12.31.17

Raw: EPO Was Forewarned About the Investigative Unit (IU) Turning Against Law-Abiding Dissent Using Illegal Surveillance

Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Original/full: English [PDF] | French [PDF]

IU warnings

Summary: SUEPO (EPO staff union) and the staff committee both warned that Battistelli’s ‘secret police’ would not really protect the dignity of staff but potentially punish people whom the President (Battistelli) does not like, e.g. Patrick Corcoran

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Permalink Mail Send this to a friend

If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

Pages that cross-reference this one

Short: Adding a Sense of Fear/Perceived Threat to the EPO With Number Plate Recognition (Surveillance)

What Else is New

I Would Have Supported the Coup (Under Very Different Circumstances)

Richard Stallman's (rms) ordeals are showing us how not to deal with a founder; this is how power transition could be done instead, according to figosdev
It Looks Like Red Hat's (IBM) Fedora Project May be 'Outsourced' to Amazon's Datacentres

In "seeking a more modern and cost effective location" for Fedora Infrastructure it seems to have been decided, privately, that Amazon (AWS) would be the new home of this project; but there's sufficient obfuscation surrounding the matter and many people seem to be totally unaware
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 08, 2020

IRC logs for Saturday, August 08, 2020
Fearmongering Was Originally an IBM Thing, Not a Microsoft Thing

Microsoft made FUD famous, but it was actually IBM’s practice that made it commonplace in the first place (the term or acronym was coined before Microsoft even mattered and on the same year Microsoft was founded)
[Meme] People Get Fired for Being Bought by IBM (With a Crummy Severance Package)

IBM used to proudly provide job security and one could have a job there for decades (career ladders and worker benefits of all sorts are what some people assess this when looking for an employer, e.g. whether they can progress, get promoted, stay onboard); by today’s standards only a month’s salary is exceptionally bad, especially when one gets fired without warning, but this is what IBM did to some Red Hat employees
New FSF Video Makes the Case Against Microsoft GitHub (and Similar), So Why is the FSF's Board Being Filled Up With Active GitHub Users?

The FSF makes a good point about “important values like autonomy, sharing, social responsibility, and collaboration” — the very things that are under attack by Microsoft’s GitHub, which is all about coercion and monopolistic control over developers
Techrights is Not Against Microsoft

It may be a suitable time to explain why Microsoft is mentioned so much and why it's not a fixation but a reactionary priority
The THRIVE Guidelines

"Nobody is perfect, and it's obvious that people already hold some to a more unreasonable interpretation of their standards than others."
Links 8/8/2020: Mageia 8 Hits Beta and FSF Has New Video

Links for the day
[Meme/History] OpenPOWER or Just White POWER?

Antiwar and anti-nukes activists cannot support those causes and support IBM at the same time, as the founder’s son (father received a medal from the Nazi Party) flew “an American heavy bomber” and enjoyed a track record of nepotism, propelling him to the top both in the military and at IBM
Rebuilding Communities

"First, we should talk about how our communities have regressed."
[Meme] Microsoft in 2020: Liaising With Criminals to Make Crime the New Normal

As the TikTok situation serves to show, Microsoft is little but a criminal cult that relies on other criminals to do Microsoft's biddings
The Computer Anybody Can Edit

"Without rebuilding and recompiling all of the packages on a large distribution, it is possible to "remaster" an ISO and get a different system -- even before you install it."
Former Microsoft Employee on So-called 'Journalists' Being Blackmailed by Microsoft

Mitchel Lewis, a former Microsoft employee, remarks on Mary Jo Foley being 'punished' by Microsoft for not mindlessly publishing Microsoft propaganda (we remarked on this before as she had spoken to me about this over a decade ago)
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 07, 2020

IRC logs for Friday, August 07, 2020
For the Want of a Pixel

"It is still possible to win, but the FSF has practically left the field."
Ubuntu and Fedora Project Serving Microsoft

The Ubuntu 'community' as well as the 'community' component of Red Hat (IBM) don't view Microsoft as a rival; over a decade ago Mark Shuttleworth accused Microsoft of "extortion" and "racketeering" (his words), but now he's paid to change his tune
(Don't Let's) Throw Caution to the Wind

"As it will become crucial to explain, the effect of all this dancing around truth and reality was to transform a volunteer force primed to bring freedom to users into cheap labour for an industry that exploits everyone in it -- all the way to the very top of Open Source itself."
Links 7/8/2020: Mesa 20.2 RC, Radeon Software for Linux 20.30

Links for the day
Computing Fundamentals

"A graphical interface is better, for some things -- sometimes. But it will also put a lot more on our plates."
IBM and the Bomb: Series Index (on 75th Anniversary of Atomic Bombs Being Dropped on Civilians)

Today seems an apt time to remind readers that IBM participated in the creation of the only bombs ever to be dropped in a war (not tests) and this tradition carries on because IBM is still profiting from it, to this very day (countless billions made by IBM during the Cold War too)
Freedom is Personal

"Before I say anything else, note that there are literally hundreds of GNU/Linux distros, and I put in a lot of work to rate which were the least encumbered by corporate politics — directly or indirectly."
Links 7/8/2020: Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS and GNU C Library 2.32 Released

Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 06, 2020

IRC logs for Thursday, August 06, 2020
Our Collective Privacy is Under Unprecedented Attacks and Privacy is Now Conflated With Bad Hygiene, Not Just Criminality

At warp speed the "War on cash" or "War on anonymous transactions" is moving ahead; now that COVID-19 infects a lot of people we're led to assume that mass surveillance saves lives not because of counter-terrorism but because of contact-tracing or whatever (in practice it's hardly effective, but it's conditioning people to give up any remnants of their privacy)
The Psychology of Developers

"It turns out, there are ways around a free license -- you can make software "less free" or more imposing, without changing the license at all."
Social Justice is Fine... When It is Not Just a Shallow Marketing Ploy

Don't let well-meaning concepts such as "Social Justice" become mere buzzwords or tools of corporate propaganda (greedy people's objectives disguised as populism)
Site Upgrades Likely Coming Soon

After more than 28,000 posts are published it might be time to move from the WordPress x.9.x LTS to something newer (5.5 is about to be released); we explain why it’s not as simple as it might first seem
Focus on the Big Issues, Not the Words

The pattern that is emerging in recent months if not years is that words hurt and therefore contributors to code must shut up about injustices, including corporate misbehaviour
Computing vs. Marketing

“The important lesson here is that Windows is NOT a computer — it is actually a horrible thing that people DO to a computer, and to themselves.”