The UK Government Knows How Extreme the Online Safety Bill Is
SCHEERPOST, By Joe Mullin / Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
The U.K.’s Online Safety Bill (OSB) has passed a critical final stage in the House of Lords, and envisions a potentially vast scheme to surveil internet users.
The bill would empower the U.K. government, in certain situations, to demand that online platforms use government-approved software to search through all users’ photos, files, and messages, scanning for illegal content. Online services that don’t comply can be subject to extreme penalties, including criminal penalties.
Such a backdoor scanning system can and will be exploited by bad actors. It will also produce false positives, leading to false accusations of child abuse that will have to be resolved. That’s why the OSB is incompatible with end-to-end encryption—and human rights. EFF has strongly opposed this bill from the start.
Now, with the bill on the verge of becoming U.K. law, the U.K. government has sheepishly acknowledged that it may not be able to make use of some aspects of this law. During a final debate over the bill, a representative of the government said that orders to scan user files “can be issued only where technically feasible,” as determined by Ofcom, the U.K.’s telecom regulatory agency. He also said any such order must be compatible with U.K. and European human rights law. ……………………………………………………………………………
People Need Privacy, Not Weak Promises
Let’s be clear: weak statements by government ministers, such as the hedging from Lord Parkinson during this week’s debate, are no substitute for real privacy rights.
Nothing in the law’s text has changed. The OSB gives the U.K. government the right to order message and photo-scanning, and that will harm the privacy and security of internet users worldwide. These powers, enshrined in Clause 122 of the OSB, are now set to become law. After that, the regulator in charge of enforcing the law, Ofcom, will have to devise and publish a set of regulations regarding how the law will be enforced.
Several companies that provide end-to-end encrypted services have said they will withdraw from the U.K. if Ofcom actually takes the extreme choice of requiring examination of currently encrypted messages. Those companies include Meta-owned WhatsApp, Signal, and U.K.-based Element, among others. ……………………….
Finally, lawmakers in other jurisdictions, including the United States, should take heed of the embarrassing result of passing a law that is not just deceptive, but unhinged from computational reality. The U.K. government has insisted that through software “magic,” a system in which they can examine or scan everything will also somehow be a privacy-protecting system. Faced with the reality of this contradiction, the government has turned to an 11th hour campaign to assure people that the powers it has demanded simply won’t be used. https://scheerpost.com/2023/09/15/the-uk-government-knows-how-extreme-the-online-safety-bill-is/
Sunak gives China green light to build UK nuclear plants despite nationbeing ‘threat to our way of life’
The Government has rejected calls
for Chinese state-linked firms to be excluded entirely from Britain’s
nuclear sector. China will not be permanently barred from investing in
Britain’s nuclear energy despite posing a “threat to our open and
democratic way of life”, the Government has said.
Ministers were accused
of a “patronising” and “misleading” approach by senior
Conservatives after ruling out a ban and insisting existing rules on China
are already tough enough. A committee of MPs suggested that allowing firms
with links to the Beijing regime to be involved in the civil nuclear sector
provided an “incentive and opportunity for espionage”.
In its response,
the Government said that it would consider new ways to scrutinise China’s
involvement in Hinkley Point C, which is already well under way, but would
not impose a blanket ban. It said: “The Government will continuously
review measures to ensure that economic security and critical national
infrastructure is protected. All investment involving critical
infrastructure is subject to thorough scrutiny and needs to satisfy strong
legal, regulatory, and national security requirements.” Future nuclear
projects would be “subject to these individual assessments” in which
the Government characterises as “a one step at a time approach” –
although a Chinese firm has already been bought out of the Sizewell C
project in which it was originally an investor.
iNews 14th Sept 2023
Chris Hedges: Stella Assange Speaks Out on the Conditions of Julian Assange’s Imprisonment
SCHEERPOST, September 14, 2023
Julian Assange has languished in Belmarsh Prison in the UK since 2019 as he fights extradition to the US to face prosecution under the Espionage Act.
Prison is always a political tool, and in the case of whistleblowers like Julian Assange, the use of incarceration to suppress, discourage, and silence dissent is self-evident. Since being imprisoned, Assange has married and even started a family—but has been kept apart from his wife and children. In the second part of a two-part conversation, Stella Assange and Chris Hedges discuss the conditions of Julian’s incarceration, and how it offers a glimpse into the overall brutality of the prison system……………………………………………………
Nuclear Free Local Authorities concerned over safety risks regarding nuclear-armed U.S. base planned for RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk
A combination of tremendous heroism, good fortune and the will of
God” – will this be the future of safety at a nuclear-armed Lakenheath?
