Slashdot Mirror
German Police Arrest Admin of Tor Anonymity Server
An anonymous reader writes "In a recent blog posting, a German operator of a Tor anonymous proxy server revealed that he was arrested by German police officers at the end of July. Showing up at his house at midnight on a Sunday night, police cuffed and arrested him in front of his wife and seized his equipment. In a display of both bitter irony and incompetence, the police did not take or shut-down the Tor server responsible for the traffic they were interested in, which was located in a data center, over 500km away. In the last year, Germany has passed a draconian new anti-security research law and raided seven different data centers to seize Tor servers. While back in 2003, A German court ordered the developers of a different anonymity network to build a back-door into their system."
should it be from the good guys never win dept.? or am i missing something about the almightiness or Tor?
People that trade freedom for security shall recieve neither.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
The gestapo is alive and well although less outright evil then before. Germany has some very restrictive laws especially related to speech. I wonder if it's an over reaction to the WWII and the Nazi's or if it's a remnant of that type of mindset. The belief that force is appropriate to fight ideas.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Do they not realize that the vast majority of people who use that software do not live under their laws and thus make the law utterly useless either way? of course they do, it isn't about actually solving problems, it's about looking like your trying to solve problems. it works in every country.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
That puts the server in another country I guess. Anyhoo, it sounds like is time to escape Honecker and the Stasi and jump the wall... Uhh, what?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I propose to suspend Godwin's law for this article, because it will be really difficult to have a debate of any depth.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
It should be the gut guys, since it's German.
So you have illegal traffic coming from your machine and intentionally can't point out who it came from, and you chose to do this willingly. How are you not liable for that traffic? It would be different if this was just a hosting provider who provided service in good faith that someone took advantage of, this is someone running something INTENTIONALLY untrackable.
If you don't think he should be held accountable for the traffic from his machine, whats to stop anyone from running tor and then either directly or through tor doing any illegal activity?
You could argue most digital crimes shouldnt be crimes at all (and I'd agree), but thats a different argument entirely
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Ahh, the irony of the slashtards, that the parent poster was modded down for stating the blindingly obvious.
We can now easily predict that the German government will soon find it difficult to hire people with an admitted knowledge of computer security topics. If you were German, would you admit to such knowledge to an official questioner?
;-)
Sorta like how the US government has been complaining about the difficulty of hiring Arabic translators, despite the statistics from a few years back saying that there were several million US residence who were fluent in Arabic. (And, contrary to the jokes going around, they aren't all gay.
It's commonly known as "shooting yourself in the foot".
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
> Come on, Eurotrolls, what do you have to say now?
Four words:
No Software Patents (yet).
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
NAZIS! NAZIS! NAZIS!
Ok, now that we can all move on with a more in-depth discussion.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Iraq? :{P
He was arrested. He will now go into extended negotiations with a prosecutor, during the entirety of which he will have a lawyer present. If the negotiations don't go favorably for him, he will have a fair trial. He will probably be convicted of it, which is an occupational hazard of doing things which the government has illegalized. After being convicted, he will be given a first-time-offender wrist-slap, probably a few months of probation and a stern warning not to do it again. Perhaps he will spend a few months of not-terribly-rigorous time in jail -- I'd bet against it but I'm not German. He'll lose quite a bit of money to attourney fees, less whatever the Tor community raises for his defense (I'm not optimistic), and probably have some equipment seized.
You know what doesn't happen?
He doesn't get summarily executed.
His wife doesn't get raped at gunpoint.
His child doesn't get burned in an oven.
People throw around the word fascist to describe any policy they don't like (that core observation is the heart of Godwin's law). Excepting the geographical accident that places both of them in Germany, there is NOTHING analagous between Nazism and the actions of the government in this case. If you want to convince people of the rightness of deploying a Tor network, keep a cool head and do not use any goose-stepping analogies, because they will brand you as a perspectiveless fanatic who is not to be taken seriously.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
All I have to say is that we are going downwards, and I don't like it a bit.
In fact, I'll probably move away from here (sweden) asap.
Hey! That's my sig you're smoking there!
"We know this because the JAP operators immediately warned users that their IP traffic might be going straight to Big Brother, right? Wrong. After taking the service down for a few days with the explanation that the interruption was "due to a hardware failure", the operators then required users to install an "upgraded version" (ie. a back-doored version) of the app to continue using the service."
So JAP was ordered to put a backdoor in their program and they forced an upgrade on everyone. Didn't we just get a forced secret upgrade from Microsoft?
