The European Medicines Agency (EMA), the EU regulatory body in charge of approving COVID-19 vaccines, said today it was the victim of a cyber-attack. From a report: In a short two-paragraph statement posted on its website today, the agency discloses the security breach but said it couldn't disclose any details about the intrusion due to an ongoing investigation. EMA is currently in the process of reviewing applications for two COVID-19 vaccines, one from US pharma giant Moderna, and a second developed in a collaboration between BioNTech and Pfizer. An EMA spokesperson did not return a request for comment seeking information if the attack targeted its vaccine approval process or if it was a financially-motivated attack like ransomware. Nonetheless, in a follow-up statement released on its own website, BioNTech said that "some documents relating to the regulatory submission for Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine candidate, BNT162b2, which has been stored on an EMA server, had been unlawfully accessed" during the attack, confirming that COVID-19 research was most likely the target of the attack.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Germany, France, Spain and ten other EU countries have joined forces to invest in processors and semiconductor technologies, key to internet-connected devices and data processing, in a push to catch up with the United States and Asia. Europe's share of the 440-billion-euro ($533 billion) global semiconductor market is around 10%, with the EU currently relying on chips made abroad. The 13 countries said they would work together to bolster Europe's electronics and embedded systems value chain. The group will reach out to companies to form industrial alliances for research and investment into designing and making processors and look into funding for such projects. It will also come up with a European-wide scheme known as an Important Project of Common European Interest which allows for funding under looser EU state aid rules. The group will seek to set up common standards and certification for electronics. The signatories include Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia.

Internet firms such as Google, Amazon.com and travel websites should explain how they rank search results on their platforms, according to European Union guidelines published Monday that could help businesses to increase their online visibility. From a report: The guidelines "set the standard for algorithmic ranking transparency," Margrethe Vestager, the EU's digital chief, said in a statement on the European Commission website. Online platforms should identify what factors their algorithms use when they decide to prioritize some results and declare when a prominent listing is paid for, according to the guidelines.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The coronavirus pandemic has not only upended social life across Europe but dramatically changed the way people work. With ever more people working from home -- roughly a third of all employees within the bloc according to the Associated Press (AP) -- and needing to be constantly reachable, the boundaries between work and private life have become increasingly hazy. On Wednesday, EU lawmakers passed a non-binding resolution arguing that individuals have a fundamental "right to disconnect." The European Parliament Employment Committee voted 31-to-6, with 18 abstentions, in favor of allowing people to take time off and urged the European Commission to create rules that "catch up with the new reality" of work, according to Alex Agius Saliba, the Maltese Socialist politician who spearheaded the resolution.

"After months of teleworking, many workers are now suffering from negative side effects such as isolation, fatigue, depression, burnout, muscular or eye illnesses," said Saliba, adding: "The pressure to always be reachable, always available, is mounting, resulting in unpaid overtime and burnout." The committee measure must now be approved by the full chamber before it can be submitted to the Commission and EU member state governments for a vote. Lawmakers in favor of the resolution say the need for employees to be available via smartphone or e-mail around the clock is detrimental to mental health and well-being and that workers should be allowed to be offline without suffering employer retribution as a result.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Privacy concerns in Europe have led to some of the world's toughest restrictions on companies like Facebook and Google and the ways they monitor people online. The crackdown has been widely popular, but the regulatory push is now entangled in the global fight against child exploitation, setting off a fierce debate about how far internet companies should be allowed to go when collecting evidence on their platforms of possible crimes against minors. A rule scheduled to take effect on Dec. 20 would inhibit the monitoring of email, messaging apps and other digital services in the European Union. It would also restrict the use of software that scans for child sexual abuse imagery and so-called grooming by online predators. The practice would be banned without a court order. European officials have spent the past several weeks trying to negotiate a deal allowing the detection to continue. But some privacy groups and lawmakers argue that while the criminal activity is abhorrent, scanning for it in personal communications risks violating the privacy rights of Europeans.

"Every time things like these unbelievable crimes are happening, or there is a terrorist attack, it's very easy to say we have to be strong and we have to restrict rights," said Birgit Sippel, a German member of the European Parliament. "We have to be very careful." Of the more than 52 million photos, videos and other materials related to online child sexual abuse reported between January and September this year, over 2.3 million came from the European Union, according to the U.S. federal clearinghouse for the imagery. If the regulation took effect, the rate of reports from Europe would drop precipitously, because automated scanning is responsible for nearly all of them. Photo- and video-scanning software uses algorithms to compare users' content with previously identified abuse imagery. Other software targeted at grooming searches for key words and phrases known to be used by predators. Facebook, the most prolific reporter of child sexual abuse imagery worldwide, said it would stop proactive scanning entirely in the E.U. if the regulation took effect. In an email, Antigone Davis, Facebook's global head of safety, said the company was "concerned that the new rules as written today would limit our ability to prevent, detect and respond to harm," but said it was "committed to complying with the updated privacy laws."

