Slashdot Mirror
Deutsche Bahn to Sue Google
Many readers including this Anonymous Coward have written about this case: "After the DB-Deutsche Bahn (German railway comp.) won a case against Dutch ISP xs4all to remove 2 articles that were hosted on one of their servers, the DB now is going to sue Google (Wednesday) and probably in 2 days time Yahoo! and Altavista. Infoworld has an article about it. More background information about previous attempts to censor the same site can be found here and here's list of mirrors." And Yes, "Access is Forbidden."
Here's Google's cache of the broken link.
Google's defense: I know NOTH-ing. I see NOTH-ing. I hear NOTH-ing...
Germans will believe that, right?
Are there people related to scientologists? :P
OTOH, these are very legal concerns that the linked pages contain information that, in the hands of the wrong party could be dangerous to their operations, and being a public utility, they have to be concerned.
This is iteresting because it has dire implications on page linking in general.
Return the bells of Balangiga.
"Deutsche Bahn will file suit in Germany, where all three search engine companies have subsidiaries, because it feels it would not stand a chance in a U.S. court because of freedom of speech allowed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution."
Have these people not been paying attention lately?
I assume if they're sucessful with sueing Google, then they'll go after the Wayback Machine's archive of the site next
Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
Just to clarify its not just the cache, its actually the links and its not to their site but articles that detail how to cut power on parts of the railway system.
Its not *their* site they want removing.
no sig.
Just more proof that there is no perfect country. The US has problems, Canada has problems, UK, Germany, France, Spain, and every other major country you can name has problems.
So here in the US we have to deal with the DMCA and the like (which we are unfortunatly pushing on everyone else). Germany just bans free speech, which at least in the US we consider golden.
Or is only in the US that we consider useless speech like this worth protecting. I wouldn't be surprized, and I can see the point, even though I disagree (that is it is worth pretecting despite being useless)
Notice that DB is not suing Google in an American court, citing that they would probably not be successful due to our freedom of speech laws....interesting juxtaposition with our constant bashing of other countries (NZ for ex) in limiting their citizens access/freedom to speech and info.... Here's to Google, Yahoo, and AltaVista -- stick to your guns!!!
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
Too bad its apache, for if it was IIS then I could just hack in...
Save money- vote Republican
From what I understand, they were about how to sabotage the railway system, and were put up to protest the transportation of radioactive materials using said railway system.
...that by attacking sites like this, they are simply drawing MORE attention to what they are trying to shut down?
By now dozens of people have mirrored the site, and the possibility of it going away forever has diminished greatly.
Fools.
no
I'm not going to argue the (stupid) merits of the lawsuit, but why Yahoo? Yahoo isn't a search engine anymore than Microsoft's DNS error page is. It's powered by Google. If suing Google gets Google to fix the issue they have, then it'll be summarily fixed on Yahoo's page as well. Yahoo just plain has nothing to do with this, outside of using Google's search tool.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
As far as I can tell, the site may refer to transport of Nuclear Waste Material via Train across Germany. There has been massive demonstrations against this before in Germany. Possibly they details Deutsche Bahnhof's schedules, movement plans etc. - I can see why DB wouldn't want that published.
In the UK, the train movements from power stations etc. are available and are on regular schedules. The security around them isn't very high, but then the flask the material is carried in weighs quite a few tons, is solid steel, and you'd need an extremely expensive facility just to open it again.
Can a lawsuit really be filed for linking to material that no longer exists on a server (xs4all)? I would expect, at *MOST* that there would be a demand to remove the links, but since the material has been removed anyhow, I don't see the point. THe google bot will get rid of its link at some point.
What do you mean by "a company such as Google"? If you mean "a company which is popular with geeks and Slashdotters" - well, you're right, in that some of the shine may gradually rub off their geek-friendly, free-speech protecting image. OTOH, plenty of large well-known corporations do business with China, say, or in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan,.. ( insert your favourite repressive non-democratic regime...) IBM organised the Holocaust, you know, and Cisco built and support the Great Firewall of China (and who knows who supplies the software tools that pull out Falun Gong-related email from the wire and queue a request for the secret police to pay the poster a visit at 4am?) (actually, it's probably Free software: but that's morally defensible, in that the Free software community are not getting rich supporting repression.)
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
"Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there."
-- Clare Booth Luce, 1903-1987
Second, imagine some radical group in the US. posting instructions on how to hijack some planes and fly them into skyscrapers on the internet. Don't you think your FBI would shut these sites down as soon as words gets out?
There goes your "free speech"...
q.e.d.
Thank you and now mod me down to oblivion for beeing a german nazi or whatever!
Nope, the content is not legal. That's why DB successfully sued the ISP in the Netherlands. Now they want Google links and caches to be removed as well.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Why not read the Grundgesetz, the constitution of Germany? You may be interested in article 5, which guarantees freedom of speech, details what it extends to (e.g. explicitly includes writing and pictures, but also the right to acquire information) and where the limits are (violation of other laws and defamation).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
First of all, you should read the article, it answers most of your questions.
They already asked google to take it down the hyperlinks and cached copies, but they didn't, so now they're suing
It's a tough situation : a handbook on how to destroy rail tracks is hardly worth fighting for - but even in those instances, freedom of speech must be absolute
but it sucks having to do it over some dangerous wingnuts' propaganda...
they're a threat to innocent citizens.
Posting instructions of how to commit crimes (sabotage in this case) should be prohibited across boarders. The poloitical background of this is that there is a very fierce anti-nuclear-power movement in germany supportet by 'left' activists.
Think of Greenpeace activists with no mind about inocent third parties and you'll get the picture.
I hate the "Bahns" miserable missmanagement (I use the train on a regular basis here in germany) and I shure as hell oppose to nuclear power but none the less, these people are criminals and they are a shame to peacefull resitance against "Atomkraft".
Sueing a searchengine is of course somewhat of a twist, but I hope this can raise and clarify some issues concerning morally doubtfull internet content and at least leverage trans-european law for this. I might help to know that the german gouverment holds large shares of the "Deutsche Bahn".
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Actually, Hogan's Heroes was only on about 35 years ago. And as silly as it's humour might have been, it was hardly distasteful
Dinivin
It actually is a much longer story (and more interesting), you can read it HERE
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
If they had sensitive documents that were harmful to the company what were they doing on a public web server with read permissions and no access restrictions in the first place? _I_ think the company should be liable to pay legal charges and damages to Google.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
It will not help. Almost all European countries have laws that prohibit distribution of information that can specifically be used for sabotage and creation of explosive devices. UK has the same laws for example. If you explain someone how to make TNT you can get jailed for a considerable amount of time.