HELLO, has anyone dissembled that upgrade?
for example, "Teledienstgesetz" (translate this as: Telecommunications Act) says TDG 9
(1) Diensteanbieter sind für fremde Informationen, die sie in einem Kommunikationsnetz übermitteln oder zu denen sie den Zugang zur Nutzung vermitteln, nicht verantwortlich, sofern sie
1. die Übermittlung nicht veranlasst,
2. den Adressaten der übermittelten Informationen nicht ausgewählt und
3. die übermittelten Informationen nicht ausgewählt oder verändert haben. which boils down to to: telecommunications providers arent liable for other ppls information, if they
1. didn't initiate the connection,
2. didn't choose the recipients and
3. didn't choose or change the information.
But... but... doesn't he have any First Amendment rights?
[/merkin]
But to go to ha-ha-only-serious land, our laws seem to extend to other countries anyway. When it suits us.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
What do you expect from the Nazi Nation? Maybe the tor guy was a jew ...
Germany is a Zionist Occupied Government. The Jew hates your freedom more than the nazis were ever alleged to have.
Er... you are moving away from Sweden, aren't you? It's about the worst of the quasi-North Korean European states.
But I don't see any reasonableness in prosecuting an inherently reasonable law. Like that (black) high school student who had the book thrown at him for having sex with his (white) girlfriend because she was a couple years younger than him and broke an asinine law in Georgia.
People throw around the word fascist to describe any policy they don't like (that core observation is the heart of Godwin's law). Excepting the geographical accident that places both of them in Germany, there is NOTHING analagous between Nazism and the actions of the government in this case.
So what? Was Mussolini German?
Preach on, brother.
Udo Vogit for fuhrer!
In fact, I'll probably move away from here (sweden) asap.
To where?
Aside from a private island, a lot of people look at Sweden as the Holy Grail....a western Mecca. If even the Swedes are looking to move out, where is there left to go?
yesterday when the powers that be introduced the logging act. All data connections, emails and phone calls has to be logged and kept on record for at least a year. Beat that!
Ahem, you really need to learn your history.
The "Dont Tread on Me" flag, aka the Gadsden flag, was a flag bourne in the American Revolution, not the Civil War. The Rattlesake, before the Bald Eagle, was the symbol of the United States itself.
How can we take your anti-semitic comments in any kind of serious manner when you do not even know the history of the very symbol of the American Revolution, no, the core values of the United States itself?
Bully I say, Bully!
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
the point is, that this is either
a) police stupidity
b) scare tactics
i'd safely bet on the latter.
People that trade old memes for karma shall receive neither.
as someone who lives in germany, I find your post very sensible and on the spot.
in building a police state. it will be a democracy and you will have political parties, but also everyone will be labeled a criminal. and every dissident will be labeled a "dangerous" criminal.
as i (and some others) see this, everything is part of a puzzle:
data retention, camera surveillance, the federal trojan, spying w/o court order, criminalizing "hacker tools" etc.
the goal is to build a repressive society to somehow grant "stability" in a period of multinational crisis (which probably means shutting down critiques at will). hint: which large asian nation likes "stability" , too ?
People are making a big deal out of supposed incompetence of the German police in that they didn't even get the actual Tor server. Who cares? That's irrelevant. This is not about taking down a single Tor node. This is about sending a message ... run one of these and you are at risk, and when we decide to confiscate your property we're not going to be too careful about what we take. They probably figure that will be enough to keep a bunch of nerds in line.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
However wrote that securty "law" sould be fired and never allowed to write anything close to a rules or laws. This laws are ofcourse only going to make Germany the favorite spot for virus makers, since securtie flaws dont get fixed.
Happy new computer virus infected Germany!
(Or rather, to hell with it.)
it probably won't be enough.
http://www.mysecureisp.com/
piracy is OK, privacy NOT
That practice is so old it has even a Latin name: panem et circenses, aka bread and circus.
Born in the USA, 1969
Killed in Europe, 2007
Sieg Heil. Enjoy your wurstels.
"Aside from a private island, a lot of people look at Sweden as the Holy Grail....a western Mecca."
Would these people happen to live in or have a lot of contact with Sweden?
Trust me, there's lots of people thinking of other European countries than their own as a western Mecca - in reality, I don't think there are any Meccas for us around. I wonder what will happen when it becomes clear to most of them.
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. -- Pastor Martin Niemöller
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. --Denis Diderot
Had it really been the Nazi's Gestapo, he would not be posting anything in September...
