AMSTERDAM (ANP/RTR) - Google heeft stevige kritiek op de Europese regels en de manier waarop die worden gehandhaafd. Het Amerikaanse techbedrijf kreeg donderdag een boete van 890 miljoen euro voor overtreding van de regels.

Brussel beboette Google vanwege het voortrekken van zijn eigen diensten in Google Search. Daarmee overtreedt het bedrijf volgens Brussel de Digital Markets Act (DMA). Daarnaast kreeg het bedrijf een boete omdat Google in zijn appwinkel Google Play geen ruimte geeft aan app-ontwikkelaars om klanten te wijzen op andere appwinkels.

Volgens Google maakt deze manier van toepassen van de DMA-regels alledaagse producten alleen maar slechter. "Om eraan te voldoen, moeten we realtime zoekfuncties verwijderen waar Europeanen veel waarde aan hechten, zoals directe prijsinformatie en actuele beschikbaarheid van hotels, vluchten en restaurants."

Verslechtering

Daarnaast zegt Google door de regels veiligheidsmaatregelen op Google Play af te moeten bouwen. "Dit is geen eerlijke concurrentie, maar een verslechtering van producten, gedreven door een kleine groep partijen die vooral hun eigen belangen nastreven. Europese bedrijven en consumenten zijn daarvan de dupe. Regelgeving zou producten moeten verbeteren, niet slechter maken", besluit het Amerikaanse bedrijf.

Google overweegt om in beroep te gaan tegen de boete.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Het Internationaal Strafhof (ICC) zet de zaak tegen de Soedanese rebellenleider Abdallah Banda stop. Aanklagers vroegen hier al om, omdat er geen goed genoeg bewijs meer zou zijn om hem te kunnen veroordelen.

Banda werd ervan verdacht in 2007 in de Soedanese regio Darfur meerdere oorlogsmisdaden te hebben gepleegd, zoals geweld tegen mensen.

De zaak zou eigenlijk in 2014 behandeld worden, maar werd uitgesteld omdat Banda er zelf toch niet bij zou zijn. Inmiddels zeggen aanklagers dat getuigen niet meer willen of kunnen meewerken. Ook zouden er bij bepaalde getuigen problemen zijn met de geloofwaardigheid.

Het ICC vindt dat de aanklager niet goed genoeg heeft laten zien dat het bewijsmateriaal door de jaren heen zo is verslechterd. Toch stemmen ze ermee in de zaak stop te zetten, omdat de aanklager "weigert de zaak te presenteren". Het hof benadrukt dat er altijd een nieuwe zaak tegen Banda kan worden gestart, over dezelfde feiten.

New paper: “Encryption and Globalization 15 Years Later: End-to-End Encryption and the Third Round of the ‘Going Dark’ Debate“:

Abstract: This Article updates and expands on 2012 research on encryption and globalization, analyzing what the authors call “Round 3” of the Going Dark Debate: the current controversies over end-to-end encryption (E2EE). Governments around the world have proposed, and in some cases enacted, laws limiting E2EE for law enforcement and national security purposes.

This Article explains the underlying technologies and market developments for a law and policy audience to assess those proposals critically. The Article proceeds in three parts tracking three rounds of the Going Dark Debate. Round 1 covers the Crypto Wars of the 1990s, when U.S. export controls on strong encryption ultimately fell in 1999. Round 2 covers the period roughly 2010 to 2015, when encryption-in-transit became widespread but lawful access remained available through cloud providers, giving rise to what the authors called a “golden age of surveillance” rather than a period of going dark. Round 3 addresses the current debate over E2EE, where no entity between sender and recipient can read the plaintext.

The Article’s first major contribution is identifying five technically distinct scenarios for how E2EE operates in practice, each with different implications for lawful access. These scenarios reveal a substantial gap between the assumption that E2EE categorically blocks lawful access and the reality of how communications are sent and received. Second, the Article shows that E2EE is not limited to messaging; instead, it is embedded throughout the modern technology stack, including in Transport Layer Security, Secure Shell, Virtual Private Networks, and Zero Trust Architecture, the last of which is now legally required under U.S. and EU law. Any law broadly limiting E2EE would thus have severe serious consequences for cybersecurity, commerce, and government operations. The Article concludes that the two key lessons from Round 2—the least trusted country problem and the golden age of surveillance—remain true in Round 3, and that new government claims for restricting effective encryption deserve great skepticism.

Als de opkomst van de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen hoger is dan vier jaar geleden, ga ik abseilen van de Euromast. Dat beloofde de Rotterdamse burgemeester. Haar actie draagt ook bij aan haar zichtbaarheid in de stad. Een tiental cameraploegen en ook buitenlandse journalisten waren erbij.

ajpscs posted a photo:

NIGHT LIGHTS, ILLUMINATIONS AND FIREWORKS
BOKEH (Playful)
© ajpscs

New US petition demands review of plans from tech companies amid fears of environmental destruction

Space datacenters proposed by SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and others would release staggering levels of pollution that would probably alter the Earth’s atmosphere and be “catastrophic” for the planet, space industry experts and environmental groups warn in a new petition demanding a review of their impacts.

Tech companies have collectively proposed millions of “orbital datacenters” and are pressing forward with plans, which require Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval. Among other issues, pollution from satellites and rockets burning up upon re-entry appears to be accumulating in the stratosphere at alarming levels. The spacecraft release black soot, rare metals, aluminum oxides and other pollutants with unknown effects.

After my 22-month-old child died, music and poetry brought catharsis and comfort

The day Renzo had his aneurysm, in the afternoon before it happened, I distinctly remember telling him that it was going to be a pleasure to watch him grow up. It seems ridiculous to write that here, the foreshadowing so on the nose as to be unbelievable. But it’s true. To him and my wife Allegra, I said, “I love our little family.” After the struggles around his birth, job loss, the pandemic, it felt, finally, like we had made it to the other side. We had, I suppose, just not how I envisioned it.

My friends Jayson and Stacy recommended I get to know David Kessler’s work. According to Harvard Business Review, Kessler is “the world’s foremost expert on grief”. He’d worked closely with Elisabeth Kübler-­Ross, who was the reigning expert on grief before her own death in 2004. A large part of Kübler-­Ross’s legacy is her classification of what she calls the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, as described in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. After you experience a death, she wrote, these stages can occur in any order, with one or more possibly not occurring at all. Just weeks after Renzo’s death, I’d tricked myself into thinking I had jumped all the way to acceptance when really I was trying to outrun anger and depression. Bargaining hasn’t been a big one for me, nor has denial. The facts have been pretty hard to ignore.

Liverpool’s new head coach is settling into the pre-season tour in Chicago as he begins to reshape the Reds’ identity

Over coffee in Liverpool’s plush hotel in Chicago, Andoni Iraola presents his theory for the phenomenal success of Basque and Spanish coaches. It is a theory that will shape his entire approach to life as the Liverpool head coach and his attempts to bring the connection, the joy and the belief back to Anfield. It centres on the power of the collective.

The Champions League, the Premier League, the Europa League, the FA Cup, the League Cup, the European Championship and, as of Sunday, the World Cup: all currently in the hands of Basque and Spanish coaches, even if Pep Guardiola has since taken his leave from Manchester City. Next season, four men from the small Basque region of Gipuzkoa will manage four of the Premier League’s main contenders, Iraola included. There is, he believes, a simple explanation for the rise of the guys from Gipuzkoa and for Spanish dominance across a global stage.