blogg för Petr Kopač

Exclusively Online: EU Data Sovereignty and Privacy in the Cloud

Petr Kopač — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 15:45:05 +0000

Språk Engelska

As I have already mentioned in my previous article, I met Caspar Bowden, who had some really interesting points at the last Open Forum Europe event. The topic is the privacy protection related to the rapidly growing market of cloud services in the context of the law in the US and the upcoming regulation in the EU - EU Data Sovereignty and Privacy in the Cloud - as says the title. I am happy to put his presentation here for you to study it as it seems to be a really interesting summary of what we are dealing with nowadays. It contains not only analysis of the threats, but also recommendations for cloud providers and customers.

eu_data_sovereignty_and_privacy_in_the_cloud_-_ofa_version_22.5.13_based_on_26.9.2012.pdf

(Permission to publish granted by the author of the presentation.)

Is our data safe in the Cloud?

Petr Kopač — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:26:36 +0000

Språk Engelska

To this question many tried to answer, but maybe we're a bit closer after yesterday discussion organized by the Open Forum Europe named "Can we determine and restrict the location of our data in the Cloud, and when do we need to?".

The main topic of this discussion was centered on data protection at service providers based in the US. In the forum there was presented this study, which claims that the European concerns about the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) are exaggerated.

Well, I wouldn't be so sure about that, because on the other hand, independent privacy advocates, represented here by Caspar Bowden, warn that most of the safeguards apply on US citizens only, so the data from EU citizens is not really protected.

Probably that's the reason why many European companies hesitate to use cloud services outside of their home country. Will we see a positive change in legislature and a gain of trust any time soon?

Svenska

...not yet for the Germans. How do Pirate parties in Europe solve their issues online?

Petr Kopač — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:53:00 +0000

Språk Engelska

This is the second part of the article you could have read yesterday, named "Online voting? German Pirates want it, but..." and actually I've also written a very similar article for the Czech readers in my blog, where I described more thoroughly the late development of the German Pirate Party and their issues within a wider context.

But let's get back to the general assembly of the German Pirates - the atmosphere was quite amazing - especially when you see democratic processes take place in front of your eyes. And you also feel like in a documentary with all those cameras around. But that doesn't seem so much interesting for the traditional media - more than a thousand people engaged in a long discussion and getting to a democratic compromise. They were explaining their concerns about possible flaws of the system of the online voting.

In the end they didn't agreed upon one system and the discussions will continue, namely it might be accepted at the next Bundesparteitag - but a huge part of the work has been done.

It wasn't so easy, because German Pirates use a 2/3 majority voting system - they require a wide agreement. And the one proposal that was just closest to be accepted missed only 23 votes. Probably because in the last day some tired Pirates have already left. Even such things can influence the party shaping process.

See the very nice and easy to understand brochure for the voting systems! And of course the Pirate Times covered this as well and in English. For sources in German, you can see all the proposals and results on their wiki. And there's also a retrospective article by the board.

But let's have a look on the other Pirate parties, which already have been using online voting systems! We can start with the Icelandic Pirate party, which has gained 3 seats in the national parliament recently. They build on a system, where the proposals must first get support of a reasonable part of the members and then the proposals are voted online for one week. This allows the party to be very dynamic and to react fast on current issues, even though it's one of the youngest Pirate parties - or maybe because of it.

In the Czech Republic, where I come from, we have a similar mechanism implemented, but even handing in the proposals happens online. Such a proposal has to gather support of the square root of the amount of all the members (don't tell me the Pirates are not geeks). Afterwards the issue is discussed thoroughly and when the discussion seems more or less finished (sometime it can be a week, sometimes months!), the process is finished by 48hour-long online voting. This system unfortunately requires the members to be under constant stress, because they never know, when something important might change or be discussed. But hopefully we will shift it towards a more regular process on our next general assembly in September.

On the other hand in the Swedish Pirate party (as I understood it, pls comment, if I got it wrong), which happened to be the first Pirate party ever, we can see more regularity. Perhaps thanks to its longer age. The proposals have to come through a standardized process, where each phase has a fixed length specified in the number of weeks (publishing the proposal, discussions, counter proposals, voting etc.) - and although this process is not as much dynamic as other parties might have (it takes place just 4 times a year) - in my opinion it's much more relaxed and comfortable for the members, so more of them can actually take part and the principle of direct democracy is stronger there.

