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telecommunications

Hundreds of French academics sign letter asking for safeguards on contact tracing

A group of 471 French cryptography and security researchers has signed a letter to raise awareness about the potential risks of a contact-tracing app. A debate in the French parliament will take place tomorrow to talk about all things related to post-lockdown — including contact-tracing app StopCovid.

Among the group of researchers, 77 of them are affiliated with Inria, the French research institute that has been working on the contact-tracing protocol that will power the government-backed contact-tracing app, ROBERT. With this letter, it appears that Inria is conflicted about ROBERT.

“All those applications induce very important risks when it comes to protecting privacy and individual rights,” the letter says. “This mass surveillance could be done by collecting the interaction graph of individuals — the social graph. It could happen at the operating system level on the phones. Not only operating system makers could reconstruct the social graph, but the state could as well, more or less easily depending on the approaches.”

The letter also mentions a thorough analysis of centralized and decentralized implementations of contact-tracing protocols. It includes multiple attack scenarios and undermines both the DP-3T protocol as well as ROBERT.

Ahead of the debate in the French parliament tomorrow, researchers say that “it is essential to thoroughly analyze the health benefits of a digital solution with specialists — there should be important evidence in order to justify the risks incurred.”

Researchers also ask for more transparency at all levels — every technical choice should be documented and justified. Data collection should be minimized and people should understand the risks and remain free not to use the contact-tracing app.

Over the past few weeks, multiple groups of researchers in Europe have been working on different protocols. In particular, DP-3T has been working a decentralized protocol that leverages smartphones to compute social interactions. Ephemeral IDs are stored on your device and you can accept to share ephemeral IDs with a relay server to send them to the community of app users.

PEPP-PT has been backing a centralized protocol that uses pseudonymization to match contacts on a central server. A national authority manages the central server, which could lead to state surveillance if the protocol isn’t implemented properly. ROBERT is a variant of PEPP-PT designed by French and German researchers.

While the French government has always been cautious about the upsides of a contact-tracing app, there’s been little debate about the implementation. Inria, with official backing from the French government, and Fraunhofer released specifications for the ROBERT protocol last week.

Many (including me) have called out various design choices, as you have to trust your government that they’re not doing anything nefarious without telling you — a centralized approach requires a lot of faith from the end users as the government holds a lot of data about your social interactions and your health. Sure, it’s pseudonymized, but it’s not anonymized, despite what the ROBERT specification document says.

Moreover, ROBERT doesn’t leverage Apple and Google’s contact-tracing API that is in the works. France’s digital minister, Cédric O, has been trying to put some pressure on Apple over Bluetooth restrictions with a Bloomberg interview. Given that Apple and Google provide an API for decentralized implementations, they have little incentive to bow to French pressure.

On Sunday, Germany announced that it would abandon its original plans for a centralized architecture in favor of a decentralized approach, leaving France and the U.K. as the two remaining backers of a centralized approach.

France’s data protection watchdog CNIL released a cautious analysis of ROBERT, saying that the protocol could be compliant with GDPR. But it says it will need further details on the implementation of the protocol to give a definitive take on StopCovid.

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) also said on Twitter that the debate in front of the French parliament is particularly important. “Decisions will have an impact not only on the immediate future but as well on years to come,” they say.

France’s Inria and Germany’s Fraunhofer detail their ROBERT contact-tracing protocol

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/27/hundreds-of-french-academics-sign-letter-asking-for-safeguards-on-contact-tracing/

telecommunications

EU privacy body urges anonymization of location data for COVID-19 tracking

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has published guidance for the use of location data and contacts tracing tools intended to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Europe’s data protection framework wraps around all such digital interventions, meaning there are legal requirements for EU countries and authorities developing tracing tools or soliciting data for a coronavirus related purpose.

