The 2014 European Elections - May 22-25 :This Time It Is Different

The countdown to EU Elections has begun

The countdown to the European Parliamentary elections have started. There are not too many weeks left to go to May 22 until the first polling stations open for the 2014 European elections.

It will be the second biggest democratic exercise in the world, 400 million people can cast their vote for a new European Parliament.

The 751 MEPs taking up their seats in July will not only set the course of European policies for the next five years but also elect the leader of the EU's executive body, the European Commission President.

This upcoming election is different because the increase in the European Parliament’s powers since 2009 has started to make itself felt as the European Union sought to pull through the economic crisis and MEPs drew up legislation, inter alia on effective budgetary discipline, the winding down of failing banks and caps on bankers' bonuses.

The May European elections therefore will allow voters to contribute to strengthening or changing the direction that Europe takes in tackling the economic crisis and in many other issues affecting people’s daily lives.

For the first time, the composition of the new European Parliament will determine who will lead the next European Commission, the EU's executive body, which initiates legislation and supervises its implementation. Under the new rules, EU government leaders, who will propose a candidate for the post of the future Commission President, must do so on the basis of the election results.

The European Parliament will elect the new Commission President by a majority of the component members, i.e. at least half of the 751 MEPs to be elected (376). European political parties will therefore, or have already, put forward their candidates for this leading position in the EU before the European elections, thus allowing citizens to have a say over next Commission President.

The new political majority emerging from the elections will also shape European legislation over the next five years in areas from the single market to civil liberties. The Parliament - the only directly elected EU institution - is now a linchpin of the European decision-making system and has an equal say with national governments on virtually all EU laws. Voters will be more influential than ever.

To see how the political cards are falling in place click on our  poll -  and to make your voice be heard don't forget to go out and vote 22 - 25  May. 2014.  

EU-Digest

Technology: The mystery of flight MH370: How on earth, with all our technology, do we lose a giant plane? - by Sebastian Anthony

Three days ago, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished from radar off the south coast of Vietnam in the South China Sea. 239 people were on board — and at this point, it is presumed that they have all perished in some kind of disaster. A massive search and rescue effort involving 40 ships and 34 aircraft from nine different nations has yet to discover any sign of the missing aircraft. For me, this is almost incomprehensible:

Despite all of the awesome technology that mankind has developed, it’s still possible for a Boeing 777-200 with 239 people on board to vanish. For me, it’s mind blowing that all we have to go on is the plane’s radar signature — and even then, that last radar reading was so poor that the search area is thousands of square miles of open water. Surely, given the fact that we can track a damn smartphone anywhere on Earth down to a few meters, there’s a better way of keeping track of missing aircraft?

In the words of Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, the fate of MH370 is “a mystery.” The Boeing 777 took off from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia en route to Beijing, was cruising normally at 35,000 feet… and then disappeared. There was no distress call. The weather was fine. The plane’s last known position, via radar, was just south of Vietnam in the South China Sea — which is where search efforts have been focused so far — but one theory suggests that the plane turned back just after the last radar ping, meaning the plane could be hundreds of miles away in the Strait of Malacca. In the absence of any other information, there is speculation that the plane was target of a terrorist attack. 

For me, the most shocking aspect of the MH370 disaster is that we won’t know what fate befell those 239 souls until we find MH370′s Flight Data Recorder (FDR), aka the black box. Except for that last radar reading, we have absolutely no knowledge of the flight at all until we find that FDR. We have no clue what was said in the cockpit by the captain and first officer — though, seemingly, if something did go wrong, they didn’t even have time to send a mayday message. We have no clue if the plane hit a patch of bad weather, or whether it was hijacked. It really will be one huge mystery until the FDR is recovered — and there’s a good chance, if MH370 did crash into the ocean, that the FDR will never be recovered. In the case of Air France flight AF447, which disappeared off the coast of Brazil, it took two months to locate the wreckage, more than a year to find the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), and the FDR was never found.

