Bonum Certa Men Certa

Further Militarisation of the European Patent Office Amid Crisis and After Request of Fair and Just Treatment of Staff

Welcome to the new and 'reformed' EPO...

Airport tower
Airport-grade security checks have arrived at the EPO



Summary: A week after the Administrative Council's historic meeting the EPO only gets more militaristic (shades of Martial Law), not the opposite, as if terrorists dressed in suits are soon going to take over the EPO

THE President of the EPO (for now), Mr. Benoît Battistelli, has no idealogical rivals. He can't, he's from Ecole nationale d’administration. No opposition is allowed or tolerated. In Battistelli's eyes, his opposition is just Nazis and criminals. In his own little mind he keeps pretending he's fighting terror and he is milking terror attacks for personal sympathy (a politician's tactic).



"There is more hiring of people from the military (also Belgian) and promotion of such people."Battistelli has already been warned, but he is not changing anything for the better. There is more hiring of people from the military (also Belgian) and promotion of such people.

"I see that following the President's allegations that members of the BoA are plotting to overthrow him through violent activity, he now believes that authorized representatives may seek to smuggle illicit material into the office," wrote one new comment this morning, citing this little nugget (epo.org link) which says:

Visitors to the EPO are advised that, as from now, their bags and luggage will be subject to a visual inspection by security.

This measure will be applied in all EPO buildings at all sites.

Thank you for your co-operation.


Does anyone think that patent lawyers, for example, would bring in a bomb or something like that? This isn't a plane and it's not even public transportation. Now, consider Battistelli's bodyguards addiction and general paranoia. Why does the EPO need to assume a state of heightened security? There have been no incidents of violence at the EPO, except by the management (institutional violence).

"No way," told me one person, "they have had minutes of training in what to look for and what to do if they find it."

USB keys perhaps? The latest attempt to catch/silence whistleblowers (deterrence at the very least)? We don't know for sure, but we can only speculate.

what next? Strip searches? Groping? Colonoscopy? Welcome to the European Patent Office, where visitors are subjected to keyloggers and hidden cameras in public terminals. And now also airport-grade security theatre. Where is this going to end?

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

SoylentNews Grows Up, Registers as a Business, Site Traffic Reportedly Grows
More people realise that social control media may in fact be a passing fad
 
Garden Season Starts Today
Outdoor time, officially...
More Information About Public Talks That Richard Stallman Gave This Week in Europe
Two talks in Switzerland
Engadget is Still a Spamfarm, It's Just an Amazon Catalogue (SPAM/SEO), a Sea of Junk Disguised as "Articles" With Few 'Fillers' (Real Articles) in Between
Engadget writes for bots now, not for humans
Richard Stallman's Talks in Switzerland This Week
We need to put an end to 'cancer culture'; it's trying to kill people and it is even swatting people
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 28, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, March 28, 2024
[Meme] EPO's New Ways of Working (NWoW), a.k.a. You Don't Even Get a Desk at Work and Cannot be Near Known Colleagues
Seems more like union-busting (divide and rule)
Hiding Microsoft's Culpability in Security Breaches and Other Major Blunders (in the United Kingdom, This May Mean You Can't Get Food)
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is vast
Giving back to the community
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 28/03/2024: Sega, Nintendo, and Bell Layoffs
Links for the day
Open letter to the ACM regarding Codes of Conduct impersonating the Code of Ethics
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
With 9 Mentions of Azure In Its Latest Blog Post, Canonical is Again Promoting Microsoft and Intel Vendor Lock-in, Surveillance, Back Doors, Considerable Power Waste, and Defects That Cannot be Fixed
Microsoft did not even have to buy Canonical (for Canonical to act like it happened)
Links 28/03/2024: GAFAM Replacing Full-Time Workers With Interns Now
Links for the day
Consent & Debian's illegitimate constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Time Our Server Host Died in a Car Accident
If Debian has internal problems, then they need to be illuminated and then tackled, at the very least in order to ensure we do not end up with "Deadian"
China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 27, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 27, 2024
WeMakeFedora.org: harassment decision, victory for volunteers and Fedora Foundations
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 27/03/2024: Terrorism Grows in Africa, Unemployment in Finland Rose Sharply in a Year, Chinese Aggression Escalates
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: Ericsson and Tencent Layoffs
Links for the day
Amid Online Reports of XBox Sales Collapsing, Mass Layoffs in More Teams, and Windows Making Things Worse (Admission of Losses, Rumours About XBox Canceled as a Hardware Unit)...
Windows has loads of issues, also as a gaming platform
Links 27/03/2024: BBC Resorts to CG Cruft, Akamai Blocking Blunders in Piracy Shield
Links for the day
Android Approaches 90% of the Operating Systems Market in Chad (Windows Down From 99.5% 15 Years Ago to Just 2.5% Right Now)
Windows is down to about 2% on the Web-connected client side as measured by statCounter
Sainsbury's: Let Them Eat Yoghurts (and Microsoft Downtimes When They Need Proper Food)
a social control media 'scandal' this week
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries