Bonum Certa Men Certa

The EPO's Digital War (Censorship) Against Staff Web Site

Benoit Battistelli



Summary: The EPO's management has been blacklisting dissent and increasingly relying on censorship as means of eliminating opposing voices

A LOT has been happening in the EPO regime in recent weeks, culminating in resignations or firings from one side and protests from the other (up to a third of all staff), resulting in an assault on the press (paid 'articles') from one side and DDOS attacks on the other. There is a war between staff and the crooked managers who attack the staff's rights, break the rules, and operate a tyranny that betrays principles of scope and even, based on numerous criteria, violates EU law.



Based on an E-mail from the webhost of SUEPO, the attacks on their site is quite serious. Here are some enumerable details:

Subject: Server blocked due to DoS attack

thank you for your request.

The attack appears to be over. We were able to unblock your IP-Addresses.

Your server should be reachable again. Detailed information about the attack: Type UDP Packetflood Traffic: 3,5G with 8MPacket/s Random external IP Sources Destination 87.106.183.86 Port 80,5190 Start-Date 2015-02-05 05:18:41+0100


In simple terms, there is no denying that this was a DDOS attack. We would love to know the outcome of the investigation as we too came under heavy DDOS attacks, lasting months (keeping my wife and I awake at night and causing serious financial damage), ever since we started criticising EPO management. We can't tell if there is a correlation between these attacks (SUEPO and us), but if there is a correlation between those two, then we can deduce something about the motivation (or source).

A source told us that an investigation is underway, citing SUEPO as stating: "By flooding our server with external requests in this manner the attackers rendered it unavailable. As soon as our server was reachable again, the attackers attempted an SSH brute-force attack to take control of the server.

"Such attacks constitute a violation of law and SUEPO has filed criminal charges against unknown and will cooperate with the German and Dutch authorities, who are now investigating the matter."

Our source further indicated that there had been other oppressive measures against SUEPO, so the above would not be exactly unprecedented. To quote further:

What happened to SUEPO until now?

Communication with our members has become extremely difficult. In particular, we cannot reach our members on their EPO email address because of the measures applied by the Office since 2013, such as:

- The domain name suepo.org is blacklisted in the email server of the EPO since 2013. A sender from @suepo.org cannot reach a recipient @epo.org

- Many colleagues have reported that external emails containing the word “SUEPO” in the subject line or body do not reach a recipient @epo.org. Despite several requests for clarification, the administration has remained silent on the matter.

What next?

Your committee will strive to maintain its communication means with staff and to continue to inform them promptly of what is really happening in the Office. We would like to encourage you to provide your local SUEPO Committee with your private email address if you haven’t done it yet. Given the current context, we think it makes sense.


This in its own right serves to show that the EPO already engages in digital war against SUEPO. It's a war of censorship. Would the EPO go as far we paying crackers? That's an important question. Some people deem DDOS attacks "just a sit-in/protest". Such people rarely (if ever) had to respond to an actual DDOS attack; these can persist for weeks or months.

"Some people deem DDOS attacks "just a sit-in/protest".""In the meantime," said our source, "SUEPO has issued the statement" (above).

"Some people," our source added, "are currently trying to investigate whether there is any similarity between the recent cyberattacks on the server of the Croatian web portal dnevno.hr.

"An open question here is whether or not EPO funds are being used to finance these attacks."

As we noted earlier today, Željko Topić is alleged to have covered up for his predecessor/s. Is the EPO now covering up its own misconduct, by covert, subversive or aggressive means also? If so, Topić may have plenty of "work experience" to offer the EPO after all.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Even Microsoft (MSN) Covers Richard Stallman's Public Talk in Milan 2 Days Ago
He spoke in Spanish earlier this month (Alicante)
Very High Attendance Level at Richard Stallman's Talk Shows People Can Relate to His Message
Smear campaigns have their limits
 
