EU-DIGEST

The United States is failing to report vital information on Covid-19 that could help track the spread of the disease and prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, according to the first comprehensive review of the nation’s coronavirus data.

The report, Tracking Covid-19 in the United States, paints a bleak picture of the country’s response to the disease. Five months into the pandemic, the essential intelligence that would allow public health authorities to get to grips with the virus is still not being compiled in usable form.

Read more at:
'Flying blind': US failure to report vital coronavirus data is hobbling response | World news | The Guardian

EU member states as well as Norway, Iceland and Switzerland granted protection status to 538,000 asylum seekers in 2017, according to new data released by Eurostat recently.

Another 24,000 refugees were resettled in the region last year.

Last year's asylum seeker figures represent a 25% drop from 2016, when 710,000 asylum seekers qualified for international protection in the bloc.

Two forms of protection are offered under EU law: refugee status — for people fleeing persecution, and subsidiary protection — for those who face serious harm if they return to their country of origin, and who don’t qualify as refugees. But protection may also be given for humanitarian reasons, such as on grounds of ill health or if the person is an unaccompanied minor.

Around a third of such asylum seekers in Europe came from Syria last year, followed by Afghan citizens (19%) and Iraqis (12%).

Note EU-Digest:The Eurostat figures in this report are not very clear. 

According to the data listed in this re, a third (33.%) of asylum seekers come from Syria, followed by Afghanistan with 19% and Iraq with 12%. Added together 64%. 

Where do the rest of the asylum seekers (36%) come from? 

Probably a large number of them from Africa, who come to Libya by illegal means to make the crossing to Europe. In our  opinion, these are mainly "economic migrants" and not asylum seekers, just as most of them from Afghanistan and Iraq. It is also striking that many of the asylum seekers are young and able men . The EU and the governments of the Member States must, as far as their migrants and asylum policies are concerned do a far better job, Right now it can only be qualified as being barely functional.

READ MORE: EU granted 500,000 people asylum protection in 2017 | Euronews

Have you ever wondered  what happens to your e-mail data on servers owned by popular e-mail servers like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook Earthlink, or other non-European based communication companies.

But here is the good news. It is called the European mode, and you don't have to be a European to benefit from the far stricter European personal privacy laws, and other regulations imposed on how companies make use of your personal data.

Here are two companies you might want to look intom if you want a secure European based e-mail account.

ECLIPSO

PROTON MAIL

In this context  FREENET  and  TOR , are also recommended networks, specially if you live in, or visiting a country where there is censorship, interception of electronic communications, and control over what you are allowed to see or not over the Internet.

It certainly is worth to look into, and best of all, they come for free, if you don't require their "premium" services.

EU-Digest 

Read more: Turkey sees almost 18 pct rise in air passengers

If you're an American voter and have provided personal information to a company, chances are data groups have shared it with political parties to help them target potential supporters.

One of the main players is NGP VAN, which manages the Democratic National Committee's database.

Its name recently surfaced in connection with a data breach blamed on a technical glitch that enabled the campaign of presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders to access voter data belonging to rival Hillary Clinton.

The incident raises questions about the reach of the database.

"Everyone" is in there, Kevin Thurman, who served as Clinton's deputy Internet director during her last campaign in 2008, said with a laugh.

"Every voter in America, since 2004, dead or alive."

NGP VAN estimates the number at about 195 million people, far more than the 146 million currently registered as voters. Voter registration is not mandatory in the United States.

Read more: Big BrotherFlash - Thanks to big data, US parties know all about voters - France 24

The internet could face an imminent ‘capacity crunch’ as soon as in eight years, should it fail to provide faster data, UK scientists say. The cables and fiber optics that deliver the data to users will have reached their limit by 2023.

Optical cables are transparent strands the thickness of a human hair: the data is transformed into light, and is sent down the fiber, and then turns back into information.

“We are starting to reach the point in the research lab where we can't get any more data into a single optical fiber. The deployment to market is about six to eight years behind the research lab - so within eight years that will be it, we can't get any more data in,” Professor Andrew Ellis, of Aston University in Birmingham, told the Daily Mail.

“Demand is increasingly catching up. It is growing again and again, and it is harder and harder to keep ahead. Unless we come forward with really radical ideas, we are going to see costs dramatically increase,” he added.

Read more: ‘Capacity crunch’: Internet could collapse by 2023, researchers warn — RT News

When it comes to the Internet, if you're not paying for a product, you probably are the product.

As data collection has become the currency of the digital economy, consumers are the ones generating the value. But many people are often oblivious to the access they grant some companies when they blindly accept their terms and conditions.

Privacy advocates at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona have been taking big Internet firms to task this week for what they regard as gross privacy violations and the exploitation of users' tendency to click "accept" without first reading a contract.

Experts say companies often hide seemingly nefarious permissions in the fine print, from reading text messages to modifying contacts and automatically turning off wireless devices' airplane mode.

"Make no mistake, there are no free apps," Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer at Finnish anti-virus company F-Secure, said during a panel discussion on Monday. "All of these free offerings are monetizing themselves one way or another."

Read more: Privacy advocates take Big Data to task | Business | DW.DE | 04.03.2015

Back in the heyday of the old Soviet Union, a phrase evolved to describe gullible western intellectuals who came to visit Russia and failed to notice the human and other costs of building a communist utopia. The phrase was “useful idiots” and it applied to a good many people who should have known better.

I now propose a new, analogous term more appropriate for the age in which we live: useful hypocrites. That’s you and me, folks, and it’s how the masters of the digital universe see us. And they have pretty good reasons for seeing us that way. They hear us whingeing about privacy, security, surveillance, etc, but notice that despite our complaints and suspicions, we appear to do nothing about it. In other words, we say one thing and do another, which is as good a working definition of hypocrisy as one could hope for.

This sounds harsh, I know, but the data supports it. At the moment, much of that data comes from the US, but I don’t think things are all that different over here. Some of the most reliable information about people’s online behaviour comes from the Pew internet and American life project, which conducts regular polling about Americans’ use of the internet. Last Wednesday, the project published the findings of a survey on public perceptions of privacy and security in the post-Edward Snowden era. And what the researchers found makes sobering reading.

The findings were neatly summarised by the New York Times as “Americans say they want privacy, but act as if they don’t”. Or to put it less succinctly: “Americans say they are deeply concerned about privacy on the web and their cellphones. They say they do not trust internet companies or the government to protect it. Yet they keep using the services and handing over their personal information.”

Read more: Why the internet has turned us into hypocrites | Technology | The Observer

A USA federal judge said Thursday that Microsoft can't prevent the US Department of Justice from obtaining emails stored in a data center overseas in a case that has raised concern among Internet privacy groups and technology companies.

Chief US District Judge Loretta Preska today ordered Microsoft to comply with a December warrant allowing the DOJ to obtain a customer's email-account data stored in Dublin, Ireland. The US government is seeking the emails in connection with a criminal investigation.

At the same time, the judge said she would stay her order temporarily, a decision that will let Microsoft appeal her decision to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals.

The outcome of this debate may reinforce concerns around the world that the data of their citizens is not safe with Microsoft and other US tech companies if US intelligence or law enforcement seek to gain access to the information.

All this began last December when a New York judge issued a search warrant seeking records and emails from a Microsoft account in a case connected with a criminal investigation. After concluding that the emails investigators sought were located on one of its servers in Dublin, Ireland, Microsoft refused.

The company maintained that a US judge has no authority to hand out warrants for search and seizure of property or data abroad. The judge later rejected Microsoft's request to quash the warrant.
Read more: US judge orders Microsoft to produce emails held abroad - CNET