WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
This week we take an extended look at the spat over personal data – ‘Safe Harbour’ – between the EU and the USA, computers in schools, running a nuclear reactor, and London and tobacco. The URLs cover home working, Stonehenge, Amazon’s attack on Apple TV and Chromecast, fingerprint files, Bitcoin as a commodity, NSA oral history transcripts, and ICANN v Europe. Happy reading!
Analysis: Not such a safe harbour in a storm...
Well, whether you noticed it or not, the big news of the week was the decision by the highest court of the European Union to strike down the ‘Safe Harbour’ agreement that more or less allowed the free transfer of personal data from the EU to the US.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with this business, here is a brief summary.
What you can and can’t do with other people’s personal data is governed by different rules in the EU and the US. For historical and cultural reasons the US has had a much more relaxed attitude towards personal data than the European countries. This wasn’t a major problem until the rise of the commercial internet.
Now, you may think you fund the internet when you pay your ISP, or even that all the free services are free. This isn’t the case. The internet is funded by slurping up vast amounts of personal data, sorting and refining it, repackaging it, and selling it to commercial organisations who use it to target customers. So, by the late 1990s, with the rise of the big international internet companies spanning not just countries, but continents, you could bet your bottom dollar that there were going to be problems.
The biggest problem was the difference between the US and EU laws on data protection. It you applied the EU laws rigorously, then it was clear that personal data could not be legally exported to the US. However, banning data transfer on the EU’s part was likely to lead to a trade war with the US, which the EU could little afford, leaving it in a weak position.
In the event, the EU capitulated and cobbled together a document, known as the ‘Safe Harbour’ agreement, that basically said that it’s OK, the US will look after our data safely. Of course, this bore no resemblance to reality, but then there is no legal requirement that documents drawn up by politicians have to have any relationship to reality, only that they be plausible.
The fact that the emperor had no clothes was generally known, but, as in the fairy-tale, as long as no one said anything to that effect, the fiction could be continued. Eventually, someone said it loudly enough to get the attention of the masses – that person being Edward Snowden, with his revelations about the scale (and lack of oversight) of US surveillance.
The result? A court case that travelled all way to the top, where the judges struck down the agreement because it allowed US government authorities to gain routine access to EU citizens’ online information. Since that was the highest court in the EU, the agreement is now dead, with no way to resurrect it in its present form.
There are other ways to legally transfer information, but the rules are (marginally) more stringent, and at least no one is pretending that the US government is applying EU data laws in its handling of EU data.
But that’s not all. Lurking in the background is another case, this one in the USA involving Microsoft. Microsoft has been told by a court to hand over information that is held on its cloud servers in Ireland, a part of the EU and a sovereign nation in its own right. At the moment appeals against the ruling are travelling up the legal system. There are international agreements that cover this sort of thing, and currently they are being ignored by the US courts. Would you believe me if I said that the Irish government is not happy about the US flouting international agreements?
Actually the US does have a genuine problem over this, because if they lose the implication is that companies engaged in illegal activities could tuck the evidence away on overseas cloud computers, where US law enforcement couldn’t get its hands on the documents. But the legal problems caused by the rise of international cloud computing are a whole new can of worms, which I’ll go into some other time.
In the meantime, I’d just note that ordinary citizens in the US seem to be starting to take a more hostile attitude to organisations that play fast and loose with their personal information...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/technology/european-union-us-data-collection.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/06/silicon_valley_after_max_schrems_safe_
harbour_facebook_google_analysis/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/07/us_cloud_giants_privacy_brief_safe_harbour/
Homework:
One bit of news that some people aren’t going to like was contained in a recent report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). As part of one of its research projects in 2012, the organisation tested over half a million 15 year olds on a wide range of skills. And this is what it said: “even countries which have invested heavily in information and communication technologies for education” aren’t able to show any improvements in reading, science, or mathematics among students.
It suggests that more emphasis on basic literacy and numeracy “will do more to create equal opportunities in a digital world than solely expanding or subsidising access to high-tech devices and services.” The politicians will probably ignore this advice, which implies more teachers and less gadgets.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/15/dont_bother_buying_computers_for_schools_says_oecd_report/
Geek Stuff:
Fancy operating a nuclear reactor? How about taking a course at Reed College in Portland, Oregon then. The college have their own nuclear reactor, and it’s available for students – undergraduate students – to use, though, of course, there is training to take. The reactor’s has been there since 1968, and you don’t have to be a science major to use it, the training is open to any student.
What a wonderful idea! It’s a pity more institutions don’t do this sort of thing.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/who-put-these-undergrads-in-charge-of-a-nuclear-reactor
London:
And now for something ideologically unsound!
Tobacco...
London has been involved in the tobacco trade almost since its inception. Indeed, at one stage tobacco could only be imported into England via London’s docks. London still has its own tobacco guild – the Worshipful Company of Tobacco Pipe Makers & Tobacco Blenders. London also has its own Tobacco Dock, which is well worth a visit, if you happen to be in the city.
http://londonist.com/2014/11/london-a-history-in-tobacco
http://www.tobaccolivery.org/
Scanner:
Things you should know about the hard work of home working
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/22/work_from_home_perils/
Stonehenge: Temple near the site shows evidence of a religious revolution
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/stonehenge-temple-near-site-shows-evidence-of-a-religious-revolution-when-britons-switched-from-10488928.html
Bezos’ ban-hammer batters Chromecast, Apple TV
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/01/bezos_banhammer_batters_chromecast_apple_tv/
What could criminals do with 5.6 million fingerprint files?
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/what-could-criminals-do-with-5-6-million-fingerprint-files/
Bitcoin is an official commodity, says US gummint
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/17/bitcoin_is_an_official_commodity_says_us_gummint/
NSA oral history interviews
https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/oral_history_interviews.shtml
Now even Europe is slapping down ICANN in internet power struggle
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/08/europe_punches_icann_board/
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Thunderbird spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
11 October 2015
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/index.html.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
