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12.03.15

Impact of Software Patents and Excessive/Unregulated Profit Motives at USPTO: Now Even Common Encryption (i.e. Computer Security) Under Patent Attacks

Posted in America, Europe, Patents at 7:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Legacy of the likes of IBM’s David Kappos and his predecessors

David Kappos
For mega-corporations, yes.

Summary: A roundup of patent news from the US and some relations between that and Europe, which risks repeating the mistakes of the patently-occupied (by large corporations’ interests) USPTO

NOT ONLY the EPO is resorting to dubious privatisation of public services. Its apparent role model, the USPTO, is doing so too. This week’s report from WIPR reminded us that: “Professionals from Serco will review patent applications and sort them into the appropriate classification. Serco has been contracted by the USPTO since 2006 to provide this service.”

“Software patents now do what even the British Prime Minister could not successfully do. They combat encryption itself, effectively banning it if not discouraging its use (for transactional security purposes).”This isn’t particularly surprising given that the USPTO is little more than a rubber-stamping warehouse, run by and for large corporations (see where its directors come from and who takes the lion's share of patents). It used to be IBM’s turf and now it’s Google’s. As Andrew Orlowski put it last week: “The nomination of former Google lawyer Michelle Lee to run the US Patent and Trademark Office has been hailed as a victory for Silicon Valley. In 2007 Lee said the patent system was “out-of-balance” and needed “to be remedied”. But does she still think that?”

Well, nothing has been done so far by Michelle Lee. Like Obama or Kappos before her, it was all Hope and Change, but nothing really happened. Kappos himself is now a patent maximalist (he profits from it), calling for software patents, which are not permitted in Europe (for good reasons).

As noted here a few days ago, patent trolls love software patents and this is starting to happen in Europe too. Software patents now do what even the British Prime Minister could not successfully do. They combat encryption itself, effectively banning it if not discouraging its use (for transactional security purposes). Who benefits here?

“If the US patent system did not permit patenting of software, none of this would have happened.”See Tim Cushing’s “Patent Troll Sues Everyone For Infringing On Encryption-Related Patent By Encrypting Their Websites” (the FSFE’s Matthias Kirschner took note of these events). An article by David Kravets says that, unsurprisingly, this happens in Texas again. “A Texas company,” he wrote, “is suing some of the biggest names in tech and retail, claiming their HTTPS websites infringe an encryption patent titled “Auto-Escrowable and Auto-Certifiable Cryptosystems.” CryptoPeak Solutions has filed about six dozen cases in all, and they began hitting the patent-troll friendly venue of the Eastern District of Texas in July.”

Here is a lawyers-centric report about it and a hackers-centric report that says: “Texas-based company CryptoPeak Solutions LLC has filed 66 lawsuits against many big businesses in the US, claiming they have illegally used its patented encryption method – Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) – on their HTTPS websites.

“Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is a key exchange algorithm that is most widely used on websites secured with Transport Layer Security (TLS) to determine what symmetric keys are used during a session.”

If the US patent system did not permit patenting of software, none of this would have happened.

This one lawsuit (or large set of lawsuits) grabbed a lot of the media’s attention, but as Joe Mullin put it: “New patent lawsuits hit an all-time high in November, with many plaintiffs likely hoping to avoid new pleading rules that came into effect yesterday. A whopping 790 lawsuits were filed last month, with at least 212 filed on a single day: Monday, November 30.” Also see “Patent Lawsuits Set One-Day Record with 257 New Cases, Most Filed in Texas”, an article by rich people’s press. The article starts as follows: “Remember patent reform? Congress proposed laws earlier this year aimed at curbing haywire patent litigation, but it appears not everyone got the memo. On Monday, dozens of patent plaintiffs targeted firms ranging from Apple to Airbnb, and set a one-day record with 257 new cases filed, ensuring 2015 will go down as another bumper year for patent lawyers.”

A lot of these lawsuits boil down to software patents, which are under attack in the US, thanks to the Alice case. PatentBuddy, citing IAM’s article, says that “David Kappos Discusses the 101/Alice Rejection of the Lip Sync Patent, McRO v Sony” and Professor Mark Lemley says, linking to this PDF: “Patentable subject matter is here to stay — en banc Fed Cir denies review in Sequenom with only Newman dissenting.”

This shows that software patents themselves are still a subject of debate even in the US, where software patents originally came from.

“The management and the high-level staff at the EPO already permit patents on life, serving the likes of Monsanto.”We regret to learn that even some British software companies are basically ignoring the evidence and still deciding to pursue software patents (not just in the US). Sage Group, according to this new report, is becoming more like Trading Technologies. Instead of focusing on development of better software it is focused on acquiring patents on software. To quote the British media: “A number of its products, such as Sage Impact and Sage Live, have recently won innovation awards and an increased number of new patents will be coming from the firm.”

Why are these large proprietary software firms and their lobbying front groups in Europe so insistent on being granted software patents? Because they are software monopolists in their area and they want to limit or block competition using patent lawsuits. How does that ever improve innovation? It’s all about protectionism and in the field of software, owing to its inherent nature, workarounds are often not even possible.

The patent scope at the EPO is slipping out of control under the current management. “The European Patent Office (EPO) has quietly adopted,” according to this new article patents “relating to human embryonic stem cells (hESCs).”

What will they patent next? The management and the high-level staff at the EPO already permit patents on life, serving the likes of Monsanto. This has got to stop. patents like these aren’t for innovation; they’re all about protections from rivals, supporting and broadening existing near-monopolies. █

“An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.”

–Aldous Huxley

French Member of Parliament Reacts to EPO Management Amidst Ongoing Attacks on Staff Representatives and Facts-free Information War

Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Responds to explosive leaks which show a massive new PR contract with an American company

Pierre-Yves Le Borgn’ letter

Summary: The EPO’s information war (with a $80,000-per-month budget dedicated just to reputation laundering and spin) upsets French politician Pierre-Yves Le Borgn’

A FEW days ago we wrote about Pierre-Yves Le Borgn’. He was being informed by EPO staff representatives that the EPO‘s President, Frenchman Benoît Battistelli, was lying about them in private letters (written in French). This isn’t unusual for Battistelli; we already covered several similar examples. In the world of Team Battistelli, you can only be in one of two teams; either Battistelli’s team or the enemies’ team. It’s a lot like nations under autocratic regimes (such as North Korea’s). Dissent is neither normal nor tolerated. There is no sense of democracy or even of free speech. Moreover, there is hardly a rule of law; the President (or Dear Leader) is the law, with the President’s guards being the unaccountable enforcers. Internally, at the EPO, these are referred to as "the gestapo" because of their actions [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

“Stuff keeps coming in,” told us a French-speaking person last night. “There is something new at the Web site of MP Le Borgn’.

“A strongly-worded letter signed “Les examinateurs exaspérés” ["The exasperated examiners" or "the fed up examiners"] reviews the profoundly toxic atmosphere at the EPO.

“Techrights is mentioned prominently on page 2.

“I’m quite sure at this point that a translation will pop up quickly. I nevertheless include an OCR version in case you want to run it through a translator.

Here is the text of the letter [PDF], which is basically a scanned copy:

Munich, le 30 novembre 2015

ASSEMBLÉE NATIONALE FRANCAISE
A l’attention de Mr. Le Borgn’, Député
Rue de l’Université 126
75355 Paris 07 SP
France

Monsieur le Député,

Tout d’abord permettez-nous de vous exprimer notre reconnaissance pour vos prises de position courageuses et vos interventions en vue de rétablir la Justice et la moralité dans l’Office européen des Brevets.

