Long-time Slashdot reader tomtermite shares a report from The Guardian: Ministers and officials from every nation will meet via video link on Monday for the annual world health assembly, which is expected to be dominated by efforts to stop rich countries monopolising drugs and future vaccines against Covid-19... The leaders of Italy, France, Germany and Norway, together with the European commission and council, called earlier this month for any innovative tools, therapeutics or vaccines to be shared equally and fairly.

"If we can develop a vaccine that is produced by the world, for the whole world, this will be a unique global public good of the 21st century," they said in a statement.

The sole resolution before the assembly this year is an EU proposal for a voluntary patent pool. Drug and vaccine companies would then be under pressure to give up the monopoly that patents allow them on their inventions, which means they can charge high prices, so that all countries can make or buy affordable versions. In the weeks of negotiations leading up to the meeting, which is scheduled to last for less than a day, there has been a dispute over the language of the resolution. Countries with major pharmaceutical companies argue they need patents to guarantee sufficiently high prices in wealthy nations to recoup their research and development costs....

Oxfam's health policy manager, Anna Marriott, said: "This week's letter calling for a people's vaccine, which was signed by more than 140 world leaders and experts, sets the bar for the scale of ambition we need to meet the challenge before us...." [Research charity] Wellcome published a poll on Sunday of 2,000 people in the UK which found 96% supported the idea that national governments should work together to ensure that treatments and vaccines can be manufactured in as many countries as possible and distributed globally to everyone who needs them.

"We need vaccines and treatments that will work for the world, and any advances must be available to all countries equally, without exception," said Alex Harris, the head of global policy at Wellcome.

Netflix is working to restore streaming quality in various European countries following government requests for the company to reduce bandwidth usage out of fear that it was putting too much stress on broadband connections. The Verge reports: People in Denmark, Norway, Germany, and other countries reported noticing an uptick in streaming bitrate, according to FlatpanelsHD. Netflix confirmed to the website that it is "working with ISPs to help increase capacity." The company did not say which countries have restored bitrate for higher-quality streaming and which ones haven't. "In the last month alone we have added four times the normal capacity," a spokesperson told FlatpanelsHD. "As conditions improve we will lift these limitations." Other streaming services will likely follow suit, with some already reportedly upping the streaming quality. Apple Insider reports that Apple restored higher bitrates to increase streaming quality for people using Apple TV Plus late last month.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Privacy pressure group Noyb has filed a legal complaint against Google on behalf of an Austrian citizen, claiming the Android Advertising ID on every Android device is "personal data" as defined by the EU's GDPR and that this data is illegally processed. Based in Vienna, Austria, Noyb is a nonprofit founded by Max Schrems, a lawyer and privacy advocate, to focus on "commercial privacy and data protection violations." It says that "the core task of the office is to work on our enforcement projects and to engage in the necessary research for strategic litigation."

The complaint against Google, which was filed with the Austrian Data Protection Authority, is based on the claim that Google's Android operating system generates the advertising ID without user choice as required by GDPR. "In essence, you buy a new Android phone, but by adding a tracking ID they ship you a tracking device," said Noyb lawyer Stefano Rossetti. [...] The complaint can be viewed here [PDF] and raises key questions about privacy, choice, and tracking. It states that the complainant (the name is redacted) completed a Google contact form to withdraw consent to use of the advertising ID (if consent had been given, which is disputed), and to object to its processing. Article 7 of the GDPR states that "the data subject shall have the right to withdraw his or her consent at any time." Article 21 is a "right to object at any time to processing of personal data concerning him or her" for marketing and profiling, following which the law states that "the personal data shall no longer be processed for such purposes."

The complaint says that there is no opt-in "consent button" for the advertising ID. Although users have to agree to the general Google privacy policy, according to the complaint this consent "was neither informed, specific (the data subject has to agree to all Google services in a single step), nor free (the user cannot use a 800-euro phone without agreeing)." [...] The complaint requests that Google is ordered to "permanently delete the advertising ID", provide access to the data collected, and be fined based on various GDPR breaches.

Google faces a data-protection complaint from Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems amid concerns it unlawfully monitors users and passes on the "tracking ID" to advertisers. From a report: Schrems's campaign group Noyb on Wednesday filed a complaint with the Austrian data protection authority, accusing Google of tracking users of Android phones through a unique ID that "allows Google and countless third-parties to" monitor users. The European Union's strict data protection rules, in force since May 2018, require people's consent before being tracked, the group said in a statement. Data regulators have the powers to levy fines of as much as 4% of a company's global annual sales for serious violations. "Google does not collect valid 'opt-in' consent before generating the tracking ID, but seems to generate these IDs without user consent," according to the statement.