Zonk et al. really need to glue a nicely printed and framed quote of the Godwin's Law on their beds' footboards, to make it the first thing they see waking up...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Since governements and corporate organisations all over de world are "cracking down" on people for all sorts of economical, ideological and behavioral docrines nowadays, it sure seem to boil down back to the Nazi regime during the 1930's era.
Godwin's Law appears to ridicule and downplay the comparison with, and fear of returning to, that time. It makes social-political discussions impossible, since you cannot seem to bring up the Worst Case examples anymore.
As my Grandparents said about WWII: "This will happen Never Again!". I, for one will always question any fascist law or corporate intimidation and point out Nazi (or emperial) parallels where appropriate.
Godwin's Law should be put againt the wall!
Refer to Wikipedia (in lieu of any basic text on the finer points of debate and rhetoric. It CAN be fallacious, but need not be.
The actual quote, which you failed to attribute, is by Benjamin Franklin and reads:
Note the adjectives "essential" and "temporary". To earn the "Insightful" moderations, which the clueless mods have given you already anyway, you must demonstrate, that the given-up liberty is essential, and that the gained security is only temporary.
Can you? I don't think so...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Tor users should run Trusted Computers. This is a technology that lets remote observers check the software configuration of the system they are connecting to. Most people think it is only for DRM but actually it has many privacy-protecting uses. If a Tor system were a TC, remote Tor clients could check that the Tor server was not logging connections, running a version of Tor with a back door, or doing other things to infringe privacy. Then if you were asked by a court why you didn't add features to your Tor software to log users and such, you could explain that if you did so, remote clients would be able to tell (due to Trusted Computing features) and so they would refuse to connect to your system and refuse to use it. Likewise if you were ordered to run a backdoored version of Tor it would not be effective, because people could see what you were doing.
Ironically, Trusted Computing, hated by the larger Internet community, can actually play an important part in protecting privacy. It is unfortunate that uninformed opposition has slowed the adoption of this potentially very useful and helpful technology. I am working hard to advance Trusted Computing and I can't wait for the day when I can run transparent servers which remote clients will be able to validate and trust. Someday I expect that all Tor servers, anonymous remailers and other privacy protecting technologies will run on Trusted Computers.
You do realize that Jews are not the only semitic people? Your comment could be contrived as being anti-Arab, as well as several other population groups.
Cheers mate, 3 friends of mine from Sweden are no longer "swedish citizens"... they've repatriated to places where the total state theft... ahem... "taxation" is a bit less than 100% :)
:P
I still had to sit back and contemplate how an entire population would take what happened in Sweden sitting down. Insane taxes, socialized everything, prohibited self defense, despite gang and racist violence towards white, blonde swedish girls... very worrisome that a Nordic population would so utterly surrender themselves to what is clear aggression, both by incomers and their own government.
Is it truly as bad as my friends have told me or is it the panacea of socialist heaven? (One of them moved to London, England and said it was an "improvement", and that really worried me.)
As one of those former Swedes said to me after moving out here... "we're tall, we're blonde, but stop thinking we're vikings". Too bad, I kinda liked the idea of her in chainmail and sallet.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
You are just plain wrong. The phrase "Slippery Slope Fallacy" came from the phrase "Slippery Slope", not the other way around. The fallacy has to do with asserting that a Slippery Slope exists when in fact it does not. It has NOTHINNG to do with actual slippery slope situations, which can and do exist.
And I am inclined to agree that this is one of them.
You're right.
The Nazis were german socialists. The Italians were fascists, Spain at the time was Fascist, and 1900-1930 America was prone to glorifying fascists and pretty much anyone that opposed communism. Hence why whoever studies history will find that many newspapers and radio broadcasts gushed all over Hitler at the time. Course sometime later they did a remarkable "about face" and gushed socialism... prodded the populace to fight on England's side.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
That does not do the same thing as Tor, at all. The only kind of surveillance this really protects you against is at your local ISP (or employer, or IT department on your own intranet), because the data leaves the MySecureISP servers unencrypted exactly as though you had not used the service at all. And your IP and other information are still being broadcast to the recipient(s).
The "security" you receive from MySecureISP is really very little security at all, unless you suspect your own employer or ISP of intercepting your traffic.
Tor, on the other hand, secures the ORIGIN of the data from prying eyes. Your IP is no longer present once it leaves the Tor server at the other end.
Arguably, combining the two would be pretty darned secure... but slow.
I think a new generation of Internet users just started hearing about Godwin's Law recently and now they're fascinated by it. I'm not sure why.
Habeas corpus.