“These guidelines clarify the conditions and principles for the proportionate use of location data and contact tracing tools, for two specific purposes: using location data to support the response to the pandemic by modelling the spread of the virus so as to assess the overall effectiveness of confinement measures; [and] contact tracing, which aims to notify individuals of the fact that they have been in close proximity of someone who is eventually confirmed to be a carrier of the virus, in order to break the contamination chains as early as possible,” the EDPB writes in the document.

The European Commission and the EU parliament have already weighed in with their own recommendations in this area, including a toolbox to help guide contacts tracing app developers. The Commission has also urged Member States to take a common approach to building such apps, and has been leaning on local telcos to provide “anonymized and aggregated” metadata for modelling the spread of the virus across the EU.

The guideline document from the EDPB — a body made up of representatives from the EU’s national data protection agencies which helps coordinate the application of pan-EU data protection law — brings additional expert steerage for those developing digital interventions as part of a public health response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The EDPB generally considers that data and technology used to help fight COVID-19 should be used to empower, rather than to control, stigmatise, or repress individuals,” it writes. “Furthermore, while data and technology can be important tools, they have intrinsic limitations and can merely leverage the effectiveness of other public health measures. The general principles of effectiveness, necessity, and proportionality must guide any measure adopted by Member States or EU institutions that involve processing of personal data to fight COVID-19.”

Among the body’s specific recommendations are that where location data is being considered for modelling the spread of the coronavirus or assessing the effectiveness of national lockdown measures then anonymizing the data is preferable — with the EDPB emphasizing that proper anonymization is not easy.

Given the inherent complexity it also recommends transparency around the anonymization methodology used. (tl;dr: there’s no security in obscurity, nor indeed accountability.)

“Many options for effective anonymisation exist, but with a caveat. Data cannot be anonymised on their own, meaning that only datasets as a whole may or may not be made anonymous,” it notes.

“A single data pattern tracing the location of an individual over a significant period of time cannot be fully anonymised. This assessment may still hold true if the precision of the recorded geographical coordinates is not sufficiently lowered, or if details of the track are removed and even if only the location of places where the data subject stays for substantial amounts of time are retained. This also holds for location data that is poorly aggregated.

“To achieve anonymisation, location data must be carefully processed in order to meet the reasonability test. In this sense, such a processing includes considering location datasets as a whole, as well as processing data from a reasonably large set of individuals using available robust anonymisation techniques, provided that they are adequately and effectively implemented.”

On contact tracing apps — aka digital tools that are designed to map proximity between individuals, as a proxy for infection risk — the EDPB urges that use of such apps be voluntary.

“The systematic and large scale monitoring of location and/or contacts between natural persons is a grave intrusion into their privacy,” it warns. “It can only be legitimised by relying on a voluntary adoption by the users for each of the respective purposes. This would imply, in particular, that individuals who decide not to or cannot use such applications should not suffer from any disadvantage at all.”

The importance of accountability is also front and center, with the EDPB saying the controller of such apps must be clearly defined.

“The EDPB considers that the national health authorities could be the controllers for such application; other controllers may also be envisaged. In any cases, if the deployment of contact tracing apps involves different actors their roles and responsibilities must be clearly established from the outset and be explained to the users.”

Purpose limitation is another highlighted component. Apps need to have purposes that are “specific enough to exclude further processing for purposes unrelated to the management of the COVID- 19 health crisis (e.g., commercial or law enforcement purposes)”, it says.

So, in other words, no function creep — and no EU citizen mass surveillance via a pandemic backdoor.

The EDPB also writes that “careful consideration should be given to the principle of data minimisation and data protection by design and by default” — noting specifically that contact tracing apps “do not require tracking the location of individual users”.

Instead “proximity data should be used” for the contacts tracing purpose.

“Contact tracing applications can function without direct identification of individuals,” it further emphasizes, adding that “appropriate measures should be put in place to prevent re-identification”.

The guidance aligns with the coronavirus contacts tracing model devised jointly by Apple and Google — which have said they will be offering a cross-platform API for COVID-19 contacts tracing based on ephemeral proximity IDs shared via Bluetooth.

