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Google May Close Gmail Germany Over Privacy Law
Matt writes "Google is threatening to shut down the German version of its Gmail service if the German Bundestag passes it's new Internet surveillance law. Peter Fleischer, Google's German privacy representative says the new law would be a severe blow against privacy and would go against Google's practice of also offering anonymous e-mail accounts. If the law is passed then starting 2008, any connection data concerning the internet, phone calls (With position data when cell phones are used), SMS etc. of any German citizen will be saved for 6 months, anonymizing services like Tor will be made illegal."
Just when I thought Europe was going to be the last bastion of freedom in the world.
... Germany is going to one-up you if you're not careful.
Congress, look out
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
WTF?
I can walk around San Francisco and find hundreds, if not thousands, of open or misconfigured wireless routers. Anonymous access to anyone with a notebook.
How does germany plan on enforcing this?
GMail Poland excutives were looking rather nervous after this announcement.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Yeah, Google will do in Germany what it didn't do in China? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google# China (OK, not exactly the same thing but you get the point). I won't bet on it.
I wonder if they are going to start requiring their citizens to wear flare as well.
Great We take down one wall and another comes up, why does the government fear computers so much that they must spy on everyone, can't they have a little trust
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
Brazilian ISPs have always had the duty to record and keep everything that's sent by anyone over the internet. If someone feels defamed by anything that can be proved to come from that ISP, the company is held responsible if the author cannot be found. Brazilian judges have always been very, very eager to grant injunctions against any publication of personally derogatory words or images.
This includes books too, a famous example was a few years ago, when a biography of soccer star Garrincha was pulled out of bookstores at the request of his daughters. The reason? It was stated in the book, based on his lovers' declarations, that Garrincha's penis was approximately 27 cm (11 inches) long. This book was later released, after an appeals court decided that saying a man has a large penis is not a derogatory statement.
Its taken the luddite politicians 20 years notice the rise and power of the internet. Virtual will mirror real world as power is rested from the techies into corporate and gorvernments. Privacy will never be mainstream. Although it will still exist for those willing to go the extra mile. Enjoy it while it lasts.
One difference is that in the West, you can pull maneuvers like this and sometimes they actually make a difference. China probably wouldn't have cared much at all if Google had gotten petulant, and it certainly wouldn't have mattered to them whether or not their citizens lost access to something valuable. In Germany, who knows?
And cynical types can always note that China is a much bigger market than Germany.
Tweet, tweet.
Why bother with the law? Seems to me all you need to do is *let* businesses do the tracking (which of course they're going to want to do, because data mining is especially useful for marketeers), and government just needs to occasionally ask nicely for copies?
Better yet if you've also got a unitary executive to go along with it.
Tweet, tweet.
Stand up and fight Germany, but let China and their ilk off the hook. Glad to see consistency w/ these companies.
Dude, they one of the largest people moving exercises in history with only the most primitive of computers, I think they could handle easily detectable wireless in 2007.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
I notice that you're using a pseudonym rather than posting under your full, legal name. What are you hiding?
Germany already requires licenses for TV sets and things like baby monitors. And they enforce it. They actually have vans equipped with detection equipment that scan for electromagnetic radiation from these devices, and if you're not on record as having paid the tax their is a knock on your door. Extending this to 802.11 will be trivial.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
If you're not anonymous, you don't have real privacy. If what you're doing online is being monitored and linked to you, then the only thing that stands between you and that loss of privacy is some flimsy company policy, or in some places, legislation -- both of which always have exceptions allowing the information to be handed over to law enforcement for a variety of reasons.
If the data exists, the government can get hold of it. You only have privacy if the data was never collected in the first place.
Liberty in your lifetime
Couldn't Germans just sign up with another countries gmail and then use that? Or is the german government going to force ISPs(which they have a large say in one of the largest ones, Telekom) to block access to gmail? I am an American currently living in Germany and I use my gmail account(which I registered for while I was still a student at Penn State) as my main email address. Would I be affected by this? TFA is pretty light on details.
Monstar L
Here the original Spiegel Article(in German, of course).
Information about the draft law and what people can do to prevent it from being passed can be found at the following site:
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/ (also in German)
What's scary is the range of people that are supposed to get access to the collected information,
it's not just the police but also "Nachrichtendienste" (news agencies!?) and "ausländische Staaten" (other countries, apparently any that ask)
I'm guessing this is caused by some lobby/bribe action of organizations like the RIAA/MPAA.