Links 28/05/2025: 'Emulation Layers' (Measurements and Linguistics), Libraries, and Discomfort
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: More Arrests for Bitcoin-Connected Torture and Prosecutions for Dieselgate-Linked Executives
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Techo-authoritarianism With Slop Plagiarism and "No Online June" (Going Offline)
Links for the day
Links 28/05/2025: GitHub MCP Exploited and MathWorks Discovers Huge Windows TCO
Links for the day
Microsofters Were Scheming to Take Over This Entire Web Site (in Their Own Words!)
Money gets spent censoring/deplatforming people who speak about real issues; no money gets spent actually tackling those underlying issues
Gemini Links 28/05/2025: Celsius-Fahrenheit, Endless Scrolling/Infinite Scrolling, and Trapping LLM Slop Bots
Links for the day
Bicycles for the Minds and the Story Harrison Bergeron
"The goal of having people in charge of the tools they use and that the tools should amplify ability" has long been abandoned
Prison gate backdrop to baptism by Fr Sean O'Connell, St Paul's, Coburg
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
More Photos From This Week's Milan Talk by Richard Stallman
The posts are in Italian, not English
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 27, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Links 27/05/2025: Science Defunded, India Arrests an Academic
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/05/2025: From Celsius to Fahrenheit and Deleting Social Control Media
Links for the day
Microsofters Have, in Effect, Attempted Extrajudicial Action Against Us
Courts and Judges (or Masters) don't exist to facilitate this kind of "bro" culture
UK High Court Masters Are Not Your Jesters, Microsoft
Judges aren't there for "funny" spectacles, they're there to act as arbiters in critical cases, not SLAPPs
Links 27/05/2025: Mass Layoffs at Volvo and More Evidence of 'AI' (Slop) Being a Passing Fad
Links for the day
The Code of Conduct (CoC) Gaslighting Phenomenon
There are still many people and projects foolish enough to outsource their labour to Microsoft via GitHub
They're Very Jealous of Richard Stallman and His Freedom (or Simple Lifestyle)
Jealousy is toxic because it can cause rational people to act irrationally and even severely harm themselves
Akira Urushibata on GNU coreutils
new message
Anouk Rozestraten (Deputy Director) Appears to Have Left the Free Software Foundation
Let's hope Rozestraten is still using and promoting Free software
There's Nothing Funny About Lawbreaking
There's plenty of room in society for humour, but "hacking" the state by breaking laws isn't cool or hip
More Mass Layoffs Coming Soon to Microsoft, Just a Question of When and How Many
Numbers from Washington were close to 5% and judging by prior rumours, it would be 5% + 5% (total 10%) at a later month
Links 27/05/2025: Bikes, Ideal Computers, and BYO
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 26, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 26, 2025
Richard Stallman's Milan Talk (Public Presentation) Was Packed, Video Available Soon
Looks like they even ran out of seats
Gemini Links 26/05/2025: Intangible Stuff and Slop Issues
Links for the day
The Openwashing Shills Initiative (OSI) - Part I: Complaints to IRS or USDOJ Needed
If enough people do it, this will be more effective, more so if people who are based in the US do it
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Lobbying and the OSI's Status at Stake
At the end we plan to summarise all the issues in one very long article
Breaking Into Other People's Devices Without Authorisation Isn't "Funny" or "Research"
“Chaos was the law of nature; order was the dream of man.”
The Issue Isn't the Internet, the Issue is How People Are Taught to Use or Misuse It
The Web is circling down the drain. The Internet is not.
A Healed Reputation of a Movement's Leader and His Robust Message
The more aggressively you push against resistors, the more credibility they will gain
Links 26/05/2025: Deletions from Microsoft's GitHub, Telegram Blocked in Vietnam
Links for the day
Linux Released Last Night and There's Already LLM Slop With Slop Images
BetaNoise does not seem to mind this anymore
Links 26/05/2025: Walmart Layoffs and DRM Dumpster Fire ('Old' Fire TV Devices Lose Netflix Access)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/05/2025: USB Camera Viewer and Fantasy Life
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 25, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, May 25, 2025