So in theory you cannot publish instructions on how to make TNT, nitroglycerine or Mercury Fluminate in the UK. In practice you can find them in the CRC handbook. Same goes for the majority of other "terrorist practices".
These laws are written in a blanket fashion, but usually, they are used only against someone who is specifically enciting to use the knowledge for terror/vandalism purposes. Which is the case here.
This does not make these laws any less stupid. For example, if the law is followed, the entire history of the resistance in Europe during World War II should be prohibited. Quite a few German trains went off the track during those years. Using similar methods. Right? So Europe did not resist german occupation. Right? No trains went down. Right?
Wrong...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
next on the list is Slashdot, and anyone else that has run this story, link to a story that links to the story about....
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
>
....
Hu?
In wich world do you live?
German Constitution Article 5: Everybody has the right to distribute and express his OPINION freely as well as to inform himself freely. [...]
Note: free speach is expressing your OPINION. And it is getting free access to the OPINIONS of other people.
Free speach is NOT a detailed instruction in "HOW TO KILL PEOPLE", "HOW TO DESTROY OTHER PEOPLES PROPERTY" and "HOW TO RECRUIT TERRORISTS".
If a certain piece of paper with letters on it is free speach or an illegal encaurae of terrorism is a descission of a court.
I doub that you can call a descission of a court censorship.
Better you read the article, and make yourself an opinion, instead of jumping on the train of dumb comments
I fully support banning such stuff from the internet, exactly as I support banning child porn from the internet. But thats only my opinion.
Regards,
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
But that couldn't happen again.
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they've hardly bothered us since then.
-- Tom Lehrer, MLF Lullaby
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
I did not confuse Deutsche Bahn with the German government. I was worried that German law enables Deutsche Bahn to file this lawsuit and expect to win it.
You're probably right, and that is a sad fact. Unfortunately, there is presently an overwhelming psuedo-patriotism in the United States today. These monkey spanks act without thought and support Ashcroft et al in their pursuit of limiting our freedom -- which is the most unpatriotic thing one could do.
mbbac
document is not illegal in Holland, and is the property of one of XS4ALL's customers. So far German authorities have not contacted XS4ALL, no official requests where made to remove these documents from our server.
I don't know about you, but it sounds like the documents in question are not illegal in the Netherlands (not much seems to be illegal in the netherlands).
Here is also a clip from the European Convention of Human Rights, article 10:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information an ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers."
Now where is the 'not legal' part of all this? The only place i can see that happen is the party that is in Germany.. I haven't heard of this issue until today so I may not know all there is to know about it, but I did read parts of the article that don't seem to corrolate with what your saying...
Subtext: Geez. If only those darned Americans would restrict speech even further and cooperate with the rest of the world, we wouldn't have to sue them here in Germany...
But they only try to ban web pages about sex and how to decrypt DVDs. Why don't they get with the program and ban more stuff!
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
In other news, www.xs4all.nl will change to www.xs4allexceptcertainanarchistpublications.nl to represent recent events.
Would it not be a better idea for Deutsche Bahn to use their excess cash to:
As the already-present mirrors show, attempting to censor people's right to freedom of speech on the Internet is a futile exercise.
Right, some links on a few search engines are better advertising than numerous news articles describing exactly what the blocked pages contain...
"There is no chance to sue them in the U.S. You are really allowed to put anything on the Internet there,"
Yeah, instructions on hacking railway systems are ok, but you'd better not post instructions describing how to open legally purchased documents "protected" by some form of "encryption."
It's morally bankrupt to make broad laws with the promise that you'll only use them "on the bad people" anyway. You should ALWAYS judge a law by the extreme case to which it could apply, not the medium case which it's being touted as a solution for.
I decided to post rather than mod...
It's VERY important to remember two things...
Security by obscurity is bad when dealing when computers because computers by their very nature makes it much easier to root out patterns and obscure points of interest.
Security by obscurity in the physical world is a de facto standard and is paramount to many security issues. For example, like it or not, our goverment uses plain-jane trucks to move radioactive elements, high explosives, deadly biological materials, and large volumes of currency throughout our nation.
By not having the routes, the trucking schedules and payload information, a high degree of security is available. This is exactly security through obscurity. Would you want this information to be available? I know I sure wouldn't.
Imagine the cost (because of the physical security requirements) and the greatly increased odds of something bad happening in the event that this information were generally known to the public. I can easily imagine bad things for any number of reasons if this were public information. Since it's not, everything from protects (increasing the odds of accidents) to terrorist attacks are avoided, and this is just the short list.
In short, in the real world, security through obscurity is not only important, it's paramount to our national security...don't believe me, ask NTSA, NSA, CIA and the FBI as well as just about any other law enforcement agency. It's only with computers that this should be avoided; as a rule of thumb...
Let's see if that works.
8 Steps to Terrorism
1. Learn to wiggle a yoke without crash.
2. Let pilot take off.
3. Hijack plane.
4. Follow a hiway to a city.
5. Point at tallest building.
6. Try to keep the plane level.
7.
Hang on, there's someone at the door, I'll post the other 2 in a minute
Free speech is not a blanket clause to let you say whatever you want.
The first amendment is still bound within the confines of the law. For example, it's illegal to threaten the lives of certain government officials. No first amendment argument is gonna help there.
The FBI might go after said site. They might go after sites with similar content, in hopes of getting to a network behind it. But I highly doubt they would go after Google for merely indexing it. That's like suing the phone company for listing a criminal in the phone book.
1. The concerned Radikal publication is from 1996/1997; Its banning/blackage in The Netherlands was unsuccessful then. Why a lawsuit now? Is it because Deutsche Bahn is (again) planning to transport nuclear waste material soon?
2. The Dutch court has made a 'tussenvonnis' (mid-sentence?). XS4ALL has said to await the final judgement.
Second, imagine some radical group in the US. posting instructions on how to hijack some planes and fly them into skyscrapers on the internet. Don't you think your FBI would shut these sites down as soon as words gets out?
In a word, no.
I would expect the FBI to talk to the owner of the site, find out what is going on in the person's mind, and determin if this person is a hazard to anyone else. But the person / group has the right to say what ever they want. That's why we have these hate groups running around in the open for the most part. they can be bigots and be open about their bigotry.
