Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

06.30.15

Links 30/6/2015: Linux Mint 17.2, OpenMandriva

Posted in News Roundup at 5:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Node.js and Docker realigned

    It’s not really a surprise, but after just over six months since the “forking” of both Node.js and Docker, the two different projects have ended up back in some sort of alignment. For Node.js, it was the reunification with io.js under the Node.js Foundation, which was officially launched under the Linux Foundation’s umbrella. The Node.js and io.js technical development is now driven by a technical committee and hopefully this will all work out well for all.

  • Libreboot Now Supports An AMD/ASUS Motherboard

    The Libreboot “fork” of Coreboot now has support for its first AMD motherboard — or more broadly, its first desktop motherboard.

  • IBM Insists It’s Open to Open Source

    So it’s interesting when a senior IBM exec turns up in a keynote slot. Big Blue’s heritage, at least at the high end, had for years been dominated by proprietary architecture. No longer, said Doug Balog, general manager of IBM Power Systems. The founding of OpenPOWER roughly two years ago, sale of IBM’s x86 business, and the sprint away from the formidable but proprietary Blue Gene (and re-embrace of the battle-tested mainframe) are all part of IBM’s about-face.

  • The Open Information Security Foundation Joins Open Source Initiative as Affiliate Member

    The Open Source Initiative® (OSI) today announced that The Open Information Security Foundation (OISF) has been accepted as an Affiliate Member. “The OSI is excited to welcome OISF,” said Patrick Masson, General Manager and Director at the OSI. “Just as we’re seeing with open source software projects, more and more organizations are looking for support from mature, robust and relevant security communities. The OISF and the open source technologies they support are ready to help and we’re happy to promote their good work.”

  • The evolution of the big data platform at Netflix

    I caught up with Eva to get a bit of a background on her, Netflix, and how open source is being used to improve services at Netflix. Not only has Netflix used and contributed to existing open source projects, but they have released their own projects like Genie as open source. To learn more about Netflix’s open source projects you can pursue their GitHub.

  • Events

    • ATO Opens Reg – Releases Partial Speakers List

      The All Things Open conference today pushed out a notification to recipients on its mailing list announcing that registration for the event, slated for October 19th and 20th. has begun. For the first time ever, event organizers are offering something of a super early bird special: Buy a ticket before July 7th and get admission for both days for only $99 — which is a deal since that’s what a single day will cost once the Early Bird Special kicks-in next Tuesday.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Can LibreOffice successfully compete with Microsoft Office?

      Michael Meeks, a leading LibreOffice developer, says the open source suite is currently being used by about 20 million Linux users. (LibreOffice is included in many Linux distributions.) He adds that update requests are also regularly received from 120 million different IP addresses – with one million new ones appearing every week — and suggests that in total there may be 80 million LibreOffice users around the globe.

    • LibreOffice 5.0 to Bring More DOCX Improvements

      The Document Foundation has released the second RC for the upcoming LibreOffice 5.0 version, and it looks like the developers are making a final push for the new version of the office suite that is scheduled to land in July.

    • The job is not done until the documentation is complete

      And yet there is a lot of really good documentation out there. For example, the documentation for LibreOffice is excellent. It includes several documents in multiple formats including HTML and PDF that range from “Getting Started” to a very complete user’s guide for each of the LibreOffice applications.

  • Funding

    • Roundcube Next crowdfunding success and community

      A couple days ago, the Roundcube Next crowdfunding campaign reached our initial funding goal. We even got a piece on Venture Beat, among other places. This was a fantastic result and a nice reward for quite a bit of effort on the entire team’s part.

  • BSD

    • DragonFly BSD 4.2 Gets Improvements for i915 and Radeon, Moves to GCC 5

      DragonFly BSD is a distribution that belongs to the same class of operating systems as other BSD-derived systems and UNIX. The developers have released a new version of the distro, and they have integrated quite a few changes and improvements.

    • OpenBSD from a veteran Linux user perspective

      For the first time I installed a BSD box on a machine I control. The experience has been eye-opening, especially since I consider myself an “old-school” Linux admin, and I’ve felt out of place with the latest changes on the system administration.

      Linux is now easier to use than ever, but administration has become more difficult. There are many components, most of which are interconnected in modern ways. I’m not against progress, but I needed a bit of recycling. So instead of adapting myself to the new tools, I thought, why not look for modern tools which behave like old ones?

    • DragonFlyBSD 4.2 Released: Brings Improved Graphics & New Compiler

      DragonFlyBSD 4.2 was released this morning as the next major release to this popular BSD operating system. For end-users there are a lot of notable changes with this update.

    • Call for Testing: Valgrind on OpenBSD

      The editors are certainly salivating over the possibility of valgrinding our way to victory.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Galicia publishes open source tools

      The government of Galicia (Spain) has made available three open source solutions over the past year, one for PC classrooms, one for land-management, and a third for computer network enhancement. The tools are available at Galicia’s software repository, and information about the solutions is now also available at Spain’s Centre for Technology Transfer (CTT).

    • Aragon publishes updates of eGovernment software

      The government of Aragon (Spain) has published updates of the open source software it uses for 25 eGovernment services. The updates have been available at the repository of Spain’s Centre for Technology Transfer since late last month.

    • House gets green light for open source

      The House of Representatives has officially jumped on the open source bandwagon. A June 25 announcement declared that U.S. representatives, committees and staff would be able to procure open source software, participate in open source software communities and contribute code developed with taxpayer dollars to open source repositories.

    • Cracking the Code: U.S. House of Representatives Allows Use Of Open Source Software

      As the executive branch of the United States government quietly works on creating an official open source policy, the legislative branch is also moving into the 21st century: Open source software is now officially permitted in the U.S. House of Representatives. That means software developed in the People’s House with taxpayer funds will eventually be available to the people. According to the nonpartisan OpenGov Foundation, there will soon be an Open Source Caucus in Congress.

  • Programming

    • LINUX, RUBY AND WEB CODING LAB FOR GRADUATE TRAINEES OPENS AT SCI-BONO

      The Simplon course was developed in France to teach skills in Linux, Ruby on Rails, CSS, Javascript, Meteor.js and other web development langauges. Co-founder Andrei Vladescu-Olt attended the opening of the SAP-funded laboratory, and explained that there’s more to the course than coding.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Matti Makkonen, inventor of the SMS text message, died on Friday

      It is a sad day in tech. This is such a young industry in mobile that most who built it are still alive. One of the biggest pioneers, however, died this past Friday. Matti Makkonen, the inventor of the SMS text message, was a former Telecoms Finland (later known as Sonera) exec and then Nokia VP and later Finnet Group boss and ended his career as Managing Director of Anviva before he retired from active business management work. He still continued on some part-time jobs in telecoms in Finland. In 2008 Matti received the Economist Innovation Award for inventing the SMS and we celebrated that occasion here on this blog at the time.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Serbia fetes Franz Ferdinand’s assassin 101 years later

      Serbia unveiled a statue on Sunday of the man whose killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand 101 years ago lit the fuse for the First World War, feting an assassin who still divides his native Balkans.

      Many Serbs regard Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, as a pan-Slavic hero, the shot he fired in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 marking the death knell for centuries of foreign occupation over the various nations and faiths that would make up the Yugoslavia that emerged.

      To others he is a terrorist, a nationalist fanatic whose act triggered a war in which 10 million soldiers died and the world order was rewritten.

    • Is more war abroad with troops on the ground what’s needed to defeat ISIS?

      It’s too early to say whether yesterday’s ‘day of terror’ was coordinated, or whether it was a random convergence of events whose perpetrators share the same commitment to ‘leaderless resistance’ jihad which makes it equally possible to murder ‘apostate’ Shia worshippers in a mosque or ‘kufar’ tourists in Tunisia.

      Whoever they are, their broader intentions are not difficult to fathom. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Kuwait and Tunisia attacks. Both are acts of ‘strategic’ terrorism.

      The attack in Kuwait is clearly intended to foment the sectarian war that IS believes it can exploit for its own purposes.

    • Killer drones raise new moral questions

      Technologies are making humans who remote-control drones more and more like children playing video-games. That is the main problem. When deaths or killings seem to be happening so far away, the “combat mentality” can combine with the comfort zone to highly murderous effect. When it’s so easy to kill without risking your own life, will you be merciful or shoot them up?

    • Killer robots are coming next: The next military-industrial complex will involve real-life Terminators
    • The human rights crisis is about domination, not perception

      When Israel is criticized about its rights-abusive policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the refrain most often heard among local politicians is that the government’s hasbara—the Israeli propaganda machine—is inadequate. The problem, in other words, is not what Israel actually does to the Palestinians, but rather the inability to get its positive message across to the international community. This is usually referred to as “rebranding Israel”. The underlying assumption here is that the merchandise is fine, and only the packaging needs to be replaced.

    • Operation Hannibal

      Here’s how Israel deals with hostages. The results aren’t pretty.

      [...]

