Miscellaneous

Although Sunday evening isn't the best time to blog, the last weeks were so full that it is worth reviewing some of the events.
As I write this, the first exit polls are out on the Greek referendum: they predict a narrow win for the "No" while the official data an overwhelming "No". No is no, so what is the difference? Well, an overwhelming "No" would give a much stronger mandate for the government (as counts progress, it seems "No" is over 60% - oh wait, what for?
No one knows (pun not intended). We will see, what the Greek government does - they also had several proposals on the table, the last two or three maybe not so far from the proposal of the Troika - which is off the table but probably would be acceptable for them again.
While we wait to see, let's talk about Hungary (and also about the U.S. Supreme Court). It's Pride weekend, and just before it, the SCOTUS (official abbreviation of the Court) ruled that same-sex couples have a right to marriage. And this stirs waves in Hungary. OK, the decision to save Obamacare by correcting the badly written law is not so relevant, but that Hungarian facebookers totally ignored the other decision (from early June) about a threat on Facebook, is somewhat surprising. A man was writing on Facebook (apparently in a rap poem - according to experts it was disastrously bad) about wanting to see his ex-wife killed. He was condemned by a court, and actually isn't off the hook due to the Supreme Court's verdict. But the verdict reinforced the "clear and present danger" principle. If the husband really wanted to have her wife killed and called others who could do it to do it, he is guilty (my simplistic interpretation). But if he did not really want it (here the "literary" expression comes into play), or it was unrealistic that anybody do it, he is protected by the freedom of speech.
Meanwhile Hungary is receiving almost as many refugees (asylum seekers) as Italy. And the government wants to seal off the Serbian boarder by a big and strong fence, costing 22 bn forints (itself sufficient to feed 14 thousand refugees for a year - although the decision to accept or reject their demand for asylum should be decided within months and a lot of them go further to the west). Let's forget about the money for the fake "National consultation" and the outraging publicity campaign.
What is more important that first a collection was started to counter the government giant poster campaign. The estimated cost was 3 million forints (as compared to a hundred times as much for the government giant posters), but within a week or so, ten times as much was donated by private individuals.
Then real actions started to emerge: groups of volunteers sacrificed their free time to help them, information leaflets were translated and printed (why only by volunteers? - the link is there, you can see what vital information it contains), food, drink (there is a heat wave also in Hungary) clothes, toys for children, medicines, blankets etc. etc. collected. The coordination runs of Facebook, even between groups in different locations to try to warn when a bigger group is due to arrive (they have to travel usually changing at least once but sometimes more - see also the leaflet). But the group is kept closed to exclude those who would only post rude comments (I see them on posts on articles dealing with the problem).
I should close now on an optimistic note - it is heartwarming what these, mostly young people do and tell about the solidarity they encounter - people bringing donations, coming to help, travelling dozens of kilometres to go to help.

The "Google case" - right to be forgotten by search providers

„Dumm hat Glück” - stupid is lucky, says the German. Sometimes lazy people also have luck: I did not have the energy to comment about the „right to be forgotten” case involving Google search results but recent days brought new developments, so I have an occasion to make up for this.

We read from time to time that “Google is evil”. Even Google gives nice results for this. And we also read sometimes interesting reactions to that. But it is not just Google. What appears once on the net, will stay there (or at least in references or at least in the cache of some computer) forever. So Viviane Reding, vice-president of the European Commission responsible for Justice, fundamental rights and citizenship made the “right to be forgotten” an important element of the EU data protection reform. We will give links to more recent materials on the reform below, and the blog quoted above also carries an analysis of the judgment of the European Court of Justice.

The case will be called “Google Spain”, it carries the number C-131/12 and the judgment can be found here . It says that the operator of a search engine is responsible for the processing it executes on personal data which appear on web pages of third parties and is obliged to remove the data from its search results on a legitimate request of the data subject, even if the data remain on the original web page. There are conditions, however, among others for the processing to fall under European law, and the Court also explained one aspect of the legitimacy of the request.

A Spanish citizen sued Google to remove from its search results data concerning him. The Court found that given that Google has an operation in Spain whose activity was found to be related to presenting the search results to Spanish users. The processing of the data and the presentation of search results was not done by Google Spain, who was only selling advertisements to be shown on the Spanish search result pages. This was sufficient for the Court to say that the activity was related. On the other hand, the Court also said that there may be reasons of overriding public interest which would justify that the search engine does not remove the data from its search results.

What is important in this judgment, that although the “right to be forgotten” will only be enshrined (if the Member States and the European Parliament approve – see a recent argument by the British minister of Justice) in new data protection regulation now under preparation, it already recognised based on the present legal framework that data subjects have the right not only to request the deletion of their data from the records of those who process their data, but also the indirect appearance of these data on the Internet.