Fascism doesn't appear instantly, it's usually a process. Having the Tor network made illegal seems to me, clearly, a part of that process. What we have here is yet another government requesting access to all their citizen's communications, and that is, IMHO, a surefire way to reach true fascism soon. Backdoors made mandatory? the police busting his door and arresting him at night for no serious offense? We should all be VERY afraid of this kind of behavior by our governments.
Let's keep this in perspective, this is both stupid and unacceptable but Germany is still the first country of Privacy International's Privacy index. Germany and Canada are the only countries in the world whose legislations are considered to have "Significant protections and safeguards"
The United States and the UK are respectively categorized as "Extensive surveillance societies" and "Endemic surveillance societies".
But did ANY OF YOU read the frigging article ? Let me quote it for you with relevant part in bold.
The police were investigating a bomb threat posted to an online forum for German police officers. The police traced one of the objectionable posts on the forum to the ip address for Janssen's server. Up until his arrest, Alex Janssen's Tor server carried over 40GB of other random strangers' Internet traffic each day. Showing up at his house at midnight on a Sunday night, police cuffed and arrested him in front of his wife and seized his equipment. In a display of both bitter irony and incompetence, the police did not take or shut-down the Tor server responsible for the traffic they were interested in, which was located in a different city, over 500km away. Janssen's attempts to explain what Tor is to the police officers fell initially on deaf ears. After being interrogated for hours, someone from the city of Düsseldorf's equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security showed up and admitted to Janssen that they'd made a mistake. He was released shortly after.
Summary : somebody saw his server was the originator IP, somebody reacted quickly, a bit like the US homeland departement IMO could have done, and fell on the face because 1) they gathered the wrong PC 2) once the dust settled they recognized their error after being interrogated for horus. Not DAYS. Not MONTH. Hours. Sure it sucks but it was a bomb threat, in other word there was urgency, and they did not torture him, they did not water board him and pretend afterward it ain't torture. They interrogated him for hours and released him and admitted mistake.
And people here are taking comparison to loss of liberty and Nazi ? Hellllooo ? Knee jerk reaction ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I don't understand why this one democratic country (oh, plus the US) keeps coming up with the dumbest laws. Where else can you not run tor? Myanmar, Iran, Syria, Somalia (just kidding)
> So you're still free to steal the ideas of others.
Or we could allow silly patents like you do, patent roman and greek alphabets whose prior art are belong to us and watch americans resorting to cyrillic if they want to sell software here.
Oh wait, "PEAKTOP" is a cyrillic rendition, IIRC. You gotta go arabic, or chinese.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Maybe you mean Euro fan boys?
First I have to ask, Euro as compared to what, North America, South East Asia?
Or Euro as in the cradle of the culture presently spanning most of the globe?
Europe, as a continent and as an Economic Union is a collection of related nations that have a history of fighting each other, the Germans have had by their sheer number and central location a large influence in the development of what is now Europe.
But the German nation developed late, only about 1 1/2 century ago, until then it was a collection of many small fiefdoms.
And in these few years of German Unity they were the source of two of the most destructive wars the world has ever seen.
It is unavoidable this has influenced the German legal system, yes it has influenced culture and legal systems in all European states.
The fear for a third war has brought us Europeans together, presently there is a generation getting into power that has no personal memory of the worst days but those that have studied are still careful in dealing with that old violent history and the misunderstandings that caused most of it.
The historically strict German legal system has translated these fears into sometimes very paranoid rules and laws.
Because the 'old' Germany was already know for it's rather black and white policies it might be more noticeable to people from the outside. For Germans this type of strict adherence to the rules seems kind of in the genes.
I therefore object to ideas that there is such a thing as a European element in the issue at hand, sure Europe has after 9/11 tried to have a unified front with the US towards terrorism but the way these laws are now being interpreted in Germany are in my view not typical for Europe as a whole.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
... and I feel awful about it. Nothing to see here, Germany was, is and probably will be a land full of idiots ruled by monkeys.
There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress.
nazis are one of the biggest lessons that have happened to mankind. if some bunch of idiots can not realize that there are places that this example should be recalled, then its not worth to waste words with them.
Read radical news here
Who needs software patents when it sounds like people would be better off no using computers there at all?
No sig for you!!
Go, Go Frattini! Go, Go undemocratically selected comissars! Do not let us search for genocide! We actually might learn something from the past! Let thy' Darfur continue! (.. Must resist .. building .. an A-bomb...can't stop myself.. bomming)
Hrm? Who was criticizing israel? Heck, I criticize Israel for a lot of their narrow-minded policies. You have no concept of what you speak of, and those with small minds should not try for such large words.