You can't make access to your website's content dependent on a visitor agreeing that you can process their data -- aka a 'consent cookie wall.' Not if you need to be compliant with European data protection law. From a report: That's the unambiguous message from the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which has published updated guidelines on the rules around online consent to process people's data. Under pan-EU law, consent is one of six lawful bases that data controllers can use when processing people's personal data. But in order for consent to be legally valid under Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) there are specific standards to meet: It must be clear and informed, specific and freely given. Hence cookie walls that demand 'consent' as the price for getting inside the club are not only an oxymoron but run into a legal brick wall. No consent behind a cookie wall The regional cookie wall has been crumbling for some time, as we reported last year -- when the Dutch DPA clarified its guidance to ban cookie walls. The updated guidelines from the EDPB look intended to hammer the point home. The steering body's role is to provide guidance to national data protection agencies to encourage a more consistent application of data protection rules.

Global health officials and diplomats are "alarmed" by America's "apparent lack of interest in cooperation" on international efforts for a vaccine against Covid-19. Slashdot reader Charlotte Web quotes this report from Politico: The fear is that Trump will be content with allowing the race to develop and distribute the vaccine to devolve into a global contest -- and that poorer countries will be left behind in the rush to procure doses. In essence: that the president's "America First" view of world affairs as an atavistic scramble for power will lead to unnecessary suffering and death. "The worst situation would be, if when these tools are available, they go to the highest bidder -- that would be terrible for the world," said Melinda Gates, who, along with her tech entrepreneur husband, Bill, leads a powerful foundation that has devoted billions to health research. "Covid-19 anywhere is Covid-19 everywhere. And that's why it's got to take global cooperation."

The ongoing global scramble for masks, gloves and other personal protective gear offers a harrowing and potentially instructive example. Now imagine, officials and experts say, a similar competition to obtain vaccine doses: It could drag out the health crisis by letting the virus spread for longer than it otherwise might, devastating the very countries least equipped to fight it... It's not just the U.S. that has put the needs of its own citizens first. Dozens of countries, including the U.S. and some in Europe, have imposed travel restrictions as well as limits on the exports of masks and other critical medical equipment. Global health leaders are trying to avoid a repeat of such nationalist tactics when it comes to vaccines and other types of medicines that could combat Covid-19.
"Health officials and analysts caution that it's too early to go into full-fledged panic about a looming global vaccine fistfight," the article notes.

But it also points out that "There's no binding treaty or other mechanism that governs how a vaccine will be produced and distributed worldwide."

U.S. chipmaker Broadcom has offered to scrap its exclusivity deals with TV and modem makers to end an EU antitrust investigation and stave off a possible hefty fine. Reuters reports: Broadcom, which makes chips to power smartphones, computers and networking equipment and is a major supplier to Apple, found itself in EU competition enforcers' crosshairs over its deals with six companies to buy chips exclusively or almost exclusively from it. That triggered an investigation in June last year and an order to stop such deals until the end of the probe on whether such practices were aimed at squeezing out rivals.

Broadcom has now pledged not to offer incentives to TV and modem makers to encourage them to acquire more than 50% of their chips and modems from the company for their worldwide or European production. Broadcom said its offer addressed the Commission's concerns and it expected the investigation to close before the end of the year. "In these uncertain times, we welcome the opportunity to avoid protracted litigation and to resolve the investigation without recognition of liability or the imposition of a fine," the company said in a statement. The European Commission said it would now seek feedback before deciding whether to accept the offer which would be valid for five years and without a finding of infringement by the company.

"Germany's labor minister wants to enshrine into law the right to work from home if it is feasible to do so, even after the coronavirus pandemic subsides," reports the Associated Press: Labor Minister Hubertus Heil told Sunday's edition of the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that he aims to put forward such legislation this fall. He said initial estimates suggest the proportion of the work force working from home has risen from 12% to 25% during the virus crisis, to around 8 million people. "Everyone who wants to and whose job allows it should be able to work in a home office, even when the corona pandemic is over," Heil was quoted as saying. "We are learning in the pandemic how much work can be done from home these days."

Heil stressed that "we want to enable more home working, but not force it." He said people could choose to switch entirely to working from home, or do so for only one or two days per week.
The labor minister had already been calling for a right to work at home back in December, the article notes.

"Germany changed course on Sunday over which type of smartphone technology it wanted to use to trace coronavirus infections," reports Reuters, "backing an approach supported by Apple and Google along with a growing number of other European countries." Chancellery Minister Helge Braun and Health Minister Jens Spahn said in a joint statement that Berlin would adopt a "decentralised" approach to digital contact tracing, thus abandoning a home-grown alternative that would have given health authorities central control over tracing data.