      The war in Gaza, which had raged for three weeks by then and claimed the lives of dozens of Israelis and some 1,500 Palestinians, seemed to be tapering off. The ambush near Rafah would have gone down as one more skirmish. But as the surviving Palestinians retreated, they did something that would turn that Friday into the bloodiest day of the summer and embroil Israel in a possible war-crimes ordeal that reverberates even now: They dragged the third Israeli, Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, with them underground.

    • AP withdraws photos in row over gun pointing at senator’s head

      Conservatives immediately turned on the news agency, which released a statement saying the five photos it issued “were not intended to portray Senator Cruz in a negative light”.

      After “consideration”, said the statement, “we have decided to remove those photos from further licensing through AP Images”.

    • Black churches taught us to forgive white people. We learned to shame ourselves
    • Barack Obama to deliver eulogy for Charleston church victims
    • Is the FBI Ignoring White Violence by Refusing to Call Dylann Roof a Terrorist?

      Civil rights activist Kevin Alexander Gray and Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, discuss whether the shooting in Charleston was an act of domestic terrorism. “Dylann Roof was a human drone, and every Tuesday morning the Obama administration uses drones to kill people whose names we don’t even know and can’t pronounce,” Kevin Alexander Gray says. “So I don’t know if I feel comfortable with the idea of expanding this word ‘terror.’” But Richard Cohen calls the shooting “a classic case of terrorism.” “It’s politically motivated violence by a non-state actor and carried out with the intention of intimidating more persons than those who were the immediate victims,” Cohen says. “I think in some ways it’s important to talk about terrorism in that way, not so we can send out drones, not so we can deny people their due process rights, but so we can understand the true dimensions of what we’re facing.”

    • “A Classic Case of Terrorism”: Is FBI Ignoring White Violence by Refusing to Call Roof a Terrorist?
    • White Americans are the biggest terror threat in the United States

      White Americans are the biggest terror threat in the United States, according to a study by the New America Foundation. The Washington-based research organization did a review of “terror” attacks on US soil since Sept. 11, 2001 and found that most of them were carried out by radical anti-government groups or white supremacists.

    • The question is: Will war ever end?

      I don’t rate any of our wars since to have been justified morally. I am morally shaken by our U.S. war these days involving drone use. Innocent civilians are being killed. We call it “collateral damage,” which I believe actually means “unintended murder.” How have we come to justify that? We claim to be doing it for the right reason. We have identified terrorists in these locations. When our drones strike, there are too often innocent civilians caught in the hell fire. It was not our intention to kill innocent people, but there are too many unanticipated consequences.

    • Let’s Not Forget Our Own Extremism

      To deem behavior or opinion as extremist depends on a particular point of view.

    • US Drone Strikes Kill Nine ‘Suspects’ in Yemen

      A pair of US drone strikes over the past 48 hours have killed at least nine people, none of them identified by name but all of them labeled “al-Qaeda suspects” by local officials on the ground in Yemen.

    • UK faces calls for intelligence-sharing guidance over drone attacks

      Ex-chief of navy Lord West says Britain must protect covert relationships but must also clear up grey areas over involvement in non-war zone killings

    • New Details About Drone Attacks Reported From Documents Leaked by Snowden

      The New York Times on Wednesday reported details about American counterterrorism officials’ use of drone strikes in countries such as Yemen, as well as the working relationship between intelligence agencies in the U.S. and the U.K.

    • Snowden papers suggest possible UK role in US drone strike

      The documents are said to show the extremely close cooperation between the NSA and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters better known as GCHQ, in regards to the controversial drone program.

    • US and British Wild West Spying…and the Entertainment Business

      Britain’s murky operations against the United Nations were first made public in 2004 when government minister Clare Short stated she “had read transcripts of some of Mr Annan’s conversations. She said she recalled thinking, as she talked to Mr Annan: “Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he and I are saying”.” She admitted in a BBC interview that British intelligence agencies had recorded conversations of the UN Secretary General in his office in New York. This astonishing revelation attracted an intriguing reaction from her own government, with prime minister Blair declaring her statement to be “deeply irresponsible” rather than taking any action about this manifestly irresponsible and illegal operation. It was obvious that the British government was up to its neck in a program of espionage against the leader of the organization that is intended to “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person,” and there was no possibility that the prime approver of such funtime capers was going to admit his culpability.

    • New York Times, ACLU Make Case For Access To Drone Strike Memos

      The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Times continued their fight in court Tuesday as they try to secure nine Department of Justice memos they believe outline the federal government’s legal justification for tactical drone strikes that have killed hundreds — including U.S. citizens — across the world.

      Attorneys on both sides presented their arguments to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York on Tuesday — the latest round of courtroom discussions that date back four years.

      In 2011, the ACLU submitted a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the targeted killings of U.S. citizens Anwar Al-Awlaki, his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, and Sameer Khan earlier that year in September.

    • Civil Liberties Union Takes Court Action over US Drone Strikes

      The appealing parties want the public to know who and why the U.S. is killing in drone strike operations.

    • Drone strike kills 5 militants in E. Afghanistan

      Five militants have been killed following a NATO airstrike in eastern Afghanistan’s Nuristan province, a source said on Sunday.

    • Drone strike kills five militants
    • Wars killed 149,000 in Pakistan, Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014

      Wars in Pakistan and Afghanistan have killed at least 149,000 people between 2001 and 2014, says a recent report by a US think-tank.

    • Wars killed 149,000 in Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2001: report
    • South Asian tensions and the fight against militancy

      Recent escalation in tension between nuclear-armed Pakistan and India figured high among US international concerns last week, with Secretary John Kerry cautioning against implications of South Asian hostilities, amidst tenuous search for Afghan stability.

    • Drone protesters vow to close down Staffordshire factory

      Protesters from 25 UK-based campaign groups are expected to take part in the latest rally on July 6 outside the Lynn Lane factory which they claim supplies arms to Israel.

    • Smart Talk: Legality of military drones on trial

      The U.S. actually trains more unmanned pilots than traditional fighter pilots today.

    • U.S. Army Begins Training Ukrainian Soldiers

      Fighting surged again this week in eastern Ukraine, where government troops are battling separatist militias and their Russian allies.

      NATO is responding by sending troops and equipment to eastern Europe, and it’s also giving defensive training to Ukraine’s beleaguered army.

    • Moving ever closer to a new Cold War

      Nato defence ministers are meeting in Brussels to agree their next steps in dealing with the renewed threat from Russia.

    • Under the rubble of drones

      It is harder for eyes from the sky or those pushing the drone buttons from the other end of the world to see precisely what lies wasted under the rubble of mud houses in the tribal regions of Pakistan. The loud claims of ‘successfully’ targeting wanted al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists have drowned the cries of the local populations for about a decade over their children, women and men having been killed. Over 2,000 civilian casualties must not disappear from the human radar after being termed collateral damage. True, we cannot escape human tragedies for larger ends of the war on terror, but we also need to take responsibility for errors of judgment.

    • Israel Bombs Lebanon

      Sunday reports indicate an Israeli warplane bombed a remote Lebanese Bekaa region to destroy one of its drones apparently downed.

      An IDF spokeswoman declined to comment. A Lebanese security source said it’s not entirely clear what happened “but most probably it was an Israeli airstrike to destroy its downed drone” – whether because of mechanical failure or by Hezbollah isn’t known.

      America, its rogue NATO partners and Israel unilaterally or together bomb other nations in blatant violation of international law.

    • Jared Keyel: It’s time to end US military interventions

      The Obama administration is contemplating setting up bases in Iraq and sending hundreds of additional American troops there. And a few months ago, President Barack Obama announced that nearly 10,000 American troops will remain in Afghanistan through the end of the year. This is in spite of US interventions in the two countries that have left hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced and continuing instability all over the region.

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • World’s Aquifers Losing Replenishment Race, Researchers Say

      From the Arabian Peninsula to northern India to California’s Central Valley, nearly a third of the world’s 37 largest aquifers are being drained faster than they are being replenished, according to a recent study led by scientists at the University of California, Irvine. The aquifers are concentrated in food-producing regions that support up to two billion people.

    • Council blocks Little Plumpton fracking application

      An application to start fracking at a site on the Fylde coast in Lancashire has been rejected by councillors.

      Energy firm Cuadrilla wanted to extract shale gas at the Little Plumpton site between Preston and Blackpool.

      Lancashire County Council rejected the bid on the grounds of “unacceptable noise impact” and the “adverse urbanising effect on the landscape”.

    • Fracking plans rejected by council in shock result after worries about environment

      Plans to frack for shale gas in Lancashire have been rejected by county councillors.

      Energy firm Cuadrilla wanted to undertake exploratory drilling and fracking at a site between Preston and Blackpool.

      Planning officials recommended approval of the operation subject to a number of conditions – but councillors rejected the advice and voted against.

    • US supreme court strikes down Obama’s EPA limits on mercury pollution

      Justices invalidate new rules in move that could make Environmental Protection Agency more vulnerable to challenges to new regulations on carbon emissions

  • Finance

    • Bitcoin poker site founder takes plea deal to avoid jail time

      A man who ran a Bitcoin-based online poker site and then fled to Antigua after being raided earlier this year has pleaded guilty to a lesser gambling violation in Nevada as a way to stay a near-free man.