I can't think of one good reason of why this might be good for anyone,
criminals will just use bot proxies or other means to bypass the tracking/collection and in the end
it will just be the honest people that get f#cked because with general government incompetence
the the data will end up in the criminal's hand's and used for who knows what.
He's a bounty hunter, Mr Fett.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
I'm hiding my full real name. :-)
Actually, and perhaps rather paradoxically, very few of my on-line writings have my real name attached to them. I wrote here a little while ago about how I'd cancelled all my accounts on social networking sites as well.
I have a very clear reason for doing this: in today's culture, posting under my real name gains me nothing and risks a lot. This is, in fact, where I came in. What we should have are real privacy laws, which prevent the kind of arbitrary collection, sharing and mining of personal information that businesses and governments are increasingly using as technology makes it easy. Until we have these, pseudo-anonymity is a somewhat effective defence, but it's only a band-aid for a greater problem.
The other problem is that society hasn't yet learned that you shouldn't trust everything you read on-line and no-one is perfect. In a sensible world, a prospective employer finding a picture of you doing something stupid while you were a student a decade ago wouldn't be a problem, because they'd just think "Oh, well, a lot of us did stupid stuff when we were students". In a sensible world, a hint in a personal blog that you enjoyed chemistry would not result in police visiting your home because someone reported you as a terrorist. In a sensible world, mentioning your employer by name in a blog wouldn't get you fired (or at least, told to close down the blog or you'd be fired). And so it goes. But this is not, yet, a sensible world.
Before we can reach that world, people need to grow up and realise that no-one is perfect. Finding the odd character flaw or past indiscretion is not the best criteria on which to judge another human being. As I've noted before, if I had taken personal offence every time one of my friends did something that hurt another of my friends, then I would long since have run out of friends. And yet, I know that all of my friends are basically decent people, and that it is just an unfortunate reality that sometimes relationships don't work out and people get hurt, so I am very glad to have the friends I do regardless of any isolated incidents that I might have disliked if I'd been on the wrong end of them.
I am optimistic about this, but I think things have to get worse before they get better. With the current generation growing up with social networking sites who are data mining them like crazy, and who have little concept of personal privacy and why it matters, I think a lot of people are going to get screwed over the next 5–10 years. But after a little while, it will become pretty obvious to everyone that this is stupid. People will stop believing every little thing they read about someone, employers will stop vetting people extensively on their Internet footprint because the method will lack credibility, and when citizens/consumers realise how much they're getting screwed I think they will demand privacy laws that prevent the kinds of abuse that are increasingly happening today.
So, until we reach that point some way down the line, when society has grown up enough to understand the value of privacy and the need to respect people's public personas in a world where most people have an Internet presence somewhere, I choose to protect myself from the damage by posting under pseudonyms on "casual" forums like this one. But I would rather live in a world with serious privacy laws and a grown-up society, where I could write my genuine thoughts here and put my real name to them, knowing that I wasn't going to risk being sued for saying something that inadvertently gave the wrong impression. In that world, I wouldn't need anonymity, and I would be happy to stand by what I write here, with my real name attached.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
USA is a war country. The only way for the president to gain power is to declare a war. A war on drugs, a war on hippies, a war on terrorists, a war on geeks, a war on freedom. Good war or bad, it's what power hungry presidents have to do.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You say there is a fine line. The line may be fine, but the choice is still clear: when in doubt, preserve a right - do not take it away. Surely you don't disagree with innocence until proven guilty or the right to bear arms in order to overthrow an oppressive government. Both can lead to bad situations such as setting a guilty person free for lack of evidence or murder. Anonymity is, up to this point, a natural human treasure-just another freedom we have. Once you let a ounce of it go, it's never coming back.
The technology has advanced way beyond the need to scapegoat by something as simplistic as "being a Jew", of course. Now we can identify and track undesirables based on a far wider range of properties and prior acts. The technology is being built; the checks on government power are being eroded while the population is being suitably distracted; ministers with the appropriate philosophical basis are coming to power. There's no need for a massive conspiracy, just for these people to take advantage of the next terror/paedophile/whatever scare to further their own aims, while turning a blind eye to information which might really take the population out of a perpetual state of fear.
When an apologist cries, "If you were really oppressed, you'd already be in prison for saying this!" he misses the point - far more efficient and reliable than silencing anyone who speaks against you, is to begin by drowning out with a louder beat all but those who present the greatest threat. If you are being left alone - if you haven't yet appeared on a harass-when-flying list; if you've never been photographed, searched, and "asked" to move on; if no-one's come to your door and asked "how you feel" about some political event - it is not a testament to your freedom, but a warning that you're not effective enough. Don't worry, the bar is being slowly lowered; just as ten years ago those who are now being picked out would have been left alone, give it another decade and maybe your voice will be a little too loud for your government's comfort.