At one point the EDPB guidance appears to be leaning towards favoring such decentralized approaches to contacts tracing apps, with the body writing that “the collected information should reside on the terminal equipment of the user and only the relevant information should be collected when absolutely necessary”.

Although later on the in guidance it discussed centralized models that involve proximity data being uploaded to a server in the cloud, writing that: “Implementations for contact tracing can follow a centralized or a decentralized approach. Both should be considered viable options, provided that adequate security measures are in place, each being accompanied by a set of advantages and disadvantages.”

In Europe there is currently a big fight between different camps over whether contacts tracing apps should use a centralized or decentralized model for storing and processing proximity data — with a contacts tracing app standardization effort known as PEPP-PT that’s backed by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications and some EU governments wanting to support centralized protocols for COVID-19 contacts tracking, while a separate coalition of European academics wants only decentralized approaches on privacy grounds, and has developed a protocol called DP-3T.

Europe’s PEPP-PT COVID-19 contacts tracing standard push could be squaring up for a fight with Apple and Google

“The current health crisis should not be used as an opportunity to establish disproportionate data retention mandates,” the EDPB warns. “Storage limitation should consider the true needs and the medical relevance (this may include epidemiology-motivated considerations like the incubation period, etc.) and personal data should be kept only for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis. Afterwards, as a general rule, all personal data should be erased or anonymised.”

The body also recommends algorithms used in contacts tracing apps be audited and regularly reviewed by outside experts.

Again, a key criticism of the PEPP-PT initiative has been around lack of transparency — including its failure to publish code for external review. (Though it has said it will be publishing code.)

“In order to ensure their fairness, accountability and, more broadly, their compliance with the law, algorithms must be auditable and should be regularly reviewed by independent experts. The application’s source code should be made publicly available for the widest possible scrutiny,” the EDPB writes.

Another notable piece of the guidance is for a data protection impact assessment not only to be carried out but that it be published — which marks a further push for accountability via transparency in such an unprecedented moment.

“The EDPB considers that a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) must be carried out before implementing such tool as the processing is considered likely high risk (health data anticipated large-scale adoption, systematic monitoring, use of new technological solution). The EDPB strongly recommends the publication of DPIAs,” it writes.

Typically DPAs leave it up to data controllers to decide whether to publish a DPIA or not — in this case the strong push from the central authority is that these documents are made public where COVID-19 contacts tracing apps are concerned.

Having highlighted the pros and cons of centralized vs decentralized approaches to contacts tracing, the EDPB goes on to recommend that the conceptual phase of app development “should always include thorough consideration of both concepts carefully weighing up the respective effects on data protection/privacy and the possible impacts on individuals rights”.

“Any server involved in the contact tracing system must only collect the contact history or the pseudonymous identifiers of a user diagnosed as infected as the result of a proper assessment made by health authorities and of a voluntary action of the user. Alternately, the server must keep a list of pseudonymous identifiers of infected users or their contact history only for the time to inform potentially infected users of their exposure, and should not try to identify potentially infected users.”

“Putting in place a global contact tracing methodology including both applications and manual tracing may require additional information to be processed in some cases. In this context, this additional information should remain on the user terminal and only be processed when strictly necessary and with his prior and specific consent,” it adds.

You can read the full document here.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/22/eu-privacy-body-urges-anonymization-of-location-data-for-covid-19-tracking/

telecommunications

France is officially working on Stop Covid contact-tracing app

France’s health minister Olivier Véran and digital minister Cédric O have officially announced that the French government is working on a smartphone app to slow the spread of COVID-19. The government is putting a stamp of approval on the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) project but remains cautious about what to expect from an app.

Using mobile apps to track the coronavirus is a sensitive issue in Europe. Dozens of nonprofit organizations have written a common statement urging governments to respect human rights.