So, think about this for a moment. We live in a day and age where GPS (and other radio triangulation methods) can track your smartphone to within a few meters, almost anywhere on Earth. With dedicated, land-based tracking networks, vehicles and devices can be tracked to within a few centimeters. Even in the absence of GPS or radio tracking, inertial guidance (dead reckoning) has been accurate enough since the ’60s to accurately land a nuclear ICBM on the other side of the planet, or put the Apollo mission into space. (Read: Think GPS is cool? IPS will blow your mind.)

And then there’s connectivity. On land, there are networks (both commercial and governmental) that provide data connectivity almost everywhere. Over water is definitely harder, but satellites do provide pretty good coverage — and yes, that particular region of Asia is very well covered by communications satellites. Finally, even if an aircraft is out of satellite/radio coverage, there is absolutely nothing preventing the airplane from transmitting a really juicy low-frequency radio signal that could be picked up thousands of miles away. This is how they communicate with air traffic control, after all.

Why, then, does a plane like the MH370 keep all of its secrets locked up in a black box? Why don’t planes constantly transmit all of their black box data, so that we know their exact location, bearing, altitude, and other important factors, at all times?

The short answer is, there’s no good reason.

Read more: The mystery of flight MH370: How on earth, with all our technology, do we lose a giant plane? | ExtremeTech

Social Media - A Boost For Your Ego Or a Clever Way To Circumvent Your Personal Privacy Rights - by RM

Social Media Serving A Human Need

The popularity of Facebook and other social media comes mainly because the people who developed these programs have successfully exploited one of the human's greatest "need/ addiction/weakness" which is the desire of being recognized and admired for their achievements in every possible form; intelligence, career, quality of life, family, religious devotion, charities, number of friends, travels, professional qualities, business succes, you name it.

As these platforms became more popular its programmers developed large data bases with detailed information about each of their members, which through various methods of cross referencing can come up with quite a precise profile on each of these members.

Obviously these profiles are very much in demand not only by corporations but also by governments.

Is there anything you can do about it?  Not really, unless governments legislate strict rules as to how companies and governments are allowed to make use of your personal data.

Don't expect Governments to do that too eagerly, because it would also tie them down on getting detailed information about you.

All you as a user of social media can do is to be very careful about what kind of information you put in there.

Make sure you "don't give away the store", because corporations and governments will always take advantage of the vulnerabilities of the human mind. That is not an illusion but a fact. 

EU-Digest 

Government Spying: Snowden Says Technology Companies Should Lead on Data Encryption - by Adam Satariano

Edward Snowden, who leaked classified documents revealing the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency, said technology companies need to take a leadership role in improving encryption tools.

“There’s a technical response that needs to occur,” said Snowden, speaking through a video feed to a packed room of more than 3,000 people today at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. Technology companies can add layers of security that make it harder for intelligence agencies to scour for data, and can do it faster than new surveillance-oversight laws can be implemented, he said.

Snowden is now a fugitive in Russia to avoid arrest following last year’s release of the documents, which disclosed how global spy agencies collect vast amounts of data about phone calls and online activities. The revelations frayed U.S. relationships with countries such as Brazil and Germany and set off a global debate about whether the government is overstepping its authority and violating privacy to bolster security.

The leaks from Snowden, a former NSA contractor, showed that the U.S. had been collecting phone records as well as data from companies such as Google Inc. (GOOG), Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. The disclosures made Snowden a hero to some people who want to see government activities reined in, while others, including U.S. President Barack Obama, say his actions compromised efforts to combat terrorism.

Security and privacy have been main themes of South by Southwest this year. Known as the conference that helped catapult Twitter Inc. to popularity, the gathering typically focuses on the discovery of new social-networking companies. Instead, this year’s event has focused more on the drawbacks and consequences of sharing personal information online.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange spoke at the conference on March 8 and said the group would soon release a new trove of classified information. He didn’t disclose the timing or the topic of the material because he said he didn’t want to give the subjects a chance to prepare.

