Internet: The Cloud -No, your data isn't secure in the cloud - by Lucas Mearian

While online data storage services claim your data is encrypted, there are no guarantees. With recent revelations that the federal government taps into the files of Internet search engines, email and cloud service providers, any myth about data "privacy" on the Internet has been busted.

Experts say there's simply no way to ever be completely sure your data will remain secure once you've moved it to the cloud.

"You have no way of knowing. You can't trust anybody. Everybody is lying to you," said security expert Bruce Schneier. "How do you know which platform to trust? They could even be lying because the U.S. government has forced them to."

While providers of email, chat, social network and cloud services often claim -- even in their service agreements -- that the data they store is encrypted and private, most often they -- not you -- are the ones who hold the keys. That means a rogue employee or any government "legally" requesting encryption keys can decrypt and see your data.

Even when service providers say only customers can generate and maintain their own encryption keys, Schneier said there's no way to be sure others won't be able to gain access.

For example, Apple's SMS/MMS-like communications platform, iMessage, claims both voice and text are encrypted and can't be heard or seen by third parties. But because the product isn't open source, "there's no way for us to know how it works," said Dan Auerbach, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "It seems because of the way it works on functionality, they do have a way to access it. The same goes for iCloud."

Note EU-Digest: The Cloud services are also offered to European Internet users. Given that  the storage data banks of  Google, and Apple for Cloud and other similar systems are kept in the US by American companies, and consequently  fall under US jurisdiction, it probably would not be a good idea for EU citizens and businesses to store sensitive material on these data bank services.

Read more: No, your data isn't secure in the cloud | Computerworld

The Netherlands: Dutch jihadi bride: 'Is she a victim or a suspect?' - by Harriet Alexander, and Anna Mees

She was a blonde-haired, blue eyed Catholic girl whose family was a pillar of the Dutch town of Maastricht. He was a smiling, bicycle-riding Dutch former soldier - a man considered such an asset to his country he was encouraged to try out for their elite special forces.

And yet the marriage of Sterlina Petalo and Omar Yilmaz was, for their families, anything but a cause for celebration.

Yilmaz, 26, was one of the most high-profile Europeans to become a jihadi, travelling to Syria to live in the Islamic State and fight on behalf of the extremists. He gloried in the teenage fantasy of war - posting a series of Instagram photos of himself pouting at the camera on a motorbike, amid bombed-out buildings in his combat fatigues, AK47 slung nonchalantly over his shoulder. Miss Petalo was a recent convert to Islam, who fell in love with Yilmaz after seeing him on television, picturing him as a Robin Hood figure.

Last week their story took a remarkable twist when it was revealed that Miss Petalo had in fact returned to her hometown - after her mother travelled to the Turkish-Syrian border to bring the 19-year-old home from the jihadist-held city of Raqqa.

“Sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” said her mother, Monique Verbert. “She rang me and said 'Take me home.’ But she could not leave Raqqa without help.”

The pair arrived back in the Netherlands on Wednesday, said Annemarie Kemp, a spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office. Clad in a niqqab, with only her eyes showing, the teenager - who has changed her name to Aicha - was photographed being driven through the town on her way to custody.

“Upon her arrival, Aicha was detained at once on suspicion of crimes threatening state security,” said Ms Kemp.

Miss Petalo is being held in a police cell - the prosecutor, Roger Bos, ruled on Friday that she should be detained for questioning for three more days. Mrs Verbert, 49, an administrator for BP, argued that her daughter’s flight to Syria was little more than teenage infatuation. Today Monday November 24 the court will decide whether to press charges.

Note EU-Digest: Every civilized human being should condemn the violence and terror IS is using to instill fear and terror in the areas where they operate. In that same breath one should also condemn social media and the International Press for publicizing these horrific scenes of barbarism, including the decapitation of body parts. This is pure commercially based sensationalism, which can only lead to popularizing these horrific acts in the minds of susceptible young people - case in point Ms Petalo who acted upon her teenage fantasy of a "glorified" war and followed this "insanely obsessed man" into certain disaster. 

Kudos to her mother for taking the proper action to bring her daughter back to reality and safety.   
 Read more: Dutch jihadi bride: 'Is she a victim or a suspect?' - Telegraph

Religious cults:: Mormon founder Joseph Smith wed 40 wives - by Daniel Burke

The founder of the Mormon church, Joseph Smith, wed as many as 40 wives, including some who were already married and one as young as 14 years old, the church acknowledged in a surprising new essay.

Smith's marital history had been the subject of frequent historical debate, but until recently Mormon leaders had taken pains to present its founding prophet as happily married to one woman. Now, the church says, "careful estimates put the number between 30 and 40."

The church, officially called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, disavowed plural marriage in 1890 under pressure from the U.S. government, which had imprisoned polygamists and seized their assets.

According to the church's essay, Smith had not wanted to take multiple wives, but relented after an angel appeared to him three times between 1834 and 1842. On the angel's last visit, the church said, "the angel came with a drawn sword, threatening Joseph with destruction unless he went forward and obeyed the commandment fully."

Readd more: Church: Mormon founder Joseph Smith wed 40 wives - CNN.com

Refugees: U.N. says 13.6 million displaced by wars in Iraq and Syria

About 13.6 million people, equivalent to the population of London, have been displaced by conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and many are without food or shelter as winter starts, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Tuesday.

Amin Awad, UNHCR's director for the Middle East and North Africa, said the world was becoming numb to the refugees' needs.

"Now when we talk about a million people displaced over two months, or 500,000 overnight, the world is just not responding," he told reporters in Geneva.

The 13.6 million include 7.2 million displaced within Syria - an increase from a long-held U.N. estimate of 6.5 million - as well as 3.3 million Syrian refugees abroad.