According to Bloomberg, Google is set to win conditional European Union approval for its $2.1 billion takeover of Fitbit this month. From the report: The deal could be approved as soon as next week after national competition authorities give their opinion, said the people who asked not to be named because the procedure isn't public. The EU usually consults the so-called advisory committee on mergers days before it issues approval. Google announced its plans to buy Fitbit in November 2019, noting that it would use the smartwatch maker to improve its lagging hardware business. Clearing regulatory obstacles for the deal come in a tough climate when the company is facing mounting global scrutiny of big technology companies and potentially restrictive regulation in the EU and other regions. While Google has agreed to concessions to allay EU antitrust concerns about its move into wearable fitness devices, its final pledge to European authorities hasn't been disclosed.

Greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union have been reduced by 24% compared to 1990 levels, according to the bloc's annual climate report, but the EU said Monday it still needs to intensify efforts to keep to its target of making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by mid-century. The Associated Press reports: The EU's executive arm said Monday that emissions in the 27-nation bloc have decreased by 3.7% in 2019 compared to the previous year, while gross domestic product rose 1.5% over the same period. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the commission expects "an unprecedented fall in emissions" in 2020, along the lines of 8%. "However, as experienced in the past, a swift economic recovery may lead to a strong and rapid rebound in emissions, unless policy gears its stimulus measures toward the green transition," the commission wrote in the report.

In its report, the commission said emissions covered by the Emissions Trading System -- a cap-and-trade scheme for industries to buy carbon credits covering about 40% of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions -- saw the biggest drop in 2019, falling by 9.1%, or about 152 million tons carbon dioxide equivalent. [...] To accelerate the transition, the commission has also proposed that member states raise their climate ambitions above the existing target of a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030, proposing to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% compared to 1990 levels. Leaders discussed the offer last month but could not immediately agree on an updated goal as reducing emissions by another 30% within the next decade poses a big challenge to many EU countries. They will try to find a consensus during a December summit ahead of the adoption of the first-ever European climate law.

European Union lawmakers are considering whether current rules aimed at limiting the practice of geoblocking across the bloc should be extended to cover access to streaming audio-visual content. From a report: Access to services like Netflix tends to be gated to individual EU Member States, meaning Europeans can be barred from accessing libraries of content offered elsewhere in the region. So if you're trying to use your Netflix subscription to access the service after moving to another Member State, or want to access inventory offered by Netflix elsewhere in Europe, the answer is typically a big fat no, as we've reported before. This undermines the core concept of the EU's Single Market (and the Digital Single Market -- aka the frictionless ecommerce end-goal which rules such as those limiting geoblocking aim to deliver). The Commission is alive to ongoing issues around online access to audio-visual content. In a review of the two-year-old Geo-blocking Regulation published today, it says it will kick off discussions with the audiovisual sector on ways to improve consumer access to this type of copyrighted content across the bloc.

In a landmark move, the European Parliament voted today to support consumers' Right to Repair. The resolution was adopted with 395 in favor and just 94 against, with 207 abstentions. iFixit reports: "By adopting this report, the European Parliament sent a clear message: harmonized mandatory labelling indicating durability and tackling premature obsolescence at EU level are the way forward," said Rapporteur David Cormand, MEP from France. The vote calls for the EU Commission to "develop and introduce mandatory labelling, to provide clear, immediately visible and easy-to-understand information to consumers on the estimated lifetime and reparability of a product at the time of purchase."

The EU motion calls for a repair score, similar to the scores that iFixit has been assigning to gadgets for the past fifteen years. According to a recent EU survey, 77% of EU citizens would rather repair their devices than replace them; 79% think that manufacturers should be legally obliged to facilitate the repair of digital devices or the replacement of their individual parts. Matthias Huisken, Director of Advocacy for iFixit Europe, said "This is a huge win for consumers across Europe. This vote will set in motion a wave of new repair-friendly policies, from repair scores at retail to product longevity disclosures."

thegreatbob writes: Looks like the main additions over the FAA's requirements are some additional pilot training requirements. The actual EASA statement can be found here. Confirms what the available information had been pointing to: the plane flies tolerably without its Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), but does not meet certification criteria. [The MCAS was a software system installed on the Max by Boeing to compensate for the Max having larger engines than its predecessors in the 737 family of airliners. Those larger engines changed the way the aeroplane responded to its controls, requiring a software system to keep it within certifiable limits.] The EU Aviation Safety Agency made the announcement after confirming the airliner will return to European skies in January 2021.