Other speakers, including Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, have discussed the impact of Snowden’s leaks. Schmidt said the material alerted his company to the fact the U.S. government was intercepting data from Google’s servers. Schmidt said the company has since enhanced its encryption and is “pretty sure” the government can’t access the data.

Still, he said the company must comply with court orders for information. Schmidt said there must be a balance between transparency and security, because the government data being disclosed could put lives at risk. Assange and Snowden’s release of classified information have made them “celebrities,” Schmidt said, and may spawn copycat efforts, increasing the risk for harm if the disclosures aren’t done carefully.

Read more: Snowden Says Technology Companies Should Lead on Data Encryption - Bloomberg

NSA created 'European bazaar' to spy on EU citizens, Snowden tells European Parliament - by Loek Essers

"Don't worry EU, we are your friend"

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has turned the European Union into a tapping “bazaar” in order to spy on as many EU citizens as possible, NSA leaker Edward Snowden said.

The NSA has been working with national security agencies in EU member states to get access to as much data of EU citizens as possible, Snowden said in a testimony sent to Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) published Friday March 7.

The European Parliament had invited Snowden to provide testimony for an inquiry into the electronic mass surveillance of EU citizens. That surveillance, often instigated by the NSA but carried out with help of EU member states, is quite extensive, he wrote.

The NSA has been pressuring EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance, according to Snowden. This is done through NSA’s Foreign Affairs Division (FAD), he said, adding that lawyers from the NSA and GCHQ work very hard “to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers,” he said.

The deals between the NSA and foreign partners are set up in such a way as to provide the NSA with a means of monitoring a partner’s citizens without informing the partner, and to provide the partner with a means of plausible deniability, he said.

“The result is a European bazaar, where an EU member state like Denmark may give the NSA access to a tapping center on the (unenforceable) condition that NSA doesn’t search it for Danes, and Germany may give the NSA access to another on the condition that it doesn't search for Germans. Yet the two tapping sites may be two points on the same cable, so the NSA simply captures the communications of the German citizens as they transit Denmark, and the Danish citizens as they transit Germany, all the while considering it entirely in accordance with their agreements,” Snowden said.

Snowden, who said that he’s still seeking asylum in the EU, also provided solutions to solve the mass surveillance problem.

It is easy to make mass surveillance more expensive through changes in technical standards, he said. “Pervasive, end-to-end encryption can quickly make indiscriminate surveillance impossible on a cost effective basis,” he said, adding that the result is that governments are likely to fall back to traditional, targeted surveillance founded upon an individualized suspicion.

The European Parliament is set to vote on a draft resolution on Wednesday March 12 that seeks to keep data protection out of EU-U.S. trade talks. The MEPs want the EU to suspend two deals with the U.S., one on exchanging banking data and the other on the Safe Harbor privacy principles for U.S. firms holding European data, as, they say, the fight against terrorism can never justify secret and illegal mass surveillance.

The MEPs will also vote on a proposal for stronger safeguards for data transfers to non-EU countries.

Wednesday’s vote could result in the updating of 19-year-old data-protection laws. Under MEPs’ amendments, companies breaking the rules would face fines of up to €100 million (about $139 million), or up to 5 percent of their annual worldwide turnover, whichever is greater, according to the Parliament

Read more: NSA created 'European bazaar' to spy on EU citizens, Snowden tells European Parliament | PCWorld

Netherlands clamps down on marijuana as the US liberalizes it - by Mike Corder

"Weed Pass" needed to get into a Dutch coffee shop"

A young man at a bus stop hisses at a passerby: "What you looking for ... marijuana?" It's a scene of street peddling that the Netherlands hoped to stamp out in the 1970s when it launched a policy of tolerating "coffee shops" where people could buy and smoke pot freely.