With evidence mounting that the United States Air Force intends to return
nuclear weapons to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, the Nuclear Free Local
Authorities have written to emergency planners in the county, and on their
recommendation now to the Ministry of Defence, to question their
preparedness for any future accident involving the destruction of a
military aircraft carrying nuclear weapons, either at Lakenheath or in
transit to or from the airbase.
NFLA 14th Sept 2023
Windfarm bid withdrawn after Ministry of Defence raises nuclear testing station concerns
Midlothian View, by Local Democracy Reporter, Paul Kelly, Wednesday September 13th 2023
A bid for a domestic windfarm in Hawick has been withdrawn after the Ministry of Defence (MoD) raised concerns over its potential impact on a nearby nuclear testing station.
Scottish Borders Council received a planning application for the erection of a 10.4m high turbine on land south east Of Wynburgh Cottage at Langburnshiels.
But the MoD objected to the application due to its potential impact on the Eskdalemuir Seismological Recording Station.
The normally unmanned station was established by the UK Atomic Energy Authority in 1962 as the British contribution to an international network intended to identify and locate underground nuclear tests and, later, monitor compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty…………………………more https://www.midlothianview.com/news/windfarm-bid-withdrawn-after-mod-raises-nuclear-testing-station-concerns
Safety fears : the problem of Britain’s ageing nuclear submarines
A British nuclear submarine has broken the record for the longest patrol at
sea as safety fears grow over the Royal Navy’s ageing fleet. The
Vanguard-class vessel returned to the Faslane naval base in Scotland on
Monday encrusted with barnacles and covered in slime after a gruelling tour
understood to have lasted more than six months.
Naval experts have raised concerns that the long patrols result in immense physical strain on the vessels and take a psychological toll on the crews. The UK has four
Vanguard-class submarines, which are armed with up to eight Trident
ballistic missiles carrying Britain’s nuclear warheads. At least one
submarine is on patrol at all times to maintain a continuous at-sea
deterrent. The fleet has been effectively reduced to two functioning
vessels, HMS Vigilant and HMS Vengeance, owing to repair works on the other
two.
Times 12th Sept 2023
Huge nuclear lobbying aimed at British Parliament
The Nuclear Industry Association will host the third Nuclear Week in
Parliament (NWiP) between the 11th and 13th of September 2023. In January
2023, the rescheduled week saw hundreds of Parliamentarians and industry
representatives engage in various events.
Back in its annual September slot, this year’s NWiP will be packed with multiple events and receptions, plus opportunities for NIA members to hold their complementary meetings.
The week will focus on engaging with Parliamentarians on various topics,
including new build, Advanced Nuclear Technologies, and the fuel cycle.
This will build on our Summer Conference, due to be held in the Concorde
Conference Centre in Manchester on Wednesday, 14 June 2023.
Nuclear Industry Association (accessed) 13th Sept 2023
https://www.niauk.org/nuclear-week-in-parliament-2023-sponsorship-opportunities/
Nuclear Free Local Authorities back councillor’s call to preserve bunker as museum to folly of nuclear war
The UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities is backing the recent call of
an Oldham Councillor for the preservation of the town’s nuclear bunker in
the name of peace. In January 2016, at a time when North Korea was testing
nuclear weapons, the Mirror newspaper posed a question of its readership:
‘Where are the best places in the UK to survive nuclear war?’ with the
surprising number one answer being the northern town of Oldham. Why?
Because when the new municipal Civic Centre was built, designers Cecil
Howitt and Partners built a bunker of reinforced concrete and brick beneath
it.
NFLA 12th Sept 2023
Nuclear Free Local Authorities’ plea to new Energy Secretary: ‘Don’t make Sizewell C Suffolk’s nightmare.’
The UK / Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities have written to the new Secretary of State for Energy Claire Continho MP asking her not to make Sizewell C ‘Suffolk’s nightmare’.
Ms Continho replaced Grant Shapps after the former Energy Secretary was sent to Defence following the resignation of Ben Wallace. She was only elected to Parliament in December 2019 for the safe Conservative seat of East Surrey and is largely unknown having previously saved in only a very junior ministerial post. With a background in banking, the new Energy Secretary does however have close connections with the Prime Minister having been an advisor and then a parliamentary aide to Rishi Sunak when he was at the Treasury, and a leading figure in Mr Sunak’s leadership campaign team.
