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.
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.
FTFA:
The judge sentenced Pierre-Paul François, who was EDF’s deputy head of nuclear production security in 2006 to three years imprisonment, with 30 months suspended. Meanwhile his boss, Pascal Durieux, who was EDF’s head of nuclear production security in 2006, was also sentenced to three years imprisonment, two years suspended, and a 10,000 euros (£8,500) fine for apparently commissioning the spying operation.
and
As a result of this, the French judge issued a guilty verdict in the case of Thierry Lorho, the head of Kargus Consultants. The former member of France’s secret services was sentenced to three years in jail, with two suspended and a €4,000 (£3,450) fine. EDF was also ordered to pay €50,000 (£42,800) to Jadot.
If what I just said sounded like a troll, it was probably just a failed attempt at humor.
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?
.
The Kargus guy involved got 3 years, and the hacker himself 2, but with 18 months suspended.
AFP report here
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.
Incidentally, the French secret service of which the Kargus consulting creep was an alumnus was the same entity responsible for sinking one of Greenpeace's ships with limpet mines in order to avoid being inconvenienced by a protest they were going to lead... Keep it classy.
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.
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.
Really?
Okay I am no fan of Geenpeace at all. I do not think their tactics and often their goals are correct.
However...
EDF is a heavily regulated utility company that is responsible for the running of nuclear facilites. They should without a doubt be held to an extremely high standard when it comes to following laws and regulations.
Greenpeace is a bunch of hippies that think they are doing good. Just as their is no room for Police officers and the military to be allowed to commit institutional acts of civil disobedience there can be no room for EDF to do the same.
Plus I am sure that Greenpeace members have spent the night in jail in the past and will again.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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
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.
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.