Patrick Ky, chief of EASA, said in a statement: "EASA's review of the 737 MAX began with the MCAS but went far beyond. We took a decision early on to review the entire flight control system and gradually broadened our assessment to include all aspects of design which could influence how the flight controls operated. This led, for example, to a deeper study of the wiring installation, which resulted in a change that is now also mandated in the Proposed Airworthiness Directive."

Ky added: "We also pushed the aircraft to its limits during flight tests, assessed the behavior of the aircraft in failure scenarios, and could confirm that the aircraft is stable and has no tendency to pitch-up even without the MCAS." A spokesperson for EASA clarified that the Max's MCAS "is necessary to meet the safety regulation and obtain the necessary safety margins. However, when it is lost (failed and inoperative), an averagely skilled and trained crew is still able to safely fly and land the airplane."

The European Union will seek to overhaul the system for key patents such as those that have fueled legal battles between car makers and technology companies, the EU's technology chief said Wednesday. From a report: Margrethe Vestager promised that regulators will weigh reforms to improve the framework in place for so-called standard-essential patents and work on industry-led initiatives "to reduce frictions and litigation." The EU move could help avoid repeats of lengthy legal battles such as Nokia Oyj's effort to get Daimler AG to pay more for mobile technology used in cars. While Daimler wants the underlying patents be licensed to its various component suppliers, Nokia wants to charge per car at a much higher price. Companies often seek court help to determine whether certain technology patents are valid and how much should be paid for licensing technology seen as essential for an industry. The EU has frequently been asked to weigh in on how much is fair for key technology. "There's quite a lot of litigation back and forth and in the short-term we would want to push for industry to figure out how to set up foras to enable discussions and mediation so that maybe to a bigger degree it can be solved out of court," Vestager said. The current system to set up so-called standard essential patents deemed key to certain technology "is not very transparent," she said. "This is why we will consider a very close consultation with anyone involved whether we should set up a third-party essential 'reality check' so someone outside of your business" can rule on whether a patent is really important or not.

The European Union could produce enough batteries by 2025 to power its fast-growing fleet of electric vehicles without relying on imported cells, European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic said on Tuesday. Reuters reports: As part of its plan to become climate neutral by 2050, the EU wants to boost local production of the building blocks for green industries -- including hydrogen fuel to make low-carbon steel and batteries to power clean vehicles. "I am confident that by 2025, the EU will be able to produce enough battery cells to meet the needs of the European automotive industry, and even to build our export capacity," Sefcovic told the online European Conference on Batteries. Today, China hosts roughly 80% of the world's lithium-ion cell production, but Europe's capacity is set to expand fast.

Europe has 15 large-scale battery cell factories under construction, including Swedish company Northvolt's plants in Sweden and Germany, Chinese battery maker CATL's German facility, and South Korean firm SK Innovation's second plant in Hungary. Sefcovic said by 2025 planned European facilities would produce enough cells to power at least 6 million electric vehicles.

The capacity of the EU's offshore windfarms in the North Sea, the Baltic, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea will be increased by 250% under a draft plan drawn up by the European commission. The Guardian reports: The total energy generating capacity in Europe's seas stands at 23 gigawatts (GW), from 5,047 grid-connected wind turbines across 12 countries, including the UK. Under a European commission strategy, the 27 EU member states alone would achieve a capacity of 60GW by 2030 and 300GW by 2050, with Germany set to hugely increase its investment in the sector.

According to the leaked paper, the commission "estimates that an installed capacity of 300GW of offshore wind [and around 60GW of ocean energies] by 2050 would be needed in the integrated, greener and climate neutral energy system of 2050." The commission writes: "This is feasible for a sector where Europe has gained unrivalled technological, scientific and industrial experience and where strong capacity exists already across the supply chain, from manufacturing to shipping and installation. Nonetheless, it is a very challenging horizon. It means that offshore renewable energy capacity should be multiplied by 25 times by 2050. The investment needed is estimated up to 789 billion pounds."