Energy represents a massive promotion for Ms Continho, but it is a complex brief. In his letter the Chair of the NFLAs Councillor Lawrence O’Neill outlines why Sizewell C, and indeed the whole new nuclear programme, should not go ahead and urges the Secretary of State to ‘take up the offer made by local campaigners to visit the site and speak to local people about their serious concerns about this costly and foolhardy project’.
The NFLAs are also backing the campaign initiated by Stop Sizewell C to deprive the nuclear monster of private sector investment by lobbying pension funds. In this vein, we have previously contacted pension funds and last month we wrote also to the Chief Executive of Centrica, a previous commercial investor in nuclear plants, asking him to refrain from backing the project.
With recent unwelcome news of a further £300 million of government funding being awarded for preparatory works at Sizewell C, the campaign feels that ‘it is time to scale up’ the pensions campaign and is asking for public support. A bespoke platform has been developed featuring almost 70 pension funds, www.stopsizewellc.org/goodpension which is now backed by a short animated video voiced by Fiona Turnbull https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LjV_WbyWkUsGf7ClwPuinU_Dq_sY7NZ9/edit .
Stop Sizewell C is asking campaign supporters who make pension contributions or receive pensions to write to their fund managers urging them NOT to invest in Sizewell C. However, the most pressing priority is to expand the reach of the campaign so Stop Sizewell C is asking supporters to raise awareness of it by sharing the links on their social media accounts.
The links to the latest pensions campaign post are:
Twitter/X – https://twitter.com/StopSizewellC/status/1699788799654637820?s=20
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cw5KbW6s6wq/
Facebook – https://fb.watch/mVA8OdaiP7/
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7105240738447114240
Councillor O’Neill added: “Sizewell C can be seen as many-headed like the mythical hydra; many of the heads represent a possible financial investment. It we can cut off the heads we can kill the monster!”
1000 Sellafield Ltd. contractors to be balloted for strike by Unite
AROUND 1,000 contractors at Sellafield are being balloted for potential
strike action, after Unite have criticised an ‘unacceptable offer’ from
management. More than 3,000 engineering construction workers nationally,
operating under the National Agreement for Engineering Construction
Industry (NAECI), are being balloted for strike action overpay, Unite, the
UK’s leading union, said on Thursday, September 7. This includes about
1,000 Sellafield Ltd. contractors who the union say conduct critical repair
and maintenance at the site.
Whitehaven News 10th Sept 2023
UK / ‘No Easy Options’ For Disposal Of Plutonium Stockpile, Says Report
“simpler and cheaper to consider it a waste material alongside the other legacies from the nuclear industry, and safely dispose of it.”
NUCNET, bBy David Dalton, 6 September 2023
There are no easy options when it comes to the “unavoidably complex” task of managing the UK’s plutonium stockpile, but more research, development and innovation is needed to underpin any decision, a report says.
The report, prepared by the Dalton Nuclear Institute at Manchester University, calls for a national dialogue led by “trusted voices” and based on a clear view of the government’s thinking of the role, if any, plutonium might play in meeting future UK energy needs.
The stockpile could be used as fuel for existing or future thermal reactors. It could also be combined with the UK’s 100,000 tonne supply of depleted, natural and low-enriched uranium to fuel new fast reactors, which has the potential to power the UK for centuries. Both options could lead to the reduction of the UK’s nuclear legacy burden.
Another option is to dispose of the stockpile in the planned UK deep geological repository.
Professor Clint Sharrad, acting director of the Dalton Nuclear Institute, said while this all sounds promising, successfully delivering such outcomes would take time, money, organisation, and commitment.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a government body, is in the process of repackaging the plutonium stocks, stored at Sellafield in northwest England, into more robust containment.
“Being wary of the current global political and economic climate, it may be that extracting the energy from UK plutonium in the not-too-distant future becomes unnecessarily expensive and political barriers may be too difficult to overcome,” Prof Sharrad said.
“Therefore, it might be simpler and cheaper to consider it a waste material alongside the other legacies from the nuclear industry, and safely dispose of it.”