A deux reprises déjà le conseil d’administration de l’Office a demandé au président Battistelli de reprendre le dialogue social. Sa réponse a été la mise à pied de toute évidence injustifiée de trois dirigeants élus de notre syndicat, la SUEPO. Des investigations ont été ouvertes contre eux. Les accusations de l’Office ne semblent pas du tout reposer sur des bases solides, et ont été formellement réfutées par des juristes allemands. Les sources juridiques qu’invoque l’Office sont actuellement inconnues et pour le moins douteuses. Aucune contre-argumentation crédible ne semble avoir été présentée qui mette en défaut les conclusions des avocats consultés par la SUEPO. A La Haye des membres de la SUEPO et de la Représentation du Personnel ont aussi été soumis à des interrogatoires où ils ont dû subir d’inacceptables pressions psychologiques. Dans le courrier qu’il vous a adressé, le président Battistelli déclare que ces séances auraient été enregistrées. Une question se pose d’emblée: quelle est la légalité de tels enregistrements? Les unités d’investigation à qui sont confiées ces enquêtes et ces interrogatoires disposent d’un pouvoir inquisitorial inacceptable totalement en dehors du cadre de l’éthique et de la sécurite juridique garanties à leurs citoyens par les democraties europeennes modernes.

A travers ces dirigeants de la SUEPO, ce sont 7000 fonctionnaires qui sont agressés par les agissements du président Battistelli. En deux heures s’est organisée une manifestation groupant 2000 personnes en face du bâtiment « Isar », siège de l’Office. Compte tenu du nombre d’employés à Munich, cela est énorme.., et constitue bien sûr ce que le président Battisteffi aura sans doute encore l’audace d’appeler « une minorité ». L’indignation et l’écoeurement sont à leur comble. Il est grand temps que soit mis un terme à cette culture du mépris du personnel et que le conseil d’administration de l’Office fasse enfin entendre sa voix en ce sens.

Nous en avons assez d’être traités comme le cheptel du président Battistelli. Nous avons tous étudié dans les écoles et universités les plus prestigieuses, et nombre de nos collègues sont détenteurs de diplômes de doctorat. La plupart d’entre nous sont issus de l’industrie, où ils ont occupé des postes à responsabilité ou des fonctions managériales. Ils pourraient avec certitude donner d’utiles leçons à la direction de l’Office et enfin lui apprendre les bonnes pratiques dans ce domaine.

Empreinte de crainte et de suspicion, l’ambiance de travail est des plus sinistres. Qui à l’Office a encore confiance dans son ordinateur ou dans les photocopieuses, parfois même dans ses collègues? Nous en sommes venus à nous méfier des téléphones mis à disposition dans nos bureaux à tel point que pour communiquer sur des sujets les plus anodins, nos collègues en viennent à ne plus utiliser que leurs. « Handys », non sans avoir jeté un regard circulaire autour d’eux pour s’assurer que leur conversation ne soit pas écoutée. La confiance a totalement disparu dans les relations entre employés et supérieurs hiérarchiques: à tort ou à raison, nous craignons constamment d’être victimes d’un coup fourré. Il ne faut donc pas s’étonner que dans cet environnement toxique les collègues désabusés réagissent de plus en plus nombreux par une « démission interne », certains ayant d’ailleurs déjà exprimé que le matin, c’est avec la haine de leur employeur qu’ils franchissent les portes de l’Office.

C’est encore avec la plus vive inquiétude que nous constatons que des mesures d’intimidation de journalistes ou de «bloggers » orchestrées par l’Office sont mentionnées sur le «net» voyez par exemple

http://techrights.org/2015/11/27/epo-reputation-laundering/
http://techrights.org/2015/11/27/epo-information-warfare/

Cette source, ainsi que des informations internes dignes de foi, semblent clairement indiquer que l’Office a maintenant débloqué un budget de l’ordre de 800 000 € pour des campagnes de presse. Comment et dans quels buts ces considérables montants d’argent public seront-ils utilisés? Cette question ne préoccupe apparemment pas le conseil d’administration. La direction de l’Office ne se gêne pas pour traîner dans la boue les membres du personnel qui osent exprimer une opinion dissidente, en particulier s’il s’agit des dirigeants syndicaux ou de la représentation du personnel. L’étape suivante sera-t-elle de museler la presse et de taire les critiques par des campagnes de diffamation et d’intimidation, ou d’abuser des cours de justice européennes pour parvenir à ces fins?

Nous voudrions bien signer cette lettre de nos vrais noms, mais voilà! Vous n’ignorez pas que l’Office s’est adjugé les services de l’inquiétante firme « Control Risks », apparemment impliquée dans un certain nombre de scandales concernant l’espionnage illégal de journalistes, de clients et d’employés de firmes en Allemagne. La crainte qu’étant connus nous puissions être victime d’une implacable vengeance reste donc fondée.

L’Office doit respecter la légalité et la justice telles qu’elles existent dans les démocraties européennes modernes. Nous ne voulons pas plus que le rétablissement de nos droits et le respect de notre honneur.
Vous exprimant notre confiance, nous vous prions, Monsieur le Député, d’agréer l’expression de nos sentiments respectueux.

Les Examinateurs exaspérés.

Any accurate translation of the above would be very much appreciated. I cannot speak or comprehend French myself.

“If they honestly believe that their target audience is going to be so gullible, then it says a lot about their dim views of the outside world.”As Pierre-Yves Le Borgn’ appears to be a reader of Techrights now, we wish to point out that a lot of what the EPO’s management is going to tell him cannot be trusted. They have created a very warped version of reality, where staff dissent is compared to Nazism or terrorism (like what recently happened in Paris). We have many examples where the management was trying to play a connotation game so as to insinuate that if you sympathise with SUEPO (or with the suspended judge), then you are “with the terrorists” (famous words from George Bush) or with violent neo-Nazis. This sort of psychological war suggests to us that many in the EPO’s management (or PR department) don’t even act like grown-ups. If they honestly believe that their target audience is going to be so gullible, then it says a lot about their dim views of the outside world.

Incidentally, text circulating inside the EPO right now speaks of “Victimisation” and covers the projection tactics of the management. “It looks like some public sympathy for management is sought because “allegedly” they have been receiving threats (verbal and physical),” wrote a person, “both inside and outside the Office for their actions. A PD has been reported even mentioning police involvement yesterday… No such thing has come back to our well-informed ears and clearly, if any of these “events” were true (and we would welcome any feedback if this were the case), I and I am sure any staff and staff representatives would condemn such acts. Portraying what many perceive as perpetrators of institutional violence as victims reminds of the “pompiers pyromanes” (pyromaniac firefighters). In any case it is yet another step in today’s conflict logic with no way out. Can the public afford a conflict that never ends?”

“We have never heard of anything non-peaceful from EPO protesters.”We wrote about this at least thrice before. It seems like a totally bogus narrative. We have never heard of anything non-peaceful from EPO protesters. Perhaps it’s just an agent provocateur strategy — something which an aggressive media strategy backed by a $80,000-per-month budget (plus union busters like CRG) actually saw worthwhile.

If someone actually heard of physical threats, please speak out. The only time we hear of such things it’s done by the management to scapegoats among the staff, who are the “real victims,” to quote the above person. “On the fact side,” the person added, “as you know many staff representatives office-wide are being targeted by different forms of attacks including (but not limited to) threatening letters, disciplinary procedures and suspensions. In particular the big duty stations of The Hague & Munich are hit extremely hard: those that have resigned already (6 I think) or have been regularly sick are trying to compensate for the last wave of the last five 100% Staff Representatives that are either suspended or sick.”

Speaking of “exhaustion”, the person writes: “In other words, staff should not wonder why their remaining representatives are close to exhaustion…”

“They make an example out of several representatives and therefore intimidate the rest.”It’s a form of psychological war. They make an example out of several representatives and therefore intimidate the rest. Classic union-busting procedures. Coca-Cola went as far as actually assassinating some union leaders. Now, that’s how you create real, total fear.

“On the positive side,” wrote the above person, “this situation seems to be perceived by staff and an increasing number of feedback and offers to help is flowing in. This is also explaining the appearance of the latest spontaneous, sometime somewhat chaotic, actions, such as petition and call for strike… In this sense staff of the big duty stations seems to understand that sticking together, helping each-others and eventually stepping-in has unfortunately become the necessary way forward to keep staff voice heard.”

