Slashdot Mirror
French Power Company Fined For Hacking Greenpeace
judgecorp writes "Electricite de France (EDF) which uses nuclear reactors to generate the majority of France's electricity, has been found guilty of hacking into Greenpeace computers in 2006. EDF has been fined fined €1.5 million and ordered to pay Greenpeace a further half a million euros, for what the judge described as an act of 'industrial scale espionage.'"
As long as this rule applies both ways -i.e. if Greenpeace were to hack into the computers if some other company, they would be fined a more or less equal amount- then I can't say I see any problem with it.
I didn't read the article yet, but 1.5 million euros seems like kind of a slap on the wrist for a power company. They'll prob make that much profit just from people using their computers to read this slashdot story (ok, that's kind of a hyperbole, but you get the idea). If this was "industrial scale espionage" like the summary said, you'd think there would be more than just a "small" fine for punishment.
If what I just said sounded like a troll, it was probably just a failed attempt at humor.
If the situation were reversed... Greenpeace would be declared terrorists and alot of people would be tossed in jail for a long long time.
Once again the lesson is.. If you wanna be a criminal. Start a company first.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yea, a nuclear reactor costs what? tens of billions to build?
Two million would be nothing, probably came out of the "Settlement fund".
I used to think like that, but then I worked for a company that cost several hundred million to build. Millions of dollars came in and left through the place on a daily basis at times. They only got to keep pennies on the dollar and most of the money had to go towards the loans and other investors. There were times the company had tens of thousands on its books as usable, owned, cash.
You can't judge cost to build as the standard for something like this. The investors and owners, probably could come up with that easily. The company itself if there are enough shield corporations between it and the owners? Hard to say.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
They only got to keep pennies on the dollar and most of the money had to go towards the loans and other investors.
I assume you're point is that it isn't terribly profitable to run a nuclear plant. How much more unprofitable would it be if you didn't have the government subsidizing those loans in the first place?
If the big oil/coal industries want to decry subsidies to green tech, they should also be screaming louder about the nuclear subsidies.
Green also doesn't tend to blow up and render large areas uninhabitable for decades...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
They made (net income) 1.249 billion last year.
Green also doesn't tend to blow up and render large areas uninhabitable for decades...
Cough. Also, which of these numbers is lowest, again? Hint: it's not hydro, wind, solar, or biomass.
The judge sentenced Pierre-Paul François, who was EDF’s deputy head of nuclear production security in 2006 to three years imprisonment
TFA
Because, of course, Greenpeace's activities are fully legal.
Think of EDF's hacking as civil disobedience aimed at Greenpeace. They're violating the law in a nonviolent (but potentially harmful) way to fight someone that they don't like. Greenpeace is also in the business of violating the law in a nonviolent (but potentially harmful) way to fight someone that they don't like. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.
I will preface this by saying I have no idea of the comparative cash flows in different countries, or between different parts of the utility/electric industry. That said...
In the U.S., if you are part of the power grid (critical infrastructure, also known as the Bulk Electric System, or BES) and are found in violation, NERC has the power to fine you one million dollars per violation, per day. This fine starts at the outset of the violation (not when it was actually discovered) and can continue until it is rectified. Example trade magazine discussion, second paragraph under NERC Basics.
Loan guarantees cost the government absolutely nothing as long as the company doesn't declare bankruptcy. Because as the name suggests it's simply a guarantee, not a subsidy. It allows the company to borrow at government interest rates (2-3%) rather than market interest rates (6-9%) with the only cost being the government backs the debt with a payment guarantee in the event the company becomes insolvent.
So again, Loan Guarantee's are NOT a subsidy.
Consider what would happen if a foreign power tried the same thing in the USA today.
...in Baltimore Harbor. The Rainbow Warrior wasn't blown up at sea; this occurred in harbor in the largest city in the country, with a lot of other completely unrelated ships and their personnel in the vicinity.
From your wikipedia reference:
"It infamously failed in 1975, causing more casualties than any other dam failure in history, and was subsequently rebuilt."
I don't see them rebuilding Fukushima or Chernobyl anytime soon...
I didn't say other power sources don't have failure issues, I said other power sources don't render the surrounding 100 square miles uninhabitable for decades.
care to try again?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
To answer your 'deaths per TWH' reference. That's not the point. The point is how much cost is associated with that figure. Where would coal be on that list if they had to fully scrub their emissions to prevent the mercury and other such stuff from escaping? Now add CO2.
They could easily get their numbers down to nuclear levels but it wouldn't be economical in any sense...
and they might need....wait for it....
government loan guarantees to be able to build such expensive plants.
Lets talk about construction versus operation. Exactly how many people die from solar panels simply sitting on a roof? Does your nuclear figure include the construction costs of the plants? Wind ditto. It just sits there spinning and as long as you aren't within a few hundred yards on a *very* windy day...zero casualties.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Slightly OT, but just for kicks I calculated the deaths/TWh for nuclear if you included Hiroshima and Nagasaki (~250,000 deaths). I ended up with 6 deaths/TWh from the .04 deaths/TWh originally. Oil is 36 deaths/TWh and US Coal is 15. I think that nicely shows just how deadly Oil and Coal are.
