security concerns

Raw Data: E.U. Reaction to Data Sharing Revelations Grew Slowly

On a continent where courts have ruled that access to the Internet is a fundamental human right, the disclosure last month of the covert program drew criticism from privacy officials and activists in Britain, France and Germany.

But the volume in Europe on privacy issues has been greater than the actual movement on the ground: Initial reactions to the leak by Edward J. Snowden, a former worker at the U.S. National Security Agency, have not led to concrete demands for greater controls on data sharing or stricter privacy controls that could hinder the operations of those U.S. technology giants in Europe.

In Brussels, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers are working to update the 1995 data protection law covering the E.U. countries. While the earlier Prism disclosures had given more ammunition to proponents of stricter privacy controls, their effect on the debate has seemed limited.

“The Prism revelations have made parliamentarians more receptive to stronger measures,” said Joe McNamee, the executive director of European Digital Rights, a Brussels group advocating greater restrictions in data sharing between the European Union and the United States. “But the reaction has not been as strong as we had hoped for.”

Before the allegations in the magazine Der Spiegel that the United States has bugged E.U. offices, the full European Parliament had been scheduled to debate a resolution on Wednesday that would have at least expressed concern about the broad nature of Prism and its collection of private data from E.U. residents. The resolution was also expected to do the same about a British program, Tempora, which involved tapping undersea communication cables.

It was unclear whether the debate — and a vote set for Thursday — would still be held, but the resolution was likely to have been moderate in tone to reflect support for U.S. security concerns, and it was not intended to carry any force of law.

“There are those in Parliament who want a hard line where the E.U. doesn’t share any data with the United States, but this is a minority,” said a legislative staff worker in Brussels who was involved in negotiations to draft a compromise resolution on the issue. The aide, who works for one of the Parliament’s most senior members, declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the topic.

Meanwhile, a student group in Austria asked regulators in Ireland, Germany and Luxembourg on Wednesday to bar the European arms of Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo from sending the personal data of E.U. citizens to the United States for processing.

The group, Europe-v-Facebook.org, formed two years ago to protest the social network’s privacy policies in Europe, is arguing that the existence of Prism proves that the United States cannot guarantee the necessary “adequate level of protection” required of countries that are certified to process the personal data of E.U. citizens.

“There is a reasonable suspicion that there is widespread surveillance,” Max Schrems, the founder of the group, said.

Mr. Schrems, a 25-year-old law student at the University of Vienna, said the group’s best chance of obtaining sanctions might be in Germany, which has the strictest data protection laws in the Union. The Austrian group filed a complaint with the data protection regulator in Bavaria, a German state where Yahoo has a large office, asking that restrictions be placed on the company’s U.S.-bound data transfers.

Spokesmen for Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo declined to comment on the complaint. Google was not included in the initial complaints, Mr. Schrems said, because Europeans who sign up for its services contract directly with Google in America, not with its European subsidiaries.

(The German complaint focused on Yahoo because of its big office in Munich. The Irish complaint focused on Apple and Facebook because they have large offices in Dublin. The Luxembourg complaint focused on Microsoft, whose Skype subsidiary is in Luxembourg.)

On Thursday, the Bavarian regulator transferred the case to the German federal data protection commissioner, Peter Schaar. In a June 7 blog post, Mr. Schaar had described the existence and reach of the Prism program as “outrageous,” adding that such systematic surveillance without prior judicial consent would be illegal in Germany.

But it was unclear whether his office could block any data transfer activity by Yahoo’s German headquarters in Munich. Juliane Heinrich, a spokeswoman for Mr. Schaar in Berlin, said the German regulator was analyzing the issue of jurisdiction to determine whether and how to proceed against Yahoo.

The Brussels-based American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union said it supported an E.U.-U.S. government dialogue on the data transfer issue.

“Prism needs to be addressed at government level,” said Anna McNally of the American Chamber.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/technology/eu-reaction-to-data-sharing-revelations-grew-slowly.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Algeria Attack Puts Focus on Worker Security

Security was a constant preoccupation, as it is with other fields in the many politically unstable parts of the world where foreign oil companies take big chances for big gain: Iraq, Nigeria and Libya, to name a few. The Algerian Army escorted the workers anytime they left the sprawling compound, to and from the airport or as they headed to distant wells where they sometimes saw nomads crossing the desert on camels.

Now energy companies’ use of these far-flung outposts staffed by expatriates is being scrutinized as never before. The bloody, four-day hostage siege at the In Amenas facility in eastern Algeria prompted at least one worker who escaped to question whether more could have been done to rebuff the attack. And analysts say the catastrophic failure could change the way the oil industry protects such compounds throughout the region, where Islamist militants who revile the West are active, just as the State Department has had to rethink security after the attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

The attack in Algeria has already led oil companies there to evacuate hundreds of workers temporarily and eventually could lead some companies to pull out of especially volatile countries. But analysts said the siege was not likely to fundamentally reshape the industry, which has a long history of making money in countries in the throes of upheaval and even war (including one in Algeria), and where workers with a taste for traveling the world — and the hazard pay they earn — have long put aside fears of kidnapping and death.

“This attack is highlighting in a ghastly way the security concerns around the global energy infrastructure on which the world depends,” the oil historian Daniel Yergin said. “Security has been a very big concern over the last two decades, and security is now an even bigger concern. But that doesn’t mean their work will stop.”

The attack in the desert has opened a rare window on a world few outside the oil industry know: the scores of oil and gas fields around the globe where foreign and local workers mix, sometimes uneasily, in vast compounds ringed by security fencing that are a strange mix of privilege and privation.

Many are in parts of the world where political problems outside the camp walls add to natural hazards: blinding sandstorms, winter cold severe enough to shatter metal and tropical diseases in areas where medical care is spotty at best. To keep their cloistered workers focused, companies often splurge on such amenities as swimming pools in the desert (In Amenas has one), steaks for lunch and air-conditioned gyms.

At some camps, the Japanese companies that specialize in plant construction had their own Japanese-style communal bath, and had their food flown in from Japan. In Amenas had no bath, but the Japanese workers there ate separately from both the locals and other foreigners, with a chef trained in Japanese cuisine catering to them.

“It’s a better way to live than in a hotel, but it’s not home and never will be,” said Pat Campbell, a longtime executive with Superior Energy Services, who has worked in North Africa and the Middle East since the 1960s and was a crucial technician in taming the burning Kuwaiti oil fields after the Persian Gulf war. “You cannot help but chuckle when you are sipping homemade bourbon by the pool, but there you are in the desert.”

The men (and some women) who sign up for assignments at the fields are generally adventurers, people able to put up with, or even thrive on, the lifestyle in the camps. The pay and the fast track to corporate success such postings can lead to does not hurt; industry insiders say that top managers can earn $250,000 or more a year. That can go a long way when food and lodging for half the year (they generally work 28 days on and 28 off) is paid for.

Clifford Krauss reported from Houston and Nederland, Tex., and Stanley Reed from London. Reporting was contributed by Nicholas Kulish and Henrik Pryser Libell from Bergen, Norway; Mihai Radu from Bucharest, Romania; Martin Fackler, Makiko Inoue and Hisako Ueno from Tokyo; Ravi Somaiya from New York; and John F. Burns from London.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/world/africa/algerian-attack-puts-focus-on-worker-security.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Raw Data: E.U. Reaction to Data Sharing Revelations Grew Slowly

Algeria Attack Puts Focus on Worker Security

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