As we wrote in our previous article, there are record-breaking numbers right now. The efforts to malign, demonise and incite against staff representatives are obviously not working. They just serve to reinforce the management’s departure from truth. It’s an information war. It’s a high-budget information war.█

“In war, truth is the first casualty.”

–Aeschylus, Father of tragedy

EPO Staff Protest Statistics: Over 2,600 Signatures (So Far) in Petition, About 800 Staff in The Hague Protest, Much More to Come in Munich

Posted in Europe, Patents at 12:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The Dutch EPO protest (Tuesday, the 1st of December)

Dutch EPO protest

Summary: Coverage from The Hague’s EPO protest, with much larger protests expected near the Munich ‘branch’ on Friday, and also the pro-SUEPO petition which in some places got immediately signed by a majority of staff

“PEOPLE POWER” at the EPO seems to be working. The management is seeing a higher proportion of its staff drifting away and defecting — publicly even — to the side of the management’s biggest critics. The reputation laundering campaign (leaked here last week) is seemingly failing.

“The staff representatives, despite being thoroughly demonised by the management (Team Battistelli and personally by Battistelli himself), is refuting the illusion…”There is now a petition in circulation. How many people formally oppose the management right now? 2,600 would be nearly half of all EPO staff, potentially to reach half in the coming days (if people were brave enough to have put their names and protect those who protected them from the aggressive management). The names won’t be shown to Team Battistelli, just the overall number of petitioners/signatures.

Why is this important? The staff representatives, despite being thoroughly demonised by the management (Team Battistelli and personally by Battistelli himself), is refuting the illusion that staff is happy [1, 2, 3, 4] and that the current state of affairs should be accepted. Suicide statistics speak for themselves.

“A huge proportion decided to attend despite the growing danger of reprisal.”A few days ago we wrote about how the Team Battistelli tried to crush the protest in Holland (the Netherlands). Team Battistelli evidently failed — miserably based on past attendance — because despite the comparably small size of the staff there, a lot of people attended the protest. A huge proportion decided to attend despite the growing danger of reprisal.

“In The Hague,” said one eyewitness report, “a massive demonstration took place in front of the Dutch ministry of economy in The Hague. Despite the fact that all foreseen buses were full and that the remaining staff had to go by their own means to the location, an estimated 800 Staff members braved the extremely unpleasant weather (see pictures above) to demonstrate peacefully their support for the suspended colleagues.”

“The following week there will be another action.”Well done! All the buses were full, which means that the scale of the protest exceeded the expectations of organisers. This movement speeds up and it wouldn’t be unthinkable or far-fetched to expect 2,000 people to walk out on Friday in Munich. As WIPR put it a few days ago: “Certain staff members at the European Patent Office (EPO) will stage two demonstrations this week to protest against what the office’s union has called “persistent attacks” on staff representatives.

“A demo is taking place today, December 1, at the Ministry of Economic Affairs in The Hague. It was due to start at 12pm local time.

“A second protest will take place in Munich on Friday, December 4, outside the EPO’s Isar building at 12.30pm local time.”

“For now, considering immediate danger to anyone who dares to challenge the tyranny (especially in small enough numbers), it’s better to focus on this coming Friday and supersize everything.”SUEPO’s site says “Friday 04 December, starting at 12.30h in front of the Isar building in Munich.” No changes to this plan have been made since. In a potentially other (unspecified for now) location, on 10/12/2015, more protests will take place. Later today (Thursday), the text of the petition and “the number of petitioners (not their names) will be sent to Mr. Battistelli,” we have learned. The same goes for “Mr. Kongstad and the members of the board 28.”

Why Board 28?

Well, as a source revealed to us, “on that day an extraordinary Board 28 meeting will take place. A demo at the Isar building will be organised by SUEPO. Please attend in vast numbers!”

Sounds like a good plan. The following week there will be another action. Demonstrations will be taken to the Justizpalast, which Wikipedia describes as “two courthouses and administrative buildings in Munich.”

“Worth noting: in Berlin, within less than 24 hours, most of the staff of the EPO already signed the petition…”For now, considering immediate danger to anyone who dares to challenge the tyranny (especially in small enough numbers), it’s better to focus on this coming Friday and supersize everything. “In Munich,” as revealed to us another source, “SUEPO Munich invites all staff to a demonstration [...] in front of the ISAR building. On that day an extraordinary Board 28 meeting will take place. Please attend in vast numbers! The demonstration was approved by the Munich local authorities.”

Obviously Team Battistelli would never approve such a thing. In fact, nasty threats were made in the past by Battistelli and his right-hand man, leading to pro-active suppression of free expression.

“Friday seems likely to bring the biggest protest (yet) that the EPO ever saw.”The source says regarding the “[Patent] Office-wide Petition” that “despite the fact that this spontaneous initiative is not driven by any organs of the Staff representation, so far ca. 2600 signatures have been collected: In Berlin 135 signatures have been collected in 24 hours! (from ca. 260 Staff – including sick/vaca on&co) – now in total of 154 –in Mu[nich], over 1600 and over 700 in DH [The Hague]. Preliminary figures will be communicated to the Board 28 this Friday and the final certified count should be made available to the AC next week.”

Worth noting: in Berlin, within less than 24 hours, most of the staff of the EPO already signed the petition, without even proper organisation of the process (it has been mostly done in secret, for fear of the mighty and somewhat lunatic Team Battistelli).

Well done and good luck. Thursday (today) will be interesting because of the signatory number being handed out. Friday seems likely to bring the biggest protest (yet) that the EPO ever saw. █

“I’m always happy when I’m protesting.”

–Richard Stallman

12.02.15

EPO “Intranet Fails to Present Any Negative Press Cuttings, Reports and Reactions From the Media”

Posted in Europe, Patents at 10:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The EPO treats employees like frightened children

Wikileaks blocked

Summary: The unprecedented censorship and information war inside the European Patent Office (EPO) reaches ridiculous levels, where a parallel reality is being constructed and outrageous amounts of money spent to reinforce this bogus reality

AS NOTED here earlier on, there is a happiness propaganda in the making (conducted secretly by EPO managers). We expect it to be funneled pretty soon into media sites and the European press, assisted by a massive budget (about $80,000 per month) as part of the EPO’s secret reputation laundering campaign (leaked here last week).

“Inside the EPO there is still a misinformation campaign as the management blocks E-mails from certain domains, blocks entire Web sites (like Techrights), and apparently tries to control the channels through which staff receives information.”Not only SUEPO is concerned about the abuses at the EPO. Other unions are equally concerned and they speak about it, though having seen how SUEPO is being crushed, they must be terrified, so they’re just tiptoeing.

Inside the EPO there is still a misinformation campaign as the management blocks E-mails from certain domains, blocks entire Web sites (like Techrights), and apparently tries to control the channels through which staff receives information. It mirrors government censorship just like with Wikileaks back in 2010 (several public, taxpayers-funded institutions in the US blocked access to Wikileaks, not just parts of the US Army).

“Well, this is not surprising given the EPO’s history of going as far as threatening staff representatives for presenting mere links to negative press articles about the EPO.”Owing to the Streisand Effect alone (attempts to gag Techrights using threats), we have noticed that top news in Google News right now (try a search for “EPO”) yield very negative press articles. They’re visible at the very top. Here is the Streisand Effect* in action (the very same thing that EPO tried to deny access to is now top news, more so because of the suppression efforts):

EPO news

Many people have been reading about this recently. In the EPO, however, the babysitters who blocked Techrights apparently keep tight controls.

Earlier today we learned about “THE MEDIA COVERAGE” at the EPO. To quote what we’ve learned: “Media coverage is progressing all over Europe. After France, NL, Belgium, Germany, it is now the turn of new public attention throughout Europe. It is interesting to note that the Intranet fails to present any negative press cuttings, reports and reactions from the media.”