You, my dear sir, have been brainwashed by those above you. They sick you like an attack dog, making you revile a group while they steal your money, resources and livlihoods, leaving you with nothing but your hatred. You poor pitiful fool. So long as you hate blindly, you are a slave. Break free of the bonds within your own mind, embrace your true friends, those that your masters wish to have you hate, rise up, free yourself before it is too late...
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
should have bought a house in a Tor neighborhood.
I have a problem with Privacy International's Index. How credible is it when the UK and China are both described as "endemic surveillance societies"? Hello: one is a democracy, the other a totalitarian state where people get jailed for their beliefs and voicing their political opinions too openly. Is there a "great Hadrian Firewall" in England? I don't think so.
The major flaw in their study is that they seem to focus on one very limited aspect of "privacy", i.e. wiretapping,etc. What they should also take into account is whether there are clear rules governing admissibility of those materials in court. After all, if the government can listen to what you say or watch what you do but cannot use it in court, why should you be too worried?
And don't forget that most European countries are now restricting freedom of speech in unacceptable ways. Take a look at this EU directive: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/file.jsp?id=216962. Someone who criticizes Islam, Christianity, Judaism or any other religion might be charged under this statute, since it might be argued that he is inciting hatred against members of this religion.
All in all, I think the US is still 'freer' than most countries in Europe: can you be a holocaust denier in Europe? Can you reveal a politician's dirty secrets without being charged for slander or libel (in many European countries, if it is a 'private matter', you're not even allowed to prove in court that what you wrote or said is true).
For cyrillic, don't forget that Saints Cyril and Methodius were born in Thessaloniki, in Greece.
nt
Look, every single person in the world believes their taxes are unreasonably high. This is rarely true. Wikipedia provides an interesting chart, which shows Sweden as having high personal taxes (but somewhat lower than France, Germany, and Belgium), and pretty reasonable corporate taxes (where the supposedly more capitalist USA has among the highest listed). God only knows if the chart is accurate or meaningful, of course, given the source.
Well honestly I think people need to be monitored. Its not like the FBI or CIA are going to come to your workplace and laugh at you for your taste in porn.
But, they will come and arrest you for whatever incognito criminal act you may have been evolved in.
Frankly, I am scared and worried for my country(USA), with the ("I" deserve everything) attitude while being more concerned with Paris Hilton. We
should be filling our thoughts with alternative energy, opensource movements, legal rights, and health.
If you think that someone shouldn't be watching after the sheep then your kidding yourself because you are either the wolf or the sheep.
As long as there is sheep there will be wolfs to eat them.
read the first paragraph of each wiki entry and look at the characteristics of both. You're arguing that a government is not fascist because it doesn't have the characteristics of nazism.
Most world powers match at least half of the fascist characteristics. It's not because you feel there's nothing wrong with the policy of the government, that the policy isn't fascist.
Note that the core observation of godwin's law is just common sense : meaningfull discussions normally end once you start insulting the other side
....turn around, uh-oh
Der Kommissar's in town, uh-oh
And if he talks to you
And you don't know why
The more you live
The faster you will die
We have been through all of this Red Herring before and it won't make any difference. There is no point trying to understand how unimportant this discussion is if you don't understand today's Germany. Germany is the biggest exporting nation on Earth and it is the biggest player in the EU - which is the biggest market on Earth. Post war Germany actively chose the social democrat model for their economy and political system. It has the finest constitution in Europe (modelled on the US but containing substantially more pages!) the welfare state supports everyone and the growing economy provides the work that creates the wealth that pays for all this. It is normal for such a society to create a bunch of laws odd to English speakers - but then my own country doesn't even have a written constitution and our councils tax the individuals home. The present day German is focussed on career, personal improvement and health and very little else.
It is an unusual characteristic of Germany that everyone suffers from angst (fair enough, they invented the word) but the angst is all about really unlikely events (acrylimide in barbeque food causing cancer for example) and yet they throw caution to the winds the moment they get in a car.
This angst condition is so endemic I have christened it "Fright Club". Only a few weeks ago they were obsessed with "wifi smog" people were switching of their routers and phones to protect themselves from this new scourge. It didn't appear to stop them from watching television or listening to the radio, but there you go - science and magic confused or just interchangeable.
Coupled with this angst is another curious condition called Gründlichkeit or thoroughness. Gründlichkeit 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 because there are about 127 of them (the last time I tried to count 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.
