This quote is quite remarkable:

Though not a party to the case, the US Department of Transportation said it “strongly objects, on both legal and policy grounds, to the EU’s plan to impose its own policies on other countries”.

– Source: eubusiness.com

What happened?

The US says EU plans for an emissions tax on airlines must be dealt with by the international aviation body. It had tried to block European Union plans to levy the emissions tax, saying they were invalid, but the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on Wednesday that they were legal.
[...]
“Application of the emissions trading scheme to aviation infringes neither the principles of customary international law at issue nor the Open Skies Agreement” across the Atlantic, the ECJ decided.
“It is only if the operators of such aircraft choose to operate a commercial air route arriving at or departing from an airport situated in the EU that they are subject to the emissions trading scheme,” it added.
As a result of this choice, the EU system “infringes neither the principle of territoriality nor the sovereignty of third states, since the scheme is applicable to the operators only when their aircraft are physically in the territory of one of the member states of the EU”.
The EU has made it clear that it will not bow to US pressure following Wednesday’s decision.
“We will neither abandon nor delay [the Emissions Trading System]. The measure will fully enter force on 1 January 2012,” said the spokesman for EU climate change commissioner, Connie Hedegaard.

– Source: a wonderful article on BBC.CO.UK

… home of the brave.

(1) After serious and longlasting privacy discussion regarding data of passengers flying from Europe to the United States, there is a new agreement now. The US is provided with data like name, address and credit card number by default. However, “sensitive data” like religion or sexual orientation underlie “very severe restrictions”, the restrictions being: they can only be saved up to 15 years, and can be given to other countries. The German minister of interior says the new agreement is a success. And I agree: if handing over very personal data to the US which then stores the data for up to 15 years and is allowed to hand it over to other countries isn’t “severely restricted”, I don’t know what is (German source).

(2) The US police is using unmanned drones. Probably that isn’t new, but it fits together with the today’s news. What this means for you is: no matter who you are and what you do, you are automatically accused of being a criminal. There is very little privacy left, at home or outside. You are a suspect, from the day you are born. Many people listed convincing evidence that general surveillance does not decrease crime rates, so did I. Look for it, the Swedish and English police publish reports regularly in which they have to admit that all the surveillance really doesn’t help, is a massive waste of tax-payers money, and infringes upon basic human rights.
Stand up for your privacy. Not because you want to hide something. Because you have the right for privacy.

“For decades, U.S. courts have allowed law enforcement to conduct aerial surveillance without a warrant. They have ruled that what a person does in the open, even behind a backyard fence, can be seen from a passing airplane and is not protected by privacy laws.”

(Sidenote: Russian bloggers are using unmanned drones in Moscow at the moment to stream the protests live on the internet, because Russian media do not report about the demonstrations of up to 80.000 people in Russia’s capital)

(3) The FBI seems to be using information from the App CarrierIQ that is installed on “millions of phones” (second source).

It is hard to believe that the so far best assessment of the state of the Republican candidates running for presidency I have read within the last months was published by a mediocre German newspaper.

Highly recommended reading:
“The Republicans’ Farcical Candidates: A Club of Liars, Demagogues and Ignoramuses (A Commentary by Marc Pitzke)”

• US knowingly ignored well known cancer risks and objections by experts: “Research suggests that anywhere from six to 100 U.S. airline passengers each year could get cancer from the machines. Still, the TSA has repeatedly defined the scanners as ‘safe’, glossing over the accepted scientific view that even low doses of ionizing radiation […] increase the risk of cancer.”
  (– propublica.org)
• “GlaxoSmithKline pays $3 billion to resolve U.S. criminal and civil investigations into whether the U.K. company marketed drugs for unapproved uses and other matters.” In other words: they payed $3 billion to stop investigations. If you screw up enough people and make enough money, you can actually pay a court not to investigate.
  (– bloomberg.com/news)
• “We fabricated drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas, former detective testifies.”
  (– NYdailynews.com)
• “Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, a nearly 25 percent increase over the 2008 total […] Nearly 90 percent of that increase is concentrated in the 50 richest Members of Congress.”
  (– rollcall.com)
• Anonymous hacked different Israeli websites, among them the military and the secret service: “We do not tolerate this kind of repeated offensive behaviour against unarmed civilians. If you continue blocking humanitarian vessels to Gaza or repeat the dreadful actions of 31 May 2010 against any Gaza freedom flotillas then you will leave us no choice but to strike back. Again and again, until you stop.”
  (– English link, German link)
• The four biggest German electricity companies seem to have consistently reported wrong information to relevant German agencies.
  (– German link)
• German government wants to make export of weapons even easier. After all, war is such a wonderful way to make money.
  (– German link)