      According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, Bryan Micon accepted probation on Thursday and will also pay a $25,000 fine, surrender the computers, 3.0996 bitcoins ($750) and the $900 that were seized from him during the raid. Once complete, his charge will be reduced to a gross misdemeanor of operating an unlicensed interactive gaming system.

    • Dutch city of Utrecht to experiment with a universal, unconditional ‘basic income’

      The Dutch city of Utrecht will start an experiment which hopes to determine whether society works effectively with universal, unconditional income introduced.

      The city has paired up with the local university to establish whether the concept of ‘basic income’ can work in real life, and plans to begin the experiment at the end of the summer holidays.

      Basic income is a universal, unconditional form of payment to individuals, which covers their living costs. The concept is to allow people to choose to work more flexible hours in a less regimented society, allowing more time for care, volunteering and study.

    • Greek PM makes plea to voters as debt deadline nears

      Tsipras asks voters to reject austerity proposals offered by creditors as thousands of his supporters rally in Athens.

    • Greek Investigator’s Report Finds Evidence of Plot Against Former PM’s Life, ‘Silver Drachma’ Plan

      Evidence pointing to international espionage, a plot to murder former Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and a 2012 plan for Greece’s exit from the euro code-named the “Silver Drachma” are just some of the sensational findings unveiled in a report by Greek Anti-Corruption Investigator Dimitris Foukas, released on Friday and sent to the Justices’ Council for consideration.

      The report outlines the findings of three converging judicial investigations spanning several years, initiated after the notorious phone-tapping scandal in 2005 and revelations that the mobile phones of then Prime Minister Karamanlis and dozens of other prominent Greeks were under surveillance.

    • ‘Nein Danke’ – smaller German firms see U.S. trade deal as threat

      Martina Roemmelt-Fella, who owns a small, family-run turbine manufacturer in Bavaria, should be a cheerleader for a trade deal between Europe and the United States that promises to ease the flow of goods and services across the Atlantic.

      But instead she fears the Trans Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) being hammered out between Brussels and Washington will give too much power to big multinationals at the expense of small companies like hers.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • George Will Won’t Throw Out a Perfectly Good Column Just Because Its Premise Is Completely Wrong

      At some point, Will either noticed, or someone pointed out to him, that Roberts’ decision did the opposite of what Will’s column says it did: It did not defer to the executive branch’s interpretation of the ACA, but instead produced its own definitive interpretation of the law. This makes most of Will’s criticism–starting with the first paragraph, which denounces “decades of populist praise of judicial deference to the political branches”–irrelevant to the opinion Roberts actually wrote.

  • Privacy

    • Humans: Are the scientists developing robots in danger of replicating the hit Channel 4 drama?

      Anyone who has been freaked out by the robots in Channel 4’s new hit drama Humans knows what life in the Uncanny Valley feels like. The same goes for those who have met or seen footage of Aiko Chihira, a realistic humanoid who has just started welcoming visitors to a department store in Japan. She’s creepy, in the extreme.

    • Two keys to rule them all: Cisco warns of default SSH keys on appliances

      Cisco revealed a security vulnerability in a number of the company’s network security virtual appliances that could give someone virtually unlimited access to them—default, pre-authorized keys for Secure Shell (SSH) sessions originally intended for “customer support” purposes. As Threatpost’s Dennis Fisher reported, Cisco has released software patches that correct the problem, but there’s no temporary workaround for systems that can’t immediately be patched.

      Cisco released an advisory on the vulnerability on June 25. There are two separate SSH key vulnerabilities for the Cisco Web Security Virtual Appliance (WSAv), Cisco Email Security Virtual Appliance (ESAv), and Cisco Security Management Virtual Appliance (SMAv).

    • Default SSH Key Found in Many Cisco Security Appliances

      Many Cisco security appliances contain default, authorized SSH keys that can allow an attacker to connect to an appliance and take almost any action he chooses. The company said that all of its Web Security Virtual Appliances, Email Security Virtual Appliances, and Content Security Management Virtual Appliances are affected by the vulnerability.

      This bug is about as serious as they come for enterprises. An attacker who is able to discover the default SSH key would have virtually free reign on vulnerable boxes, which, given Cisco’s market share and presence in the enterprise worldwide, is likely a high number. The default key apparently was inserted into the software for support reasons.

    • When a Company Is Put Up for Sale, in Many Cases, Your Personal Data Is, Too

      That respect could lapse, however, if the company is ever sold or goes bankrupt. At that point, according to a clause several screens deep in the policy, the host of details that Hulu can gather about subscribers — names, birth dates, email addresses, videos watched, device locations and more — could be transferred to “one or more third parties as part of the transaction.” The policy does not promise to contact users if their data changes hands.

    • Nissan shuns cloud for physical communications infrastructure

      While this project is separate from the ongoing developments in Nissan’s connected vehicle technology, Deacon said that there were “huge developments” ongoing in bringing customer service to the car dashboard and more automated systems.

      Last year Renault also revealed a major overhaul of its internal and customer-facing interactions through a Europe-wide Salesforce rollout that would link its systems to its dealerships, allowing it to claw back valuable customer data.

    • Online Data Policies … in Plain English

      Clauses in privacy policies that enable online services to transfer or sell personal data about consumers as part of a merger, bankruptcy or other transaction are becoming common practice, an examination by The New York Times of the top 100 websites in the United States has found. The prevalence of these data-transfer clauses illustrates how little control people typically have over the dissemination of information about them. Details from privacy policies of five companies offer a sampling of the information that may be collected and how companies may handle the data in the event of a sale or bankruptcy. — Natasha Singer

    • Warrantless phone tapping, e-mail spying inching to Supreme Court review

      In 2013, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a once-clandestine warrantless surveillance program that gobbles up Americans’ electronic communications—a project secretly adopted in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks on the United States. Congress legalized the surveillance in 2008 and again in 2012 after it was exposed by The New York Times.

      Human-rights activists and journalists brought the Supreme Court challenge amid claims that the FISA Amendments Act was chilling their speech. But the Supreme Court tossed the case, telling the challengers’ lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union to bring proof by real targets of the warrantless e-mail and phone surveillance. In a 5-4 ruling (PDF) by Justice Samuel Alito at the time, the court said the case was based on “assumptions” and that the plaintiffs “merely speculate” that they were being spied upon.

      Fast forward to the present day: a US resident of Brooklyn, New York, accused of sending $1,000 to a Pakistani terror group has won the right to become the nation’s second defendant to challenge the surveillance at the appellate level. This could mean a Supreme Court bid is likely several months or more away.

    • The most dangerous data breach ever known

      But the true nature and scope of the information required by the government and subsequently collected by the government on an employee is massive. Take a look at Standard Form 86. This is a 127-page form that usually takes a week or more to complete and requires the entry of the applicant’s Social Security number on each page. The data included on this form is not just enough for identity theft, but enough to allow a person to literally become another person. Each Standard Form 86 fully documents the life of the subject. The only thing missing is the name of your first crush, though that might be in there somewhere too.

    • Why Facebook Is Opening An Office In Africa

      Facebook is to open a new office in Africa, a region with more than one billion people but only 120 million Facebook users.

  • Civil Rights

    • Bernie Needs To Speak Truth To Power (and try to stay alive)

      One thing I was obsessed with was campaign finance reform. I almost cut my throat when Citizens United was allowed to participate in financing political campaigns because corporations have the same rights as people. I believe that decision absolutely destroyed our so-called democracy. I also observed the Democrats that stood by and let that happen. What that showed me was how corrupt and devious our elected officials are. I stand with Bernie on this issue on overturning Citizens United.

    • China Issues Report on Human Rights Violation by the United States

      China’s State Council Information Office on Friday issued a list of human rights violations committed by the United States government. The annual report is intended to counter US allegations of human rights abuses in China.

    • China criticizes United States’ human rights record
    • US Police Killings Violate International Law

      Amnesty International finds all 50 states and Washington, DC, fail to comply with international law and standards on the use of lethal force by law enforcement officers

    • Don’t expect rhetoric to match reality

      The transition from Bush to Obama was much less dramatic than one imagined and the transition from Obama to someone else is likely to be more nuanced

    • EU launches navy operation against migrant-traffickers

      More than 100,000 migrants have entered Europe so far this year, with some 2,000 dead or missing during the perilous quest to reach the continent. Dozens of boats set off from lawless Libya each week, with Italy and Greece bearing the brunt of the surge.

    • Australia’s New Law Would Strip Citizenship For Possessing A ‘Thing’ Connected With Terrorism, Or Whistleblowing
    • ‘Australians fighting in Syria will lose citizenship’ says PM Tony Abbott

      Australians who engaged in terrorism will be stripped of their citizenship, under new laws aimed at preventing militants fighting overseas from returning home.

    • Coalition defends proposed citizenship laws – as it happened

      The prime minister announces an expansion of powers ‘to reflect modern conditions’ and says laws could be applied retrospectively; Julie Bishop can’t confirm deaths of two Australians reportedly killed in drone strikes; and the ABC is under attack for allowing a former terrorism suspect to appear on Q&A. As it happened

    • Terror suspects to lose citizenship: PM
    • BBC News: Australia prepares new citizenship laws

      The laws would also strip citizenship from dual nationals who engage in terrorism inside Australia.