As far as 'free speech' goes, the Supreme Court just allowed virtual kiddie porn (and granted the law was over reaching, effecting medical texts and other beneficial forms of expressions as well, which is why it was struck down, but I digress) to exist, and we really try not to say what can be and want can not be said, but more importantly what the social constraints of what is being said, and why (just covering my ass with the shouting of 'Fire' in a theater). This is why the 'Anarchist's Cook Book' is legal and for sale here, along with books on how to make drugs, modify guns, etc, etc, etc.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
As someone who works for a major German telecommunications company, I was directly involved in this, in that my office was responsible for giving the DB a 'heads up' about the site (whether or not we found it I'm not sure).
I was asked to take a look at the portion of the site relating to my companies products (which was a guide on how to sabotage them to disrupt train services), and essentially the most elegant intructions given were "Pry the cover off, bash the insides to pieces with a rock, and/or fill it up with dirt/glue/etc".
This was only a few weeks ago too, and this is the first I've heard of any action the DB has taken, but I am quite impressed at the speed at which this has progressed.
(Details have been left vague to give me some semblance of anonyminity, protect my job, etc)
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
stereotyping germans as people who look away when evil is done is insulting, whether you encapsulate it into a reference to Hogans Heroes or not.
There is no reference to the holocaust in Hogan's Heros -- the humour is entirely related to the bumbling of the camp guards and commander. Most of the German civilians referenced in the show are either outright members of the resistance or sympathetic and complicit in the resistance.
There is no reference to Nazi ideology, and even American racism never plays a part -- the "electrical engineer" of the show is a black who is well treated by both his peers and the guards.
Even the Gestapo is misrepresented. Major Hochstedter is frequently portrayed performing Gestapo duties in a pre-war Waffen SS dress uniform. The Waffen SS dress uniform was changed from black to grey at the start of the war. It's also unlikely that the Gestapo performed their duties in Waffen SS uniforms, even if they were Waffen SS members. I'd call it technically correct in that its likely that Gestapo officers were SS members as the SS controlled all state security apparatus and would have put their men in the officer ranks, but...wrong uniform for the job, and wrong uniform style for the period.
The really funny thing is that this is all documented very well in any number of books at your local public library, like The Running Man (for the crashing) and various other true and fictional books to describe how to do the hijacking itself. The average American has seen plenty of movies that involve airplane hijackings; figuring out how to do it yourself (note: this is not something I'm advocating here) would not be that difficult. Especially if you don't even use guns to do it.
In the U.S. you can still buy The Anarchist's Cookbook even! But you may have to go to court to defend that right, just like xs4all is in this case. So there is no absolute freedom of speech without at least the money to back it up.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
"Don't you think your FBI would shut these sites down as soon as words gets out?"
Hell, if they can get in trouble for shutting down the so-called Nuremberg List, I can see the FBI at least hesitating before going after such a site.
stereotyping germans as people who look away when evil is done is insulting
But nevertheless appropriate as far as stereotypes go.
Of course, being as it is this stereotype holds true for pretty much all the people in the world. We are a bunch of egoistic cowards after all.
We don't need Freedom of Speech protections to protect Aunt Helen's "I love puppies!" website. We don't need them to protect Ed Jones's "The Taliban suck" page. The wingnuts are the people testing the bounds of free speech, and they're the ones who let us know how much of it we can count on.
Some argue that people like this are actually a threat to speech, by inciting the government to crack down so regularly. Personally, I take the opinion that your average government would simply attempt to regulate even less controversial speech-- things like "steal music" or "this politician sucks"-- if they didn't have the wingnuts to keep them constantly tied up in court.
PS I realize we're talking about a private company, in a country without all of the free speech protections of the US. Nonetheless, speech protections are important to us all, and should be fought for no matter where they're threatened. Particularly on the net, where one country's silly laws can potentially be applied to everyone on the planet.
Actually, yes, the freedom of speech is the freedom to say such things. If the courts were to blacklist everytype of "terrorist" writings, where would it stop? How is this different from blacklisting Communism in the 50's and Herr McCarthy's banning of forms of thought? To say that freedom of speech only takes the curret fad of what is "good" does not mean it is freedom. It is subjectivism under which everyone is forced by law. The freedom of speech is all encroaching; it takes the "good" with the "bad" despite what people want to have censored.
Translation from: http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/eurodocs/germ/ggeng.h
Why the freespeech in germany isn't as free as in the USA is because of the second part. Most of the restrictions of the free speech are because the content of the speech is against the constiution.
Jan
If the sites go away, reply to this comment with the news, and I can honor reasonable requests for copies of the english translated mirror.
This *MAY* require PGP (GPG) key exchange, so make sure you have yours ready!
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Isn't it ironic now that the U.S. is starting to enforce it's laws outside its borders (Dimitry Skylarov, anyone?) that other countries expect to do the same? Did we really expect an international medium (the Internet) to comply with the laws of just one country?
What is needed is for all of the countries which use the Internet to agree on a set of standards/rules which govern the Internet, and a way for those who want to post material which violates those rules to restrict their sites to countries where such material is legal. Currently, the web knows no borders and has no means of keeping information from traversing state and national boundaries into areas where it may be illegal (China excepted...) While this might seem draconian, it could easily keep citizens of other countries from being prosecuted should they choose to visit countries in which their viewpoints are illegal (such as the U.S. and China), since such illegal content would not be available to the prosecutors in the offended country.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
There are plans for nuclear weapons on the internet. Why didn't Al-Qaeda just build one of those and let it off in New York?
Could it be because there is a difference between knowing how to do something and being able to do it?
--
E_NOSIG
Deutsche Bahn will file suit in Germany, where all three search engine companies have subsidiaries, because it feels it would not stand a chance in a U.S. court because of freedom of speech allowed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
http://web.archive.org/web/19981206125714/www.xs4a ll.nl/~tank/radikal/
or simply go to www.archive.org and type in http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/radikal
dinner: it's what's for beer
For example, if the law is followed, the entire history of the resistance in Europe during World War II should be prohibited.
Not to mention all episodes of McGyver
+5 Insightful?
Second, imagine some radical group in the US. posting instructions on how to hijack some planes and fly them into skyscrapers on the internet
Security via obscurity does not work. Your example is very flawed. This exact thing happened and I bet the the idea did not come from a search of Google on the internet. Had the idea of this nature been made more public then it would have opened peoples eyes to this fact and maybe something would have been done before hand to prevent it. If the German railway has a bad design and is open to attack, it will be attacked by a motivated individual. Hiding the flaw from the "general" public does not stop this. If you were a frequent user of the German railroad don't you think you should have the right to know about this?
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
which is the most unpatriotic thing one could do.