The UK, which left the EU in January, has the largest amount of offshore wind capacity in Europe, with 45% of all installations. Germany is second with 34%, followed by Denmark (8%), Belgium (7%) and the Netherlands (5%). Over the summer, the German government said it would also increase its current 7.5GW of capacity to 20GW by 2030, with a target of 40GW by 2040. But the European commission has called for a more "resolute" approach across the bloc. According to a leak of the strategy obtained by the Euractiv news website, the "very challenging" target for new windfarms would come with an expected price tag of 789 billion pounds, creating 62,000 jobs in the offshore wind industry.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: According to Bloomberg, EQT is planning an IPO for German Linux and enterprise software company SUSE. EQT is a Swedish-based private equity firm with 50 billion euros in raised capital. SUSE is the leading European Union (EU) Linux distributor. Over the years, SUSE has changed owners several times. First, it was acquired by Novell in 2004. Then, Attachmate, with some Microsoft funding, bought Novell and SUSE in 2010. This was followed in 2014 when Micro Focus purchased Attachmate and SUSE was spun off as an independent division. Then, EQT purchased SUSE from Micro Focus for $2.5 billion in March 2019. With an IPO of approximately $6 billion, EQT would do very well for itself in very little time.

Bloomberg states that the IPO talks are in a very preliminary stage. Nothing may yet come of these conversations. As for SUSE, a company representative said, "As a company, we are constantly exploring ways to grow. But as a matter of corporate policy, we do not comment on rumor or speculation in the market."

dcblogs writes: Japan's Fugaku ARM-based supercomputer is the world's most powerful in the latest Top500 list, setting a world record of 442 petaflops. But this was otherwise an unremarkable year for supercomputers, with a "flattening performance curve," said Jack Dongarra, one of the academics behind the twice-a-year ranking and director of the Innovative Computing Laboratory at the University of Tennessee. This is a result of Moore's Law slowing down as well as a slowdown in the replacement of older systems, he said. But the U.S. is set to deliver an exascale system -- 1,000 petaflops -- next year and China as well. Meanwhile, the EU has a 550 petaflop system in development in Finland. "On the Top500 list, the second-ranked system was IBM Power Systems at nearly 149 petaflops using its Power9 CPUs and Nvidia Tesla GPUs. It is at the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee," adds TechTarget.

"Third place went to Sierra supercomputer, which also uses Power9 and Nvidia GPUs, at about 95 petaflops. It is at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif."

"[I]n the coming weeks," Google will show a new blanket setting to "turn off smart features" which will disable features like Smart Compose, Smart Reply, in apps like Gmail; the second half of the same prompt will disable whether additional Google products -- like Maps or Assistant, for example -- are allowed to be personalized based on data from Gmail, Meet, and Chat. Gizmodo reports: Google writes in its blog post about the new-ish settings that humans are not looking at your emails to enable smart features, and Google ads are "not based on your personal data in Gmail," something CEO Sundar Pichai has likewise said time and again. Google claims to have stopped that practice in 2017, although the following year the Wall Street Journal reported that third-party app developers had freely perused inboxes with little oversight. (When asked whether this is still a problem, the spokesperson pointed us to Google's 2018 effort to tighten security.)

A Google spokesperson emphasized that the company only uses email contents for security purposes like filtering spam and phishing attempts. These personalization changes aren't so much about tightening security as they are another informed consent defense which Google can use to repel the current regulatory siege being waged against it by lawmakers. [...] Inquiries in the U.S. and EU have found that Google's privacy settings have historically presented the appearance of privacy, rather than privacy itself. [...] So this is nice, and also Google's announcement reads as a letter to regulators. "This new setting is designed to reduce the work of understanding and managing [a choice over how data is processed], in view of what we've learned from user experience research and regulators' emphasis on comprehensible, actionable user choices over data."

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has apologised to Europe's industry chief Thierry Breton over a leaked internal document proposing ways to counter the EU's tough new rules for technology companies. From a report: Pichai and Breton exchanged views in a video-conference call late on Thursday, the third this year, according to a statement from the European Commission. "The Internet cannot remain a 'Wild West': we need clear and transparent rules, a predictable environment and balanced rights and obligations," Breton told Pichai. The call came after a Google internal document outlined a 60-day strategy to counter the European Union's push for the new rules by getting U.S. allies to push back against Breton. The call was initiated by Google before the document was leaked. Breton brought up the leaked document and showed it to Pichai during the call and said that there was no need to use old century tactics and to play one unit at the Commission against another, a person familiar with the call said.