Last week, something very special happened, and it is worth remembering: the organization “Chaos Computer Club” managed to get the sourcecode of the software “German Trojan Horse” (Bundestrojaner), which is used by the German state to invade the privacy of its citizens and find things out about people (e.g. if they are involved in illegal activities).

The idea of this trojan horse is that you hack the computer of a citizen, install this trojan horse on it, and then you have full surveillence of that person’s life. You can even use the camera of a laptop to take pictures of the room, or record audio if the computer has a microphone.

The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany has declared many of the functions of this software illegal (because they break the constitution) in 2008, and the government reacted to that and changed the software.

Or did they? A few days ago the software leaked to the CCC, they analyzed the program, and published a 23page statement. I will not translate this here, but to sum it up:

• The program still has most of the functions that were declared to be anti-constitutional; you could also say, the government ignored the order of the highest German court on purpose (yes, “the government”. I’m aware that only few people knew of this, but they are in the government, and the government has to take responsibility for the actions of his members, especially when are the main guys).
• The software is badly written, leading to the fact that it can be hyjacked by other people with bad intentions and abused – it has plenty of security issues.
• The way the program works is that it abolishes certain defenses, leaving the computer open to other attacks.
• The program enables the state to STORE ALIEN DATA on the computer. I cannot stress this enough, and I am sure you are aware of what this means (it takes 2 minutes to store data on a computer which will ruin this person’s life forever).
• The data is transferred over servers hosted in the US, giving other countries potentiall access to sensitive data of German citizens.

The main point: people who are experts in the field warned about this, precisely about all these points, when we were debating whether we needed something like a state trojan horse or not. Everything they said has come true now.

Next time they say something, stop acting like they are hallucinating weirdos who lost their mind, and listen to them. They might look funny, and some of them don’t shower as often as you would like it, but they are among the most important people of a modern society.
A big shoutout to the CCC.

Spread the word, let other people know what is happening. This is important.
If you want to know more, Fefe has a very comprehensive overview of links. For my English-speaking friends, here are two American sources (1, 2).

PS.: Thank you, government, for making sure that the Pirate Party will be elected into parliament September 2013. You are doing a great job. <3

Update: Thomas Stadler on his Internet-Law blog with a devastating statement.

Introduction
Berlin finished voting. Let’s look at some of the interesting facts which have not been excessively talked about in the media. All the data displayed here, even if I talk about them without giving precise numbers, are based upon demographic data that have been published within the last two days, and not on my personal speculation. I have my opinion about politics, but will try to keep it to a minimum and focus on facts.

Sources
Sources are mostly Wahlen-Berlin.de, sueddeutsche.de, spiegel.de and tagesschau.de. A good summary of numbers can be found in this pdf.

Overview

• SPD: 28.3% (-2.5)
• CDU: 23.4% (+2.1)
• GREEN: 17.6% (+4.5)
• LEFT: 11.7% (-1.7)
• PIRATES: 8.9% (+8.9)
• FDP: 1.8% (-5.8)
• OTHERS: 8.3% (-5.4) (among them NDP with 2.1%)
• Voter participation: 60.2% (+2.2)