The stockpile originates from reprocessing spent fuel from the UK’s reactor fleets, plus some material derived from outside the UK….. https://www.nucnet.org/news/no-easy-options-for-disposal-of-uranium-stockpile-says-report-9-3-2023
Today Hinkley C contract would cost £180 per MWh around 3xs the cost of offshore wind
DAVID TOKE, SEP 8, 2023 https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/today-hinkley-c-contract-would-cost
There’s been a lot of talk about how offshore wind has ‘increased’ its costs since the last Government contract auction – but that’s not a patch on nuclear power a la Hinkley C, courtesy of EDF. Capital costs for the project have increased in real (not just inflation) terms by around 50 percent since 2012, and there’s probably a lot worse to come.
The figure of £92.50 per MWh is often mentioned as the price of the contract for Hinkley C, and that is the contract price in 2012 prices. In today’s money using the Government’s preferred CPI calculator that is £124 per MWh – higher even than the currently gas-inflated wholesale power price.
But it is worse, much much worse than that, because Hinkley C’s real, not just inflation-adjusted price, has increased. In 2012 the capital cost was estimated at £16 billion by EDF. Now the capital cost in 2012 prices has risen to around £33 billion in 2023 money or around £24 billion in 2012 money.
That means that if Hinkley C’s contract was set up today at the revised capital cost then the equivalent contract price would be about £138 per MWh in 2012 prices and around £180 per MWh in today’s prices. That is of course if the contract was assessed on the same contract length – 35 years, and on a similar rate of return. The rate of return certainly would not be less since interest rates are a lot higher than they were in 2012.
The estimates published by EDF do not include interest rate charges. They are called ‘overnight’ costs, which in itself is highly ironic since the last thing nuclear power stations are noted for is being built overnight. Their construction takes many years, racking up immense interest charges on the way. If this was a private company they surely would have gone bust by now. The only way that EDF could get themselves into this position is because everybody knows that the French Government will inevitably bail them out.
Of course, as far as Hinkley C costs go, the only way is up. Heaven knows how high they will go! And the Government is going to make electricity consumers pay for the next EDF nuclear disaster at Sizewell C!
So let’s reflect a bit on the apparent horror apparently experienced by the UK Treasury that they might have to offer more than £44 per MWh (at 2012 prices) for offshore wind contracts.
Health and safety concerns raised with Dounreay management
Some trade union and safety representatives have no confidence in the
management at Dounreay and have raised health and safety concerns at the
site.
A number of employees told the John O’Groat Journal that they are
also worried over how issues on the well-being of staff were being
addressed. “There are numerous cases of staff members off due to
work-related stress – some as a result of bullying and harassment,” said
one worker. “Concerns have been raised but do not appear to be addressed.
“Dounreay has said that ‘our workers are out greatest asset’, but from the
conversations I’ve had with people across site, this is not believed.”
Another employee stated: “This has been an ongoing issue for years. It is
hard to prove in many cases and has been dealt with in some instances.
Safety reps have been involved in meetings on this topic along with the
chairman of the Trade Union Co-ordinating Committee.”
John O’Groat Journal 8th Sept 2023
UK and Japan’s governments funding research on problem of nuclear waste
Two projects have been awarded a share of £1 million, delivered by the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK
Research and Innovation (UKRI), to address challenges in: radioactive waste
treatment, packaging, and storage; remote handling, robotic, and autonomous
systems in decommissioning; environmental behaviour of radionuclide release
and management of risk and degraded infrastructure.
The UK-Japan Civil Nuclear Research programme is a partnership between UKRI and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The research
projects are being led by academics at the universities of Strathclyde and
Sheffield.
UK Research & Innovation 8th Sept 2023
https://www.ukri.org/news/uk-japan-partnership-to-develop-new-tech-for-nuclear-waste-disposal/
Unite urges employer to pay a fair wage and avoid nuclear plant shutdown
Unite urges employer to pay a fair wage and avoid nuclear plant shutdown.
Electricians who certify tools for use in nuclear power stations are taking
strike action.
Unite, the country’s leading trade union, announced today
(Wednesday 6 September) that its members at Altrad Babcock Ltd are taking
strike action following a dismal pay offer from the employer. Electricians
at Altrad Babcock, based in Tipton in the West Midlands, are responsible
for certifying that electrical tools are safe to use in nuclear facilities
across the country. Yet this safety-critical role is not being valued by
the employer, with some members earning as little as £13.62 per hour.
Unite 6th Sept 2023
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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