To summarize, I would like stress that we might see the Pirate parties also as an experimental incubator of direct democracy. Because even though there's a strong principal of international cooperation among us, we are neither guided nor lead by any single authority, which would determine exactly, how we should work - so we actually try different methods in parallel.

I am really impatiently waiting for the next Bundesparteitag to see, what system the German pirates will adopt. But whatever the result will be, I'm sure it will be a next step on the long way towards a modern form of direct democracy, which will create a stable and fair political environment as it does already eg. in Switzerland.

Online voting? German Pirates want it, but...

Petr Kopač — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:19:53 +0000

Språk Engelska

After a fast and hard fall from the heights the German Pirates are up and running again and their preferences grow up. They focus their forces now on hard-working preparations for the elections instead of internal disputes and feel motivated #ichbinmotiviert. And it pays off - the last Bundesparteitag was a success, commented as outstandingly productive as most local media stated.

There were though some reasons of the previous fall and one of them was actually the inflexibility of the modern party. Because the German Pirates, as all Pirates around the globe put much emphasis on direct democracy and at the same time their general assemblies take place only twice a year, it was virtually impossible for their leaders to take any position in reaction on current events, if nothing connected was approved by all the members.

You can imagine that it hurts your PR, when you keep saying into cameras "Sorry, we don't have an official position on this." Any opinion is better then just plain "I don't know."

So this very weekend the pirates gathered not only to agree upon more than 800 pages of proposals, but also to vote, which kind of online voting they would like to have. To put you into the image - the party has currently around 34 000 members! Seriously, guys, you'd need a stadium for such a GA! The event was actually attended just by "mere" 2000 people. Even so, it stays the largest general assembly organized by any party in Germany. And that's because direct democracy. But how can be it so much direct, when only a small portion of members can take part?

And that's it - we got now to the two main reasons to establish online votings: flexibility and allowing participation to all the party members - comfortably and cheap. Keeping up with 21st century, some might add. But on the other hand there stand many concerns - obviously - electronic voting can be tempered with and how can you find out then, what were the real votes? On the topic, I recommend you to watch this document shot for HBO, which features activists in the US fighting against insecure election system - which was closed-source and even the autorithies were not allowed to look into the source code, because of the "trade secret"!

But let's get back to Germany... there were actually many propositions at this huge gathering of Pirates, some of which offered voting, which was transparent, but on the other hand the voter lost their right of secret vote. Some proposed continuous voting system, where the party could react pretty fast, but if you think about it for a moment - that would keep all the party members in a constant stress. Because then you never know, whether something important comes up and so that you must pretty often check the voting system or keep some kind of voting calendar.

To be continued... tomorrow I will unfold, how online voting actually works in some Pirate parties around Europe and tell you how this ended up for now for the German Pirates. Stay tuned!

One more Pirate in Brussels

Petr Kopač — Wed, 08 May 2013 10:12:50 +0000

Språk Engelska

Hi everyone! Well, another Pirate came to help the cause to Brussels. This time it's me - a hyperactive Czech Pirate - Petr. Amelia gave us the opportunity to send people for an internship to her office and I just thought - why not?! This could be a great experience and something totally different from the stuff I do usually (programming in Java and studying artificial intelligence). So I am here now, I came on Monday actually, and the agenda just keeps on coming - helping with coordination of the European Pirate parties, Data protection regulation and everything connected to it. Don't worry, I'll update you about everything important from now on.

If you are wondering, who I am actually, I can give you a short description of my background. I joined the Czech Pirates some year and a half ago, just in time to jump into the fight against ACTA. And before I knew it, I was standing in the middle of the town square and having a speech of the importance of individual freedom in front of hundreds and at -20 degrees. Afterwards the PPI GA Prague 2012 was organized and again, somehow I found myself in the middle of things, helping with organisation. See the keynote from Rick Falkvinge, Cory Doctorow's speech and Amelia's speech to remind you of the atmosphere at the conference.

Later I also took part in doing the campaign for our regional elections and I was quite happy that out of the 13 Pirate regions participating, my region ended up as the second best. All these experiences were exciting a lot and brought me also some adventures, which I had to deal with. So later, because my colleagues thought I was active enough (or hyperactive, better said), I was appointed the international coordinator for the party and I started to get in touch with Pirates around the world - participating in conferences, workshops, helping with campaigns etc.

So I set my long term goal to help the Pirates in Europe to share ideas and information among each other and help a bit with winning the fight for the EU Parliament next year, so that we can be more efficient at pushing the Pirate agenda further. If that happens, it will be a success of us all.