In Germany when you change your address, you have to inform the special municipal department -Wohnamtmeldegung- (department of names and addresses)of the change and fill in three forms. A group of students could not understand how this did not exist in Britain or USA. "What's to stop you getting on a plane, flying to the UK, robbing a bank and then flying home?" was their completely serious question and my answer: "Even German bank robbers don't normally use their identity cards or leave a forwarding address during the robbery," leaves them completely unconvinced.
Conversation with Wohnamt Official:
Official:"What is your father's occupation?"
"He's dead, what difference does it make?"
Official:"I have a space in the form for it"
"which job would you like?"
Official:"His last one..."
Official:"What religion are you?"
(proudly) "Agnostic"
Official:"You can have: Catholic, Protestant or atheist."
"But I'm an agnostic"
Official: Ticks 'atheist'
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.
Germany has these laws and they pale into insignificance compared to the UK's
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
There are various variants of this, there is no record of the exact wording of the original. He repeated it several times in various forms.
The order should be, roughly: Communists, trade unionists, socialists. Sometimes he included the sick, sometimes jews or jehowah's witnesses. But historically, they started with the communists, and by the time they came for the jews (1940), they had long come for Niemöller himself (1937).
So how exactly is this poster brainwashed and how exactly is he anti-semitic (i.e. he is against all of the semitic peoples of the Earth)? Don't waste paragraphs on some trite righteous fantasy about being a brainwashed slave when you can't even formulate a cohesive argument.
I may be mistaken, but I believe European countries are involved in that situation as well. So my question is, do you admit your government was misinformed too? Or just blindly followed another nation? This is in general about the European nations in the coalition, seeing as I don't know where you live.
nothing changes.
Are the western going nutcrack because the masses are too lazy and too much occupied having entertainment ? Or is it because the general population isn't actually asked often enough what voters think about law passed by their representative ?
Personnaly, I think that what most western countries actually lack, is direct democracy. The currently most dysfunctionnal western democracy cited are similar to USA, i.e.: representative democrary.
I have the feeling that the representative flavor can function very well (people elect representative that think like them and make the decision that people like) up to one point. After which the whole system turn into a ploutocracy, where the power is in the hand in those who'll manage to funf/finance/pay/corrupt the biggest lobby.
In a system like the USA, with the massive amount of cash needed to be active in the pollicital scene, the best funded party wins and takes the decision its sponsor asked. Whereas, in a direct democracy such 'buying' of decision is much more difficult, as in the end the decision is taken by the population and one need to corrupt a huge part of the voters instead of just paying a lobby.
Also, with representative democracy academic milieu have little to say about politics. Often, the representing politician may lack the necessary knowledge to take into account all possible outcome of some crappy decision. So they take it anyway. And nobody is goind to stop them anyway, because they *ARE* supposed to be taking the decision.
Whereas in a direct democracy, the final decision is going to be taken by the population anyway. Thus, this leves more room for academic expert and such to try to teach and give enough explanation so the voters can take a much better informed decision. (Imagine what would have happened to the German anti-Hacker law, or the USA PATRIOT act or the USA net-neutrality debate if in the end the poeple themeself had to take the decision)
Granted direct democracy has its own bunch of probleme, like the whole pollitical procedure working at snail speed (or at least that's what we see here around in Switzerland), but at least asinine decision tend to be less often made, maybe because of some pollicital equivalent of Linus' law.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It's not really the taxes which I dislike, I'm a student ;) It's more the general moral amongst the citizens, and the way of thinking. The country is way too neutral, we bend too much according to what other countries (and EU of course) says, and it's reflected amongst the population. Few people stand up for what they think, and if you do you'll be labeled a proud idiot. We even have a name for the phenomenon - "Jantelagen". You're not allowed to be proud of yourself, and you're not allowed to think outside the political box. To be honest, I'm sick and tired of it.
I guess some people think Sweden is cool because of the pirate bay and how it's pretty much "ok" to download copyrighted material and such. But my guess is that we'll be just as the states within a couple of years.
Hey! That's my sig you're smoking there!
Fuck Godwin and his dumbass law. Hitler was not so evil that we cant talk about it. By avoiding the comparison we may allow equivalent and greater evil to occur.
Furthermore, how can we have a conversation about German facism without mentioning Nazis? In fact, the Nazis are the gold standard of facism. One cannot discuss facism without discussing Nazis and Hitler. Godwin's law has the effect of stifling conversations that identify and eliminate fascism.
I kinda thought he paraphrased greenspan ( currently popular in other news)
he wrote. "They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2970788.ece
That's harsh. I generally only wish cancer upon people I see spitting on the ground, or who talk/eat/use their phones in the cinema.
Switzerland sounds pretty good.