    • An Open Letter to the NRA and Its Trolls

      When are we going to have an honest conversation about guns in America? While I vigorously disagree with the Supreme Court’s most recent interpretation of the Second Amendment, I’ll concede that the right of individuals to bear arms is, for now, the law of the land.

    • First Texas abortion clinic closes, more to follow barring Supreme Court involvement

      Operation Rescue has confirmed that the Routh Street Women’s Clinic in Dallas, Texas, halted abortions earlier this month, beginning what is expected to be a series of clinic closures in the wake of a ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling upheld a 2013 law, HB2, that requires abortion clinics to meet minimum safety standards.

      In addition, Planned Parenthood has apparently abandoned its efforts to open a larger clinic to replace its outdated facility located at 104 Babcock Road in San Antonio. Pro-life supporters with the Stop Planned Parenthood SA Coalition sued and successfully blocked a planned opening in January 2015, citing deception and zoning violations.

    • Destruction of Evidence

      David Cameron, echoed by the corporate media, calls upon the millions of law-abiding Muslims in the UK to denounce and distance themselves from a few terrorist nutters with whom 99.99% of British Muslims have no connection anyway. That apparently is acceptable. But to ask that the Zionist and Jewish organisations denounce the long term criminal activities of the man who actually led those organisations, is portrayed as unacceptable racism.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Charter: We won’t impose data caps after buying Time Warner Cable

      Charter yesterday promised that it won’t impose any data caps or overage charges on customers for at least three years if the Federal Communications Commission allows it to buy Time Warner Cable.

    • EU Parliament must defend Net Neutrality against pressure from Member States

      The Council of the European Union is looking to remove all reference to Net Neutrality in the regulation of telecommunications. While the Council has always refused to take a step towards a compromise, it has been looking for several weeks to put the responsibility for the failure of the negotiations on the European Parliament. Thus, it is with bad faith that the Council is taking on this 4th trialogue today ; with their aim to make the Parliament to give in.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Sad day for developers: SCOTUS denies Google’s appeal on APIs

        Supreme Court’s decision is bad news for developers targeting the U.S. market, who will now have to avoid any API not explicitly licensed as open

      • US Supreme Court denies Google’s request to review API Copyright decision

        A week after making the US LGBTQI community happy last week by ruling gay marriage legal across all the states, the US Supreme Court made the decision to not review the Google v. Oracle API Copyright decision made by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals last year. The Federal Circuit have been accused for misunderstanding both computer science and copyright law.

      • Pirate Bay Founder Still Wants to Clear His Name

        Last week Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm lost his appeal against his hacking conviction in Denmark. With an August release potentially on the horizon but an unexpected situation still to be resolved in Sweden, Gottfrid is longing to get in front of a computer and back into the world of IT. But before then he wants to set the record straight.

Techrights Confirmed as a Target of EPO Surveillance, With Help From Control Risks Group (CRG)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 2:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Control Risks

Summary: Unveiling the cloak of secrecy from long-term surveillance by the European Patent Office (EPO) and a London-based mercenary it hired, bypassing the law

SEVERAL months ago, before the whole EPO surveillance scandal even began (it’s now standard practice at the EPO, signed off even by a bogus ‘data protection’ officer), we got an important headsup. Our sources informed us that the UK-based “independent global risk consultancy” (i.e. private security company) Control Risks had been “engaged by the EPO to carry out an investigation into EPO Staff Representatives.”

We previously wrote about Control Risks in the following important posts which add some background:

This had significant impact because it meant that the EPO was officially on a fishing expedition, trying to find sources and thus targeting reporters. It was always without doubt that we had been put on Control Risks’ “targets” list. If we were not, it would just mean that Control Risks may be utterly incompetent. These people don’t try to uphold the law but rather to protect those who break the law, by breaking the law themselves (privacy violations and cracking). At a later date we will provide additional details about the EPO’s shameful (and potentially illegal) practices.

Our claims, as above, are based not purely on hearsay. We found out about this before the press even talked about it and before EPO staff knew about it. At a later date we had a source tell us that Control Risks’ involvement “may also indicate that Control Risks will be involved in “investigating” Techrights (due to the fact that EPO managements is highly concerned about negative publicity from that channel).

“According to information, the EPO or its agents are involved in monitoring Techrights IRC channels and the logs of these channels to try and identify who is feeding information to Techrights.”

Look what the EPO has turned into. It’s something to be expected from an authoritarian regime. █

Investigation Unit

06.29.15

Google’s Fight to Keep APIs Free is Lost, Let’s Hope Google Continues Fighting

Posted in Apple, Google, Intellectual Monopoly, Microsoft, Patents at 2:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

SCOTUS says no entry!

No entry sign

Summary: SCOTUS refuses to rule that APIs cannot be considered copyright-’protected’, despite common sense and despite Java (which the case is about) being Free/libre software

FOR anyone who has been paying attention, Oracle‘s hostility towards Android is not hard to understand. It is a CPTN member along with Microsoft and Apple and it has shown on numerous occasions over the years that it is eager to antagonise and badmouth Free software. Oracle killed many of the projects that it bought from Sun. Google, on the other hand, is at least trying to appease the Free software community and it has made Android (AOSP) an ‘open’ platform, even if most developers contribute just proprietary software to run on it.

Many of our readers have probably heard the big news by now. SCOTUS has aligned itself with foes of software development [1, 2, 3] (not just Free software development), reaffirming the ridiculous judgement from CAFC. Now that SCOTUS reaffirms the status of APIs as copyrightable, adding to mass surveillance with NDAs and software patents in the United States, why would software companies still choose to be there?

To give Google some credit, it did fight over this matter for nearly half a decade. After pressure from the clueless White House (exactly one month ago), however, reuse of APIs may be impossible and collaborative development with forking may soon be toxic. Today is a horrible day for software development in general and it’s not too clear to us what Google can do next. Some certain types of lawyers probably know Google’s next steps or options and knowing that this ‘legal’ system favours the deeper pockets, there is usually something someone can do given the correct fees (just see how long the SCO case goes on for).

“Google will hopefully continue to fight that case, whatever its options may be.”One reader of ours was disappointed with this article that FOSS Force published today, comparing Google to Microsoft. “Revisionism,” he said, “especially that closing sentence. People hate Microsoft not for the sake of hating Microsoft but because of how it (and its people) behaves and has behaved. It has held computing back at least 20 years and the damage spreads into all domains where desktop computers are used.

“It’s just that Microsoft pays for constant whine against Google. While Google has many shortcomings, it is not a problem like Microsoft has been and continues to be.”

“But on the topic of Google,” he continued, “here’s something fairly current with yet another ****up by SCOTUS” (he linked to the above news).

Google will hopefully continue to fight that case, whatever its options may be. As for Microsoft and Apple, they surely will keep trying to harm the market. They often work together these days (mostly true when it comes to patents, OOXML, DRM, and so on) and as this article by Galen Gruman reminds us:

If you thought Microsoft was finally treating the Mac as an equal citizen, you’ll be disappointed in the reality

Remember that Microsoft and Apple are both on Oracle’s anti-Android side (even publicly, on numerous occasions). These are all proprietary software giants, aspiring to control the entire market by patents, copyrights, litigation, and intimidation. Google simply does not fall under the same category. It deserves the public’s support in this particular case. █

Patent Trolls in the Post-Alice World

Posted in Patents at 2:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: A round-up of news about patent trolls in the United States, some of whom are are doing well and some of them not as well

Lawyers and other patent-centric parasites based in the unofficial home of patent trolls, the state of Texas, are very much upset with Alice — a case which essentially invalidates many of the patents they use for extortion. We covered this before and explained the reasons for it. Their livelihood is in jeopardy because they can’t quite prey on life savings of individuals and modest (at best) bank accounts of various startups around the US. “East Texas Federal Judge Sets Rules for Post-’Alice’ World,” says one article. We recently showed how patent practitioners in Texas were lobbying hard to keep the patent trolls going (antagonising patent reform), with their blackmail (as a ‘business’) flourishing. Using Lex Machina’s figures, Matt Levy very recently shared some statistics about Texas, and the Eastern District of Texas in particular. To quote: “The Eastern District of Texas had over 1,400 patent cases filed last year, and over 1,000 patent cases have been filed there in the first half of 2015. (Source: Lex Machina) Just last month (May), out of the 418 lawsuits filed, 295 were filed in Marshall, Texas, a town with a population of just under 24,000. For comparison, there were only 199 patent lawsuits filed in total in May 2014.”

“Apple sued the biggest Android distributor (Samsung) and Google’s/Android’s favourite child (Motorola), but then again so did Microsoft.”BlackBerry, which is rumoured to be exploring Android as the only route forward (not just one among several routes) was looking like an anti-Android troll in the making until not so long ago, but according to this analysis of “BlackBerry’s Licensing Revenue” (meaning patents): “There was little to no IP licensing done in the recent past.”