Interesting details

• SPD: Wowereit (the current mayor) declared himself the winner of the elections. He is not (I will not discuss this in detail here), but he will be able to govern the city for another four years, either with CDU, or with the GREEN party. One third of the SPD voters said they voted because of Wowereit. The SPD lost more than 10% of their voters among young people (18-25).
• CDU: they won votes. Most of them from FDP voters (n=30.000). Many people voted them because of their “economical expertise”, only few people (especially compared to the SPD) because of their “frontman”. CDU voters are older and more religious than other voters, and live in Berlin for quite some time. Obviously, few immigrants vote for the CDU. The correlation-coefficient between young voters (18-30) and the CDU is -0.64. (East) and -0.83 (West). The coefficient for people over 60 is 0.26 (East) and 0.83 (West).
• GREEN: they won less votes than they expected to. Compared to the other recent elections in Germany, they didn’t do remarkably well – then again, +4.5% is nothing to be ashamed of. Main topics for the voters: energy, education, environment, social justice. The correlation-coefficient between middle-aged voters (30-60) and the GREEN party is 0.72 (East) and 0.75 (West), and turns highly negative for voters above 60.
• LEFT: they do not have the majority of votes together with the SPD anymore – they will not be part of the next government. They lost the majority of voters among young people (18-25), and were mostly elected by unemployed people or workers. The correlation-coefficient between old voters (60+) and the LEFT party is 0.83 (East) and -0.85 (West) (wow, that’s interesting). Very few voters are religious. There are many more interesting numbers actually, big differences in voter profile between East and West. Check out the summary-link listed at the top of the post.
• PIRATES: surprise surprise, from zero to nearly 9%. I will comment on that in detail below.
• FDP: project 2% failed. Too bad … not. 30.000 of their 2006 voters voted CDU, 8.000 voted SPD, 16.000 didn’t vote at all. The FDP didn’t get more than 5% in any demographic group whatsoever (job, age, gender). This is the 5th out of 7 elections this year in which they failed to re-enter parliament.
• OTHERS: I didn’t realize that 2006, OTHER parties together had 13.7%. That is, for German standards, remarkably high. Usually the numbers are between 2 and 5%.

Differences between East and West Berlin
The biggest differences are

• LEFT: East 22.6% (-5.5), West 4.3%
• GREEN: East 13.5%, West 20.4%
• CDU: East 14.2%, West 29.5%
• SPD had 28.x in both East and West

Overview of districts:

The German election system is a bit complicated, to summarize: many small districts were won by the GREEN party, but on a large scale, there are 12 districts in Berlin. 11 will be governed by a CDU or SPD, and 1 by a GREEN mayor (Friedrichshain/Kreuzberg).

Pirates
Apart from the fact that the Pirate Party went up to 8.9% from zero, let’s talk about some details:

• Lowest result in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf (considered to be rich and conversative) with 6.9%, highest result in Friedrichhain/Kreuzberg (considered to be hip, cool, square and groovy) with 14.7%. And in case you didn’t get that, let me state this clearly: the Pirates will be in all the district governments, since they reached 5% in every single district. I would have never expected that.
• 8.9% equals 130.000 people.
• The Pirates were able to steal away voters from all parties. Most of the voters came from the GREEN party, (17.000), the SPD (14.000), and the LEFT party (13.000). The majority of their voters, however, are people who voted OTHER parties (22.000) before, or didn’t vote at all (23.000). Especially the last point is something that makes this election special: getting people to vote who didn’t vote before (most probably because they did not feel represented by any party) is a pretty good thing, I guess. This is open to discussion, obviously, and highly speculative. But it is one of the most interesting facts about this election.
• About 50% of the Pirate voters decided within the last week before the elections.
• The Pirates themselves were overwhelmed by their success, and it looks like they do not have enough “politicians” (they didn’t have a single person who was on a salary before the elections) to fill in all the positions that they hold now.
• The correlation-coefficients between both young (18-30) and middle-aged (30-60) voters and the Pirate party are both above 0.50, and only negative for people above 60. Most people expected the Pirate party only to raise votes among very young people.

Elections in Berlin in ten days – poll results:

(Apologies, dear international readers – German politics. Just skip this one if you don’t know what is going on.)

Prof Philip Zimbardo on Time Perception – a wonderful and inspiring talk.

The Watson Institute presents Mark Blyth on Austerity:

This is why Austerity is not
common-sense.
It’s a
non-sense.

And a dangerous one.