This of course has consequences to all who provide references to data others put on the web. But also means that even if some data cannot be deleted (like official documents published), they may have to disappear from secondary sources, thus making finding this information more difficult or even impossible. If will be an interesting question whether the search results of the primary publisher of the information also will have to “forget” the information.

The saga is, however continuing as Google receives thousands of requests to remove information from its search results, and took an overly cautious approach and removed links to several articles on a public personality but was forced to retreat and reinstate the references.

For those who want to read more, here is a thorough analysis. And the Guardian, who was one of those whose articles were removed, who gave also a good reporting of the case.

On data protection reform, here is the latest text under discussion by the Council.

A strategy for the Hungarian opposition?

First of all a fast summary of what happened recently on the opposition landscape: - Talks are slowly starting between MSzP and Együtt 2014 - Mesterházy, president of the MSzP was more diplomatic concerning his candidacy for prime minister in an interview - The hassle around the name of the Party of Bajnai, Együtt-2014 continues - New attacks were launched against Bajnai - LMP received the right to keep its faction in the Parliament. Some main events in Hungarian politics and the economy: - The tobacconist saga continues with new leaks about who from friends and relations (in the Hungarian translation of "Winnie the Pooh": "Friends, relations and business partners") - well, not of Rabbit but of the FIDESZ notabilities won tobacconist concessions - The new land law has been voted and Ángyán, one of the main agricultural eminences in FIDESZ, who became outrightly critical to the land policy and the distribution of rental rights on state-owned land to "friends, relations and business partners" who have nothing to do with agriculture, left FIDESZ in response - The merger of the National Bank and the Financial Supervision is progressing and the head of the latter -who is set to lose his job or at least his power even when he was the most faithful executioner during the first FIDESZ government of foreign banks who helped companies in transactions the government didn't like - wrote an open letter to the president of the Supreme Court (recently renamed to Kuria to be able to get rid of the previous president) calling the attention of the judges to the danger to the economy if the loan contracts tied to foreign currency would be declared "en masse" invalid. It is a little strange that the basis of this invalidation would be the laws on financial services he helped to forge. - The minister of the national economy (also fulfilling the tasks of the finance minister) announced a new round of austerity measures (forgetting to announce one of them) in spite that the EU liberated Hungary from the excessive deficit procedure under which it was since it joined the EU. Debates started immediately whether this is to enable the government to relax spending and start "bribing" voters with spending - some bribes were already distributed in the form of cutting utility prices but the extent is small till now - or just to cover the losses to the budget coming from bad planing and delay of some revenues (like e-toll for trucks and the tax revenue expected from connecting the cash tellers of all shops electronically to the computers of the Tax Office). What is the context? About the actors: Everybody knows probably that FIDESZ is the governing party (having and utilising, one may say abusing 2/3 majority in the Hungarian Parliament). - MSzP is the main opposition party if we look at the number of members of Parliament or at the results of surveys. It is also the party which was in government for the 8 years before the 2010 elections, in coalition with the liberals, whose SzDSz party practically disappeared and no measurable successor has appeared yet on the stage. - Együtt 2014 is a new formation, which was intended to be an NGO as an umbrella organisation for the alliance of opposition parties who want to defeat FIDESZ in the 2014 elections. They have foreseen to nominate the unique opposition candidate in the "first past the post" individual constituencies while the parties could go independently for the votes in the proportional part of the elections (as all voters have two votes, an individual for a candidate of their constituency and one for party lists - there are some other details which I will ignore for the moment). Immediately the election law was changed to exclude the possibility of NGOs nominating candidates. The organisation is lead by Gordon Bajnai, short-time prime minister of Hungary for about a year before the 2010 elections, who took over without long-term ambitions, i.e. he was not going to be a candidate in the elections 2010. He put the budget and the economy back on track after the combined devastating effect of the 2008 crisis and the spending spree between 2002 and 2006 and the aborted attempts by Gyurcsány for austerity and reform at the same time from 2006. These attempts triggered an unprecedented series of demonstrations which peaked in the months-long occupation of Kossuth square, the square in front of the Parliament which was also scene of emblematic demonstrations during the 1956 revolution. Another climax was when the 23rd of October, the anniversary of the 1956 revolution, police had to dissipate forceful demonstrations, which (it is debated, by whose fault) mingled with the masses of the anniversary celebration of FIDESZ (set in a place which had no relationship to the revolution at all but was dangerously close to the place where the forceful demonstrators were stopped in order not to be able to get to the Parliament). As a consequence, participants of the FIDESZ-organised event were also attacked and hurt by police. - LMP, a grassroots green - left - liberal party, which surprisingly won seats in the Parliament in 2010 (their name is the abbreviation of the slogan: Politics can be different), split along the line whether to co-operate with Együtt 2014. Those who favoured co-operation, left the party and were denied the right to form a faction in Parliament (just like the faction who left MSzP with Gyurcsány at their helm) while those who wanted to go alone into the elections 2014 kept the name LMP. Why all this? The election law modified by FIDESZ (and introducing a smaller Parliament which was already a promise by Gyurcsány but he couldn't assemble a 2/3 majority behind his propositions) foresees a higher proportion of individual constituency seats but even in the previous system, individual constituencies were the key to success. Before, however, if no candidate attained absolute majority, the candidates with the most votes had to face each-other in a second round, and also here, an absolute majority was needed. If less than 50% of the voters voted in a constituency, the round was invalid. Now, there is no such limit, and the candidate with a relative majority wins the seat, there is no second round. Before, votes cast in a constituency for the losing candidates were counted towards a compensating list, thus they had, if only a lower, value. Now, this system has been complemented with one where the votes cast for the winning candidate in a constituency, also count toward this compensation which also increases the importance of individual constituencies. Given that according to surveys, most of the voters have no party preferences, or do not intend to vote, in case of a low turnout and several opposition candidates, FIDESZ (who amalgamated all parties on the "right" (at least for: MDF, KDMP, FKGP, MDNP - no importance who they WERE - except the extreme right Jobbik) can win a huge parliamentary majority even with a low proportion of the votes (if there are three opposition parties including Jobbik, with 25%), not to talk about the proportion to voters overall. Therefore unity of opposition is crucial. OK, if this is trivial for everybody, why no opposition unity? In my opinion, there are two main reasons (apart from personal controversies), one of principle and one of tactics. As Orbán put his party practically outside the normal political spectrum, the opposition covers all political streams. Classical right wing (i.e. pro-market, libertarian which build on individual incentive and the responsibility of the individual) have no great popularity in Hungary. But still, the co-operation of parties from the most various ideologies and social models is necessary. And a close co operation, meaning even possibly (see the second reason below) uniting in one party. And they have to formulate a programme in common. A programme which is reasonable, coherent, acceptable for the opinion leaders and experts and at the same time one with which they can win elections against a populist propaganda - and deeds - of the governing party, in a media space which is outright unfavourable for them (I will return to that in another post soon - talking about the Tavares-report and Viviane Reding). On the other hand, FIDESZ has the possibility to change any law it wants, within days (and has done so, if necessary, see above). So if the way the opposition wants to shape its co-operation gets known, this way of co-operation will immediately forbidden or strongly disadvantaged. AS parties who have joint candidates in individual constituencies already are in distribution of the "compensation" votes (explained above). I mentioned personal controversies. It is taken for granted, that the opposition has to have one candidate for prime minister (who would believe in co-operation if they had more? I think even more sophisticated voters than the Hungarians would not be able to follow this - even I was stuck now when I tried to spell out this solution although I just raised it) and of course both the president of MSzP as Bajnai announced their ambition (what would an opposition leader without a PM ambition be like?). So that's why the flexibility shown by Mesterházy is important. Although no one precisely knows how the voters think (there is talk about this or that politician or party causing voters of another one in alliance with him/her/it not to vote for the common candidates), and there are undoubtedly risks in naming a candidate, the politically conscious population on the Internet (Facebook and commenters on blogs) mostly trust Bajnai most. His movement organises meetings al over the country, has a Facebook presence and is (just like MSzP, of course) an unavoidable component of the opposition co-operation. So it is not easy, but if opposition politicians and voters will look for what joins them, and not what separates, they may be able to get to a solution.