Well, this is not surprising given the EPO’s history of going as far as threatening staff representatives for presenting mere links to negative press articles about the EPO. Is this China or is this Europe? Is this a private company or a public service?

“Interesting in particular,” said the same person, “is the link made with the risk such situation brings for the patent System as a whole and the public or users in particular.

“Here is a collection of some of the latest ones: [with our comments in brackets]

· in Denmark: http://ing.dk/debat/epo-paa-vildspor-en-status-180452 (article by George Brock-Nannestad, we need a translation from a Danish-speaking reader)

· in Portugal: http://observador.pt/2015/11/27/mundo-obscuro-da-organizacao-europeia-patentes/ (by Observador, mentioned here a day ago)

· in the United Kingdom: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/30/european_patent_office_launches_lawyers/ (article by Kieren McCarthy, mentioned here before)

· in Spain: http://www.elconfidencial.com/economia/2015-11-26/suicidios-espionaje-nepotismo-la-oficina-europea-de-patentes-es-un-polvorin_1107057/ (just translated for us)

· in Italy: http://punto-informa.co.it/4286621/PI/News/epo-denunce-breve are.aspx (by Carlos Sánchez, English translation published here yesterday)

· in Germany : http://www.labournet.de/internationales/europa/europaeisches-patentamt-belegschaft-gegen-sonnenkoenig
/#more-77614 (mentioned here before)

“And also in Blogs:

· Techdirt: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151125/06173532901/european-patent-office-threatens-blogger-with-defamation-lawsuit-
criticism.shtml (by Mike Masnick, a little out of date by now)

· WIPR: http://www.worldipreview.com/page/10-second-survey-industrial-dispute (readers, please take this 10-second survey)

· Techrights: please consult outside the EPO (or in Mozilla’s Cache)

· SUEPO took an official position on Mr Battstelli’s letter to French MP Pierre-Yves le Borgn’ who has published it on his blog (SUEPO’s position can be found in pdf at the bottom of Mr le Borgn’s post): http://www.pyleborgn.eu/2015/11/crise-a-loeb-reponse-de-lunion-syndicale-suepo/

“…when protest are measurable and visible, they trigger reactions of the press and politicians, which are otherwise busy elsewhere…”
      –Anonymous“As the Register notes, these events have been “covered in some depth for several months but it was the mass protests that appears to have been the spark that lead the heavy legal response from the EPO”. It is also the case for the reaction from the media: when protest are measurable and visible, they trigger reactions of the press and politicians, which are otherwise busy elsewhere…

“For those who do not find comfort in protesting but “feel confused, burdened, anxious, caught in a whirlwind, endlessly spinning in a wheel like a hamster on amphetamines”, I would advise to take the take heart in the advices of the following excellent DH publication. And most important of all, think of yourself, your friends and beloved ones: your health comes first.”

Our next post will be about the protests, which we encourage everyone who works in Munich to attend. █
____
* It is worth noting that the person who coined the term “Streisand Effect” has just proven it again. That was yesterday (an article titled “Our Response To The Latest Ridiculous Legal Threat Against Us”).

The Spanish EPO Scandal – Part III

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

EPO scandal in Spain

Summary: The third and final part of our report about connections between EPO management (Battistelli’s controversial team) and the Spanish government, recalling a dubious appointment before the EPO’s ‘import’ of these connections, which persist to date (Spain’s main delegate to the EPO’s Administrative Council)

OVER the course of few recent months, the EPO’s high-level management has been feeling the pinch. Managers worry because not only their staff but also the public saw some of the rot (it’s really rotting inside). In the first part and second part of this short series we focused on the past of a prominent Vice-President of the EPO because there is a lasting impact right now. It is adding to the rot at the EPO. This final part will explain this critical kind of impact further down at the bottom (it’s a relatively long post, but we want to end this series today in order to move on to even bigger scandals).

“Mrs. García-Escudero is therefore also Spain’s main delegate to the EPO’s Administrative Council.”Why does it matter at all? Well, the EPO scandals are due to bad management and abusive management, it’s not the fault of patent examiners, who are usually the victims and the recipients of bullying (by the management). Right now the EPO’s management struggles on two fronts: one, it is unable to recruit talented people while losing existing talented people because they reportedly leave in droves; two, it is unable to attract patent applications (or applicants in general) because patent neutrality turned out to be only an illusion (if everyone applied for preferential treatment, what efficiency advantage would it bring really?) and the reputation of the EPO is in the gutter, not to mention the declining qualify of examination (because of the former point about staff leaving and no talented people being absorbed to replace them).

Now it’s time to turn to the latest scandal and urge readers who have not yet read parts one and two to do so right now. It’s essential reading which forms the factual basis of what we’re about to show.

Recap:

  • Mrs. García-Escudero began working at the SPTO in 1987. [source: Spanish transparency Web site]
  • She happens to be the sister of the Partido Popular speaker in the Senate.
  • On 1/11/2011 a job announcement apparently tailor-made for Mrs. García-Escudero’s qualifications is published in Spain’s Official Journal. At that time she was working in the SPTO’s communication department.
  • The requirements listed are far below those which had been demanded for a previous selection procedure for the same position held in 2002.
  • This vacancy is open to all qualified Spanish civil servants.
  • The deadline for applications is Tuesday the 22nd of November, 2011.
  • On the 10th of November (2011), 10 days before the general election, and almost two weeks before the end of the deadline for applications, the appointment of Mrs. García-Escudero to the post is made by Alberto Casado Cerniño, DG of SPTO, and publicly announced.
  • El Confidencial believes in its article from 17/11/2011 that Casado Cerviño engineered this appointment to win favours from Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular, which is poised for a landslide election in the upcoming election, and to get to keep his job as director of SPTO. For reference, here is the English language Wikipedia entry on the Partido Popular.
  • In June 2012, The EPO’s AC appoints Alberto Casado Cerviño as VP of Directorate-General Operational Support.
  • Mrs. García-Escudero took over from Alberto Casado Cerviño as DG of the SPTO, presumably as soon as he vacated his chair.
  • Casado Cerviño therefore rubs elbows with our beloved Željko Topić, and might have some common conversation “topics” about how to make friends, and buy or keep one’s job.
  • Mrs. García-Escudero is therefore also Spain’s main delegate to the EPO’s Administrative Council.

Beautiful, isn’t it? And it has all been public for years…

Here is EPO press release regarding Casado Cerviño’s appointment.

Casado Cerviño's appointment
EPO press release on the nomination/appointment of Alberto Casado Cerviño as Vice-President (screenshot of the printer-friendly version of the page included so that prudent readers won’t have to click on an epo.org link, risking surveillance/tracking/IP harvesting by Team Battistelli)

Here is the Official Journal of Spain with the job vacancy for a senior position at the SPTO dated 1/11/2011 [PDF]. The window for applying is stated to open “quince días hábiles”, i.e., 15 working days [Mon-Fri excluding holidays, according to the Spanish wiki]. We have no idea how long recruitments for official positions are usually kept opened in Spain, but this delay seems a tad short considering that it was for senior position. The relevant article states “el plazo de inscripción no finaliza hasta el próximo martes.”, i.e., “the registration delay doesn’t end until next Tuesday”. Since the dateline was 17/11/2011, that would have been Tuesday, the 22nd of November, 2011. We’ve looked at a calendar, and it checks. The call for applications wasn’t even half way through when Mrs. García-Escudero was appointed.

“The call for applications wasn’t even half way through when Mrs. García-Escudero was appointed.”This is where this story began, a blog entry published on the 13th of November, 2011.

Here is the full (original) source, a 3-page job vacancy form.