Questioning the patriotism of people you disagree with pretty much ends discussion on any topic. Someone could argue with equal logic that the people who oppose Ashcroft the most are the terrorists. Therefore, people like yourself who oppose Ashcroft support the terrorists.
Insofar as the threat of terrorism is real, it poses a real limitation on our freedom. The question is: do the measures proposed by Ashcroft reduce the threat of terrorism enough to compensate for the loss of freedom that fighting terrorism entails? When the question is framed this way, the debate is over what approach leads to the minimum loss of freedom.
One can take either side in this debate without being a traitor.
I think that information like this can be potentially destructive. I would never condone someone using one of Hayduke's books, or the Anarchist's Cookbook, for harming another person; nor do I believe that books such as 'Making Your 30-03 Springfield Fully Automatic' really has any purpose in our civilization.
That being said, information such as this -- for picking locks, field-expedient ordnance, dirty tricks, even making ricin-DNSO -- is important to have. There may very well come a time when it is not only important but *neccessary* to conduct illegal activities for whatever reason. One thing that comes to mind is for a guerilla resistance movement in an occupied country. Information on how to fight the occupying army is at least important as food and ammunition to such groups. Yes, this information can be potentially devastating, but there exists the potential, real need for it.
Now, obviously, this information can be abused. I'm sure there are real-life anarchists out there who would jump at the chance to "stick it to the Man" and in the process kill a lot of people. There's no easy way to address this. There are two conflicting needs here, and unfortunately there's no way to be equitable about it: one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. How do you decide what information is kept free?
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
No, I can talk about security arrangements at the pentagon as much as I want, assuming I can find them out. That is the hard part, and I can only think of two (general) ways to find out, and both are illegal. First is the break in, and watch what happens. (you will get arrested, but if you get your information back to your orginization perhaps eventially they get someone in, and then can publish how). The other is to interview those who work in the pentagon, who are prohibited from talking about it, it would be legal for me to talk about it, but those who told me would get in trouble.
And without knowing a thing about their arrangements I can assure everyone that they change things constantly to keep security as strong as possibal, and should they suspect someone knows enough about arrangements to bypass them, they will change that immeadiatly.
"Deutsche Bahn recently sent letters to all three U.S. search engine operators asking them to remove the hyperlinks to the online copies of two articles from the German-language left-wing extremist publication, Radikal, which has been outlawed in Germany."
Outlawed? I had no idea that an entire publication could be made illegal in that country. But then it is not too suprising considering the fact that they outlaw anything and everything to do with the Nazi era just like France does. Nevermind the fact that armbands with swastika's on them can't hurt anyone. I'm of the strong opinion that reminders of the Nazi era should be kept around and carefully studied so that the next time a similar group, such as Scientology, comes around the people will know it for what it is.
If you live in the US, be glad. Our country may not be perfect, but at least here attempts to silence political views have to be done quietly and covertly rather than through direct and obvious government action.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
PS I realize we're talking about a private company, in a country without all of the free speech protections of the US.
Sounds pretty clear from this slashdotter's comments that Germany does have much the same free speech protections as the US, at least in terms of their Constitution.
My journal has hot
There's no accounting for taste, anyway.
The obvious point is, if it's shown on German TV and Germans apparently like to watch it, it doesn't seem to be too insulting to Germans, now does it? (So much for your attempt at political correctness.)
You want to see something *really* politically incorrect about WWII? Try the British comedy "Allo Allo"...you know, the series with the "Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies by Van Klump", a gay German tank commander, a Prussian general whose idea of politics is to shoot French peasants and so on. (And again, my wife loves it, as do I.)
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Ah, the beautiful irony! The DB guy says 'There's no chance to sue them in the US, you can put anything online there'. Of course, he's half right: you probably are allowed to put instructions for how to sabotage a train system on a website (whether you think that's a good thing or not is another matter). But boy-oh-boy, if you put something online that might affect the tiniest bit the record or movie industry's revenue, you'll be sued to hell.
Nice shot at a knee-jerk reaction.
What would I say to such a document? Post it. Link to it. Alert the media. Get CNN to do a cyber-scare article on it. Get people thinking about the state of security in their airports and the danger this represents.
Know why a group of people were able to seize guided missiles for the price of some flying lessons, airline tickets, and box cutters? It wasn't because box cutters are such a formidable weapon. It is because the passangers and crew of those airlines did not expect what was to come. Up to that point, hijackings tended to be isolated events that lead up to a police standoff on the ground. Most of the time, the majority of hijack victoms survived.
The passangers of Flight 93 quickly learned of the fate of other hijacked airlines that day thanks to mobile phones. With the cry of "let's roll" (accredited to Todd Beamer), the passangers of that flight attacked their captors. It cost them their lives as the entire flight went down in a field in western Pennsylvania. But their flight was the only one to not also crash in to a monument and take additional lives on the ground (authorities believe the flight was headed for a target in Washington).
The difference between Flight 93 and other doomed flights that day was a slim margin of knowledge. A realization that the threat was different than the past. Information.
If a group attempted the same tactic today (with box cutters, much less the nail-clippers being confiscated by airport security now), they would meet the same resistance. Additional attempts of airline terrorism (the shoe-bomber being a prime example) has lead to quick action by fellow passangers to subdue their would-be attacker.
What would a document called "10 easy ways to Hijack an airliner and slam it into a building" do? I can tell you what a lack of such a document didn't do - stop the events of 9/11 from happening.
In the US, nuclear materials are transported by road. Imagine, for a moment, what would happen if you posted accurate information on the route information, security procedures, and instructions on how to sabotage such a transport here. Do you really believe the FBI wouldn't be knocking on your door? In the current climate, you'd probably simply disappear in some US "holding cell" somewhere, not to be heard from for months or years.
Having said that - if you're so concerned about safe passage, look in to the issue. Maybe you're not as safe as you think you are.
That's like suing the phone company for listing a criminal in the phone book.
True. This wouldn't happen in the USA. It's like suing Napster for providing the infrastructure to share songs... oh wait... damn.
Freedom of speech is not absolute in America, and never has been. Nor should it be.
Darned close, yes, but there have always been some things you couldn't do. Yelling fire in a crowded theater is the classic example. Distributing child pornography is still quite illegal. Telling somebody to go kill other people or destroy property is likewise outlawed. And of course, there have always been restrictions against libel and slander.
That's the way it's always been. Freedom of speech was never absolute, nor was it intended to cover such acts. Deconstructionist interpretations of the First Ammendment can't change that.
Whether the limitations apply to this case might be open to debate. Personally, I'm content to let the parties settle it themselves.