The Commission will soon publish its ‘strategy for e-procurement'. Public procurement should be enabled to use the internet.
Public procurement tender notices of all public authorities in the EEA are already published on the Internet and the submission of these documents is also continuously being streamlined. Notices can be submitted through a web-based for after registration or sent through computer-to-computer connections using the so-called e-sender network. The Commission's informatics directorate general is already doing some e-procurement. E-tendering is being phased in, first documents can be submitted, later the whole process will be possible on the net.

Meanwhile two commissioners, Michel Barnier, the commissioner for the internal market and services, and Karel De Gucht, the commissioner for trade are planning a regulation which would enable municipal authorities to reject bids from companies from countries where EU firms cannot bid in public procurement.

This is part of the EU's fight against discrimination in trade.

Surprise

I was skiing a couple of weeks ago in Austria. I used the computer in the hall of the hotel. It was subscribed to a content filtering service which classified blog.hu, one of the popular Hungarian blogging sites as pornographic. This would not in itself surprise me, it also had an interface to report errors so I reported that the site certainly has some pornblogs but this is no reason to block the whole site as - plausibly - the different blogs are independent of each other and a number of very good political, cultural and lifestyle blogs can be found on it.
When I wanted to access the site of a left-wing Hungarian weekly, another content filter became active and informed me that based on the frequent occurrence of certain words, this site has been blocked. As this site is in Hungarian, I did not understand it quite. There was no e-mail address or used interface to report errors or to contact them. However, I find this very strange.