A job vacancy page 1

A job vacancy page 2

A job vacancy page 3

Caveats and Postscript:

Readers have informed us of the political nature of some of these affairs. “The role of Pío García-Escudero in the Senate,” one person told us, “was clarified a bit” after speaking with a Spaniard.

“I’m not too familiar with the Spanish political system,” this person wrote, “but I gather that he was representing his party, and not occupying an official position. So “spokesman” is more appropriate” [than speaker].

This means that the person in question was the sister of the spokesman [of the Partido Popular] in the senate. Our reader added that “mere weeks after the 17/11/2011 article on his sister, and the 20/11/2011 general election, Pío García-Escudero actually became the President of the Senate on 13/12/2011. To have connections to people in high places surely isn’t detrimental to Casado’s career.”

Casado, as a reminder, is now part of Team Battistelli.

“I have noticed that this first part of the series refers to an article written at El Confidencial not too long ago.”
      –AnonymousEl Confidencial, according to SUEPO, is “a highly praised Spanish media,” but one of our sources disagrees. Also, a reader whom we spoke to does not quite agree. SUEPO speaks of “reports on the deteriorated social situation at European Patent Office and in particular about its authoritarian drift.” While we agree with that statement/assessment, let’s clarify that some are sceptical of El Confidencial, which we shall only carefully cite again in the future.

“I read on Friday your tweet about something that might be very revealing in relation to Spain/EPO,” one reader told us. “I have read today the first part of the series [...] I´m just a reader, not a journalist.

“I just wanted you to be aware that IMHO and due to the timing of the nearby general elections in Spain this (El Confidencial) might not be the ideal medium to expose in depth whatever you might have on the EPO subject if it’s going to damage the reputation of the ruling party Partido Popular.”
      –Anonymous“I have noticed that this first part of the series refers to an article written at El Confidencial not too long ago. I´ll be very happy to read any scoop that comes from your research on such important matters. I just wanted you to be aware that IMHO and due to the timing of the nearby general elections in Spain this (El Confidencial) might not be the ideal medium to expose in depth whatever you might have on the EPO subject if it’s going to damage the reputation of the ruling party Partido Popular.

“My purpose is to help them help you expose what you have. El Confidencial has been demonizing encryption, Tor, and any other kind of private communications since Ed Snowden came out. I wouldn´t trust this outlet at all. I guess it´s up to you anyway, but I thought I could somehow influence on who (medium) deals with what you and me care about.”

It is for this reason that we sought the same information in other Web sites and found it as well. It’s cited above. We no longer depend on just El Confidencial. Coverage about the topic was a lot broader than this, but we first found the report of El Confidencial because of another brand-new article they recently wrote about the EPO (leading to this older story, cross-referenced therein). █

“You can never plan the future by the past.”

–Edmund Burke

New EPO Job Advertisement Reveals Gestapo-Like ‘Deep State’, Operating Outside the Rule of Law and Managed Secretly by a Tyrannical President

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The EPO’s ‘secret police’ is put on steroids

Staff committee paper 1

Staff committee paper 2

Summary: A letter from the Central Staff Committee (shown in the 2 images above) reveals that EPO managers panic to the point of trying to override the rule of law (and state-mandated courts) in order to establish their own secret police or overzealous prosecution department where the EPO’s President is the judge, jury, and executioner, whereas the accused enjoy no rights at all

THE EPO, which established its own ‘gestapo’ (as staff calls it) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] in order to behave like a state within a state (managed like a de facto monarchy) is apparently still preparing its happy/happiness propaganda, which will probably be pushed out through aggressive, high-budget (about $80,000 per month) reputation laundering campaign (leaked here last week).

EPO staff is not so happy, to say the least. Many are stressed, depressed, and a relatively high proportion — even those with families to feed — commit suicide.

Complaints from staff representatives are not ambiguous. The complaints come not just from SUEPO, but also from the Central Staff Committee, as we showed here last month. FFPE-EPO, which expressed solidarity for SUEPO's representatives, is no exception, despite its reputation as a little too management-friendly (maybe a subject for another day).

Here we have some new material from representatives at the Central Staff Committee. Here it is as text (with our emphasis in yellow) for those who don’t want just images:

Zentraler Personalausschuss
Central Staff Committee
Le Comité central du Personnel

02.12.2015 sc11915cp
–
0.2.1/0.3.2/4.1

Why does the EPO need an investigator performing forensic activities?

With its vacancy notice published on 16.11.2015 under INT/EXT/5918 http://www.epo.org/about-us/jobs/vacancies/other.html , the EPO is looking for a staff member with some skills and a task profile very unusual for a public service employee in a patent office.

Among others the candidate shall have a master´s degree in e.g. law, criminology, forensic science, fraud investigation, or related subjects, to carry out investigations into cases of alleged misconduct, in particular by: …, performing forensic activities, gathering and assessing all relevant evidences (physical and electronic records and other pertinent information).

According to the Oxford Dictionary1, forensic means “Relating to or denoting the application of scientific methods and techniques to the investigation of crime”. A list of modern forensic techniques can be found in Wikipedia2, including dactyloscopy, DNA analysis and digital forensic.

Staff as well as external readers of this publication may wonder why the EPO needs, in addition to the currently six staff members in the Investigative Unit, one or two (this is not entirely clear from the job advertisement) permanent, full-time investigators for these specific duties, not to forget the costly intervention for unclear purposes of Control Risks´ staff.

Basically, investigations of criminal cases are a monopoly of the state following, at least in democratic countries, well defined legal regulations (like the Strafprozessordnung StPO in Germany) under the supervision of the relevant prosecutors and courts. This secures also the rights of the accused. The respective regulations define for example the conditions under which DNA samples (see for example § 81g StPO), finger prints and digital records may be taken and how long respective data may be stored.

What now, if indeed a suspicion of crime, like theft, fraud or murder, occurs at the EPO? According to Protocol on Privileges and Immunities of the European Patent Organisation (PPI), Art. 19 (2) the President of the European Patent Office has the duty to wave immunity where he considers that such immunity prevents the normal course of justice and that it is possible to dispense with such immunity without prejudicing the interest of the Organisation. Then official prosecutors can do their job under the respective rule of law.

Establishing, however, its own fully fledged prosecution unit, with relevant skills and equipment within the EPO, located in the direct line of command under the president, allows bypassing any national or European law protecting the rights of the accused individual. Moreover, the monopoly of the respective state to investigate potential cases of crime is set aside and prosecution activities are shifted into the Office with the consequence that national or European law does no longer apply.

Once again, this will deprive EPO staff from the application of legal standards every European citizen enjoys.

Your Central Staff Committee

______
1 http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/forensic

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_science#20th_century

If often seems like the harder EPO managers try to protect their jobs (amid scandals of their own creation and their own fault), the worse things get. They bully staff representatives, bully critics, bully bloggers, bully the media, bully lawyers, bully politicians, they spend extraordinary amounts of money on ‘British Blackwater’ and reputation laundering firms from another country (at taxpayers’ expense). Where does this end? It’s like another Watergate Scandal with escalations and culminations which may result in arrests. Just give it up before more people commit suicide.

The above was independently sent to us from several sources today (everyone, even outside the EPO, seems to have become aware of this very quickly). This latest item from staff representatives is not to be mistaken for SUEPO, and vice versa. This is not even a controversial union.

“Why does the EPO need an investigator performing forensic activities?”

Because the EPO is not a public body anymore; it’s a sordid mess run by vicious people whose ends, they believe, justify any means. To them, law is just a nuisance or an obstruction, except when they try to manipulate it to punish or crush perceived opponents. █

“The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”

–Robert Frost

Punto Informatico (Italian Media) About EPO’s Legal Bullying Against Techrights

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Punto Informatico

Summary: Translation of a new article from Punto Informatico, which criticises the European Patent Office (EPO) for trying to silence longtime critics by cherry-picking articles and issuing threats

THE EPO has attempted to silence us and by this stage we have said most of what we had to say. The media, however, is still catching up. For the record, here is everything we have written on the subject so far, in chronological order:

There are more in-betweens in the Wiki, but we consider them a little less relevant, or only indirectly relevant to the subject at hand.

