Made in the USA? The influence of the US on the EU's data protection regime. CEPS Liberty and Security, November 2009

Recent developments have shown that the EU’s border security policy is greatly influenced by the US. This influence simultaneously has implications for other EU policies, including those on data protection. This paper highlights that policy-making at the transatlantic level is increasingly taking place through informal networks, such as the High-Level Political Dialogue on Border and Transportation Security and the High-Level Contact Group on data protection, which allow US involvement in EU policy-making. This tendency stems from the growing personal relationships among policy-makers, the gradual substitution of formal instruments with less formal contracts and informal understandings shaping the content of formal agreements. Drawing from empirical examples of EU–US cooperation on data protection in the context of homeland security, the paper analyses the repercussions of these developments and the issues that remain unresolved, and offers policy recommendations

The pursuit of positive accountability in the cyber domain

Published online: 28 November 2023Debates about accountability in cyberspace are dominated by state-centric and security-driven approaches that disregard the complexity of the institutional ecosystem in cyberspace and the diverse ways through which different stakeholder groups may pursue accountability. Such an approach has contributed to a flawed interpretation of accountability in cyberspace as applicable solely to malicious actors who need to be punished for their actions. Despite greater policy and research attention to this line of reasoning, holding states accountable for their behaviour has yielded limited results due to the legal, political and technical complexities. At the same time, the non-malicious activities in cyberspace that might have unintended negative effects remain exempted from scrutiny. Cyber capacity-building activities, which aim at supporting governments and societies in strengthening their cyber resilience, illustrate this point well. This article introduces the concept of positive accountability to describe accountability for actions that are not malicious in their intent. It argues that the anticipatory potential of mechanisms like deliberation, joint problem-solving, interactive learning and competition plays an important role in strengthening accountability by eliminating or minimising any unintended or undesired spillovers. It concludes with a proposal that broadly defined capacity building might also be considered a form of anticipatory and deliberative accountability mechanism

Operational guidance : the EU’s international cooperation on cyber capacity building

This is the second edition.In the era of digital interdependence, cybersecurity has evolved from a technical and technological issue to a societal need and a multifaceted discipline. The promotion of digital transition and digital society as a key element of the EU’s international cooperation and partnerships has steadily increased the funding for such initiatives. The sustainability of the digital development outcomes and the safe transition to digital societies rely on the cybersecurity and cyber resilience of these processes. Therefore, a concerted effort is necessary to consolidate lessons from the EU’s experience to date – particularly in bridging the development and technical communities – and articulate a systematic methodology that combines the various dimensions of cyber policy with development cooperation principles.This publication was funded by the European Union

Governing cyberspace : policy boundary politics across organizations

Published online: 01 September 2023Policy boundaries and issue interdependence are not a given. The stakes they imply—who governs, how, and where a policy domain is—become institutionalized over time, often first by the Global North. We know little about how these stakes are presented and institutionalized within and across organizations. We tackle this lacuna by asking how, and to what effect, an emerging policy domain is situated in a densely institutionalized environment. We argue that new policy domains such as cyberspace or artificial intelligence prompt resourceful governments to forum-shop policy frames by clustering promising issues in new and existing organizations in pursuit of coalition-building. Initially, resonance is more likely to be established in organizations with like-minded countries, leading to partially differentiated non-hierarchical regime complexes. In the long-term, competing adjustment pressures, particularly felt in the Global South, help trigger a regime-shift to an orchestrating general-purpose organization. Key actors must reconfigure their frames thereby reducing differentiation. In today’s geopolitical world, this hardens intra-organizational political differences. We examine three propositions in the case of cyberspace and show how the proliferation of competing frames across organizations led to shifting the policy debate to the UN, where only piecemeal policy adjustments are possible. Our analysis is based on primary sources and immersion strategies

Automated Meter Reading For Water Demand Forecast And Hydraulic Modelling Of The Municipal Water Distribution System In Mikołów, Poland

This paper presents preliminary results of a project aimed at utilising automated meter reading (AMR) system for water demand forecasting and hydraulic modelling of Mikołów (Poland) water distribution system. This system will allow for near-real time collection of hydraulic data. Accurate estimation and prediction of the demand patterns of the customers is a crucial element affecting accuracy of hydraulic model. AMR will be used to analyse the behaviour of individual household-based water consumption. Calibration and validation of the model will be realised by combining existing SCADA system and mobile (temporary) measurement points. Total length of the main water distribution system in Mikołów (pop. 40 000) is about 310 km, with 117 km of service pipelines. Water in amount of 300 000 m3 per month is supplied to over 7600 individual clients and bulk (industrial) customers. All connections to water network will be equipped with automated meter and incorporated into existing monitoring system. The existing telemetry system for Mikołów is composed of 30 stations measuring flow rate and pressure in the water distribution network (WDN). A hybrid AMR system will be used. It combines local reading of meters by two-way RF units with telemetry stations sending signals using mobile network (GSM) to the main database server. This server contains a database of water consumption readings for individual customers. To take advantage of the AMR system a detailed hydraulic model of the Mikołów WDN was build. The hydraulic model will be later coupled with an integrated ICT system for comprehensive management of the water distribution network. The seamless connection between model and GIS, CIS and SCADA modules will allow for the network topology update, automatic re-calibration, water demand reading and forecasting