Google is pretty much immune under U.S. law for someone else's speech that they're caching. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects them from civil liability.
1.) The original paper is very detailled and specific in it's security aspects. It is explicitely stating that nothing should be damaged, about whose functions one is not certain, because that could endanger humans or transports.
Ah, so, since the paper says not to damage anything, nobody will damage anything. If the paper said not to push the big shiny red button, I'm sure people wouldn't push it, right?
2.) The description was available on the internet for 4 to 5 years by now. It's publication on paper was not forbidden during this time.
Ah, so, since it had been around for a little while, it's okay for the government to allow its continued publication in spite of the grave threat to national security it may pose.
3.) The "Right to Resistance" is an explicit part of the German constitutional law.
Ah, so all of this is okay since it places nobody at risk. More of a censorship than a security issue? Letting people know where and when nuclear material is being delivered by train is something you've a right to do?
What the hell kind of fucked-up crack are you smoking?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Well, the suit would fail. Everything else the guy said is whiny hyperbole.
Did the September 11th hijackers visit such a helpful web site to learn how to hijack planes? No? Then what harm can putting the information up have? The bad guys already know. Can putting the information up potentially help? Certainly. I wish more bad guys would put their evil plans up on the web. Then the FBI could read the documents, identify the security weaknesses the bad guys are planning on using and fix the security weaknesses.
Criminals are perfectly capable and willing to spread censored information amoung themselves. After all, if you've decided to sacrifice your life to kill innocents, what's going to stop you from making some photocopies?
Would you care to furnish any examples of this observed behavior?
The problem with security through obscurity is that once the information is revealed, it's nearly impossible to stop. The Radikal magazine information is already available to anyone who really wants it. No amount of censorship will stop someone who wants to see it from getting it. Anyone who downloaded it before it was taken down still has a copy. They can email it to others, print it out, hand out photocopies, make handwritten copies, or distribute it in any number of ways. As a civilization, we've spent a great deal of time and effort to make it easy to duplicate information. Stopping the flow of information people want is impossible in all but the most limited of cases.
Great, so by relying on everyone involved keeping this a secret, all it takes is for the secret to leak once and these shipments are put in danger. A single person can unravel the whole thing, perhaps under torture, threat, blackmail, bribery, or simple malice. Spies exist.
Keeping the information secret does help. It weeds out many potential criminals. It reduces expenses defending against attacks that can't possibly succeed, but might cost money to stop. But if you're relying on it as your sole defense, you're foolish.
Phones have lots of uses. So does Google. Although I imagine xs4all has more uses than just posting anarchist links, and they lost, so what do I know.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Why? Because there are some things more important than the war against terrorism, but Ascroft and his cronies don't see it.
Play Command HQ online
This is more of a general rant than about the specifics of this case, but since the discussion has veered into general free speech issues, I think it's appropriate.
Thanks to the DMCA and similar restrictions, publishing information on cracking dongles (hardware keys for software) is basically illegal. Concrete details on how to crack a dongle definately is. The people putting up information on cracking dongles usually do so for the sole purpose of encouraging others to use illegal copies of software. Clearly the dominant use of this information is criminal.
So what's the harm in censoring this speech?
Well, several years ago I was asked to investigate adding copy protection to a new software product (now defunct). My initial research focused on "respectable" publications on the subject. I found almost nothing useful. If the information I found was to be believed, dongles were practically impossible to defeat. So I extended my search to cracker sites. Now I found something. I discovered that all dongle technologies have been defeated on a case by case basis. I discovered which dongle technologies were trivial to defeat and which were very hard to defeat. I learned specific, concrete weaknesses and arguments for and against dongles. With this information I was able to provide solid information for my employers to use to make a decision.
Let's say that the information on dongle cracking had been removed from the web. Well, my research would have been mostly fruitless. I would have had to largely rely on the misleading claims of the manufacturers themselves and reviews that didn't make serious attempts to defeat the dongles. However, the crackers would still have access to the information, passed around via instant messaging, password protected ftp, email, and other techniques. Dongles would still be insecure, but I wouldn't be able to make reasoned decisions about them.
Non-governmental supported organized warfare(warfare, violence, tomato, tomahto) is conducted by guerillas. Terrorists specifically target civilian, non-military targets to inspire fear in order to further a political agenda. Setting up in lines on a battlefield across from the military of the government is NOT a terrorist act.
Please, don't forget that those examples are not limitations of speech. They are limitations of acts that may be commited through the mechanism of speech. It would be perfectly legal to yell "Fire" in an ampitheatre being used for a lecture at a firefighters convention. I see naked children on TV regularly, but they're not being sexually exploited - they're in diaper commercials. Libel and slander are just that - libel and slander, not any particular speech.
We make laws against inciting riots, exploitation of children, and spreading malicious untruths about people. We do not directly limit speech. This is an important disinction that too few people recognize.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
No the FBI wouldn't shut them down, they might however pay them a little visit, and keep them under a close eye however. They have the right to post those instructions if they wish. Free speech is not contingent on protecting the current system, IT'S TO PROTECT PEOPLE WHO ARE DISCONTENT WITH THE CURRENT SYSTEM AND WANT TO CHANGE. It doesn't protect your right to say the world is flat, it's so I can say the world is round and not fear persecution. Or that I think the government should be disbanded, or anything else that is seen as subversive enough for the government to want to censor me.
Plus take it to another level, deeper than your knee-jerk thin thought reaction. We're talking about making pubically available these instructions. What's better to have an underground manual floating around that ONLY people who want to cause harm will see, or public instructions that anyone (including the authorities responsible for security and safety) can see? If theres a weakness in the system and it's public, those responsible will have to make it more secure. If the information was not available, not only would Joe Schmoe not have any idea that he was in danger, the authorities would have no idea where likely attacks were to occur.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Obviously Deutsche Bahn isn't too Internet savvy, or they would know that this only causes the information to spread even further. They cases only cost Google money, quite sad really. I'm sure it will be thrown out of court. There have TXT files on the Internet (and way back to the BBS age) detailing how to do just about everything such as creating your own explosives. Only criminals will use the information for illegal activities, since when is having the information illegal? What's this world coming too...
That there is no spoon.
- Matrix
If a certain piece of paper with letters on it is free speach or an illegal encaurae of terrorism is a descission of a court.
If it's a decision of a court whether or not something you've said is free speech or not, you can never trust that ANYTHING you say is free speech.