This new article from Punto Informatico appeared on Wednesday morning. The site had been writing some articles about the EPO before, so its authors weren’t exactly unfamiliar with the many issues. When I found the article (I got alerted about it) I sent it to some friends who can speak Italian and without having to wait long someone not only responded with a summary (as some did) but even gave a full translation into English. The article is citing Techrights mostly, and it focuses on the above events. We want it sort of archived in English because it helps reinforce our view that, having seen several such articles on the Web, they are all supportive of our positions and condemn the EPO.

“I can throw down a quick translation of the article in Punto Informatico,” told us one person, “if you haven’t got one yet. I’ll send it to you in a while.”

Here is the translation which we consider quite accurate (RS being my initials and BB being Battistelli, for short):

EPO. patenting lawsuits.

The European patent office has accused a blogger of having published a post with defamatory content and it has threatened him with legal action. These events took place in October when the blogger Mr RS – known for having expressed in the past a lot of criticism towards the European patent office and towards its President Mr BB – published in his Blog Techrights a post with the title “EPO, aiding a racketeer”, where he related to some preferential treatment granted by EPO to big corporations such as Microsoft, via some internal procedure.

According to some observers anyway, the concerned post only represents one last among many occasions for RS to criticise the organisation of EPO, accused by him many times before to act arbitrarily and with a corporate conduct beyond any law, even beyond the laws protecting employees and visitors, often obliged to allow deep and accurate searches upon themselves.

All this considered, threatening to press charges onto a blogger from the side of an institution, which is a consortium of national governments appears to be absolutely exaggerated.

On the other side RS, a well known presence for his thousands of posts, often with polemic content, has taken the chance to answer the threats: “It’s incredible that in spite of being a public institution, EPO intimidates National delegates, Lawyers, Union/Staff(1) delegates, and now even journalists and bloggers. This is the evidence that EPO not only suffocates any dissent internally, but also externally.”

For the moment, EPO has not commented further.

_____
(1) this word is actually missing in the Italian version, but it would make little sense without it.

For the record, “EPO, aiding a racketeer” was not the title of the post (it’s gentler than this) — a mistake that’s often repeated by the media because the article is not publicly available.

I will stay up until 4AM tonight (for the third night in a row, leaving me too little time to sleep) in order to release some important articles and keep the promise of accelerating coverage to avenge the EPO’s menacing ways. There are negative and positive developments right now, negatives being more intense attacks by the EPO’s management and positives being an unprecedented level of dissent at the EPO, with thousands signing petitions and an unprecedented number of staff members attending protests. █

Links 2/12/2015: Microsoft and Debian, Thunderbird’s Fate

Posted in News Roundup at 8:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Prioritizing volunteer contributions in free software development

    Wikimedia is an organization which has both volunteers and paid folks working together in software development, with many software projects and different stakeholders involved.

  • Varnish Software: Zipnish for microservices

    Twitter developed the open source software Zipkin in 2012 to address this issue, however it only supports Java architectures.

    So then, Varnish now launches Zipnish in response to demand for an architecture-agnostic open source tool.

  • Dogecoin Startup Goes Open Source as Creator Says ‘Peace Out’ to Crypto

    The creator or micropayments startup dogetipbot has announced he will open-source the payments tool, just over one year after raising $445,000 from investors including Blackbird Ventures.

  • IBM Expands Spark Support with SystemML

    IBM’s machine learning technology has been accepted as an open source project, adding momentum to the steady enterprise shift to open-source development. The development effort also extends IBM’s reach into the Apache Spark ecosystem.

    IBM (NYSE: IBM) said last week its SystemML originally developed for its BigInsights data analytics platform has been accepted as an Apache Incubator open source project. SystemML is a machine learning algorithm translator designed to help developers building machine-learning models used for predictive analytics across a range of industries.

  • Altair to Open Source PBS Professional HPC Technology in 2016

    “Altair’s open source contribution is valuable and will help advance the work of the OpenHPC Collaborative Project,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “By working together to build and extend new technologies for the world’s most complex computing systems, Altair and other members of OpenHPC can accelerate exascale computing.” The open licensing system is scheduled to be released to the open source community in mid-2016.

  • Best Practices for Open-source Projects

    GitHub’s Phil Haack hosted a panel on Channel 9 that focused on best practices for open source projects.

    The panel saw the participation of four maintainers of open source projects: Carlos Rojas, audience evangelism manager at Microsoft for Latin America; Brian Lagunas, maintainer of the PRISM framework, used to build loosely coupled, maintainable, and testable XAML applications; David Paquette, contributor to several open source projects; and Carlos dos Santos, maintainer of CodeCracker, an analyzer library for C# and VB.

  • IBM Fashions Open Source Platform for Machine Learning

    It’s funny how Hadoop continues to crop up as the prime example of an open source platform that finds an early niche as an experiment in enterprise IT shops then suddenly explodes into its own vibrant ecosystem. In fact, the same thing might be happening with Spark, at least as an engine for the types of workloads that Hadoop was not so skilled at tackling.

  • IBM, Google Open Source Machine Learning Technology for Big Data Analytics

    IBM followed Google’s lead in donating machine learning technology to the open source community, providing developers with more resources for their Big Data predictive analytics projects.

  • Gallery of open source project stickers

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • End-of-Year Surveys Show Hadoop Growing, Still Complex, Though

      As the year draws to a close, several research reports and surveys are quantifying just how big an open source success story Hadoop has become. According to a new best practices survey from TDWI there is a big increase in how many enterprises plan to have Hadoop clusters in production. By Q1 of next year, 60% of survey respondents said they will be in production, up from 16% when the report was published earlier in 2015. We covered the complete results of the survey here.

  • CMS

  • BSD

    • New ELF Linker from the LLVM Project

      We have been working hard for a few months now to rewrite the ELF support in lld, the LLVM linker. We are happy to announce that it has reached a significant milestone: it is now able to bootstrap LLVM, Clang, and itself and pass all tests on x86-64 Linux and FreeBSD with the speed expected of an LLVM project.

    • LLVM Is Developing A New ELF Linker

      They wrote today, “We are happy to announce that it has reached a significant milestone: it is now able to bootstrap LLVM, Clang, and itself and pass all tests on x86-64 Linux and FreeBSD with the speed expected of an LLVM project.”

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Richard Stallman Is Not The Father Of Open Source

      Richard Stallman wants to make one thing completely clear: He is not the father. “I’m not the father of open source. If I’m the father of open source, it was conceived by artificial insemination without my knowledge or consent,” he proclaimed from the keynote stage last month at Fossetcon 2015. It wasn’t close to the strongest statement he made from that stage.

    • GNU UPC Hopes To Merge For GCC 6

      Developers on GUPC, the GNU UPC project for extending GCC to support the Unified Parallel C language dialect, are hoping they can get their code merged for GCC 6.

      It’s been a while since last talking about Unified Parallel C as the C programming language extension designed for HPC on parallel machines, but the developers have been hard at work on improving the code and keeping it in sync with GCC.

    • GIMP 2.9.2 Released, How About Features Trivia?

      In a surge of long overdue updates the GIMP team made the first public release in the 2.9.x series. It’s completely GEGL-based, has 16/32-bit per channel editing and new tools. It’s also surprisingly stable enough even for the faint of heart.

    • Supporting Software Freedom Conservancy
    • Software Freedom Conservancy supporter

      They provide a non-profit home, infrastructure, and advice for FLOSS projects. They take care that the will of the project members, choosing free software licenses, is respected by third parties. They care about “all the rest” so free software contributors can focus in improving the software itself. They have an agreement with the Debian community to protect the freedoms that Debian Developers provide to the Debian end users (and derivative distributions).