Perhaps BlackBerry is no longer a threat like Nokia, which Microsoft definitely turned into an anti-Android patent troll (of the bigger kind).

Speaking of trolls, Joe Mullin, a trolls expert, says that a “[p]atent troll wins $30M verdict against Sprint, has more trials on the way”. This story, for a change, didn’t develop in Texas. To quote Mullin, “Nebraska jury has ordered Sprint to pay $30 million to Prism Technologies, a patent-holding company that has sued the five largest cell phone carriers.

“Tuesday’s verdict (PDF) comes at a time when Congress is debating, for the second time in recent years, a bill to rein in companies like Prism, often referred to as “patent trolls.”

“Prism Technologies was founded as a successor to Prism Resources, an operating company that existed from 1991 to 2001 according to an online biography of co-founder Richard Gregg, who testified at trial. The company is now focused solely on licensing and litigation, and it has continued to get more patents.”

A week ago, citing this article from Ina Fried, BoingBoing asked, “Is patent trolling going out of style?”

That is indeed the case based on the booster of Microsoft and longtime promoter of Microsoft’s attacks (with patents) on GNU/Linux (Ina Fried did a lot of this while still at CNET/CBS). Fried writes: “For a while it seemed the mobile industry was deteriorating into a battle over who had the best patents — and the best patent lawyers.

“Apple was suing Samsung, Motorola was suing Microsoft and Google was in everyone’s cross hairs. And there were a lot more cases that weren’t making headlines.”

Apple sued the biggest Android distributor (Samsung) and Google’s/Android’s favourite child (Motorola), but then again so did Microsoft. The latter aggressor sued both companies and recently pressured the former to become a vassal of Microsoft in exchange for settlement. Microsoft has essentially itself become more like a patent troll, but since it refuses to let its own platform go (despite massive losses), it does not yet qualify, not as per the textbook definition of “patent troll”.

“Unified Patents,” said this one report from the other day, “works to deter nonpracticing entities from asserting weak patents” (whatever “weak” means).

When will Microsoft be recognised for what it really has become? When will European authorities react in lieu with their promise and stop Nokia from essentially becoming a European patent troll? Will BlackBerry ever sell its patents or itself become a patent troll? And in light of Apple‘s latest (over)hyped patent [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], will more people care to realise that Apple is not an innovator but an aggressor (using patents for lawsuits and imtmidation, not highlight any significant breakthroughs)? Also mind Amazon‘s latest Orwellian patent, which hardly comes across as anything that a 5-year-old wouldn’t have managed to ‘invent’. █

06.28.15

DDOS Attacks Against Techrights

Posted in Site News at 9:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Knocking the site over intentionally

Chess board

Summary: Information about some of the most recent DDOS attacks against this Web site and the steps to be taken next

THERE is a long history of DDOS attacks against Techrights, going back to 2008 or thereabouts. There were also press articles about DDOS attacks against the site (based on evidence provided to journalists upon request). Pinpointing who’s to blame for an attack is a lot harder than combating an attack (one way or another) and holding someone accountable is virtually impossible. People don’t just give themselves away so willing.

Over the past week there was a new pattern of DDOS attacks and they came from AWS servers, so I was able to file abuse reports and pursue this complaint (still work in progress). At this stage I am still hoping to see who or what group (or company) is behind it. This is clearly malicious.

Over the past few months I lost a lot of time (maybe hundreds of hours) due to DDOS attacks. It’s financially damaging and emotionally exhausting. I have been privately advised to file a report with the Dutch authorities over various DDOS attacks, which some told me might be connected to the EPO (or particular high-level staff at the EPO). Nonetheless, these efforts are usually a waste of time (I last tried around 8 years ago), so I did not bother. It’s a patience-draining experience that usually yields no results at all. It’s mostly symbolic. I did plan to write about this at some later stage and I even told one person that I might write more about intricate details of the attacks one day, maybe after the storm is settled at the EPO (giving too much information away usually helps the attacker). Today I would like to share some information about recent DDOS attacks and patterns that were noticed. This is information that won’t help the attacker; rather, it might discourage the attacker.

Referring to our DDOS complaints (IP addresses of the EPO hammering on our server quite heavily) and my recent “tweet”, one person told me that “The EPO IU is based in Munich but that doesn’t really tell you anything about what IP addresses are going to appear on traffic from the EPO.

“As far as [I'm] informed much of the EPO’s IT infrastructure is located in the Hague (Rijswijk) office. So even Internet traffic from Munich may be routed through a proxy in the Hague and appear with a Netherlands IP address. In any case the IU (in Munich) could presumably delegate tasks to an IT department (which could be based in the Hague).

“But the fact that you seem to be identifying IP addresses assigned to the EPO is in itself revealing.

“A lot of EPO addresses begin with 145.64 [...] You can find many of the address blocks in the db-ip.com database. For example: https://db-ip.com/all/145.64.0

“But it’s important to note that the geographical location nominally associated with the EPO IP address (e.g. Rijswijk/Hague) doesn’t really tell you where the user of the IP address is physically located (e.g. whether in Munich or the Hague).”

More technical information about the nature of the DDOS-induced strain can be published when the storm at the EPO is over. I can only speculate about who’s behind the attacks and weigh the probabilities. There is no ‘smoking gun’ just yet.

Some things, like the nature of attacks on this site, can be published upon key events, such as key facts about SIPO/Željko Topić corruption being published after a defamation trial reveals that allegations have merit and are most likely true. It would be safer for Techrights to limit sharing of information temporarily and to do so (against accusations or retaliatory tactics) only until perceived foes are powerless and widely scrutinised.

“You could try filing a criminal complaint with the Dutch authorities,” one person told me. “It seems that they have take action against DDOS attacks in the past.

“The EPO will probably try to hide behind its “immunity” but that should not protect it in this case as DDOS is not part of its official functions.”

DDOS attacks are very hard to analyse for original sources, speaking as a system administrator here. As far back as pre-2010 I have tried complaining to British authorities and it never led to the slightest of actions. They don’t even know what DDOS means, until or unless it attacks some major business or a governmental institution. Experience teaches that it’s a waste of time to even initiate action and I already have a big battle with BT (since March) and another one brewing with Amazon (over the latest DDOS against Techrights). Amazon will hopefully unmask (perhaps under increasing pressure) the identity of the account behind it all. This needs to happen soon, maybe this week.

“You may be right,” wrote to us another person with some background in this area. “It’s probably easier just to block the addresses.” Well, it’s not always possible, not with AWS anyway (far too many IP addresses).

Speaking again with one who is familiar with the EPO’s network, I begin to consider filing a complaint directly with the EPO. “As mentioned previously,” wrote to us one person, “as far as we can determine, most officially registered EPO addresses begin with 145.64.

“See here: http://bgp.he.net/AS28756#_prefixes

“Also here: https://ipinfo.io/AS28756

The E-mail addresses listed for the Network Administrators at the EPO under the second link above are rather clear.

ywoue@epo.org and wherler@epo.org (that’s Wolfgang Herler) will soon be contacted.

We found two further E-mail addresses here: jbielsa@epo.org and nderuiter@epo.org (that’s Niek de Ruiter).

There is also an “impersonal” E-mail address for Network Administration: admin_network@epo.org

Once I get to the bottom of the DDOS attacks from Amazon AWS I may also make time to file a detailed complaint to the above addresses, complete with a list of offending EPO IP addresses (which automatically got banned by our security software/defences, based on their erratic behaviour). █

The Patent System Not What it Used to be, Large Corporations and Patent Lawyers the Principal Beneficiaries

Posted in Patents at 8:35 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Ensuring that rich people become even richer, resistant to challenge

NYC

Summary: A look at some recent patent stories and what can be deduced from them, based on statistics and trends

THE HUGE news (in our assessment) that no Free software and GNU/Linux sites ever talk about is the fast demise of software patents in the United States. The prospects of patent blackmail are greatly affected (vastly diminished) by this. It helps any unaffiliated (independent from corporations and thus autonomous) software project compete against big entities with patents — those that have been shutting down Free software projects for years, usually by means of intimidation alone. Indie Free software developers cannot afford days in court and the income they receive from Free software they develop tends to be zero or very little, so the incentive to go to court is reasonably low.

Not only software patents are affected but patents on business methods are too. As this one article put it a fortnight ago: “Each panelist had a very interesting perspective on the future of patents held by banking and financial services firms, where the majority of these patents are primarily business methods and software related.”

Debates about patent scope are important. Some wonder whether drugs should be patentable (ethical issues arise because of potentially mortal impact) and other wonder about patenting medical devices so as to price them out of reach, if not just monopolise them, thus making them more scarce (unavailable in poorer places or inaccessible to poor people).

“No matter who wins and who loses a case, patent lawyers will always profit from it.”Patents originally promised ‘protection’ for the little independent inventor, supposedly protecting him or her from much better funded corporations with copycats and mass production. In reality, as these new figures serve to show, patents are being hoarded or at least gathered mostly by large corporations, perhaps reminding us who is best served by today’s patent system. It’s getting worse — and fast! The past decade alone has been terrible amd the passage of power to large corporations accelerated, as evidenced by patents. As Patently-O puts it: “As with dependent claims, the average number of independent claims per patent has also dropped significantly over the past decade. (From around 3.2 to 2.5 independent claims per patent). As the histogram shows below, the decline comes primarily from a rise in the percentage of applications with three-or-fewer independent claims.”