In Europe, most countries have chosen short-range Bluetooth "handshakes" between mobile devices as the best way of registering a potential contact, even though it does not provide location data. But they have disagreed about whether to log such contacts on individual devices or on a central server -- which would be more directly useful to existing contact tracing teams that work phones and knock on doors to warn those who may be at risk. Under the decentralised approach, users could opt to share their phone number or details of their symptoms -- making it easier for health authorities to get in touch and give advice on the best course of action in the event they are found to be at risk. This consent would be given in the app, however, and not be part of the system's central architecture...

Germany as recently as Friday backed a centralised standard called Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT), which would have needed Apple in particular to change the settings on its iPhones.

When Apple refused to budge there was no alternative but to change course, said a senior government source.
The article notes Germany had also received opposition in a recently-published letter signed by hundreds of scientists.

It had warned that Germany's original plan for centralized tracing would allow "unprecedented surveillance of society at large".

EU-based Internet governance body RIPE is opposing a proposal to remodel core internet protocols, a proposal backed by the Chinese government, Chinese telecoms, and Chinese networking equipment vendor Huawei. From a report: Named "New IP," this proposal consists of a revamped version of the TCP/IP standards to accommodate new technologies, a "shutoff protocol" to cut off misbehaving parts of the internet, and a new "top-to-bottom" governance model that decentralizes the internet and puts it into the hands of a few crucial node operators. The New IP proposal was submitted last year to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and brought to the public's attention following a Financial Times report last month. The proposal received immediate criticism from the general public and privacy advocates due to its obvious attempt to hide internet censorship features behind a technical redesign of the TCP/IP protocol stack.

The New IP proposal was described as the Chinese government's attempt to export and impose its autocratic views onto the rest of the internet and its infrastructure. Millions of eyebrows were raised when authoritarian countries like Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia expressed support for the proposal. In a blog post this week, RIPE NCC, the regional Internet registry for Europe, West Asia, and the former USSR, formally expressed a public opinion against China New IP proposal. "Do we need New IP? I don't think we do," said Marco Hogewoning, the current acting Manager Public Policy and Internet Governance at the RIPE NCC. "Although certain technical challenges exist with the current Internet model, I do not believe that we need a whole new architecture to address them."

Karl Bode, reporting for TechDirt: A few weeks ago, a new talking point popped up among telecom policy pundits opposed to net neutrality. They began claiming that the only reason the internet hasn't buckled during the pandemic was thanks to the FCC's controversial and unpopular net neutrality repeal. That repeal, you'll recall, not only killed net neutrality, but much of the FCC's ability to hold ISPs accountable for pretty much anything, including outright billing fraud. But to hear various net neutrality opponents tell it, the repeal is the primary reason the US internet hasn't fallen apart during COVID-19 quarantine: "We should thank our lucky stars that Title II net neutrality regulations were repealed by the FCC in 2017. In doing so, the US avoided the fate of much of Europe today, where broadband networks are strained and suffering from a lack of investment and innovation."

Except none of this is true. This entire narrative is fantasy -- built almost entirely off of the EU simply asking various high bandwidth providers to throttle certain services in an abundance of caution. There remains no evidence that this was due to any actual congestion, and, at the same time, there's been no evidence that US networks have held up better than those elsewhere (indeed, many of the companies that throttled services in the EU did so in the US as well). Investment at many US ISPs actually dropped post net neutrality repeal. And there's literally no indication that US networks are somehow "more robust" than the EU because the FCC decided to ignore the public and obliterate its own authority at the behest of the telecom lobby. It's just not a supportable claim.

The European Union said it will scrutinize Google and Apple's proposed contact-tracing technology to ensure it meets the bloc's new standards governing the deployment of Covid-19 apps. From a report: Officials from member states and the EU's executive arm will "seek clarifications on the solution proposed by Google and Apple," the European Commission said on Thursday as it issued guidelines aimed at making the various virus-tracking apps interoperable. Alphabet's Google and Apple late last week announced they would add technology to their platforms to alert users if they have come into contact with a person with the coronavirus. While the system is voluntary, it has the potential to monitor about a third of the world's population. In a video-conference earlier this week with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, EU Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton "insisted on the need for all digital actors to develop apps to trace the spread of the virus in full respect of the privacy of individuals and ensuring interoperability and security of communications," the EU said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Italian authorities are working on introducing a smartphone app that would help health services trace the contacts of people who test positive for the coronavirus as the government looks at ways of gradually lifting a lockdown imposed a month ago. Innovation minister Paola Pisano acknowledged that launching the app would raise major issues of privacy and data control, something which would have to be resolved before it went into operation. But it could help reduce contagion and limit the impact of a disease that has killed more than 17,000 people in Italy in just over a month. "This is delicate terrain. I think we are all conscious of that and we must remain so," she told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday.