FYI, I asked my German friend to comment on the topic and at the bottom of the article are his comments:o gles-gmail-has-issues-in-germany
http://www.centernetworks.com/first-flickr-now-go
That's not the solution. Germany has jurisdiction over DeNIC, the .de registry. So they could have them pull the DNS records for any reasons. The solution is for privacy-aware Germans to use a generic gTLD domain like, say, .net, .org or .com.
If Google closed shop in Germany, so what? All what Germans need to do is to use google.com, over which Germany has no influence whatsoever. Actually, it's Google that's pushing Germans to google.de and force them use googlemail.com instead of gmail.com for GMail, with some kind of geo-based IP detection, even if they go to google.com. Crazy! Now would be good time for Google to stop this country-specific nonsense and let users choose (without forcing them to set cookies, use proxies to sign up for gmail.com addresses and what not).
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Disclaimer: I am an American, however, I was forced to take European history. Are people in Europe ever required to take American history?
Let's start with your major contention: Basically it means they can push through the EU constitution that was thrown out by voters in 2 of the countries last time, without the pesky annoyances of, oh lets say, the people of the EU [Ed's note: I assume you mean the people of the two dissenting EU contries] voting on the matter...[A constitution that requires] only a majority of countries are needed for things to be agreed upon not unanimous...
An example from US history would be the movement from the Articles of Confederation (which did require unanimous ratification of the Articles and the laws) to the US Constitution (which required a 3/4 ratification for the Constitution and simple majority for the laws). The reason the US Constitution only required 3/4 ratification was to force Rhode Island and Providence Plantation and North Carolina to join the Union (since they were known to oppose it) and leave a one state buffer. The reason why the simple majority system works better, well perhaps I best use a European example: "Poland was a country ruled by a council of 500 barons, all of whom had to agree for anything to happen. This allowed Poland to get ****ed by anyone who could make a simple decision."
Basicailly, the Articles of Conferation were a flop, and there needed to either be one or thirteen states. Similarly, any EU requiring unanimous consent will also fail. History abounds with examples where the needs of building or running a nation mean forcing people into the social contract. There doesn't seem to be any other way for the world to work.
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I very rarely post vote parent up posts, but this is just too important to languish at Score:2.
Our national democracies is being systematically taken over by this mockery of a democratic system and the mainstream press is all but silent on the matter.
The semi-informed Europeans point the finger at the present state on non-democracy in the US and feel superior. The truly informed Europeans are attempting to make the rest realize that we are just a few years behind. The same powers that have almost completely removed any real democracy from the US are hard at work doing the same to the EU.
Please people, wake up and make your voices heard through protests, and through votes before it is too late.
What do you mean, how do they plan on enforcing this? Since when do lawmakers around the world need to worry about this sort of praticalities when passing idiotic internet laws? How could they possibly be expected to? Next thing you'll want them to actually understand the technical issues before making a decision, eh?
And that helps? Yes. It will kill all the bugs.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Gründlichkeit or thoroughness is just so much part of the German character. Back in Scotland you could read the important parts of the Blue Book tax guide in the bookshop and easily identify any new legal tax avoidance strategies. You couldn't do that with the German Tax Books there are about 127 of them. My accountant just photocopies pages out and sticks them in the tax return. You have to pay canal tax but there's no canal and you don't get one either. As for thoroughness, Non-German partners are often very surprised when they clean the entire house from top to bottom only to have their partner point out that they forgot the single cup they drank their post cleaning coffee in which is standing on the immaculate sink - dirty. There is no mention of all the good work, because the concept of balancing good things against negative things (one good thing outweighs loads of bad things) is rather specific to English speakers. German anthropology uses the concept of a linear measure of perfection (or distance from it!) and the streets are so clean you could eat your dinner off them. Well, almost but this is the real reason behind this action, more national character than conspiracy.
I should confess to reading lots of Tabloid newspapers though but I have also read Critique of Pure Reason if that counts for anything curiously neither activity appears to have had any lasting effect, whereas Counterstrike, now that's a whole different kettle of fish...
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
...I'm happy that the members of my parliament doesn't even know what Internet is!
There is a huge difference between the government recording and watching everything you do and a company that you volunteer to use their services if they can watch how you surf their webpages.
The government forces the surveillance on you and could do tremendous damage, look at the US, Stalin, Hitler, Cuba, Venetzuela, Saudi Arabia and China. Next up is Germany and then the rest of EU. Happy hunting.