Many thanks to Dennis Crouch for shattering a common myth about ‘protection’ for the little independent inventor. This myth is now dead. Crouch attributes this to costs and explains that “change is largely driven by PTO fees and the ongoing commodification of patent prosecution.”

The system is now just tilted in favour of large corporations. The Fitbit-Jawbone feud which we mentioned the other day is still in the news [1, 2] and it helps remind us who benefits the most from patent extravaganza (more so than corporations): patent lawyers. No matter who wins and who loses a case, patent lawyers will always profit from it. Patent litigation is a racket and a racket that needs to be ended, just like Major General Smedley Butler once explained in relation to the war industry. █

After Intervention by the Council of Europe Comes a Detailed Summary of the Situation in the European Patent Office (EPO)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Will Europe tolerate corruption again?

“[A]mazing that corruption is [accepted] by the entire developed world. stunning that it has met with resistance only with some developing nations and maybe the european union.”

–Ashok Pai

European flags

Summary: The abuses of the EPO’s management summarised in a 9-page document, which includes many references to media coverage in Europe

THE coming weeks or months promise potentially big changes, similar to the ones at FIFA (with Blatter in Battistelli’s shoes). Like glorified tyrant Lee Kuan Yew, Battistelli exercises authoritarian control in pursuit of profit (at all costs, even by expanding patent scope beyond what is legal), including corruption of the media, corruption of what was supposed to resemble separation of powers, and self-indulgence in massive inequality, even embezzlement of public money and misuse thereof for human rights violations. Some large businesses may genuinely like Battistelli, but not the citizens (of Europe) or the workers (of EPO); they are just afraid to say it. It’s a reign of terror. It’s tyranny.

The Council of Europe's complaint (with over 80 high-profile signatures) sure put a lot of pressure on the EPO‘s management. Here is the direct link corresponding to the Council of Europe’s official statement in its Web site. The French version is here.

Some time on Sunday SUEPO wrote in its public site:

The social conflict at the European Patent Office continues. The working climate has become toxic for both individual staff in the EPO and for the broader functioning of this European institution as a whole.

An overview of the latest events and an analysis of the current situation can be found in this publication.

Since this is a PDF-only publication, we decided to reproduce it as HTML, potentially broadening its reach:

26.06.2015

su15271cp – 0.2.1/0.3.2/5.3

Situation of European Patent Office (EPO)

JUNE 2015

Governments, politicians, representatives of Europe’s industry, NGOs and other interested critical observers, all should be concerned about the situation at the European Patent Office.

The officials of the EPO are entrusted with carrying out the European patent granting process, which includes taking responsibility for an independent review of European patent applications and for the application of law in this area of intellectual property.

However, governance over the current EPO procedure lacks fundamental checks and balances, there is no democratic control, and the staff themselves have in many cases no effective access to an independent, impartial judicial review when contesting a decision.

Yet checks and balances with access to a fair trial are fundamental components of the rule of law enjoyed in the democracies of our founding States, since they belong to their “community of values”. But apparently these are not applied in the EPO, which is fast becoming an island of lawlessness in the very heart of Europe.

For EPO staff, this governance problem is compounded by the now notoriously authoritarian administration style of the President of the EPO, Benoit Battistelli, such that the problem is now acute. Under his regime, the EPO has become a police state operating with impunity. Opposition is not tolerated and any staff perceived as being “obstructive” are removed by way of disciplinary procedures, penalties or other means, sometimes of dubious legality. Staff – in particular Union officials – are investigated and interrogated, in some cases by an external security agency, without any personal safeguards.

The events described in this document illustrate the dramatic downward trend in social dialog over the last four years. This drift, which is now increasingly visible to the public, finds its roots in an EPO management style characterized by its authoritarian leadership. The working climate is toxic for both individual staff in the EPO and for the broader functioning of this European institution as a whole. Functional immunity granted to the EPO has been conceived as blanket immunity, thereby exposing staff to the unlawful exertion of internal influence.

Not only the Administrative Council of the EPO, but also the European authorities and the public at large, all should beware the undesirable consequences when such abusive powers are left to operate effectively with total impunity.

UPDATED PRESS COVERAGE AND LETTERS FROM SUEPO
CAN BE FOUND HERE:

http://www.suepo.org/public/news

1

The EPO as a battlefield?1

1. Reforms

The European Patent Convention is now over 40 years old. The EPO is set up according to principles of the international civil service, many of which date back to the early 20th century. As early as 2007, the Administrative Council mandated a succession of EPO Presidents to develop and then introduce a number of reforms. The need for reform is understandable; it should strive to maintain the organisation’s compatibility with the needs and values of the public it professes to serve. However until now, most of the reforms have concerned human resources management and changing working conditions. None have addressed the issues of transparent governance with management accountability.
The working conditions laid down in the Service Regulations are not published; once the Administrative Council adopts new working conditions, they are implemented without any possibility for an independent instance or for the public to verify their compatibility with fundamental rights or with the generally accepted principles of law. A combination of claimed total immunity and, at the behest of the President, the abolition of external audit has led to this grave situation. Far from being of simply academic concern, the issue of control over governance and enforcement of fundamental rights is a very concrete issue. Although EPO staff members are civil servants, they do not enjoy the same “safety net” as
their counterparts in national administrations. In the event of termination of contract, EPO staff have no claim to support from a national health insurance, nor will they receive any unemployment benefits. In addition, their pension rights are not always secured.

2. Democratic deficit

All citizens of any democratic country retain, at least indirectly through their elected representatives, a certain degree of influence over the rules and legislation that will apply to them. They can always take part through internal procedures of political parties in the elaboration of proposals, they can participate in public debates, and ultimately they can vote legislators out of office at the next election. This is not the case in the EPO. Binding rules are enacted by the Administrative Council (which consists of non-elected civil servants from member states) on the recommendations of the President of the EPO. Lack of meaningful consultation or collaboration means staff has virtually no say and judicial control is limited.
Many of the changes introduced are perceived as being nonsensical, disruptive and later deemed inconsistent with subsequent changes. This has caused widespread discontent.

3. Repression of dissent: An uncontrolled police state

Even though the outcome was often less than satisfactory, the EPO management must be given credit for trying, at least between 2007 and 2010, to allay the concerns of staff by engaging in meaningful dialogue with elected staff representatives, including the staff union. All this has changed dramatically under the current President. Instead of engaging in dialogue, he has chosen the path of systematically repressing the slightest expression of dissent and/or opposition.
To silence any dissenting voice, the President has unilaterally introduced a raft of reforms including: changing the rules for challenging decisions; introducing new “investigation

____________________
1 IPKat provides an interesting overview of the events at the EPO since 1 January 2015.

2

guidelines“; introducing new strike rules; banning SUEPO from EPO premises; applying disciplinary measures to Staff Representatives; banning Staff Representatives from sending emails to more than 50 Staff members; investigating Staff representatives using the Investigating Unit who use sometimes dubious methods and external2 contractors.
Both the international press and the internet are replete with negative reports concerning the management style of Benoît Battistelli. These include:

  • Censorship over deteriorating working conditions;
  • Disciplinary measures and threats against those individuals who raise the issue of four suicides in 3 years. Threats of reprisals against those who intend to join a peaceful demonstration duly authorized by the city authorities;
  • Suspension of and disciplinary measures against two Staff Committee nominees in the Appeal Committee, allegedly for daring to resist management manipulation;
  • Suspension of a “patent judge”, a Board of Appeal member, by the EPO President under the guise of a “house ban”, which has now endured for more than 6 months)3;
  • Installation of secret spying equipment (including key-loggers) on computers in the semi-public areas of the EPO: such computers were made available to members of the Administrative Council (during AC meetings) and visiting patent attorneys while prosecuting patents for their clients;
  • Approval – albeit retroactively4 – of such spying by the Data Protection Officer;
  • While ostensibly trying to repair its image by endeavouring to re-open dialogue with the Unions5, the Administration has concurrently launched investigations against the majority (if not all) of the Staff representatives and Union Officials. Many of these investigations have been sub-contracted to an external company, Control Risks, who have a somewhat
    controversial reputation. Their techniques involve interrogation without any safeguards, all this at the initiative of the investigation unit, itself under the direct authority of the President of the Office.