They fear that governments could use this opportunity to enforce far-reaching surveillance measures that don’t comply with the regulatory framework and that remain in place after the coronavirus crisis. The European Commission reminded governments that they should implement “appropriate safeguards” as EU citizens are not going to trust contact-tracing apps if they don’t treat personal information appropriately.

That’s probably why the government is preventively trying to reassure people before releasing the Stop Covid app. According to a statement, the Ministry for the Digital Sector says that it is working with the Health Ministry, the Justice Ministry and the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation to coordinate tech-based initiatives.

Led by Germany’s Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute for telecoms (HHI), the PEPP-PT project that was unveiled last week is a coalition of dozens of research institutions across multiple countries. France’s INRIA is a member of the PEPP-PT and the French government is willing to collaborate with the INRIA as part of the PEPP-PT effort.

They’re working on an open standard to develop contact-tracing apps. Those apps would rely on Bluetooth Low Energy to identify other phones running the same app. If, at some point, you are near an infected person, you would be notified.

And the French government says that there will be an app specifically designed to track people living in France. That app will leverage the PEPP-PT protocol.

People in favor of contact-tracing apps say that it would help break infection chains if you combine those apps with proactive tests and self-isolations.

In an interview with Le Monde, Cédric O and Olivier Véran detailed the effort. France isn’t going to force you to install the app and “Stop Covid” is only going to use Bluetooth. A prototype is in the works, but it’s going to take three to six weeks to develop.

Even then, the French government might not even release the app. “We’re not sure that we can overcome all the technical difficulties because Bluetooth hasn’t been designed to measure the distance between individuals. We will decide later if it would be useful to roll out such an application or not,” Cédric O told Le Monde .

When it comes to privacy, Cédric O says the app will be open-source and France’s privacy watchdog the CNIL will have a say. We’ve reached out to the CNIL for comment but the agency said it was too early to comment.

More importantly, details are still thin on the implementation of the PEPP-PT protocol in France. Privacy experts are debating the design of the system. Some argue that it should be as decentralized as possible. Smartphones should keep a log of your social interactions (via ephemeral Bluetooth identifiers). Your phone would regularly fetch a list of infected ephemeral Bluetooth identifiers and do the heavy lifting.

The PEPP-PT project currently supports centralized and decentralized approaches, which means that governments have to decide on an implementation. In a centralized system, a server would assign each user an anonymized identifier and collect data about your social interactions. Each user would be able to fetch the status of its identifier to check whether they’ve been potentially infected or not. It creates a single point of failure and presents risks if someone is able to match anonymized identifiers with real names.

EU privacy experts push a decentralized approach to COVID-19 contacts tracing

The Ministry for the Digital Sector also detailed how France is leveraging tech in general to understand the coronavirus outbreak, improve COVID-19 treatments and plan the end of the lockdown in France.

In addition to the app that is currently in the works, the French government has rolled out an official website to inform people, is encouraging telemedicine services to treat patients (such as Covidom from public hospitals in Paris), is mining aggregated data from telecom companies to understand how people move around the country and is leveraging machine learning on big data to forecast the coronavirus outbreak.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/08/france-is-officially-working-on-stop-covid-contact-tracing-app/

telecommunications

No technical reason to exclude Huawei as 5G supplier, says UK committee

A UK parliamentary committee has concluded there are no technical grounds for excluding Chinese network kit vendor Huawei from the country’s 5G networks.

In a letter from the chair of the Science & Technology Committee to the UK’s digital minister Jeremy Wright, the committee says: “We have found no evidence from our work to suggest that the complete exclusion of Huawei from the UK’s telecommunications networks would, from a technical point of view, constitute a proportionate response to the potential security threat posed by foreign suppliers.”

Though the committee does go on to recommend the government mandate the exclusion of Huawei from the core of 5G networks, noting that UK mobile network operators have “mostly” done so already — but on a voluntary basis.

If it places a formal requirement on operators not to use Huawei for core supply the committee urges the government to provide “clear criteria” for the exclusion so that it could be applied to other suppliers in future.

