Bonum Certa Men Certa

Warning: EPO Surveillance May Have Just Gotten Even More Intrusive

Reporters Without Borders on BlueCoat
Source: Reporters Without Borders



Summary: BlueCoat, which the EPO uses to enable oppression inside its European premises, has just gotten even nastier and staff may be at risk

LAST year we wrote about BlueCoat's relationship with the EPO. Some people already know about this, but some do not. BlueCoat is (or at least was) used to spy on EPO staff and censor EPO staff, as we first suspected quite a while back (this was later confirmed to us). We gave some background regarding BlueCoat at the time. It's militarised, just like Control Risks. There are many militaristic elements to the EPO under Battistelli and it's getting worse over time, to the point where one paranoid man in a suit has half a dozen bodyguards, costing a fortune.



"There are many militaristic elements to the EPO under Battistelli and it's getting worse over time, to the point where one paranoid man in a suit has half a dozen bodyguards, costing a fortune.""Please spread this really bad news which I read on Twitter," wrote to us one person earlier today. It's a reliable source.

"BlueCoat," we're told, "the company making TLS MitM equipment allegedly used by govs [AND EPO] to violate human rights, now has a REAL UNRESTRICTED CA."

"Please spread this really bad news."

"BlueCoat is used by the EPO to filter web traffic (at least it was in 2013/2014)," our source told us. This is something that we were able to verify independently. "From now on all these people (bastards) can intercept (as Man-in-the-middle, MitM) and read (possibly) without that you even notice also https:// traffic because your browser will trust them, because they have a real unrestricted certificate -like your bank, and so on.Please spread this really bad news.

"Here are some links."

https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/735941957130817536?lang=de

https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/735940720931012608

https://twitter.com/kennwhite/status/735956084574326784

This now-deleted tweet said: "network interception device manufacturer granted a Certificate Authority able to MitM HTTPS on any computer."

"Remedy," we're told, "partially, but perhaps not for unlucky sheep in the office," is this. "Here's how to untrust it," apparently believes our source, although that in itself may arouse suspicion from within the Office. This may have gone on for quite some time because, to quote the blog post: "This month an interesting one popped up, generated apparently in September 2015: "Blue Coat Public Services Intermediate CA", signed by Symantec. (No certificates signed by this CA have reached the CT logs or Censys so far.)"

Staff representatives of the EPO, albeit besieged and suppressed, might wish to report to European authorities which kind of parties the EPO is associating itself with. Under Battistelli, in the widely notorious Eponia, human rights are respected no more than in Bahrain.

Recent Techrights' Posts

People Used to Talk
If pets can live a measurably happy life without gadgets and "apps", why can't humans?
Rust is Starting to Seem More Like Microsoft-hosted "Digital Maoism", Not a Legitimate Effort to Improve Security
Maybe this is very innocent, but they seem to have taken a solid, stable program from a high-profile Frenchman and looked for ways to marry it with GitHub, i.e. Microsoft/NSA
 
Gemini Links 08/05/2025: Practical Gemini Use Case, Shutdown of the Blanket Fort Webring
Links for the day
Links 08/05/2025: "Slop Presidency", US Government Defunds Public Broadcasting
Links for the day
Lasse Fister, Organiser of Libre Graphics Meeting, Points Out the Code of Conduct is Likely Violated by the Same People Who Promote Codes of Conduct (and Then Bully Him Into Cancelling a Keynote)
I am starting to see Lasse Fister as another victim
LLM Slop Attacks Not Only Sites of Free Software Projects But Also Bug Reporting Systems (Time-wasting, in Effect "DDoS")
Microsoft, the leading purveyor and promoter of slop, is a cancer
The Richard Stallman (RMS) "European Tour" Carries on In Spite of the Nuremberg Incident
Some people spoke about how they saw yesterday's talk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 07, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 07, 2025
The CoC Means the Founder of GNU/Linux Cannot Talk and a 72-Year-Old Man With Cancer is Somehow a "Safety" Risk?
Those who don't like RMS are not forced to attend his talks
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: A Shopping Spree and Digital Gardening
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: Pegasus Guilty and a Path Towards EU Without Russian Energy
Links for the day
Outsourcing GNU/Linux to Microsoft GitHub Promoted by Microsoft LLM Slop and Army Officers
Something doesn't seem right
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part III: No More Media Lawsuits From Brett Wilson LLP This Year, One Can Only Guess Why
People leak a lot of material to Techrights because they know, based on the track record, that the sources will be protected and whatever gets published will stay online, in full, no matter how stubborn an effort (even lawsuits and blackmail) will be sent its way
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: Adopting GrapheneOS, Further Enshittification of Flickr
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: CISA Gutted, Debt-Saddled (Likely Insolvent) 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop) Faking Its Financial State Again
Links for the day
Finland, Lithuania, and Latvia Fortify Their Digital Border With GNU/Linux
This month's data from statCounter is particularly interesting near the Baltic Sea
The European Patent Office (EPO) Has a Very Profound Corruption Issue, Far More Urgent an Issue Than Pronouns
a rather long document
Richard Stallman Gives Public Talk at Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic
"For programs that you could run, and for network services that could do your own computing, under what circumstances is it reasonable to trust them?"
Today We Turn 18.5
The eighteenth "and a half" anniversary
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 06, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 06, 2025
Microsoft Finally Admits That XBox is ****
In this case, "enshittification" is an understatement
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Comes Shortly. Microsoft Propaganda Sites and Slopforms Powered by Microsoft LLMs Already Spew Out Face-Saving Nonsense.
Based on last month's leak, some very extensive layoffs are now imminent [...] Perhaps we can expect a lot of noise, some of it spewed out by bots, to distract from or belittle the impending mass layoffs
Ubuntu Becomes Microsoft GitHub, Based on Decision Made by British Army Officer
You're hopeless, Canonical
Slopwatch: Microsoft Slop, Anti-Linux Slop, and IBM Marketing Itself as a Slop Company
Microsoft-controlled LLM spewing out garbage about "Linux"
Links 06/05/2025: Microsoft's Assassination of Skype After Years of Failure, Slop Hallucinations Are Getting Worse
Links for the day
Links 06/05/2025: Changing Places and StarGrid for PalmOS
Links for the day
Windows and Microsoft Causing Serious Data Breaches, Media Rushes to Blame That on "Linux" Somehow
While selling us some rusty old propaganda about how moving to Microsoft GitHub (Rust) will improve security
Making Site Archives More Easily Accessible (Approaching 50,000 Blog Posts)
Efforts to censor us have always backfired badly
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part II: Hiding Behind Lawyers and Barristers Who Lack Standards so as to Engage in Classic Corporate Extortion
They're trying to scare people and they misuse their licence to operate
Links 06/05/2025: LLMs/Chatbots Attract More Scrutiny (Getting Worse Over Time), PwC Has Many Layoffs
Links for the day
Thanks for listening. How can this Morse feed be further improved?
Right now any and all feedback on the audio would be helpful
statCounter: Bing's Market Share Lower Right Now Than It Was When LLM Hype Began (With "Bing Chat")
If anybody gains at Google's expense in search, it is BRICS' alternatives such as Yandex
Gemini Links 06/05/2025: Failure and Proxmox Cluster
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 05, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 05, 2025