Remember that it's only income tax. It doesn't count their equivalent to National Insurance which is basically a second income tax in the UK, at something like another 10-15% in the UK; Value Added Tax, which is a tax we pay whenever we spend something (17.5%)... capital gains tax, inheritance tax, taxes on transactions such as stamp duty.
Also ISTR something about Sweden having an additional tax on net worth--something like 2% per year! Though that may only be Internet true--can anyone verify?
Quaint. :)
At least in the letter I wrote, I pointed out that making security tools illegal would only stop the legitimate use of these tools and cause economic damage to the country by not allowing the good guys to mount an effective defense. Nefarious use of the tools wouldn't be stopped because they were conducting illegal activities anyway evectivley making the legislation counterproductive. I think it's because these terms were used, the magic "economic" word, and many other pragmatic arguments that legislators responded by rejecting the legislation.
I think Benjamin Franklin said it best when he said;
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
This is an important point that needs to be brought to the attention of Slashdotters. Currently, the parent post is modded up to a maximum already, but in my sort-by-modpoints view of the Slashdot comments, this thread is still far down the list, preceded by other threads with more numerous upmodded replies. The comments on this thread should be modded up further so the thread floats to the top, at least for those users who sort by modpoints.
I volunteer to have this inane reply of mine modded up. Go ahead, don't worry about my karma overload --for the sake of the Slashdot community, I'm willing to deal with excessive karma.
(Yes, I am trying to be funny.)
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Interesting. I know the USA has been hammering local businesses, and that most of the people here are looking at the WTO and other legislature as "anti business" (while it merely gives a fantastic loophole for offshoring various things and avoiding the heavy taxation placed on locals here.)
I wouldn't put too much weight in the wikis. Wiki should be a "guide" in your research, not an end all resource.
Most "estimate" charts don't include property taxes, social "health/wellfare" taxation, or other such "add on" stuff that is usually missed because it isn't subject to a visible deduction on a paycheck. If the individual is taxed to the limit of outright revolution, while the corporate taxes are low, that isn't exactly what I'd call a "free market" or "capitalist" society. Corporations have become more valuable than individual men and women when evaluating economies nowadays... Most individuals are content to be treated as livestock, but there are enough of us who refuse that treatment that they still have to tip toe around our "archaic sensibilities".
I hate to tell you this but
Look, every single person in the world believes their taxes are unreasonably high. This is rarely true. is actually an incorrect statement.
Taxes are ALWAYS too high. Short of slaves, I know of no ancient group that paid as much as 50% of their yearly revenue (not income, which legally refers only to PROFIT, but actual revenue/recompense/actual pay, what you might term "pre tax income".)
The American revolution of 1776 occurred because of a tax hike to the insane tax percentage of 14% tax!!!
For 14% tax Americans (between 5 and 10% of the colonists) rebelled against their king. Today we struggle to survive under 30%+ "income tax" plus sales tax, fuel tax, food tax, ammo tax, tobacco tax, alcohol tax, vehicle tax, property tax, etc. Add them all up, instead of just looking at "income" tax. Your 10000.00 piece of crap toyota corolla racks you up 400 bucks worth of vehicle tax. Don't forget registrations, licenses, utility taxes, etc. By the time you're done, if you do an honest bit of math... you pay at LEAST 50% of your yearly remuneration to the government.
If you are a frugal and good shopper, I bet you could accomplish MORE with that money than the local, state and federal government can EVER pretend to offer. Their education system is sub par, their civil protection system (cops) has never been on time except to give citations... (I've been robbed in my own home some time ago), their medical system drugs kids who are merely being kids, and in general they are a merely looking for an excuse to provide themselves with a job at the expense of the "taxpayers" at large.
Sorry if my cynicism offends you, but I can think of many better ways to spend that cash than to pay for wars of aggression, murderous invasions, and for roads that take millions to fix a mere 10 or 20 pot holes over the course of 10 months (since I ran construction teams, I've seen the waste that goes into government contracting... those doing the work never see the millions being expended on "road maintenance" or "infrastructure maintenance". That money must go somewhere else.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
And, before you know it, the US will be doing all it can to appease them.
"Those who would give up ESSENTIAL LIBERTY to purchase a little TEMPORARY SAFETY, deserve neither LIBERTY nor SAFETY."
and the strange form of 's' that was being used that slashdots forum can't display. Franklin had something far more appropriate to say on matters such as these.
and this site has a scan of the ORIGINAL section of the document.
Except that in a letter to David Hume Franklin denies he wrote that and researchers now think it was a fellow diplomat named Richard Jackson who said that.