Reached for a response to the recommendations, a government spokesperson told us: “The security and resilience of the UK’s telecoms networks is of paramount importance. We have robust procedures in place to manage risks to national security and are committed to the highest possible security standards.”

The spokesperson for the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport added: “The Telecoms Supply Chain Review will be announced in due course. We have been clear throughout the process that all network operators will need to comply with the Government’s decision.”

In recent years the US administration has been putting pressure on allies around the world to entirely exclude Huawei from 5G networks — claiming the Chinese company poses a national security risk.

Australia announced it was banning Huawei and another Chinese vendor ZTE from providing kit for its 5G networks last year. Though in Europe there has not been a rush to follow the US lead and slam the door on Chinese tech giants.

In April leaked information from a UK Cabinet meeting suggested the government had settled on a policy of granting Huawei access as a supplier for some non-core parts of domestic 5G networks, while requiring they be excluded from supplying components for use in network cores.

On this somewhat fuzzy issue of delineating core vs non-core elements of 5G networks, the committee writes that it “heard unanimously and clearly” from witnesses that there will still be a distinction between the two in the next-gen networks.

It also cites testimony by the technical director of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), Dr Ian Levy, who told it “geography matters in 5G”, and pointed out Australia and the UK have very different “laydowns” — meaning “we may have exactly the same technical understanding, but come to very different conclusions”.

In a response statement to the committee’s letter, Huawei SVP Victor Zhang welcomed the committee’s “key conclusion” before going on to take a thinly veiled swiped at the US — writing: “We are reassured that the UK, unlike others, is taking an evidence based approach to network security. Huawei complies with the laws and regulations in all the markets where we operate.”

The committee’s assessment is not all comfortable reading for Huawei, though, with the letter also flagging the damning conclusions of the most recent Huawei Oversight Board report which found “serious and systematic defects” in its software engineering and cyber security competence — and urging the government to monitor Huawei’s response to the raised security concerns, and to “be prepared to act to restrict the use of Huawei equipment if progress is unsatisfactory”.

Huawei has previously pledged to spend $2BN addressing security shortcomings related to its UK business — a figure it was forced to qualify as an “initial budget” after that same Oversight Board report.

“It is clear that Huawei must improve the standard of its cybersecurity,” the committee warns.

It also suggests the government consults on whether telecoms regulator Ofcom needs stronger powers to be able to force network suppliers to clean up their security act, writing that: “While it is reassuring to hear that network operators share this point of view and are ready to use commercial pressure to encourage this, there is currently limited regulatory power to enforce this.”

Another committee recommendation is for the NCSC to be consulted on whether similar security evaluation mechanisms should be established for other 5G vendors — such as Ericsson and Nokia: Two European based kit vendors which, unlike Huawei, are expected to be supplying core 5G.

“It is worth noting that an assurance system comparable to the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre does not exist for other vendors. The shortcomings in Huawei’s cyber security reported by the Centre cannot therefore be directly compared to the cyber security of other vendors,” it notes.

On the issue of 5G security generally the committee dubs this “critical”, adding that “all steps must be taken to ensure that the risks are as low as reasonably possible”.

Where “essential services” that make use of 5G networks are concerned, the committee says witnesses were clear such services must be able to continue to operate safely even if the network connection is disrupted. Government must ensure measures are put in place to safeguard operation in the event of cyber attacks, floods, power cuts and other comparable events, it adds. 

While the committee concludes there is no technical reason to limit Huawei’s access to UK 5G, the letter does make a point of highlighting other considerations, most notably human rights abuses, emphasizing its conclusion does not factor them in at all — and pointing out: “There may well be geopolitical or ethical grounds… to enact a ban on Huawei’s equipment”.

It adds that Huawei’s global cyber security and privacy officer, John Suffolk, confirmed that a third party had supplied Huawei services to Xinjiang’s Public Security Bureau, despite Huawei forbidding its own employees from misusing IT and comms tech to carry out surveillance of users.