4. No effective access to justice

Staff is particularly aggrieved because it has no reasonable way to seek relief through judicial review:

  • The internal dispute resolution process (the Internal Appeals Committee) and the subsequent external instance (the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation) are reserved for individual grievances that can be instigated once the alleged

____________________
2 A comprehensive list can be found in the following SUEPO publication.
3 This action has generated enormous disquiet, not only among bloggers, attorneys and EPO union officials, but also within the Enlarged Board of Appeal. The Administrative Council endorsed this decision in its December session. Up to date (June 2015), disciplinary proceedings are on-going and the BoA member is still suspended until a further decision, probably the next AC session.
4 It has become apparent from a document (archive) available on internet (FOSS Patents) that the covert surveillance of publicly accessible computers in the Munich ISAR building by the Investigation Unit has been signed by the Data Protection Officer of the European Patent Office. A blogger, Florian Mueller, comments as follows: “There is now
conclusive evidence that the EPO has violated basic human rights not only of its staff but even of unsuspecting visitors of one of the EPO’s Munich facilities. [...] [T]he request that the “data protection officer” (who is more than 25 years late to serve as a Stasi official) authorized merely refers to freedom-of-speech issues: “a sustained campaign of defamatory and insulting communications against [the EPO's Jack Warner] Vice President Zejlko Topic, other senior managers of the Office and possibly Administrative Council Delegates, in the form of normal post and electronic mail.” In the mean time, neither the EPO nor the AC representatives have commented upon these events, let alone taken steps to suspend the investigations. See References [6]-[11] below.
5 In an attempt to limit the damage in the public eye, and to counter the criticism within the Administrative Council, the Chair of the Council Jesper Kongstad and the President of the EPO Benoit Battistelli called for “a renewed social dialogue”: They “consider in particular that the formal recognition of the trade unions within the EPO’s legal framework could create the conditions to re-launch the process and to overcome some longstanding issues5.” This led the way to “trilateral meetings” with representatives of the unions, of the Administrative Council and the President. However, it has become quite clear that any “recognition” has to remain toothless.

3

  • damage has occurred. Only in very exceptionally circumstances can a general decision, such as a decision modifying working conditions, be challenged perhaps collectively before it has been implemented.
  • An appeal against dismissal or other disciplinary action can only be sought in front of the “Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation” (ILOAT) in Geneva, who cannot grant injunctive relief. The situation can only be corrected once the damage has occurred: such relief may take many years. This and the lack of any emergency procedure,
    makes EPO staff particularly vulnerable to succumbing to the threats inherent in the present management style.
  • The staff union has no access to either the Internal Appeals Committee or to the ATILO. As a corporate body established under national law, the Union may have access to the domestic courts of the host countries, but the EPO shields itself behind its functional immunity from any and all jurisdiction and execution.
  • Even when staff members have access to the statutory dispute resolution process, it takes on average 3-5 years for a grievance to be assessed by the Internal Appeals Committee. If the grievance then proceeds to the ATILO, the claimant can count on a minimum of another 3-4 years before the grievance is heard. All in all, with the current increasing backlog in the
    Internal Appeals Committee and at the ATILO, it is expected that grievances lodged after 2011 will not be adjudicated before at least a decade.
  • Staff repeatedly complain that the Appeals Committee is both highly dysfunctional and lacking in impartiality. Things were so bad that in October 2014, the Central Staff Committee refused to appoint representatives to the Appeals Committee until these issues were resolved. Instead of addressing them, the President simply ordered his appointees to proceed without staff representatives6.
  • On behalf of the AC, the Board of Auditors of the European Patent Organisation reviewed the Internal Appeals procedure in June 2015 (CA/20/15). They have confirmed that the President does not follow recommendations of his own Appeals Committee insofar as he (almost) systematically rules against staff. The ILO-AT itself judged that it “is ill equipped to act as a trial court” (J.3291). For SUEPO, there can be no social peace without unrestricted access to impartial justice.
  • Moreover, if one takes the figures provided by the auditors for 2013 – 20 Nov 2014 in A/20/15 and compares them to the figures provided by the President in his social report (CA/55/15), one realizes that between 20 Nov. and 23 Dec. 2014, the Committee apparently managed to produce over 150 opinions in a single month! One could be tempted to conclude that when the clash exploded and the Appeals Committee was directed to continue its work without staff representatives, the remainder of the Committee either accelerated to an incredible speed or found a short-cut to the procedures: in a couple of sessions and within a few days, it took care and to provide opinions on the equivalent of the past year’s “production”.

5. Conflict

The management style that currently prevails in the EPO may well be both detrimental to its proper functioning and undermine the EPO’s reputation on the international stage. This has generated a considerable number of articles in the mainstream press or well-respected blogs on intellectual property. Questions have even been raised in several European parliaments. Despite this unrest, the organization fails to adhere to European values.

To try and ease the situation, the staff representation has repeatedly proposed to Mr. Battistelli to use an external mediator; this suggestion has always been rejected. The Union has proposed a

____________________
6 Staff Committee views can be found here [1].

4

framework agreement to regulate relations between itself and management; the proposal has also been ignored. Recently, the German court in Munich also suggested mediation as a means to
facilitate resolution of a dispute with the union; Mr Battistelli flatly rejected the Court’s recommendation.

Eventually, the Union has had to bring the matter before a national court where they claimed that the EPO was infringing SUEPO’s right to operate and to engage in collective bargaining. The Dutch Court of Appeal, in its February judgment, ruled in favour of SUEPO vs EPO. To quote from an article in the Nederlands Juristenblad, a Dutch legal magazine:

“The Court of Appeal in The Hague has created an international precedent in the case against EPO by rejecting the immunity of an international organisation in a collective labour law case, and also awarding the claims on their merits, based on the fact that the organisation in question violated fundamental human rights. This decision is important because it further institutionalises the accountability of international organisations. Unfortunately the Netherlands also showed itself at its most narrow-minded: the Minister instructed the bailiff to not enforce the judgement because the organisation enjoys immunity from enforcement under international law. This instruction not only erodes the separation of powers stipulated by the Constitution, it isn’t an obligation under international law either: as is the case for immunity from jurisdiction, immunity from enforcement can only be granted if the organisation adequately protects fundamental rights.”

In the meantime, the Dutch government has now apparently joined the EPO in an attempt to overturn the judgment in the next instance (“cassation”)7.

6. An unhealthy concentration of Power.

Like many international organisations, the EPO and its (high) officials enjoy a degree of immunity that borders on impunity. There are virtually no checks and balances left to counter any abuse. Of perhaps greatest concern is the lack of checks and balances in respect of the highest “judicial instance” of the EPO, the Board of Appeals. Even the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO took up this issue in early 2014 through a remarkable decision >[16].

President Battistelli has engaged in a series of reforms for the Boards of Appeal8:

  • Perceived independence: a new proposal (CA/16/15) states its goals as “to increase the organisational and managerial autonomy of the BOA, the perception of their independence (enshrined in Article 23 EPC) and also their efficiency, in order to respect the principle of effective legal protection within the legal framework of the current EPC”.
    In a position paper, the association of the members of the BoA (AMBA) criticised the proposal: in their opinion, it “mixes up the roles of a supervisory committee and a council of the judiciary without being either” and without solving “the problems noted in R 19/12”. Furthermore, “making re-appointment dependent on performance appraisals, including quality aspects, [goes] against the security of tenure.“ uncertainty of permanent status“ which in turn is not “helpful in recruiting experienced external candidates”. Finally, the proposed “move to Berlin would have serious consequences on manpower”.
  • New career proposal: AMBA and the Presidium of the BoA equally criticised the new proposal for implementing a new career system noting that it “takes no account of the special situation of the boards of appeal, and even removes existing derogations”.

____________________

7 See references [3]-[5] below.
8 See references [12]-[15].

5

These proposals are under discussion and are receiving great public attention. AMBA concludes that these proposals are “in contrast to a clear separation of powers which is a basic principle in all European countries and which is of utmost importance for the acceptance of the European patent system.”

7. The interest of the European public

There is a serious problem of governance in the EPO. The opacity of its decision-making processes and the lack of accountability, which the EPO justifies on the basis of “its immunity”, is anachronistic in both Europe and in the 21st century: we live in a time where states require from their institutions (and from each other) both financial transparency and accountability. While the EPO may still be “competitive” as an employer in terms of remuneration benefits, its internal human resources policies, in particular with regards to interpersonal relationships, are both antiquated and brutal.

Generally speaking, European society should not tolerate that some of its citizens are deprived of their fundamental rights simply because they are employed by an intergovernmental organisation, or because they are well paid. This is surely particularly pertinent when the EPO member states are, in their overwhelming majority, also member states of the European Union. Yet this is exactly what now happens at the EPO.

The Administrative Council of the EPO, and thereby vicariously the member states, are being at best complacent, at worst grossly negligent of their responsibilities. The Council largely gives the President carte blanche, without asking what the consequences might be or considering how he could use his powers. Structurally, the President of the EPO acts as accuser, investigator, judge and final arbiter on all matters; there is no separation of power guaranteeing a healthy system of checks and balances for his actions. The nearly absolute power the current President enjoys and the manner in which he uses it continues to be a source of particular concern and dismay. Staff and their unions consider the limitations on the freedom of expression and freedom of association (embodied in the strike regulations) without effective access to justice as breaches of their fundamental rights as Europeans.

