Dutch privacy watchdog fines Uber for keeping quiet about hack

DutchNews, November 27, 2018

Photo: DutchNews.nl

The Dutch data protection agency (DPA) has fined taxi company Uber €600,000 for failing to report a data leak which took place in 2016. 

Uber was hacked in 2016 and the email addresses, names and phone numbers of 57 million users came into the hands of hackers. In the Netherlands, 174,000 clients and drivers were affected. 

Uber paid the hackers €100,000 to keep quiet about the hack and did not go public with the news, which only emerged a year later. By law the company should have informed the DPA within 72 hours. 

The taxi company reached an out of court settlement in the US equivalent to some €130m and was also fined €434,000 in Britain.

Samsung Electronics apologises for factory cancer cases

Yahoo – AFP, Jung Hawon, 23 November 2018

Samsung Electronics co-president Kim Ki-nam bows as he makes a formal
apology to victims of work-related diseases in Seoul on November 23, 2018

Samsung Electronics apologised Friday to workers who developed cancer after working at some of its factories, finally ending a decade-long dispute at the world's top chipmaker.

The father of a dead 22-year-old worker and the company's co-president Kim Ki-nam signed a formal settlement agreement in Seoul as other disabled ex-employees looked on.

"We sincerely apologise to the workers who suffered from illness and their families," said the firm's co-president Kim Ki-nam. "We have failed to properly manage health risks at our semiconductor and LCD factories."

Samsung Electronics is the world's biggest mobile phone manufacturer and chipmaker and the flagship subsidiary of the Samsung Group, by far the biggest of the family-controlled conglomerates that dominate the South's economy.

Samsung currently operates vast semiconductor production compounds in Suwon as well as the cities of Hwaseong and Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, as well as Xian in China.

Campaign groups say that about 240 people have suffered from work-related illnesses after being employed at Samsung semiconductor and display factories, with around 80 of them -- many of them young women -- dying.

Under a deal announced earlier this month, Samsung Electronics will pay the group's employees compensation of up to 150 million won ($133,000) per case.

It covers 16 types of cancer, some other rare illnesses, miscarriages and congenital diseases suffered by the workers' children. Claimants can have worked at plants as far back as 1984.

The scandal emerged in 2007 when former workers at its semiconductor and display factories in Suwon, south of Seoul, and their families said that staff had been diagnosed or died of various forms of cancer.

A series of rulings and decisions by courts, Seoul's state labour welfare agency and a mediation committee followed over more than 10 years, culminating in Friday's announcement.

Factfile on Samsung Electronics, including profit and smartphone market share

Hwang Sang-ki, who signed the agreement on behalf of the workers and their families, told reporters he was glad to have fulfilled his promise to his daughter, who died of leukaemia in 2007, to prove Samsung was to blame for her death.

But he went on: "The apology honestly was not enough for the families of the victims but we will accept it.

"No amount of apology will be enough to heal all the insults, the pain of industrial injuries and the suffering of losing one's family.

"I cannot forget the pain she and our family went through. Too many people have suffered the same fate."

Trade secret

Little is known about possible connections between the production process in the factories and the workers' illnesses, as Samsung has refused to disclose what specific chemical substances it uses, describing the information as a trade secret.

Hwang and other relatives have sought a court order to compel it to release the details.

"Compensation for industrial injury is important, but what's more important is prevention," said Hwang, whose story was made into a movie in 2013.

Samsung has played a key part in the South's rise to become the world's 11th-largest economy, but it is also the focus of resentment over the power and influence of the chaebols and has faced accusations of murky political connections.

Its de facto leader Lee Jae-yong was found guilty of bribing former president Park Geun-hye as part of the corruption scandal that brought her down, and he spent almost a year in prison before most of his convictions were overturned on appeal and he was released.

The cancer scandal is one of the worst instances of industrial injuries in the South, where safety standards sometimes belie its advanced technological status.

Two months ago, two subcontractors were killed in a carbon dioxide leak at Samsung Electronics' Suwon chip plant.

In January, four workers suffocated due to a gas leak at a steel factory owned by Posco -- the country's top steelmaker -- in the southern city of Pohang.

Internet con men ripped off Pathe NL for €19m in sophisticated fraud

DutchNews, November 12, 2018

Photo: Depositphotos.com

The Dutch operation of the Pathé cinema group was ripped off by internet con men to the tune of over €19m, court documents published on Friday show. 

The con cost both the chief executive and financial director of the Dutch operation their jobs, and it is unclear if any of the money has been recovered. 

The court documents, which cover the unfair dismissal case brought by sacked finance chief Edwin Slutter, show in detail how the thieves went about scamming Pathé Nederland earlier this year. 

The first email arrived on March 8, and was apparently sent by the chief executive of the French cinema group to the Dutch chief Dertje Meijer. 

The message asked if KPMG had contacted Meijer that morning. After discussing the issue with financial director Edwin Slutter, Meijer replied to the email: ‘We did not receive anything or a call from him. If you want me to contact him, do you have contact details?’ 

The respondent said the company was involved in a takeover in Dubai and needed her to make a confidential payment of €826,521. The money would be repaid on the 26th of the same month. 

Confidential 

‘The transaction must remain strictly confidential. No one else must be made aware of it for now in order to give us an advantage over our competitors,’ the email said. ‘I and I alone will notify the affected parties in due time.’ 