The committee suggests Huawei technology may therefore be being used to “permit the appalling treatment of Muslims in Western China”.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/15/no-technical-reason-to-exclude-huawei-as-5g-supplier-says-uk-committee/

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US man arrested over murder of shopkeeper in Italy

Rome (CNN)Italian police have arrested an American citizen on suspicion of brutally murdering a shopkeeper in the city of Viterbo, near Rome, authorities told CNN Sunday.

Pang arrived in Italy in mid-February and rented a bed and breakfast in the village of Capodimonte, the officer said.
“He was gentle with everyone and always greeted everyone,” Trombetta said, adding that the young man doesn’t speak Italian and used his mobile phone translator to communicate.
    But he was arrested over the killing of Fedeli, who was struck with an iron stool and had his face trampled with a shoe, in a crime committed in daylight that has stunned the normally quiet town.
    Investigators say Pang had already purchased clothes for 600 euros (about $673) in the shop, mainly sweatshirts and brand-name jeans, on April 30 and May 2, using credit cards.
    But the payments were blocked so “probably … when the boy returned and the shopkeeper refused to sell him the merchandise, they started fighting,” Trombetta said.
    Pang was born in South Korea on March 22, 1997, authorities said. He was identified in security camera footage after the killing, according to Trombetta.
    CCTV footage appears to show Pang walking in the street out of the shop with a plastic bag covering his left foot. Investigators say they found the wallet of the victim and many new garments from the victim’s shop in Pang’s room.
      Trombetta added that Pang, now in prison in Viterbo, declined to answer magistrates’ questions. His court-appointed lawyers did not respond to CNN’s request for comment on Sunday.
      Paolo Auriemma, a prosecutor in Viterbo, told journalists that Pang had no criminal records during his two and a half months in Italy.

      Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/05/europe/viterbo-italy-murder-us-man-intl/index.html

      telecommunications

      UK gives Huawei an amber light to supply 5G

      The U.K. government will allow Huawei to be a supplier for some non-core parts of the country’s 5G networks, despite concerns that the involvement of the Chinese telecoms vendor could pose a risk to national security. But it will be excluded from core parts of the networks, according to reports in national press.

      The news of prime minister Theresa May’s decision made during a meeting of the National Security Council yesterday was reported earlier by The Telegraph. The newspaper said multiple ministers raised concerns about her approach — including the Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Defence Secretary, International Trade Secretary and International Development Secretary.

      The FT reports that heavy constraints on Huawei’s involvement in U.K. 5G networks reflect the level of concern raised by ministers.

      May’s decision to give an amber light to Huawei’s involvement in building next-gen 5G networks comes a month after a damning report by a U.K. oversight body set up to evaluate the Chinese company’s approach to security.

      The fifth annual report by the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre Oversight Board blasted “serious and systematic defects” in its software engineering and cyber security competence.

      Though the oversight board stopped short of calling for an outright ban — despite saying it could provide “only limited assurance that all risks to U.K. national security from Huawei’s involvement in the U.K.’s critical networks can be sufficiently mitigated long-term.”

      But speaking at a cybersecurity conference in Brussels in February, Ciaran Martin, the CEO of the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), expressed confidence U.K. authorities can mitigate any risk posed by Huawei.

      The NCSC is part of the domestic GCHQ signals intelligence agency.

      Dr. Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity advisor and research associate at the Center for Technology and Global Affairs at Oxford University, told TechCrunch he’s not surprised by the government’s decision to work with Huawei.

      “It’s a message that was long-expected,” he said. “U.K. officials have been carefully sending signals in the previous months. In a sense, this makes us closer to the end of the 5G drama.”

      “With proper management most risk can be mitigated. It all depends on the strategic planning,” he added.

      “I believe the level of [security] responsibility at telecoms will remain similar to today’s. The main message expected by telecoms is clarity to enable them to move on with infrastructure.”