Furthermore, beyond the fact that European citizens are deprived of the fundamental rights, this working environment is highly toxic for both the individual staff in the EPO and for the normal functioning of this European institution as a whole. An authoritarian leadership without effective judicial protection makes individual staff members particularly vulnerable to suffering under the present management style: not only does their health suffer, but their capacity as officials entrusted with the European patent granting process is impaired. Under these conditions, how can one expect EPO agents to fulfil their responsibilities and undertake an independent review of European patent applications and apply the law dictated by the EPC? If the EPO is tasked with granting patent rights to inventors and European industry, how credible are those rights if delivered by an institution that is ostensibly unable to comply with the rule of law in its own internal affairs?

Functional immunity granted to the EPO has been conceived by management as blanket immunity, thereby exposing staff to the use of abusive powers with total impunity.

It is high time that the competent authorities take a keener interest in what is happening at the EPO and insist that the house be put in order. This should be done by introducing proper policies through consultation and negotiation, not through repression and intimidation.

6

REFERENCES

[1] “EPO Justice: Analysis of Board of Auditors Review (CA/20/15)” , by the Central Staff Committee, 02.06.2105

https://www.suepo.org/rights/public/archive/sc15220cp.pdf

“Report – EPO Internal Justice System”, SUEPO, 18.12.2013

http://www.suepo.org/public/su13201cp.pdf

“Trias Politica” – Beyond the problems, the way out: “Feuille de Route” for Social Democracy“, by SUEPO, 18.12.2013

http://www.suepo.org/public/su13202cp.pdf

[2] “SOCIAL CONFLICT AT THE EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE”, by SUEPO, 27.11.2014

http://www.suepo.org/public/su14294cp.pdf

[3] Judgment of the Dutch Court of Appeal in SUEPO v EPO
The judgment of the Dutch Court of Appeal is available in English, French and German.

http://www.suepo.org/archive/su15088cpe.pdf

Süddeutsche Zeitung, “Recht haben und recht bekommen”, 27.02.2015
http://www.suepo.org/public/ex15092cp.pdf (with translations)

Nederlands Juristenblad, “Fundamentele arbeidsrechten en immuniteit”, 08.05.2015
http://www.suepo.org/public/ex15222cp.pdf (with translations)

[4] Communiqué 69 from the President of the EPO (Annex)

http://ipkitten.blogspot.de/2015/02/the-epo-privileged-and-immune-says_24.html

[5] Notification from the Dutch Government (Annex)

http://www.suepo.org/public/su15090cp.pdf

[6] “The so-called data protection officer of the EPO signed off on keylogging, hidden
cameras”, FOSS Patents, 14.06.2015

http://www.fosspatents.com/2015/06/the-so-called-data-protection-officer.html

“Forderung nach externem Datenschützer”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 10.06.2015
http://www.suepo.org/public/ex15250cp.pdf (with translations)

[7] “Wie bei der FIFA oder in China – Europäisches Patentamt: Beschäftigte bespitzelt”, Münchner Merkur, 12.06.2015

http://www.suepo.org/public/ex15244cp.pdf

[8] “MPs call for tough action on rogue investigators”, 06.06.2012

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/home-affairs-committee/news/120706-pi-rpt-published/

“The Dark Side of Power: German Corporate Spying Scandal Widens”, Spiegel Online,
“Attack on Customer Data: Lufthansa Admits Spying on Journalist”, Spiegel Online
“Watching the detectives”, The Guardian
“From guard dogs and fences to business intelligence”, Financial Times

7

[9] “Sturm im Glashaus”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 31.05.2015
http://www.suepo.org/public/ex15214cp.pdf (with translations)

“Krisenfachleute spähen im Europäischen Patentamt”, FAZ, 02.06.2015
http://www.suepo.org/public/ex15219cp.pdf (with translations)

[10] “Un si bon office”, Le Monde, 06.04.2015

http://www.suepo.org/public/ex15152cp.pdf

[11] Demonstration in front of the British consulate in Munich planned for the 25.02.15 and
cancelled on 23.03.2015. What does EPO staff want?

http://www.suepo.org/public/su14286cp.pdf

“Präsident droht protestwilligen Mitarbeitern”, Münchner Merkur, 25.02.2015

http://www.suepo.org/public/ex15070cp.pdf

[12] Letter of Sir Robin Jacob addressed to Mr Jesper Kongstad, Chairman of the AC of the EPO.

http://ipkitten.blogspot.de/2015/01/judicial-independence-europes-ip-judges.html

[13] Communiqué on decisions taken by the Administrative Council at its 142nd meeting concerning the suspension of the member of the Board of Appeal, 12.12.2014

http://www.epo.org/about-us/organisation/communiques.html#a10

For all matter concerning the Board of Appeals please refer to the Association of the
Board Members:

http://www.amba-epo.org/

[14] The further public condemnations:

Letter from Dr. Tilman Müller-Stoy at Bardehele PagenBerg to the German representative of the AC, 08.12.2014

http://ipkitten.blogspot.de/2014/12/the-chorus-swells-another-entreaty-to.html

http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/12/top-notch-patent-litigator-sees.html

Letter from the Enlarged Board of Appeal to the representatives of the AC, 08.12.2014

http://ipkitten.blogspot.de/2014/12/breaking-news-enlarged-board-appeals.html

Letter from two external members of the Enlarged Board of Appeal to the representatives of the AC;

http://ipkitten.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/leading-european-ip-judges-join-chorus.html

Six further external members of the Enlarged Board agree, 11.12.2014

http://ipkitten.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/six-more-judges-criticise-battistellis.html

[15] Letter from the EP Lawyers Association to the AC representatives, 29.12.2014

[16] Concerns from Law Associations about the new BoA Career proposal (CA/16/15)

8

In the framework of the user consultation, the following raised concerns about the
proposal in CA/16/15:

Letter from Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), 15.05.2015

http://www.ccbe.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/NTCdocument/1__Letter_independen1_1432041035.pdf

Letter from EPLAW, 04.06.2015
http://www.eplawpatentblog.com/2015/June/20150604 Letter to Mr. Battistelli.pdf

[17] Decision R 19/12:

The Enlarged Board decides that the Vice President of DG3 is to be recused from a petition for review case on suspicion of partiality because of his continuing connection with the EPO management.

https://register.epo.org/application?documentId=EV0ZJBW50569684&number=EP99947419&lng=en&npl=false

Further Press reports

[18] “Streit beim Europäischen Patentamt”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 11.03.2014
http://www.suepo.org/public/Streit_eskaliert_de_en_nl.pdf (with translations)

[19] “Umstritten und Souverän”, Die Zeit, Ausgabe Nr.13 20.03.2014

http://www.zeit.de/2014/13/benoit-battistelli-epa-europaeisches-patentamt

[20] Brief vom französischen Abgeordneten Philip Cordery an die französischen Minister Arnaud Montebourg und Fleur Pellerin.
http://www.suepo.org/public/CorderyLetterFr-En-De.pdf (with translations)

[21] Offener Brief vom französischen Abgeordneten Pierre-Yves Le Borgn‘

http://www.pyleborgn.eu/2014/04/interrogations-sur-la-gouvernance-de-loffice-europeen-des-brevets/

[22] “Eine kleine Minderheit schürt Ängste”, Süddeutsche Zeitung 26.03.2014

http://www.suepo.org/public/su14078cp.pdf

[23] “Ärger im Europäischen Patentamt – Aufstand gegen den Sonnenkönig”, Berliner Zeitung vom 30.03.2014

http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/wirtschaft/aerger-im-europaeischen-patentamt-aufstand-gegen-den-sonnenkoenig,10808230,26698776.html

[24] “A l’Office européen des brevets, ambiance délétère et président contesté”, AFP & Libération.fr, 30.03.2014

http://www.liberation.fr/economie/2014/03/30/a-l-office-europeen-des-brevets-ambiance-deletere-et-president-conteste_991434

9

If “Mister President” and “Sun King” (his common nickname), also known as Benoît Battistelli, ends up announcing his resignation (hopefully forced, albeit silently) some time soon, it won’t surprise us. He won’t allow himself to publicly accept defeat (get fired), he has already threatened to resign (fall on his sword under great pressure with suicidal tendencies), much to the expectation of Wouter Pors, an IP practitioner widely known around Europe. It would also be somewhat poetic a justice given the number of suicides Battistelli et al. are claimed to have caused. █

IRC Proceedings: May 31st – June 27th, 2015

Posted in IRC Logs at 7:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

IRC Proceedings: May 31st – June 6th, 2015

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#techrights log

#boycottnovell log

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#boycottnovell-social log

#techbytes log

IRC Proceedings: June 7th – June 13th, 2015

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#techrights log

#boycottnovell log

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#boycottnovell-social log

#techbytes log

IRC Proceedings: June 14th – June 20th, 2015

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#techrights log

#boycottnovell log

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#boycottnovell-social log

#techbytes log

IRC Proceedings: June 21st – June 27th, 2015

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#techrights log

#boycottnovell log

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#boycottnovell-social log

#techbytes log

Enter the IRC channels now

« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »

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

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

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

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

New to This Site? Here Are Some Introductory Resources

No

Mono

ODF

Samba logo






We support

End software patents

GPLv3

GNU project

BLAG

EFF bloggers

Comcast is Blocktastic? SavetheInternet.com



Recent Posts