Hydraulic Modelling And Calibration Of The Upper Silesian Waterworks In Poland

Our paper presents the preliminary results of hydraulic modelling and calibration of a complex water transfer and distribution system of Upper Silesian Waterworks PLC (USW). A new approach to quasi real-time model calibration and validation in connection with an integrated ICT system will be presented. The USW is the biggest water company in Poland and one of the biggest in Europe delivering water to over 3 million customers in Silesian Metropolis, on the area covering about 4.3 thousand square kilometres, with the main water network which is over 880 km long. This water distribution system incorporates central and western sub-regions of Silesia (Silesian Metropolis) supplying water in the amount of about 400 000 m3/d. The USW water transportation system is a mix of pressure and gravity mains (with diameters ranging between 300 mm and 1800 mm) conveying the water to several local (municipal) distribution systems and bulk buyers (industrial). The area is characterised by a great diversity of terrain altitude, heavy concentration of industry and severe mining damages. This dynamic environment requires constant update of WDN topology and real-time water demand from wholesale customers (towns and cities, coal mines, steel, energy, automotive, machinery and chemical industry). For calibration and validation of hydraulic model we used the extensive telemetry system composed of 180 monitoring stations (including wholesale customers meters, reservoirs, tanks, pumping stations etc.). This system contains over 800 sensors measuring flow rate, pressure, turbidity and chlorine residual. The existing database of measurements will be temporarily supported by mobile measurement points used for identification of hydraulic properties of selected groups of pipelines. Hydraulic model (based on EPANET) is an element of the integrated ICT system for comprehensive water network management, consisting of several modules: GIS, CIS, SCADA as well as tools for multi-criteria optimisation and forecasting

Poisoning cause analysis among patients hospitalized in an emergency department

Consequences of using psychoactive substances are always negative. They cause not only physical and mental dependence, but also huge damage in the body in case of poisoning. The toxicity of these substances varies and depends on the type of chemical compound. The effects can be difficult to predict and often can pose a direct threat to life and health. The objective of this study was to analyse the causes and consequences of poisoning with psychoactive substances among patients hospitalized in the Emergency Department of Stefan Kardynał Wyszyński Province Specialist Hospital in Lublin within the period of one year (01.01.2016 - 31.12.2016). Our own study results showed that men and people living in urban areas were the patients most frequently admitted to the Emergency Department due to poisoning. Alcohol was the most common psychoactive substance used by the patients in the study group. Poisoning with anti-epileptic, sedative-hypnotic and psychotropic medications predominated among women, whereas alcohol and narcotics and psychodysleptic medications were the most frequent cause of poisoning among men

Spitzer Microlensing Parallax for OGLE-2017-BLG-0896 Reveals a Counter-rotating Low-mass Brown Dwarf

The kinematics of isolated brown dwarfs in the Galaxy, beyond the solar neighborhood, is virtually unknown. Microlensing has the potential to probe this hidden population, as it can measure both the mass and five of the six phase-space coordinates (all except the radial velocity) even of a dark isolated lens. However, the measurements of both the microlens-parallax and finite-source effects are needed in order to recover the full information. Here, we combine the Spitzer satellite parallax measurement with the ground-based light curve, which exhibits strong finite-source effects, of event OGLE-2017-BLG-0896. We find two degenerate solutions for the lens (due to the known satellite-parallax degeneracy), which are consistent with each other except for their proper motion. The lens is an isolated brown dwarf with a mass of either 18 ± 1 M J or 20 ± 1 M J . This is the lowest isolated-object mass measurement to date, only ~45% more massive than the theoretical deuterium-fusion boundary at solar metallicity, which is the common definition of a free-floating planet. The brown dwarf is located at either 3.9 ± 0.1 kpc or 4.1 ± 0.1 kpc toward the Galactic bulge, but with proper motion in the opposite direction of disk stars, with one solution suggesting it is moving within the Galactic plane. While it is possibly a halo brown dwarf, it might also represent a different, unknown population

The United States as a regional security actor

The purpose of this paper is to explore the U.S. role as a regional actor along three dimensions: intra-regional, inter-regional and trans-regional. The paper investigates to what extent these three dimensions are present within the U.S. strategic thinking and discusses briefly different dimensions of the U.S. role as a security provider. The paper demonstrates that despite the extensive interdependence between the United States and its North American neighbours, the political and analytical significance of their relationship is overshadowed by its international commitments in other parts of the world, including in the Middle East or Asia. The paper concludes that the roles that the United States plays as a regional security provider are in constant evolution which results in a varied geometry of U.S. engagement within North America and globally

The External Dimension of Area of Freedom, Security and Justice: Hijacker or Hostage of Cross-pillarisation?

The objective of this article is to investigate the issue of cross-pillarization in the context of the growing interconnection between the EU Justice and Home Affairs and other policies. At the conceptual level, the article traces the development and functioning of cross-pillarization in various contexts: legal and political, internal and international. At the analytical level, it investigates whether cross-pillarization might be used by European institutions in a strategic way in order to promote particular interests. Based on the literature on European inter- and intra-institutional politics, this article makes the case that the process of cross-pillarization has a strong politics component. The Strategy for External Dimension of Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) and the Passenger Name Record Agreement are used to demonstrate how the objective of cross-pillar consistency may be jeopardized by bureaucratic turf wars and conflicts over ideology or resources