Italy launched a fast tender for a monitoring and remote medical support app on March 24 and received hundreds of proposals which are currently under evaluation by a specially created task force. The app would be only one part of a wider monitoring and support system, Pisano said. It would function on a voluntary basis and would have to be limited to clearly defined ends and guarantee anonymity as well as meet technical requirements. The app would record when it came into proximity with another smartphone user with the app, for how long and at what distance and if a person tested positive for the coronavirus, authorities would be able to trace the contacts and alert them. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) is calling for a pan-European mobile app to track the spread of the coronavirus "instead of the current hodge-podge of apps used in various EU countries which could breach people's privacy rights," Reuters reported on Monday. "The EDPS said the use of temporary broadcast identifiers and bluetooth technology for contact tracing protected both privacy and personal data, but voiced concerns about the variety of apps sprouting up."

"Given these divergences, the European Data Protection Supervisor calls for a pan-European model COVID-19 mobile application, coordinated at EU level," Wojciech Wiewiorowski, the head of the EU privacy watchdog, said in a statement. "Ideally, coordination with the World Health Organization should also take place, to ensure data protection by design globally from the start," he said.

Mike Masnick, reporting at TechDirt: Five years ago, we wrote about another such crazy demand -- a PRO (Performance Rights Organizations (PROs), sometimes known as "Collection Societies," that have a long history of demanding licensing for just about every damn thing) in Sweden demanding that rental car companies pay a performance license because their cars had radios, and since "the public" could rent their cards and listen to the radio, that constituted "a communication to the public" that required a separate license. The case has bounced around the courts, and finally up to the Court of Justice for the EU which has now, finally, ruled that merely renting cars does not constitute "communication to the public."

Yesterday, Apple said it would stop taking a cut of some sales for "qualifying" streaming video services on iPhones and other Apple devices, including Amazon's Prime Video. Reuters reports: To make purchases inside apps on its App Store, Apple requires the use of its own payment systems and takes a commission of between 15% and 30% before passing on the rest to the third-party app developer. Many of Apple's rivals in streaming music and video, such as Netflix and Spotify, avoid paying those commissions by asking users to sign up with a credit card outside the App Store. That leaves those rivals' apps serving as log-in screens for existing customers.

In an emailed statement, Apple said that for "qualifying premium video entertainment apps such as Prime Video, Altice One, and Canal+, customers have the option to buy or rent movies and TV shows using the payment method tied to their existing video subscription." Apple also said the services will function better with Apple devices and apps, for example by letting users ask its voice assistant, Siri, to find shows on the third-party services. Last March, Spotify filed a complaint with EU antitrust regulators against Apple, saying the iPhone maker unfairly limits rivals to its own Apple Music streaming service. Spotify also raised the issue with the U.S. Justice Department and the House Judiciary Committee, "both of which have antitrust probes pending regarding Apple," notes Reuters.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has ordered Boeing 787 operators to switch their aircraft off and on every 51 days to prevent what it called "several potentially catastrophic failure scenarios" -- including the crashing of onboard network switches. The Register reports: The airworthiness directive, due to be enforced from later this month, orders airlines to power-cycle their B787s before the aircraft reaches the specified days of continuous power-on operation. The power cycling is needed to prevent stale data from populating the aircraft's systems, a problem that has occurred on different 787 systems in the past. According to the directive itself, if the aircraft is powered on for more than 51 days this can lead to "display of misleading data" to the pilots, with that data including airspeed, attitude, altitude and engine operating indications. On top of all that, the stall warning horn and overspeed horn also stop working.

This alarming-sounding situation comes about because, for reasons the directive did not go into, the 787's common core system (CCS) -- a Wind River VxWorks realtime OS product, at heart -- stops filtering out stale data from key flight control displays. That stale data-monitoring function going down in turn "could lead to undetected or unannunciated loss of common data network (CDN) message age validation, combined with a CDN switch failure." Solving the problem is simple: power the aircraft down completely before reaching 51 days. It is usual for commercial airliners to spend weeks or more continuously powered on as crews change at airports, or ground power is plugged in overnight while cleaners and maintainers do their thing.