There was nothing wrong with what he said. He didn't say they were borrowing from the government, he said that they could borrow (from private banks) at government rates.
The reason that governments get much lower rates is that they are very unlikely to default on their loans so there is much less risk and cost involved in loaning them money. That means that the interest rate they charge can be very low. If you can get the government credit "blanket" extended over you, then the banks can consider your loan to be just as safe as a government one and give you the same deal.
So he was right, a loan guarantee is NOT a subsidy, unless there is a bankruptcy. It makes it less expensive to build a reactor, but that money does not come from the government. I was also loaned money for my education that was a federal student loan. Since the government was on the hook for the money, I got a low interest rate, but the government did not pay one cent for my education loans.
Aren't the citizens getting fined more than Corps?
So "Industrial Espionage" is only worth a penalty of a million or two but Anonymous hackers are Terrorists for Life?
Remember that Corporations are People? How did Corps manage to NOT get on the Terrorist Lists?!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Quite frankly, passing on costs of violations should be illegal. The company is the one that should have to suffer, not the consumer.
Here you go: Greenpeace annual reports.
I think you're missing the point: corporations are people *when it suits them*
The lost profit is to the bank at the expense of the company borrowing the capital, not the taxpayers. More to the point, it is not actually lost profit because without the lower interest rates, many of these businesses wouldn't even be borrowing any capital which would mean the profit would be... wait for it...
non-existent without the gov't loan guarantees.
The way you rail against it you'd think the nuclear power industry molested you or something. This is the point where you have lost credibility due to irrationality. Good day sir.
I got here through a series of tubes
A lower cost to build the plant is relative. Without the guarantees, the plant would not be built so in essence, there is not a lower cost to build the plant, there is only one cost which since lower is a comparative term it is invalid in this case because there is no comparison. That is not a subsidy. Now if the gov't wasn't collecting taxes due on said plant or was deferring its own collection of interest premiums then that would be a subsidy, but neither are occurring in this case.
I got here through a series of tubes
Exactly how many people die from solar panels simply sitting on a roof? Does your nuclear figure include the construction costs of the plants?
Most of the death toll from nuclear power since the adoption of the containment vessel probably comes from mining, not construction. I'm willing to bet the same for other forms of generation, except for fossil fuels and hydroelectric. Getting the raw materials out of the ground is a labor intensive process requiring heavy machinery and risky setups, and lives are invariably lost or shortened more so than in normal construction. In China alone, between 5,000 and 20,000 people die each year from mining accidents.
It has been 25 years since a nuclear disaster occured that resulted in the loss of human lives, 64 lives directly, according to UNSCEAR but up to 4,000 according to the World Health Organization when shortened lives are also accounted for. That means that since Chernobyl, the death toll from mining supercedes the nuclear death toll by between 30 and 7800 times over depending on who you trust. Keep in mind, this is for CHINA ALONE, and is assuming mining in China was NOT more dangerous 25 years ago.
Now lets take into account that Chernobyl implemented a design created primarily for weapons production, had no containment vessel, and was being run by a communist regime on the brink of collapse. The scale of melt-down that occured there would be near-impossible for a gifted group of well-funded terrorist engineers to cause in a modern reactor with containment. The worst nature has thrown at an ill-prepared plant (read: Fukushima) still resulted in no deaths.
So here would be my question: which energy source requires the most mined materials per TW. Honestly, I don't know. But my suspicions are that nuclear would be near the bottom of that list.
Wind ditto. It just sits there spinning and as long as you aren't within a few hundred yards on a *very* windy day...zero casualties.
As long as [ this | that ]. If you are going to hold nuclear to these extreme corner cases, please hold all other energy generation techniques to equally high standards.
I hold them to extreme corner cases as commensurate with the risk of what happens when those conditions manifest themselves.
No, you didn't. Your previous post assumes that people standing in a windy field next to a fatally defective wind turbine is equally as likely as reactor being built without a containment vessel, or being ill-prepared before being hit by a tsunami, this leads to an inaccurate calculation of risk. If risk is defined as probability of an event multiplied by its consequences, wind power is still the riskier bet. This is magnified when you consider that the probability of the windy-field scenario would be magnified if we were to scale wind-energy up to nuclear's specs.
Nuclear simply has consequences that no other power source does. In each and every other case I can quite safely walk the grounds of a failed power plant the very day after the accident. You simply can't do that with nuclear when it goes tits up.
The costs of nuclear that are not associated with loss of human life are a valid argument. Land becomes unusable for a period of time. Back to my original comment, I'm willing to bet that this area of land is very, very insignificant when you consider the land made unusable when mining for the input materials. Again, I think nuclear will fair favorably, but we would need more resources than I have at my fingertips at this computer to make a reasonable estimate.