You're so abolutely wrong it's hard to even begin to tear you to shreds. Free Speech is Free Speech, case closed. If that's really the German version of free speech, they don't have free speech at all. It's such a perversion of the concept that it's entirely useless.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
This is a dirty trick, what the German government's doing. Basically, it amounts to, "you can't win the case in the country where Google is based, so you try to win it through a German subsidary". In other words, they're side-stepping the US' 1st Amendments by suing the German subsidary. Thus, if they win in court in Germany, Google may be forced to take down its links to that website in the US too -- because if they didn't, any accounts they have in Germany could be impounded and their offices in Germany could be shut down.
I heard someone say, "when will we be able to talk about what the Germans do without also mentioning the Nazi's". Well, I'm German (but raised in US). But they still haven't cleared from their nazi and communist past.
Burned books, banned books, what's the difference? In Germany, "Mein Kampf" is a banned book. So are any other extremist books.
Who decides what is "bad" and "good"? By banning books, the German government is effectively burning them today.
I've never read Fahrenheit 451, but I did see the movie. One of my favorite lines was when the Captain says, "We must burn the books, Montag," and then, holding up a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf, continues, "All of the books."
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
How 'bout this one? Georgia Tech campus newspapers were stolen and burned because an editorial against racial quotas was in it. Nobody did anything, nobody said anything -- except that the paper later printed an apology for running the editorial and stated its urgent desire not to "offend" anyone.
This is just one example. There are others that can be produced with more digging. I can go find them, or if you're really interested in this topic you can google for them yourselves.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"There is no chance to sue them in the U.S. You are really allowed to put anything on the Internet there," Schreyer said.
This is from the country that prides itself in producing- and hosting on the internet- videos of people shitting on each other?
I think they're the ones with problems about what their citizenry puts on the internet. Sure, shit videos are protected speech here, but 99% of our porn is just licking, sucking, and fucking.
Maybe thats what happens when you repress free speech like Germany does, cause it might hurt someone's feelings- you get shit videos.
Blah, give me railroad destruction instructions any day.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Until the 1950's it was perfectly legal to threaten politicians (verbally). I suppose that there were limits, but they were never reached (or I didn't hear of it). The "don't threaten a politician" act in the 50's was instigated, as far as I remember, by the secret service so that they wouldn't have to do so much work tracking people down who were just being silly. ... Or so that they could make them shut up. It has no justification under the US constitution. This doesn't mean that you can get it overthrown. The constitution only protects what the courts are willing for it to protect.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
And the same law has already chilled speech by making several people restrict access to various documents to people outside the US (including Alan Cox for a few Linux kernel changelog entries)?
So much for free speech guarantees in the US.
Yes, there are areas where you have more free speech rights in the US than in Germany, but the opposite is also true.
> but there have always been some things you couldn't do. Yelling fire in a crowded theater is the classic example.
n dness.com/FREEDOM990628.htm
That is a fallacious argument. You might want to read this to see why.
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:www.fatalbli
xs4all has also taken heat for hosting some anti-scientology pages.
There's some interesting stuff about when they got raided by the CoS (church of scientology) here.
Excerpt: A corporation like CoS, having its' own security service with a capacity equal to that of a small country, would scare the shit out of any normal firm. XS4ALL, however, is NOT a normal middle-sized firm. It is an ex-foundation, an offshoot of the Dutch hacker-magazine "HackTic". The staff at XS4ALL are ALL cyberpunks, former long-haired anarchists happy to find themselves in charge of a company so fast growing, that it is considered important for the Dutch national economy. And as you can tell from its' name, this is a company which wants to give everyone access to information, worldwide.
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
This Article even contains that infamous sentence "Censorship does not happen" and is one of the most dishonest and misleading texts ever written in a constitutional document.
Note that Par. 2 of this Article reads "These rights can be limited by general laws, laws for the protection of minors, and laws for the protection of personal honour." Which means, by about anything.
German Constituonal practice furthermore interprets constitutional rights not as absolute immutable rights but as entitlements that can and will be balanced with about boatloads of other entitlements. So you will find court decisions denying your right of free speech or freedom of information for sake of boatloads of other interests.
Oh, and of course, "Censorship" (which doesn't happen, you know) also doesn's mean censorship but some kind of complicated "pre-censorship" - related to but not identical with the "prior restraint" concept in the US). And, of course, in reality this also happens frequently.
This is a fine example of what 50 years of self-serving politicians and obedient judges can do to an apparently simple legal text.
They recently banned Unreal Tournament. Censorhsip doesn't happen, you know - we have that in the Constitution.
Pissers...
The problem with security through obscurity is that once the information is revealed, it's nearly impossible to stop.
This is true, however, in the context that I explained, schedules are normally not the same for every trip...thus adding to it's security in the event of a leak. There's also the concept of "need to know". Surely you've heard of such a thing. If the concept works for world affairs and national security, i'm fairly sure it can work pretty well for plain-jane trucks.
Great, so by relying on everyone involved keeping this a secret, all it takes is for the secret to leak once and these shipments are put in danger.
In a single instance...at least in the context that I used. So, more accurately, "a shipment" would be put in danger.
Keeping the information secret does help. It weeds out many potential criminals. It reduces expenses defending against attacks that can't possibly succeed, but might cost money to stop. But if you're relying on it as your sole defense, you're foolish.
Foolish is making assuptions about things that were not asserted. No one said this was the sole source of protection. As such, these tactics are not the sole defense. Nonetheless, these serve to greatly reduce the cost of transport, ease the general public, and greatly enhance security. Like it or not, this type of security IS the first line of defense. Like it or not, it tends to work rather well.
To the best of my knowledge, no one has asserted anything that supports your "foolish" comment.
As for 3 I would consider the transfer of nuclear material everyone certainly should have a right to know. A lot of people are very concerned about the safety of such transports, and especially when it is likely that possible saboteurs will have the information anyway, it should be a right for members of the public to know so that they can make the decision for themselves on whether or not to be near the area where the transport happens.
And in fact, not that these movements are hardly easy to hide. The security around the movement of radioactive waste is so high in Germany due to the amount of protests it raises, that it is trivial to find out when and where it happens because the security precautions are highly visible.
According to at least one CNN report, at one point the German government had to use 15.000 police officers to protect ONE shipment of radioactive waste because of the massive amount of demonstrations.
No! Next you'll tell me that the Germans didn't speak English all the time, even when talking amongst themselves.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Isn't Deutsche Bahn infringing on that patent that Anonymous Coward got registered for the business method of using lawsuits as a means to get content massively duplicated and spread all over the internet very rapidly?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This has got to be the funniest thing I have ever seen in Infoworld. Short of an advertisement during the Super Bowl, I can't think of anything else they could do that would be more likely to make people want to look for it elsewhere. Have they learned nothing from the idiocy of the Scientology copyright wars?
