Berlin, May 31th 2010 -- The European Parliament would spend five million EUR to give an Apple iPad to every Member of Parliament under an "IT mobility" budget earmark, an investigative journalist of the British newspaper Times asserts. An iPad costs around 550 Euro and there are 736 representatives. The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure recommends assessing the interoperability and security impact prior to technology adoption.
Benjamin Henrion, President of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), says: "Money should be better spent in improving the European Parliament´s video website. Right now it is still a piece of junk that does not work unless you have Microsoft or Adobe installed. We complained of this situation with the OpenParliament petition two years ago, and since then, nothing happened."
"In Spain we prevent such technical discrimination by smart regulation. Interoperability is mandated by law for the public sector as a natural right of citizens", explains Alberto Barrionuevo from the FFII Open Standards working group.
MEPs should take the security aspects seriously, warns Rene Mages from FFII France. "When foreign companies provide communication devices and software for our democratic representatives we should be paranoid about security. Full disclosure of source code and interface information is essential to lower the risk of backdoors for American or Asian services." Ten years ago a scandal over Lotus Notes software backdoors for the US National Security Agency rocked the Swedish Parliament.
Links
Times Online article: The European Parliament parl will expend €5 Mio. in to give an iPad to every MEP
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7134077.ece
OpenParliament.eu Initiative
http://openparliament.eu/
TP: Only NSA can listen, so that's OK
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/2/2898/1.html
OpenParliament petition:
http://openparliament.eu/
Permanent link to this press release:
http://press.ffii.org/Press%20releases/iPad%20for%20the%20European%20Parliament%20displays%20interoperability%20and%20security%20carelessness
Contact
Benjamin Henrion
FFII Brussels
+32-484-56 61 09 (mobile)
bhenrion at ffii.org
(French/English)
About FFII
The FFII is a not-for-profit association registered in twenty European countries, dedicated to the development of information goods for the public benefit, based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 1000 members, 3,500 companies and 100,000 supporters have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice in public policy questions concerning exclusion rights (intellectual property) in data processing.