EU justice chief Vera Jourova on Thursday criticised U.S. tech giants such as Google and Facebook for making money off coronavirus-related fake news instead of putting in more efforts to stop the deluge. From a report: With millions of people confined to their homes due to lockdowns to counter the spread of the virus, social media and online platforms have seen the volume of news on their sites and user traffic soared. That has in turn sparked alarm and criticism because of the flood of disinformation. Jourova, who last week held a conference call with Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla, said their efforts to date were inadequate. The companies last week told Jourova that they had removed large quantities of false and harmful content, the bulk of which related to health, and taken measures to remove ads related to protective equipment, such as masks, although there were still gaps. They also pledged to step up measures to increase users' access to authoritative sources of information.

sixoh1 shared this story from the Wall Street Journal: Home internet and wireless connectivity in the U.S. have largely withstood unprecedented demands as more Americans work and learn remotely. Broadband and wireless service providers say traffic has jumped in residential areas at times of the day when families would typically head to offices and schools. Still, that surge in usage hasn't yet resulted in widespread outages or unusually long service disruptions, industry executives and analysts say. That is because the biggest increases in usage are happening during normally fallow periods.

Some service providers have joked that internet usage during the pandemic doesn't compare to the Super Bowl or season finale of the popular HBO show "Game of Thrones" in terms of strain on their networks, Evan Swarztrauber, senior policy adviser to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said this week on a call hosted by consulting company Recon Analytics Inc.Broadband consumption during the hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m . has risen by more than 50% since January, according to broadband data company OpenVault, which measured connections in more than one million homes. Usage during the peak early-evening hours increased 20% as of March 25. OpenVault estimates that average data consumption per household in March will reach nearly 400 gigabytes, a nearly 11% increase over the previous monthly record in January....

Some carriers that use cells on wheels and aerial network-support drones after hurricanes or tornadoes are now deploying those resources to neighborhoods with heavy wireless-service usage and places where health-care facilities need additional connectivity. Several wireless carriers including Verizon, T-Mobile US Inc. and AT&T Inc. have been given temporary access to fresh spectrum over the past week to bolster network capacity.
While Netflix is lowering its video quality in Canada, the Journal reports Netflix isn't as worried about the EU: Netflix Vice President Dave Temkin, speaking on a videoconference hosted by the network analytics company Kentik, said his engineers took some upgrades originally planned for the holiday season near the end of 2020 and simply made them sooner. A European regulator earlier this month asked Netflix to shift all its videos to standard-definition to avoid taxing domestic networks. Mr. Temkin said Netflix managed to shave its bandwidth usage using less drastic measures. "None of it is actually melting down," he said.
And the article also has stats from America's ISPs and cellphone providers:

• AT&T said cellular-data traffic was almost flat, with more customers using their home wi-fi networks instead -- but voice phone calls increased as much as 44%.
• Charter saw increases in daytime network activity, but in most markets "levels remain well below capacity and typical peak evening usage."
• Comcast says its peak traffic increased 20%, but they're still running at 40% capacity.

An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press: German Chancellor Angela Merkel has gone into quarantine after being informed that a doctor who administered a vaccine to her has tested positive for the new coronavirus.

Merkel's spokesman said the German chancellor was informed about the doctor's test shortly after holding a news conference Sunday announcing new measures to curb the spread of the virus.
The 65-year-old Chancellor will continue her work from home.

UPDATE: (3/25/2019):Merkel tested negative in a second test, "and will undergo another test at the beginning of next week," reports Reuters, citing a statement from a government spokesman.

AmiMoJo quotes Reuters: Russian media have deployed a "significant disinformation campaign" against the West to worsen the impact of the coronavirus, generate panic and sow distrust, according to a European Union document seen by Reuters... The EU document said the Russian campaign, pushing fake news online in English, Spanish, Italian, German and French, uses contradictory, confusing and malicious reports to make it harder for the EU to communicate its response to the pandemic.

"A significant disinformation campaign by Russian state media and pro-Kremlin outlets regarding COVID-19 is ongoing," said the nine-page internal document, dated March 16, using the name of the disease that can be caused by the coronavirus. "The overarching aim of Kremlin disinformation is to aggravate the public health crisis in Western countries...in line with the Kremlin's broader strategy of attempting to subvert European societies," the document produced by the EU's foreign policy arm, the European External Action Service, said.
The article notes that while Russia calls the accusations "unfounded," the EU has recorded nearly 80 cases of coronavirus disinformation since January 22nd. Responding to the report, America's Secretary of State also criticized disinformation efforts coming from China and Iran, according to U.S. News and World Report. He adds that the U.S. government has since contacted all three of the disinformation-spreading countries.

"They need to knock it off. We don't approve of it. The idea of transparency and accuracy in information is very important."