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
We don't need Freedom of Speech protections to protect Aunt Helen's "I love puppies!" website.
Apparently we do! I've searched and searched and for the life of me I can't find any reference to Aunt Helen's "I love puppies!" website. Curse those censors! They've already gotten to Google on this one!
First Dimitri, now this. Enough is enough! It's time we took a stand against this corporate anti-puppy campaign! Who's willing to register http://www.boycottpetsmart.com?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Exactly. Or, as i like to put it:
Security through obscurity is bad when you're dealing with a system that could theoretically be 100% secure. For example, an encryption algorithm or a web server. At least it theory, it is possible to remove absolutely all bugs from sshd and have a perfectly secure program with no exploitable holes. (spare me replies talking about stupid administrators making their own holes)
When you're talking about physical security, it's impossible to be perfectly secure -- given a large enough army, it's possible to break into Fort Knox.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
How do you design a railway that is immune to sabotage?! Have you ever seen a railway before?
I seperated myself from the railroad thing a bit but my point was consistant with yours...
There are many ways for destruction or tampering to occur. Trying to coverup or mute those who expose a method is not going to hinder someone that has a goal to cause harm...
I do not agree or condone the actions of these activists either, but shutting down a few web sites is not going to make a radioactive transfer over rail secure. They should take the money they are wasteing on law suits and hire some more physical security that may actually be able to stop someone.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
A couple of remarks:
- the church of scientology bitched mightily against the German government because it removed it's religious non-profit tax status to replace it with a for-profit organization status. They love money remember. The church of scientology is being observed by the "Verfassungsschutz" (lit. = federal agency for the protection of the constitution) because it's been established by court that it has near-totalitarian goals (i.e. domination) that threatens the constitution. Other than that it operates just as freely as in the US (they bugged me, I've had their material in my mailbox, etc.).
- this is a Perl world: there's more than one way to do it (I mean democracy here). The US constitution works fine for Americans, the German constitution works fine for Germans, etc. A constitution reflects the preferences and experiences of the people who live with it (and ultimately write it). There isn't any such thing as a supremely democratic and freedom-maximizing constitution, as the many rights we enjoy collide frequently. Therefore, your sentence "it makes me grateful that I live where I live, despite its many problems" applies to many countries, and to my understanding it means that you like the constitution you live with. That's great.
In Germany, there are laws against free expression, banning hate speech, Nazi-talk, and so forth. An outcome of a certain war, I believe. That said, it is clear the above clauses permit arbitrary reduction of free speech, and allow for too much government control.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
So it would be Ok if they changed the page to something like, "In my opinion, it would damage the railway badly if someone were to..."? Violating the spirit of the law but sticking to the letter you say? Well, that's Ok because the German Constitution obviously violates the spirit of free speech whilst maintaining a resemblance to the letter of it.
Let me spell it out to you: the spirit of free speech is that the government is not permitted to regulate the flow of information. Controlling all information is tyranny just as surely as a Gestapo or some other secret police. It is a far more insidious tyranny, in fact, because it is a hidden tyranny, where the prisoners can injure themselves on the bars because they are not permitted to see them.
If the government is permitted to regulate the flow of factual information that it does not like, then it will not permit people to inform others about government graft and corruption, etc.
If you want to discuss pedophiles, remember that pedos are a much smaller problem than a government tyranny (in terms of the number of people it effects). Tyranny control has to be done first, then the pedophiles can be dealt with (laws such as victimizing children, aiding and abetting, etc.).
BlackGriffen
There were originally 17 amendments proposed
Facinating. I did a google search and found some info, but I had trouble finding a full descrition of the other seven (the most promising result was a link to a page that's gone).
Is there any chance you have a good link for this?
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Just to clarify: the Deutsche Bahn hasn't won in the case against xs4all yet. A preliminary verdict was issued that forced xs4all to close down the website in question for the time being, but the final ruling won't be available until april 25th. Given that the material is NOT copyrighted by Deutsche Bahn, and is NOT illegal in the Netherlands, I would expect the preliminary verdict to be overturned in favor of xs4all.
Your own post contradicts you.
So? you failed to point out the contradiction.
German Constitution Article 5: Everybody has the right to distribute and express his OPINION freely as well as to inform himself freely.
People do need to be know how terroism works, otherwise we just have trust some secret cabel to tell us what to do. That's what free speech is all about.
So: you need a construction plan for a fire bomb to protect yourself against fire bombs?
I would say a descent emergency plan in case of fire makes fare more sence.
Probably supported by fire extinctures at the right places.
Probably supported by an emergency response team (fire guards).
There is no secret cable telling anything: there is a public law suit, held at a public court, supported by public law opened by a public listed company against an other public listed company and the whole issue is public discussed at
How much more public do you need? BTW: its common sence in the wesern european society that it is not "necessary" to have such informations on the net.
We think that there are two kinds of freedoms: the freeedom of free speach and the freedom of being protected from people who call for destruction of men and live and property.
If have still not found the time to read the stuff this thread is about you probably should. The blocked web page does not tell people how terrorism works. It calls people to commit terroristc acts. It tells people where and how to bomb. It tells people which kind of bombs are most effective and appropriated.
I realy doubt that the site would be legal in the US.
I'm pretty sure a similar side calling for bombing a institution in the united states with dedicated plans how to achieve such a bombing would be declared illegal and closed in the same way it is done here in europe.
Free speach ends where the freedom of the other guy is hurt.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Hi,
...
today I had a phone talk with Christian Schreyer, the legal advisor of Deutsche Bahn.
Deutsche Bahn will sue all, who create a mirror of this pages; if it's not possible sue them (e.g. free speech laws in the US or whatelse), they want to block the pages at the german access providers: There is a filter system in development, which will be able to block all unwanted URLs.
The stalking-horse to establish these filter system (called "Filterpilot"), which uses a combination of routing and transparent proxying, are nazi websites. Denying holocaust is illegal in germany and there is a wide front against nazis; they use this to establish filterpilot at all border gateways.
The district government of Düsseldorf, which is the outrider in the case of net censorship in germany, sais: "If we want to prohibit milk drinking, we have first test this with two milk bottles."
It is naive to think, that "Filterpilot" will remain in Germany. It's a commercial development and not only in germany there are lot if interested organisations in such a filter: remember MPAA, IPFI, Scientology,
At ODEM we have a petition against provider side filter systems. Please support us and sign the Declaration for freedom of information in the internet.