Read more: U.N. says 13.6 million displaced by wars in Iraq and Syria - Chicago Tribune

Global Economy: European economic figures far more accurate than those from the US - by RM

Transparency key to success Atlantic Alliance

When listening to or reading US financial reports there are some remarkably disturbing facts popping up.

One of these is the fact that it was actually the US which caused the 2007/2008 financial crash but this has been completely swept under the mat by the US.

Keep in mind though that all the media outlets in the US, except very few, which are "not for profit organizations" (who mainly get their income from public/private donations and grants) are mostly profit based multi-national corporations. This should immediately raise a red flag as to the impartiality and balance of the news/financial reports they release.

Possibly, this is also the reason that at the same time there is this constant barrage of attacks coming from those same US media circles bashing and critizicing the EU/ECB for not adopting the US QE financial policies (printing more money and pumping this" monopoly money" into the marketplace) in order to get the EU economy going again.

As to the US QE policies,  many economists believe this could eventually be a recipe for future US economic disaster.

Also, looking at some of the official figures put out by the US Government and reading between the lines, the attentive reader will quickly find a lot of nebulous statistics on a variety of issues and items, including employment, trade, debt, infrastructure, military and security expenditures.

In this volatile scenario Wall Street is a special "Chapter" by itself.  Some critics call Wall Street a financial "fairyland" where words and phrases as versatility, headwinds, optimize, boldness, performance, choices, transparency, bubbles, wealth, growth, state of the art, profitable, opportunity are used in different ways as shares go up and down and traders turn out the big winners in dividing up the spoils.

Obviously without any doubt there are also "forces" in Europe ( Britain) who are following and would love to have the EU adapt this "flawed" US financial model.

Fortunately, and maybe unfortunately for some,  the EU is a Union of 28 countries with 28 central banks.  Of these 28 countries 18 belong to the so called European Economic Zone (Eurozone) that have adopted the euro (€) as their common currency.and sole legal tender.

The ECB is the central bank for the euro and administers monetary policy for the whole Eurozone.

Any report or statistic on or about the state of the EU economy issued by the ECB  is scrutinized very carefully by all 18 members of the ECB before they become public.Canada which is a Federated country also applies similar rules.

Official EU financial reports and statement are therefore without any doubt far  more accurate and reliable than those coming from US government agencies.

Isn't it time for the EU to get to the point with our friends across the other side of the pond on this issue? And what better venue to do it than during the ongoing EU-US trade negotiations?

EU-Digest

The Wall: 25 Years After Berlin, Do We Still Need Walls? - by Peter Schurman

The Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago this week. People on both sides filled the streets in celebration, cheered on by virtually everyone around the world. For all of us who were alive then, it remains one of the most hopeful historical moments we've ever experienced.

Now that 25 years have passed, it's an appropriate time to take stock. Have we seized our historic opportunity to create, at last, a more peaceful world?

Sadly, we have not:

• By Wikipedia's count, the US has engaged in 10 wars since then, and we now live in a surveillance state the East German secret police would have envied.

• Russia has reasserted regional military dominance, annexing Crimea, threatening other parts of Ukraine, and re-conquering Chechnya.

• The Middle East is a boiling cauldron of warfare, much of it touched off by the American invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003.

• China is building a potentially formidable Navy and picking fights with its neighbors.

How can it be that we've made so little progress, following such a breakthrough?

As global citizens, we largely left the job of converting the end of the Cold War into a lasting peace in the hands of our national governments.

We had little alternative at first: in 1989, the Internet had not yet been
widely adopted, so people worldwide had no way to band together at scale.

The arrival of the Internet has upended virtually every major system on earth, revolutionizing our economy and breathing new life into grassroots politics.

Yet our governance structures remain stubbornly anachronistic. And they're failing us, not only on the great question of war or peace, but also on many other front-burner issues today, including global warming, economic inequality, disease response, immigration, human trafficking, and financial crimes.

Although we seldom consider it, one key factor that ties all these failures together is our fragmented system of nation-states, separated by militarized borders.

Almere-Digest Note: After the wall went down in Berlin many new walls went up. There is now a wall built by Israel which will eventually stretch for 750 km's between Palestine and Israel. There is also a new wall between the US and Mexico and China has built an electronic wall around China to curb what the Chinese citizens can see on the Internet .   

Read more: 25 Years After Berlin, Do We Still Need Walls? | Peter Schurman

EU-US Trade Negotiations: Europe faces weapons of legal destruction in USA trade talks - by Kevin Albertson

Efforts to build a more effective trading regime between Europe and the USA can reasonably be called positive, both for growth and the ease of doing business. Currently, however, negotiations include proposals which threaten to distort the way governments regulate companies and which might cost the taxpayer dearly.

The sticking point for many is the inclusion in the TTIP negotiations of the contentious Investor to State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision.

ISDS gives international investors the right to bring a case for damages against the local government if they (the investors) feel government policy has harmed their interests. A supposed independent international tribunal hears such claims. In other words, under ISDS, multinational corporations have the right effectively to sue a sovereign state, demanding the state (that is, the taxpayer) compensates them for enacting domestic policy if it reduces profitability below that which was expected.

There are clear potential conflicts of interest. The responsibility of the corporate sector is to maximise profits, while the responsibility of government is to promote competition which might reduce corporate profits; also governments must promote the public good – which is likely in some instances to affect corporate profits, for example in controlling pollution or enforcing health and safety legislation. Establishing a means by which disagreements might be resolved is, therefore, of some importance. However, to this end, the ISDS is not an efficient means – it is apparently skewed.

ISDS arguably weakens the rule of law, forces the public to subsidise the risk of multi-national investment abroad, and effectively encourages outsourcing.

Read more: Europe faces weapons of legal destruction in USA trade talks