But Maastricht's street dealers are back, local residents complain. And the reason is a crackdown on coffee shops triggered by another problem: Pot tourists who crossed the border to visit the cafés and made a nuisance of themselves by snarling traffic, dumping litter and even urinating in the streets.This exchange of one drug problem for another has become a headache for Maastricht - and may give reason for pause in the U.S. states of Washington and Colorado that recently allowed the sale of marijuana for the first time. The Netherlands, the world pioneer in pot liberalization, has recently taken a harder line toward marijuana, with mixed results seen particularly in border towns such as Maastricht.

The central government clampdown has involved barring people who live outside the Netherlands from coffee shops, and shuttering shops that are deemed to be too close to schools. There was even a short-lived policy that said smokers had to apply for a "Weed Pass" to get into a coffee shop. The new rules were rolled out across the country between the middle of 2012 and the beginning of last year.

Amsterdam, with about 200 licensed coffee shops, one-third of the nationwide total, still lets foreigners visit them, although it is closing coffee shops that are near schools.

One city that has embraced the crackdown wholeheartedly is Maastricht, in the southern province of Limburg close to the Dutch borders with Belgium and Germany.

Its mayor, Onno Hoes, says he enforced the legislation to halt a daily influx of thousands of foreigners who crossed the borders to stock up on pot at its 14 coffee shops. That effort to end so-called "drug tourism" has been successful, local residents say, but the flip side has been a rise in street dealers.

Read more: Netherlands clamps down on marijuana

Ukraine: Obama and Putin Playing Chess With New Cold War At Stake - by RM

It's amazing to hear US Senator McCaine calling for force to solve the Ukraine crises while President Obama and President Putin are playing a complicated game of chess in trying  to solve the problem without militarily involvement.

How can President Obama and his European allies counter Putin's opening gambit of this chess game? And how can the United States and the EU roll back what Putin has pulled off so far?

The US Obama Administration and the EU can-not and must-not confront Russia militarily -- it would be suicide in today's nuclear age.

At this point it looks like actions from the West against Russia, over the long term, will come in a form where it will hurt Russia and President Putin's popularity at home the most - economics.

But not everyone agrees that this scenario is the best course of action - certainly not the Republicans in the US, or for that matter, the conservative right-wingers in Britain.

US Republican Sen. John McCain - presently one of the the least popular senators in the US of those surveyed by the Public Policy Polling, with low marks from members of his own party, independents and Democrats, is among the Republican's loudest critics of the Obama Administration foreign policy.

He directly blamed President Obama's "incompetent" foreign policy for inviting the crisis in Ukraine and  recently told a pro-Israel group that the president has repeatedly failed to demonstrate American strength in the face of adversaries.

McCain was not the only Republican to criticize the Administration's handling of the crisis.Many other GOP critics just about tripped over each others feet to attack Obama.

On Sunday March 2, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., even went as far as to tell CNN in an interview, "we have a weak and indecisive president whom invites aggression.".

As an independent congressman remarked afterwards, "this kind of rhetoric by the Republicans can basically be qualified as that of five year old's playing with marbles and one suddenly throwing a tantrum."

To put some perspective as to the causes of what is happening in Ukraine, and why Obama and Putin are now having to negotiate and play a game of chess,  requires us to turn back the clock to when the Soviet Union (USSR) formally ceased to exist on 26 December 1991. 

From that date onward,  the United States has relentlessly pursued a strategy of encircling Russia, just as it has with other perceived enemies like China and Iran.

At the same time, the US also increased its military capability in Europe after it brought an additional 12 countries from central Europe, all of them formerly allied with Moscow, into the already existing NATO alliance. This in fact has now brought US military power and might directly on Russia’s borders.

Apart from facing the issue of encirclement President Putin probably also had a few other sleepless nights after he compared US military spending, which is 40% of the worlds total military spending,  to that of his own country, which is only 5.5% of the total global military spending.

Let's face it and be realistic, Russia is now basically between "a rock and a hard place" and  that is not a good place for them or anyone else to be in.

Obviously there are no angels on either side -  but for this issue is to be resolved everyone has to take a step back, look at the bigger picture, calm down and reach a negotiated diplomatic solution.

EU-Digest