      The heaviest international pressure to exclude the Chinese vendor from next-gen 5G networks has been coming from the U.S., where President Trump has been leaning on key intelligence-sharing allies to act on espionage fears and shut out Huawei — with some success.

      Last year Australia and New Zealand both announced bans on Chinese kit vendors citing national security fears.

      But in Europe governments appear to be leaning in another direction: toward managing and mitigating potential risks rather than shutting the door completely.

      The European Commission has also eschewed pushing for a pan-EU ban — instead issuing recommendations encouraging member states to step up individual and collective attention on network security to mitigate potential risks.

      It has warned too — and conversely — of the risk of fragmentation to its flagship “digital single market” project if member state governments decide to slam doors on their own. So, at the pan-EU level, security considerations are very clearly being weighed against strategic commercial imperatives and technology priorities.

      Equally, individual European governments appear to have little appetite to throw a spanner in the 5G works, given the risk of being left lagging as cellular connectivity evolves and transforms — an upgrade that’s expected to fuel and underpin developments in artificial intelligence and big data analysis, among other myriad and much-hyped benefits.

      In the U.K.’s case, national security concerns have been repeatedly brandished as justification for driving through domestic surveillance legislation so draconian that parts of it have later been unpicked by both U.K. and EU courts. Even if the same security concerns are here, where 5G networks are concerned, being deemed “manageable” — rather than grounds for a similarly draconian approach to technology procurement.

      It’s not clear at this stage how extensively Huawei will be involved in supplying and building U.K. 5G networks.

      The NCSC sent us the following statement in response to questions:

      National Security Council discussions are confidential. Decisions from those meetings are made and announced at the appropriate time through the established processes.

      The security and resilience of the UK’s telecoms networks is of paramount importance.

      As part of our plans to provide world class digital connectivity, including 5G, we have conducted an evidence based review of the supply chain to ensure a diverse and secure supply base, now and into the future. This is a thorough review into a complex area and will report with its conclusions in due course.

      “How ‘non-core’ will be defined is anyone’s guess but it would have to be clearly defined and publicly communicated,” Olejnik also told us. “I would assume this refers to government and military networks, but what about safety communication or industrial systems, such as that of power plants or railroad? That’s why we should expect more clarity.”

      Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/24/uk-gives-huawei-an-amber-light-to-supply-5g/

      Tax Free Retirement Program

      How Germany stacks up against its European neighbors

      (CNN)When German voters head to the polls on September 24, they’ll have to choose from a record 42 parties, but there are just two realistic candidates for Chancellor — incumbent Angela Merkel, of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and her Social Democratic Party (SPD) rival, Martin Schulz.

      Here’s how Germany stacks up against its European neighbors on these issues, and what Merkel and Schulz plan to do about them.

      ECONOMY

      At 4%, Germany has a very low rate of unemployment. And it’s been falling fairly consistently — from a high of 11.5% — since 2005.

      But although the number of full-time jobs has risen, there’s been a bigger increase in the number of part-time and low-paid jobs. According to the Federal Employment Office, 4.7 million Germans rely solely on so-called “mini-jobs,” which tend to be lower paying and insecure.
      Schulz has promised to crack down on precarious forms of employment, pledging to offer workers a way into more secure jobs.
      Merkel has herself hired several employees from her own government office to work as “mini-jobbers” on her election campaign — for which she has been widely criticized — but wants to see workers in these jobs benefit from the same wage increases as regular employees.
        When asked about the hirings at a news conference, she said she saw no problem with employing people on these contracts.

        Although Germans earn more on average than British, French, Spanish and Italian workers, incomes have stagnated over the past decade and are now slightly lower than in 2008.
        Between 2008 and 2015, the number of people at risk of poverty rose nearly 10%, leaving one in six Germans at risk.
        Tackling in-work poverty is a key part of Schulz’s campaign.
        “Whoever believes that good work deserves fair pay must vote SPD,” he said at a recent rally.
          The CDU manifesto says that “everyone should be able to afford to live from what they earn,” but Merkel herself has said little on the issue, choosing to focus primarily on the country’s low unemployment rate.

