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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."
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.
Unlike what the summary suggests, this is not specific to Germany. It's the implementation of a European directive on data retention. And FWIW, the US is indeed less invasive than the EU at this point concerning data retention.
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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.
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.
It IS specific to Germany in some respects. Remember, the directive only specifies the MINIMUM requirements for the law; The implementations are country-specific.
Outlawing Tor is very much specific to Germany.
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:[.]
That's true, although it is quite "consistent" with the directive. One of our criticisms was that it is ridiculous to do what the directive requires because there are so many ways around it. Forcing ISPs to record all email from/to data can be worked around by using foreign email providers and tunnelling. Recording from/to data about IP-telephony can't be done without inspecting every single ip packet flowing through your network, and even then only if someone is using a documented protocol without encryption/obfuscation, etc.
Banning TOR, requiring foreign email providers to play by the rules of the directive etc are minimal requirements for implementing the directive in any "sensible" way, if you look at it from an data retention efficacy perspective.
So in the end, I am convinced it is perfectly correct to say that this is all because of that EU directive and the horrific combination of fascists and idiots that supported it "to save the children" and to "catch the terrorists".
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Outlawing Tor is very much specific to Germany.
Tor will not be outlawed, but anybody who runs a Tor server from within Germany has to log the connection data, which pretty much goes against the idea of Tor.
But running or using Tor in general will not be illegal (from what I unterstand).
Furthermore, that one of the real points of contention is that the UK is trying it's best to prevent the treaty from making a charter of fundamental rights for EU's citizens legally binding.
So for once, rather than complaining about the EU in general and Germany in particular, those of us living in the UK should instead be complaining about how our government at every turn tries to prevent from being bound to give it's citizens any form of protection against it's government.
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.
"Now what about all those other metrics we use to measure privacy?"
That's why the US doesn't use metrics.
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.
Fortunately, it is irrelevant where Tor server actually runs :)
It seems that idea of such directives is to prevent common case of communication from becoming really secure, so that anyone can be a suspect just if he/she ever used that method way of communication.
For that reason we won't soon (or ever) see secure authentication and exchange of decryption keys in e.g. mobile-phones: so that police can tune in and listen whenever they want. Although we already see this "problem" with VoIP which is widely used as replacement for a fixed telephony.
those of us living in the UK should instead be complaining about how our government at every turn tries to prevent from being bound to give it's citizens any form of protection against it's government.
How did you get them to sign the Magna Carta?
We are all just people.
I think the poster referres to The Council of the European Union. This council isn't elected directly. As you describe it consists of ministers of the governments, which are members of the executive. So the executive suddenly gains a tremendous legislative power.
Your description sounds nice and democratic, but in reality checks and balances are way out of control regarding European legislation. And given the enormous impact some EU directives have, there is almost no political discussion let alone media coverage. The leading governments of Europe basically can change laws at will.
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 submit to you that the distinction between a public and a private act is nearly dissolved in this day and age. Most meaningful tasks cannot be completed except by some portion occurring in traditionally "public" space, including all forms of communication but speaking in situ, all commerce, and indeed preety much all social life. A person's public habits and actions, when reviewed in full and codifiable such that they may be stored and compared, are a very powerful inferential tool for predicting private behaviors, opinions, and actions.
The distinction between public and private was meaningful at a time and a place where an indivudual was exposed to public scrutiny only when they call attention to themselves. That is no longer true; surveillance technologies allow constant monitoring of individuals. For those who see no problem with this, ask have they ever had a bad hair day? A cranky mood? Occassionally sped or missed a stop sign? Problem is nobody is perfect in action, even in the narrow sense that they always do what they intend, all the time.
Laws were designed to maintain public order; they cast a net of proscripted behavior slightly wider than those behaviors that actually are a threat to public order, because it is generally recognized than a simple practical safeguard against overintrusive law enforcement is that acts which are technically illegal but raise nobody's heckles are probably not a threat to public order. To wit, someone has to complain in order for one to believe that someone is aggrieved. With surveillance that is no longer the case; and yet we execute those same old laws in a heavily surveilled world.
If the entirety of UK's public space were surveilled, then yes, I think that it would be nearly as destructive as comparable forms of private surveillance. The fact that on narrow philosophical grounds it seems more justifiable, due to our clinging to notions of "public" and "private" that are today practically dead, is why fewer people seem to care. And that is a pity.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
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.
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...
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Maybe it would help to see that politics is not just a one-dimensional "left-right" scheme. Politics is usually at the very least two dimensional (with economic freedom on one axis and personal freedom on the other), there've been people who suggested even three and more dimensional systems, but the two dimensional already works wonders, usually.
... something that hasn't been tried yet, I guess.
Generally you will notice that one-dimensional classifications don't work out. You had Hitler and Stalin (to take the politically extremes), one being, on the economic scale, a full blown free market supporter, with a no-bars attitude on the question how much you may profit from your workforce, the market and even the state (well, provided your bribes were high enough), the other one an (economic) communist with the forced collectivation of all production material available. So technically, in a one-dimensional system, they should be as different as they can be.
The reason we perceive them as near equal is that they were both on the "personal freedom" scale in the same bottom. Both were dictators to the fullest degree.
"Freedom" on both axes is a very liberal free market/free world model, bordering on anarchy. Such a system can actually be surprisingly stable if the people support it (the US were for some time quite close to this model). "Restrictive" on both axes is very close to a communist dictatorship. Restricting personal freedom while allowing the economy as much liberties as possible is a fascist dictatorship. And the complementary (personal freedom but tightly regulated/socialized economy) is
So I don't subscribe to the one dimensional "social - liberal" left-right notion. Politics is far more dimensional than that, it can't be condensed into one variable.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.