ODEM.org Tour (about censorship)
By your logic the Allies in WWII were in the wrong for giving information on sabotage tactics to the French resistance. So much for supporting freedom fighters in tyranical nations.
This is a deeply flawed, naive response. First, France was occupied by a hostile power. This is a German group 'resisting' a democratically elected German government. They are not disenfranchised or repressed, but rather lazy and/or malicious. The could affect changes in German nuclear energy policy through political means, but choose not to. Second, French freedom fighters did not intentionally target and endanger German civilians. They sabotaged military targets. This group recklessly endangers civilian targets, which is disgusting.
This is the same basic flaw of logic that burdens the US's war on terror. According to the definition we are using (all non-government supported organized violence) our own founding fathers were terrorists.
Another bold claim with nothing to back it up. Please explain to me in a moderately logical way how the American revolution relates to the current 'war on terror' and this anti-nuclear group.
The US's current military action against these militant Islamic groups began when we were attacked. Al Queda hates the US - their main goal is the killing of 'infidels'. They attacked 2 African embassies, the USS Cole, and the WTC. On the other hand, the American revolution's goals were stated in the Declaration of Independence which was sent to the British monarchy. We reached our goals through military conflict, not by attacking non-combatants. The comparison between the rebelling colonies and the German group is even worse. The colonies fought because they did not recieve Parlimentary representation - the German group has that at it's fingertips.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
If Hogan's Heroes is so nasty, then explain why it's dubbed into German and broadcast on German TV.
(I'm not joking...I saw it maybe 3 or 4 years ago. My parents and I (they were stationed @ Ramstein; I was visiting) were in Rothenburg (sp?) and it was on one evening...we were out of range for AFN. (Besides, PAL TVs don't pick up NTSC signals too well and AFN carries mostly sports anyway...a fair number of GIs get minidishes, have someone in England send an access card, and watch Sky.))
You do have to wonder a bit about what the Germans might find funny about it, but I guess enough of them do to make it worth carrying.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
a handbook on how to destroy rail tracks is hardly worth fighting for - but even in those instances, freedom of speech must be absolute
but it sucks having to do it over some dangerous wingnuts' propaganda...
As I understand it the the censored article was a descrition of a rather sophisticated form of sabotage. They trigger the railway system's built in fail-safe mechanisms and the trains slow to a few MPH. Minimal damage that actually results in safer than normal operation.
You can disagree with their position. You can arrest them when they sabotage equipment. But you have to respect their commitment to safety.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Yeah, just like they learned to wear headdresses from old Tarzan movies.
when I read of other 'progressive' governments (read: Great Britain, Germany, Canada. Not Pakistan, Peru, etc.) doing away with the rights that I take for granted (and enjoy reading about and taking part in the free exercise thereof) I am quite startled
So, what rights do you have in the US that I don't have in the UK? At least I can discuss ROT-13 in a public place without getting sent to jail.
Here's a much more useful archive of the site than Google's:
/ /w ww.xs4all.nl/~tank/radikal/
n l/ ~tank/radikal/
/zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
http://web.archive.org/web/20020208065004/http:
The Internet Archive also has past versions:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.xs4all.
The main page for the Internet Archive's multi-year web collection is web.archive.org
--Pat
So my point was that the Bill of Rights was a necessary condition for acceptance of the Constitution. This makes these ten amendments rather different, historically if not legally, from all the others.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
OMG!
The page is so stupendously ugly Google should be sued until they destroy all copies!
Good example, thanks.
One thing that seems to keep getting missed in all of this, is that Google has offices in Germany, conducts business in Germany, and should therefore make sure that they don't violate the laws in Germany. Seriously, if you are going to have a presence in a country, you shouldn't go flaunting their laws, just because its legal in your home country.
By way of disclosure, I am an American, and the thought of this sort of limitation on what Google can link to is distasteful to me; however Google has offices in Germany, and Germany has laws preventing this sort of thing. So, if a German court decides that Google was wrong in what they did, Google should suffer the consequences. End of Story. If you don't like the laws of a country, don't set up operations there, its that simple. I would expect US based companies to follow German laws, if they have a presence there, and I would expect German companies to follow US laws if they have a presence here(Russian companies too!). The only time I would expect a company to be exempt from a law, is if they don't have a physical presence. As such, I could post a copy of the offending article, and be relativly safe, as long as I stay out of Germany. And a German national could crack the CD protections of the RIAA, and be realtively safe, as long as they stay out of the US. Its either that, or a lot of people need to start preparing a hell of a legal defence for violating Shira law by viewing porn.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
i will have my mirror of it up within a week i should have an english translation at one point in time, our american forefathers trew tea into the harbor as an act of protest...that too was illegal and no it has already been requested that i do not host this on my main site.
Someone could argue with equal logic that the people who oppose Ashcroft the most are the terrorists.
Given some of the things that Ashcroft has said, I'm rather sure he believes that this is the case.
When the question is framed this way, the debate is over what approach leads to the minimum loss of freedom.
No, the debate extends to whether or not any proposed loss of freedom is both worth the consequences and will have any real effect on terrorism. The rabid 'safety before all else' folks have fundamentally failed to prove that any of the legislation passed or considered will do anything to stem terrorism.
And then we could go further to ask why we're a target in the first place and if there's anything we could do to not make ourselves a target in the future. I don't see anyone hankering to to blow up Canadians; maybe they're doing something right that we're doing wrong....
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
This isn't a question of proving that the information on the site has a "legal" use. This is about the right to think and speak whatever you want, as long as that act of speech, in and of itself, does not hurt anyone else. Yes there are caveats for defamation, etc. But the point is that thought is difficult without speech, and if I want to fantasize, or discuss, the best way to blow up a railroad, then I -- as an autonomous person -- should have the right to do so. It's about privacy, about getting the thought police and speech police out of our lives, and letting people express themeselves.
A better way to fight crime is to, god forbid, do good police work, while also tackling whatever underlying issues may contribute. But forbidding people from talking about crime is not a legitimate way of fighting it. Banning racial epithets does not decrease racism. Actually bringing these things out in the open, and allowing people to discuss what is on their minds is a much more effective way of fighting crime, while also preserving our freedom to voice unpopular opinions.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
if the constitution is a bad one, isn't the correct response to say "the constitution failed to protect the freespeech, there are too many limitation of art. 5, therefore the constitution is a bad one - so we should get a bunch of guns, overthrow the government, and institute a better one?"
now actually doing that i can see being illegal. but saying that you should do it? seems that if you can't say that, then you're being censored clear as day in direct contradiction to the 'no censorship' clause.