          Figures show that incomes are a little more equal in Germany than in many of its European neighbors. But income inequality has hardly budged over the last decade.
          It’s a key concern for German voters and a central topic in the election campaign, particularly among Germany’s left-wing parties.
          “Zeit für mehr Gerechtigkeit” (“time for more fairness/justice”) is Schulz’s primary campaign slogan and a staple in his speeches.
          Asked about social inequality in a live YouTube interview in August, Merkel spoke about employment figures and her government’s success in raising the minimum wage.
            RELATED: Germany’s economic strength masks rising inequality

            REFUGEES

            Although Germany tops the list for asylum applications this year, the number is a lot lower than in 2015-2016, when the country received more than 1.2 million applications.

            The presence of so many asylum seekers has pushed the number of foreigners in Germany to a record 18.6 million. Around half of Germans say they are worried about the integration of refugees and about immigration more broadly.
            Merkel has defended her 2015 “open door” policy while insisting that the events of that year must not be repeated.
            “We want the number of refugees arriving in Germany to be permanently low,” her party’s manifesto reads.
            Schulz is calling for all European countries to take their fair share of refugees. “We stand for a humanitarian refugee policy,” the manifesto says.
              RELATED: Through Germany’s open door: What life is really like for refugees

              SECURITY

              Germany climbed eight places on the Global Terrorism Index to 41 after six people were killed by terror attacks in 2015 — the country’s first terror-related deaths since 2007. Further attacks in 2016 killed 22 people and injured many more.

              The attacks led to calls for stricter immigration controls and increased support for the anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany.
              The same year saw more than 3,500 attacks on refugees and refugee hostels, leaving 560 people injured including 43 children, according to a government document.
              Both Merkel and Schulz have pledged to put 15,000 more police officers on Germany’s streets and to continue investing in anti-terrorism measures.
              The SPD has also promised to tackle the growing problem of right-wing extremism.

              ENVIRONMENT

              Germany emits more CO2 per capita than many of its neighbors, including Austria, Denmark, Italy and Spain.

              It’s an issue that concerns the majority of voters. A recent survey showed that more Germans are worried about climate change than about war or terror attacks.
              Germany also looks likely to miss its 2020 target for reducing emission levels, which have barely changed since 2009.

              A bigger proportion of Germany’s energy comes from renewable sources than in the Netherlands or Poland — but countries such as Norway and Iceland are far ahead.
              Most voters want Germany to do better. In a recent survey, 95% of those asked said that the growth of renewable energy was important or very important.
              Both the conservatives and the Social Democrats are promising to expand the production of renewables in Germany — but they’re not setting any targets.
              RELATED: Why Germany has a dirty climate secret

              AGING POPULATION

              There are now more retirees than ever before, while the proportion of working-age Germans to support them has been falling for the past three decades.

              Pensioner poverty has emerged as an important election issue. More than 17% of Germans aged 65 and over are at risk of poverty, compared to 15.5% in 2008.
              Schulz wants to stabilize pension levels using public money, and has pledged not to raise the retirement age higher than 67 before 2030.
              Merkel’s party manifesto offers no new plans to tackle the challenge, describing the policies of the past 12 years as “successful” and promising more of the same.

              MILITARY

              Germany spends a smaller proportion of its GDP than the UK and Italy on its military — and less than even Norway and Finland, countries that very rarely mobilize their troops.

              Earlier this year, Merkel came under fire from US President Donald Trump for spending less than 2% on defense — the requirement for NATO countries.
              She has promised to meet that target by 2024. Germany also plans to increase its troop levels by 20,000 over the next seven years to nearly 200,000, as reported by German media.
              Schulz calls for the removal of US nuclear weapons from German soil and rejects any “spiral of rearmament.”

              Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/11/europe/germany-compared-to-europe/index.html