European Union regulators have filed antitrust charges against Amazon, accusing the e-commerce giant of using data to gain an unfair advantage over merchants using its platform. From a report: The EU's executive commission, the bloc's top antitrust enforcer, said Tuesday that the charges have been sent to the company. The commission said it takes issue with Amazon's systematic use of non-public business data to avoid "the normal risks of competition and to leverage its dominance" for e-commerce services in France and Germany, the company's two biggest markets in the EU. The EU started looking into Amazon in 2018 and has been focusing on its dual role as a marketplace and retailer. In addition to selling its own products, the U.S. company allows third-party retailers to sell their own goods through its site. Last year, more than half of the items sold on Amazon worldwide were from these outside merchants. Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager, the EU commissioner in charge of competition, said it's not a problem that Amazon is a successful business but "our concern is very specific business conduct which appears to distort genuine competition." Amazon faces a possible fine of up to 10% of its annual worldwide revenue, which could amount to billions of dollars. The company rejected the accusations.

The former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, is finalizing a plan to become a citizen of the island of Cyprus, Recode has learned, becoming one of the highest-profile Americans to take advantage of one of the world's most controversial "passport-for-sale" programs. From the report: Schmidt, one of America's wealthiest people, and his family have won approval to become citizens of the Mediterranean nation, according to a previously unreported notice in a Cypriot publication in October. While it is not clear why exactly Schmidt has pursued this foreign citizenship, the new passport gives him the ability to travel to the European Union, along with a potentially favorable personal tax regime. The move is a window into how the world's billionaires can maximize their freedoms and finances by relying on the permissive laws of countries where they do not live.

The Cyprus program is one of about a half-dozen programs in the world where foreigners can effectively purchase citizenship rights, skirting residency requirements or lengthy lines by making a payment or an investment in the host country. They have become the latest way for billionaires around the world to go "borderless" and take advantage of foreign countries' laws, moving themselves offshore just like they might move their assets offshore, a phenomenon documented by the journalist Oliver Bullough in the recent book Moneyland. [...] The way the program works is that once a foreigner lays down between $2 million and $3 million worth of investment in Cyprus, typically through a real estate purchase, they can apply to what is technically called the "Citizenship by Investment" program. After the government reviews the applicant's background, conducts a security check, and hosts a visit from the foreigner, their application can be approved.

While the RIAA has objected to a tool for downloading online videos, EFF senior activist Elliot Harmon responds with this question. "Who died and put them in charge of YouTube?"

He asks the question in a new video "explainer" on the controversy, and argues in a new piece at EFF.org that the youtube-dl tool "doesn't infringe on any RIAA copyrights." RIAA's argument relies on a different section of the DMCA, Section 1201. DMCA 1201 says that it's illegal to bypass a digital lock in order to access or modify a copyrighted work. Copyright holders have argued that it's a violation of DMCA 1201 to bypass DRM even if you're doing it for completely lawful purposes; for example, if you're downloading a video on YouTube for the purpose of using it in a way that's protected by fair use. (And thanks to the way that copyright law has been globalized via trade agreements, similar laws exist in many other jurisdictions too.) RIAA argues that since youtube-dl could be used to download music owned by RIAA-member labels, no one should be able to use the tool, even for completely lawful purposes.

This is an egregious abuse of the notice-and-takedown system, which is intended to resolve disputes over allegedly infringing material online. Again, youtube-dl doesn't use RIAA-member labels' music in any way. The makers of youtube-dl simply shared information with the public about how to perform a certain task — one with many completely lawful applications.
Harmon wants to hear from people using youtube-dl for lawful purposes. And he also links to an earlier EFF piece arguing that DMCA 1201 "is incredibly broad, apparently allowing rightsholders to legally harass any 'trafficker' in code that lets users re-take control of their devices from DRM locks..."

And EFF's concern over DMCA 1201 has been ongoing: DMCA 1201 has been loaded with terrible implications for innovation and free expression since the day it was passed. For many years, EFF documented these issues in our "Unintended Consequences" series; we continue to organize and lobby for temporary exemptions to its provisions for the purposes of cellphone unlocking, restoring vintage videogames and similar fair uses, as well as file and defend lawsuits in the United States to try and mitigate its damage. We look forward to the day when it is no longer part of U.S. law.

But due to the WIPO Copyright Treaty, the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions infest much of the world's jurisdictions too, including the European Union via the Information Society Directive 2001/29/EC.