  • Public Services/Government

    • Open source Gov.UK is ‘example of UK soft power’

      In introducing Manzoni, Nefkens described the UK as a world leader in the “digital transformation of government”, a model even for similar schemes in the USA and Australia. Furthermore, New Zealand has used Gov.uk source code – it’s based on open standards and is open source – to help build out own digital services.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • First Open Source Scientific Notebook Released On Kickstarter

      Modularity is what makes sciNote flexible and useful for every laboratory. Modules are either developed by the sciNote team or by the community. There is a number of open source scientific platforms out there which can be connected to sciNote so there will be an ever-growing selection of modules to choose from. Modules can be simple, such as reagent calculator or complex, such as bioinformatics modules. They can be connected with your existing, databases, laboratory instruments and software.

    • Open Data

      • Flanders to redouble focus on open data standards

        One of the first tasks for Flanders’ newly created Agency for Information (Agentschap Informatie Vlaanderen) will be to promote the use of open data standards by public administrations in the Belgian region. The agency is to align existing and future business processes involving open data and will advance the use of European linked open data standards. The agency’s long-term vision is to support the European Commission’s actions on spatial data infrastructure standards (INSPIRE) and on semantic interoperability for eGovernment systems – one of the actions of the EC’s ISA programme. (ISA is also responsible for the Joinup platform.)

    • Open Hardware

      • It May Soon Be Possible To Build A Do-It-Yourself 64-Bit ARM Laptop

        Olimex Ltd is hoping to make it possible to sell a Do-It-Yourself laptop powered by a 64-bit ARM SoC.

        Olimex has been working on the OLinuXino OSHW Linux laptop that’s an open-source ARM hardware design and would be powered by an Allwinner A64 64-bit SoC.

        They just received samples of their plastic body design for the laptop itself. While a pure plastic laptop is worrisome, they claim that “the plastic parts [are] very good!” They have also sourced the battery, LCD display, keyboard, and other components.

Leftovers

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • US will deploy special force to boost fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

      The United States is deploying a specialized expeditionary targeting force to help Iraq put additional pressure on Islamic State and be positioned to conduct unilateral operations into Syria, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Tuesday.

    • Corbyn says only ‘small number’ of ‘diehard’ Labour MPs support airstrikes – Politics live
    • We need Chilcot’s lessons from Iraq now – before we bomb Syria

      MPs have instead been summoned to meetings to talk to “experts” – David Cameron’s reference to intelligence agencies that he is reluctant to identify after the disaster in Iraq. We are having to wait until next summer, more than 13 years after the invasion, to hear what Chilcot says about “lessons learned”, the main purpose of his inquiry.

    • The Desolation of Labour

      Labour is in a mad panic over Ken Livingstone’s fundamental departure from the neo-con narrative.

    • The Planned Parenthood Attack, And How Homegrown Terrorism Gets Downplayed By The Press

      So, in just the last three months we’ve seen a car set on fire, Molotov cocktails allegedly thrown at a house of worship, terroristic threats leveled against a family, liberal protesters gunned down by radicals, and a medical facility stormed by an anti-abortion/anti-government gunman who killed civilians and a policeman.

      What portrait do those events paint in your mind? And is that portrait of radical homegrown violence and terrorism the one you’ve seen conveyed in the press following the Colorado Springs terror attack?

      It’s not the one I’ve been seeing.

      Media Matters for years has documented how Fox News in particular has used a blinding double standard in terms of casting wide, cultural and religious aspersions when covering terror attacks involving Muslim attackers, versus how it deals with homegrown political violence from the right. (It was Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade who once confidently declared, “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.”)

    • BBC Broadcasting House ‘Bomb Scare’ Leaves Journalists Bemused Over False Evacuation Report

      Hundreds of BBC journalists were left bemused after a rival news outlets reported they were being evacuated from Broadcasting House.

      Staff at the broadcaster were less than impressed at claims – later debunked – that they had been escorted from the building over a suspicious vehicle parked nearby posing a possible bomb threat.

      ITV, the Independent, the Daily Express, City AM and others fell foul of the false claims, sparked by a tweet from one BBC journalist who claimed Broadcasting House had been evacuated.

    • The large proportion of Iraqis who believe the US is supporting Isis

      On the front lines of the battle against Isis, suspicion of the United States runs deep. Iraqi fighters say they have all seen the videos purportedly showing U.S. helicopters airdropping weapons to the militants, and many claim they have friends and relatives who have witnessed similar instances of collusion.

      Ordinary people also have seen the videos, heard the stories and reached the same conclusion — one that might seem absurd to Americans but is widely believed among Iraqis — that the United States is supporting Isis for a variety of pernicious reasons that have to do with asserting U.S. control over Iraq, the wider Middle East and, perhaps, its oil.

    • 70,000 is the new 45 minutes

      Precisely as I reported two days ago, Cameron really is in trouble over the Syria vote due to his patently ludicrous claim of the existence of 70,000 “moderate rebels”. Most MPs are pretty unpleasant people, but they do have a high opinion of their own importance. They will vote for anything they see as in their own self-interest, but not if it means kneeling and licking the floor when they are being treated with very obvious contempt, in public. Well, a great many of them will even do that if it advances their career, and the George Osborne tendency do it in private and pay for it. But not even pretending to take MPs seriously is a risky tactic, and that is what Cameron has done with his foolish ruse of just inventing 70,000 moderate fighters.

      Today the government rubbed MPs faces further in the dirt by saying they could not give a breakdown of who the 70,000 are, because it is a secret.

      Yes, honestly. The identity of our allies – even just in terms of what groups they belong to – is a secret.

    • The Old Etonian Sir Mark Lyall Grant

      Lyall Grant is now National Security Adviser and made responsible by Cameron for persuading Labour MPs to bomb Syria. A disagreement has arisen tonight over whether he admitted or not that a great many of the “70,000” are “extreme Islamists”.

    • Syria airstrikes: Has the West learned nothing after its 9/11 response?

      …a new intervention will play directly into the narrative used by ISIS to lure the Western recruits most likely to carry out attacks in Britain.

    • MSNBC’s Kornacki Found Muslims In NYC Were Assaulted After 9/11, But No News Reports Of Muslim Celebrations

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • The Worst Right-Wing Media Reactions To The UN Climate Summit

      President Obama is in Paris at a United Nations summit, where nations hope to reach an international agreement on climate change. In response, conservative media figures have resorted to denial, dismissal, and mockery, while criticizing Obama as “simply stupid” and NASA scientists as “talentless low-lives.”

    • Indonesia forest fires: how the year’s worst environmental disaster unfolded – interactive

      As world leaders gather in Paris to discuss the global response to climate change, we assess the impact of the widespread forest fires in Indonesia. Set to clear land for paper and palm oil production, the fires have not only destroyed forest and peatland, but also severely affected public health and released massive amounts of carbon

  • Finance

    • How EU nations are being sued for billions by foreign companies in secret tribunals

      The most controversial aspect of the the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement, which is currently being negotiated behind closed doors between the US and EU, is the plan to allow foreign companies to sue entire nations in special tribunals for the alleged expropriation of future profits through changes in laws or regulations. This is not an entirely new approach—these secret tribunals have been included in hundreds of other smaller-scale trade agreements over the years—but its inclusion here would have profound impacts on both the EU and US.

      Opponents of the idea see these secret tribunals as undermining a government’s sovereign ability to implement democratic decisions through new legislation. Those in favour of this investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism insist that it’s just a normal part of trade agreements, and nothing to worry about.

      The UK government’s public stance on ISDS is typical: “Since 1975 the UK has negotiated 94 Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) almost all of which include ISDS provisions,” one of its information leaflets says. And yet the government also claims: “No ISDS challenge has ever succeeded against the UK. Despite the large number of treaties in force with ISDS clauses, there have been only two ISDS challenges brought against us.”

