies who even work outside of Europe. Good use of taxpayers’ money clearly it is not.”A toxic work environment — sometimes literally toxic — is something that I last discussed with my wife yesterday as she recalled her time working in Taiwan. After confiscating all workers’ passports (having forcibly, as per the oppressive rules, visited the police where everyone had to register) they proceeded to taking fingerprints, faeces samples etc. (people treated like cattle and reduced to mere objects, assets, resources). They were then exposed to cancer-causing X-ray (more than once) and were led to machines that not only ruined their vision but also their general health (because of exposure to hazardous chemicals). Moreover, they were pressured to work very fast in order to meet quotas and not only underperforming staff (based on very demanding standards) got laid off but also ones who had charisma and merely suggested that meals can be shared among colleagues; not only one such worker got fired (and ended up in tears) perhaps because she was deemed a potentially unionising force and thus a ‘threat’ but also her friend got fired, merely for association (or maybe fear of retaliation by communication after her friend got unjustly fired). Union-busting may be very prevalent in places like Taiwan and China, but it is also alive and well in Europe, not just famously in the US (Walmart for instance).

The EPO’s management ruined what was supposed to be decent, at least on paper. It has become a nasty organisation that targets unionists and their friends. It is therefore no wonder that the management lost legitimacy and there is now “BRAIN DRAIN at the EPO,” one source has told us, expanding that “the EPO suffers from a massive BRAIN DRAIN. Many staff members (examiners, formality offices) leave the hell, if they can, by early retirement (between 50 and 60, you still can early retire, with certain amount of deductions), “normal” retirement, or they resign. I just received information about figures, but as long as I don’t have a proof, this info is in a kind of limbo.”

“The EPO is so unbelievably corrupt, but there are things people know but cannot say (at least not yet).”“Perhaps you receive such information from other sources,” said the source, “they are not lying, but simply telling the truth.” As pointed out in recent letters to Benoît Battistelli, this has become common knowledge now and we have been hearing it from several sources (independently). “I expect the office failing in the future,” told us a source, adding: “Who is responsible? Benoît Battistelli & clique damaged the EPO and patent system.”

For the time being, this is information that we can publish with the caveats, at least until we have some harder figures. We know about the fifth suicide, but what about people who make their way out of the EPO alive?

“Better wait until “hard” figures are published,” a source told us about this “BRAIN DRAIN” at the EPO, “or leaking.” It “may be needed to wait until the next year when the official yearly report for 2015 is published, with the staff figures. Personally I know of dozens of colleagues who retired, early retired or resigned.”

We will follow up with publication if someone can send us additional details and preferably hard proof, aside from many anecdotes. According to suepo.org’s silence as of late, the atmosphere of intimidation has had a chilling effect on people who may want to come forth with information (members of the union and outsiders). We have seen cases of hesitance to speak out, even when information is available that can seriously undermine the rogue elements at the organisation.

The EPO is so unbelievably corrupt, but there are things people know but cannot say (at least not yet). It’s almost as though fascist regimes are back with a vengeance even in Europe, but as long as they are compartmentalised, people don’t quite know about them. The EPO is a good example of a worrisome trend where an employer or a government treats staff and citizens like enemies, acting accordingly.

To better understand why there are many EPO staff suicides one needs to know what happens behind closed doors, including revolving doors. There are people who move from war in Afghanistan to the EPO and from spy agencies to the EPO, where ‘interrogation’ techniques are now being used on staff. If only more people knew the full extent of what the EPO does, there would possibly be a mass exodus.

“We kindly ask anyone with relevant information to consider contacting us.”Calls for the arrest of high-level EPO officials aren’t new, but apparently these thugs are too well-connected to face justice. To tackle the abuses of the EPO we don’t need MEPs to speak out; we need special units of German police and we need immediate action that is based on the hard facts. What the public really needs to know about the EPO is the stuff that EPO threatens people who speak out about.

Based on our research, the EPO now employs (not contracts) staff from CRG (Control Risks Group, or ‘British Blackwater’) and we know now who asked Battistelli to sign a contract with CRG, showing disturbing intersection between EPO management and the Military-industrial Complex. For those who forgot how CRG relates to the EPO, recall the following older articles:

We kindly ask anyone with relevant information to consider contacting us. We have never let down a source (in nearly a decade of operation) because we are prudent, discreet, and have strict policy on data security (my laptop, for instance, never leaves the house and messages are encrypted). If enough people speak out, things will change. European politicians access our article and occasionally interact with us because they are growingly disturbed by what is happening at the EPO, but they can only go as far as the information available to them allows. █

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time

New to This Site? Here Are Some Introductory Resources

No

Mono

ODF

Samba logo






We support

End software patents

GPLv3

GNU project

BLAG

EFF bloggers

Comcast is Blocktastic? SavetheInternet.com



Recent Posts