After more to-ing and fro-ing, Meijer sent the correspondence on to Slutter with the comment ‘strange don’t you think?’ 

On March 9 she received a new mail, confirming the takeover and sending an invoice for the money, which was the first 10% of the acquisition price. The money was to be paid into the bank account operated by Towering Stars General Trading LLC in Dubai. 

On March 13, a second payment of €2,479,563 was made to the same account, followed by a third and fourth payments. By March 27, Pathé Nederland had paid over a total of €19,244,304. 

Questions 

On March 28, Meijer received a final email from the fake company boss, pledging to repay the cash. But that same day questions then began coming in from Pathé headquarters in Paris. 

It was immediately clear that Meijer and Slutter had been victims of fraud. Both Meijer and Slutter were suspended. Their sacking was made public at the end of the month with Pathé ‘s owners stating they no longer had any confidence in them. 

Meijer, who used to run the Amsterdam port authority, had been in the job for less than a year. Slutter, who had years of experience as a KPMG accountant, decided to fight his sacking in court, hence the detailed examination of the fraud in legal documents. 

Outside investigators brought in by Pathé said they had no evidence that both Meijer and Slutter were involved in the fraud or that they had any knowledge of it.

‘Pathe had been the target of a professional group of con men, who had used refined communication techniques to win the trust of several Pathé employees,’ the report is quoted as saying in the court documents. 

Sophisticated 

The court decided that Slutter had been lured in by the con men in a sophisticated trap and that he should not have been sacked in the spot, even though he ignored several red flags.

Nevertheless, there is no question he can return to the company, the court ruled. 

The court went on to state that the employment contract between Slutter and Pathé should be formally dissolved on December 1, but that the former finance chief should be paid his monthly salary of over €13,500 from March until then. 

DutchNews.nl has asked Pathé ‘s head office in Paris to comment on the case. Neither Meijer or Slutter were named in the court documents but both Dutch and French media have identified them as such.

Cambridge Analytica whistleblower calls for online regulation

Yahoo – AFP, November 6, 2018

Canadian whistleblower Christopher Wylie speaks during the annual Web Summit
 technology conference in Lisbon on November 6, 2018 (AFP Photo/PATRICIA DE
MELO MOREIRA)

Lisbon (AFP) - A whistleblower who claimed data consultancy Cambridge Analytica played a role in obtaining data from Facebook users called Tuesday for greater government regulation of social media and online advertising.

"Why is it we can regulate nuclear power, but we can't regulate code" Christopher Wylie, a former director of research at the now-defunct data consultancy, said at the Web Summit, Europe's biggest tech gathering, in Lisbon.

Wylie earlier this year said data from millions of Facebook users was used by Cambridge Analytica without their knowledge to help elect US President Donald Trump -- a claim denied by the company.

In his address at the Web Summit, Wylie also called on data scientists to be subject to an ethical code just as doctors, nurses and teachers are.

"Why is it that as a data scientists, we don't have to think of the ethical and moral implications of what we are doing. I think that is absurd," he said to applause from the audience.

The need for regulation is more urgent given the rise in the number of people using social media, he added.

"People now sleep with their phones more than they sleep with people," Wylie said.

Some 70,000 people are expected to take part in the four-day Web Summit which got underway Monday, including speakers from leading global tech companies, politicians and start-ups hoping to attract investors.

Dubbed "the Davos for geeks", the annual event was launched in Dublin in 2010 and moved to Lisbon six years later.

Big Dutch banks join forces to develop yellow ATM network

DutchNews, November 5, 2018 

Photo: Geldmaat 

The three big Dutch banks are introducing a new, uniform ATM system which will replace current ING, ABN Amro and Rabobank cash machines nationwide. 

‘People are using less cash but there is still demand for it,’ said Geert Eikelboom, of Geldservice Nederland, which manages ATMs for the banks, and also part of the new system. ‘The banks are joining forces to make sure cash remains available in the future.’ 

Some ATMs will disappear in places where several from competing banks are close together, but the banks also plan to place the new machines in other localities where there are no cash withdrawal options. 

The new ATMs will start appearing early in 2019.

Digital investigation collective Bellingcat to expand into NL

DutchNews, November 2, 2018

Photo: Depositphotos.com 

The British research collective Bellingcat is planning to expand into the Netherlands and to open a permanent office in The Hague, the organisation confirmed to DutchNews.nl on Friday. 

‘The current plan is to open an office in The Hague, which will have teams working on Yemen, Syria, and Libya,’ founder Eliot Higgins said. The office will also host ‘a team focused on working with local groups on local issues’ and more MH17 revelations are on the way, he said. 

Higgins, in the Netherlands for the Den Bosch Data Week, told the NRC in an interview on Friday that the organisation has applied for funding from the Postcode Lottery foundation to help establish the first Bellingcat operation outside the UK.

 The aim is to set up an operation in the Netherlands to support the work of the International Criminal Court in The Hague with open source material, the NRC said. 

Bellingcat was founded in 2014 after a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign and has since hit the headlines with revelations about shooting down of flight MH17 over Ukraine and the Skripal poisoning case in Britain, among others 

The organisation funds its operations by giving workshops to journalists, students and civil servants as well as donations from both charitable institutions and private individuals.