  • Censorship

    • Our Response To The Latest Ridiculous Legal Threat Against Us: Milorad Trkulja Can Go Pound Sand

      As we’ve noted, we regularly get legal threats, some of which are more serious than others. Sometimes we ignore them entirely, and sometimes we feel the need to respond. Depending on the situation, sometimes we respond privately. Sometimes we respond publicly. The more ridiculous the threat, the more likely we are to respond publicly — and I think the latest holds up as one of the most ridiculous legal threats we’ve seen. It comes from Milorad Trkulja, who is also known as Michael Trkulja, and who lives in Australia. Trkulja made some news a few years back when he (somewhat surprisingly) successfully sued both Yahoo and Google for hundreds of thousands of dollars, because when people did image searches on a variety of phrases related to things like “Australian criminal underworld mafia” sometimes a picture of Trkulja would show up. Apparently, Trkulja was actually shot in the back a decade ago by an unknown gunman. And somehow, for whatever reasons, certain websites included pictures of him along with enough keywords that the search algorithms at both Google and Yahoo would return his photo in such searches. We wrote about his victory over Google back in November of 2012, pointing out how ridiculous it was that an Australian court said you could sue search engines because image search happens to pop up your image along with actual gangsters.

      [...]

      That’s enough of a response. There are tons of other possible responses, but in short: we’re not doing a damn thing in response to this ridiculous threat. You have no case whatsoever and complaining about this is ridiculous. It may be time to find a hobby or something, Mr. Trkulja, because poorly written and ridiculous legal threats to foreign entities aren’t doing you any good.

    • Prince Charles: 15-page contract reveals how the Prince of Wales tries to control the media

      Prince Charles is demanding “North Korean-style” pre-conditions in television interviews, including advance knowledge of precise questions, the right to oversee editing and even to block a broadcast if he does not approve of the final product.

  • Privacy

    • GCHQ accused of ‘persistent’ illegal hacking at security tribunal

      GCHQ carries out “persistent” illegal hacking of phones, computers and networks worldwide under broad “thematic” warrants that ignore privacy safeguards, a security tribunal has heard.

      Microphones and cameras on electronic devices can be remotely activated without owners’ knowledge, photographs and personal documents copied and locations discovered, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has been told.

      GCHQ, the government monitoring station in Cheltenham, has for the first time in a court case admitted that it carries out computer network exploitation (CNE) – commonly known as hacking – both in the UK and overseas.

    • The attack that broke the Dark Web—and how Tor plans to fix it

      Law enforcement has been complaining for years about the Web “going dark,” saying that encryption and privacy tools are frustrating their ability to track criminals online. But massive FBI operations over the last year that have busted ‘hidden sites’ used for the sale of drugs, hacking tools, and child pornography suggest the digital criminal world has gotten lighter, with law enforcement bragging that criminals can’t “hide in the shadows of the Dark Web anymore.” While mysterious about its tactics, law enforcement indicated that it had found a way to circumvent the tool on which these sites relied, a software called Tor. But criminals are not the only ones who rely on it.

    • IRS says it will get a warrant before using cell-site simulators

      The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is drafting a policy to restrict the use without a warrant of cell-site simulator technology to snoop on the location and other information from mobile phones.

      The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is drafting a policy to restrict the use without a warrant of cell-site simulator technology to snoop on the location and other information from mobile phones.

      The head of the IRS, John Koskinen, wrote in a letter that the agency was drafting a policy that would mirror an earlier Department of Justice rule, which requires a search warrant supported by probable cause before using the technology, except in exigent or exceptional circumstances.

    • Google accused of tracking school kids after it promised not to

      Google has been collecting information about schoolchildren’s browsing habits despite signing a pledge saying it was committed to their privacy, the EFF said Tuesday.

      Google has been collecting information about schoolchildren’s browsing habits despite signing a pledge saying it was committed to their privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a complaint filed Tuesday.

    • Boston PD Finally Confirms It Has A Stingray Device In Its Possession

      The Boston Police Department has been fighting two FOIA requests — one from Mike Katz-Lacabe and one from Shawn Musgrave — for months. We covered Katz-Lacabe’s battle back in June. In that one, the BPD denied the release of documents related to Stingray devices on the questionable grounds that they were covered under the “investigative materials” exemption.

    • Bulk Collection Under Section 215 Has Ended… What’s Next?

      But the facts that have emerged thus far tell a different story. It appears that much of the planning took place IRL (that’s “in real life” for those of you who don’t have teenagers). The attackers, several of whom were on law enforcement’s radar, communicated openly over the Internet. If France ever has a 9/11 Commission-type inquiry, it could well conclude that the Paris attacks were a failure of the intelligence agencies rather than a failure of intelligence authorities.

  • Civil Rights

    • Sixty years on, U.S. heroes of Montgomery bus boycott celebrated

      While Rosa Parks became a symbol of the U.S. civil rights movement when she refused to give up her seat on a segregated Alabama bus, the 60th anniversary of her arrest is also highlighting lesser-known pioneers of the bus boycott she sparked.

      Parks made history by taking a stand alongside other desegregation pioneers like Claudette Colvin, a black teenager arrested nine months earlier in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger, said Fred Gray, a lawyer who represented both women.

      “If there had not been a Claudette Colvin, who did what she did, a lot of other events would not have occurred,” Gray said. “It was a matter of each one building upon each other, and the rest is history.”

      The Montgomery bus boycott, launched in protest of Parks’ arrest on Dec. 1, 1955, modelled the nonviolent protests that defined the era and brought to prominence a lead organizer, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

    • Rosa Parks: 60th anniversary of a historic day in Alabama – in pictures
    • Chicago police chief ousted amid tensions over black teen’s killing

      Chicago’s police chief was ousted on Tuesday following days of unrest over video footage showing the shooting of a black teenager and the filing of murder charges against a white police officer in the young man’s death.

      Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced during a news conference he had asked Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy to resign. The mayor also said he was creating a new police accountability task force.

      The white officer, Jason Van Dyke, was charged a week ago with first-degree murder in the killing of Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times. The video of the killing was released on the same day.

    • Human Rights Watch demands U.S. criminal probe of CIA torture

      Human Rights Watch called on the Obama administration on Tuesday to investigate 21 former U.S. officials, including former President George W. Bush, for potential criminal misconduct for their roles in the CIA’s torture of terrorism suspects in detention.

    • US Officials Must Be Brought to Justice for CIA Torture Program – HRW

      Human Rights Watch concluded in a report that foreign governments must prosecute senior US officials involved in the Central Intelligence Agency’s torture program.

    • Where is the Outrage on David Cameron’s Scandal in the Gulf?

      The UAE, we now know, was busy planning its own operation against Muslim Brotherhood affiliates at home while urging David Cameron to do the same in Britain.

  • DRM

    • Adobe isn’t killing Flash, just changing the name of the tool that makes it

      Score one for the late Steve Jobs. Adobe is changing the name of Flash Professional CC, its web animation tool, to Animate CC. The goal is to accurately reflect the reality that web developers are using the tool to also create HTML5 content—“over a third of all the content” created with the app—according to Adobe.

      In a blog post announcing the change, Adobe credited Flash with “[pushing] the web forward.” But the company also conceded that HTML5, which is friendlier to laptop batteries and not the security nightmare Flash has become, has matured enough to “be the web platform of the future across all devices.”

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • UK Anti-Piracy ‘Education’ Campaign Launched, Quietly

        After a long wait the UK’s broad anti-piracy effort operated by ISPs and copyright holders has finally launched. The UK Government-funded program aims to warn and educate illegal file-sharers in the hope of decreasing piracy rates over time, but thus far the response has been rather underwhelming.

      • Broke Again, Dotcom Asks Hong Kong Court For Millions

        Lawyers for Kim Dotcom have asked a Hong Kong court for the release of millions in previously seized funds claiming that their client is broke once again. However, the prosecution claim that after opening new businesses, Dotcom banked “hundreds of millions” of dollars through Hong Kong.

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