So you could say "Those who are pedantic with pseudo-quotes deserve a slap in the head with a wet fish - including me"
So mod me - "+1 - slap with wet fish"
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Hmm, actually from what I've seen, they're happy to let you *talk* about democracy and freedom in the USA, it's just when you start trying to practice it that things start to turn downhill.
Of course, I'm Canadian, and while I'd like to be able to say that things are much better, there's a downhill slide here as well.
For example, the Ian Bush shooting, which has now faded somewhat from the news. We have a cop who insists that - as an act of self-defence - he shot and kill a young man being held in custody. Investigation into blood spatter showed the given account of events was unlikely, and then suddenly the blood-expert finds himself facing disciplinary hearings and investigation. Of course, they wouldn't need an expert if the camera o the holding-room hadn't been turned off at the time...
So yes, if you live in Canada, the USA, Germany, or wherever, have a good laugh at everywhere else in the world, but remember that - for average citizens - justice, freedom, democracy, and many others may end up being more of a concept than a reality. Maybe one day you too, will end up as a provocative but quickly forgotten news article.
if you eat your phone, you just might get cancer...
yes, unless you happen to be an immigrant
People eat their phones in the cinema up your way? Sounds uncomfortable!
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
someone can send "secret" messages that your decoder ring won't work on. "All hail to the Führer!"
So what about "The Torture manual's", or "how to blow-up your local nuclear reactor" instructional dvd's? What about videos of people being murdered? Laws are a response to community you can't say "censor whatever is illegal or immoral" because it is subjective.
I value freedom of speech most highly but I recognise that there are abuses of freedom of speech. At the same time I don't mind being offended because it opens my eyes to new forms of fuckedupedness, fucktards and fuckerisation. Maybe we need to completely open up everything and see how fuked we are, but that draws the wrath of the 'think of the children' crowd. Maybe only under 18's should be subject to censorship, but I also think that if you work, you should vote.
I think what you say is completely rational and balanced and very well considered and I agree with you, but the reality is this thinking is sadly in the minority, therefore the capability for our society to be rational and balanced is knobbled by the fact that the fucktard:rational ratio is, well, fucked. Thinking is hard work and most people hate hard work, whereas, thinking is actually cool and people who think should have sex more often. I also think that traffic lights should automatically adjust to your IQ points and allow you to pass, cause your smarter, thus giving smart people more time for more sex, but I don't think it is going to happen anytime soon.
The battle is very much against ignorance, today the cry of a freeman very much is "SALE". Things like this show that even a country like Germany, who has once survived despotism can go there again and even America is begining it's slide into despotism, which I beleive was another Benjamin Franklin opinion where he said words to the effect 'The constitution won't save America from despotism forever' - but don't slap me with a wet fish because that's only from memory.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The FCC covers broadcast TV and broadcast radio only. That still leaves CNN, YouTube, and various newsmagazines. Better than nothing. This site can post the print vs.
If it involves cops breaking down doors, the local broadcast media (if any) will probably cover it. The question would be, as you noticed, whose side they'll be on.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
You do not seem to understand the basic concepts behind the words.
Security is always, ALWAYS, temporary. You CANNOT gain permanent security. EVER. Even if you locked yourself up in a fortress, protected by 10 battalions of heavily armed private militia, that is NOT permanent security. The circumstances of your security are ALWAYS temporary. The current government is temporary. World order is temporary. Your life is temporary. Franklin underlines temporary security, because it never lasts. EVER.
Similarly, an essential liberty refers to any liberty as essential. Liberties like freedom of speech, freedom of movement, right to your life, etc are all essential. There are no liberties that are non-essential. This is by definitions of what liberty means. You lose any part of that definition, and you lose more than you ever gain through some temporary security.
* autonomy: immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority: political independence
* freedom of choice; "liberty of opinion"; "liberty of worship"; "liberty--perfect liberty--to think or feel or do just as one pleases"; "at liberty to choose whatever occupation one wishes"
* personal freedom from servitude or confinement or oppression
http://www.google.ca/search?q=define%3A+liberty&hl=en
These are very general freedoms and we are losing them one chip of the security hammer at a time. Yet, we will NEVER get security because true security is a state of mind. Think about it - you are never physically secure in this world.
Example. People in UK allowed CCTV cameras to be put everywhere. They lost their liberty of freedom of movement (at least anonymous movement). They "gained" their security because they thought "it will fight crime". Result is that crime rate has not decreased. But the liberty will not be restored. Citizens of UK, and London especially, lost liberty and gained nothing.
After all this crap, it would be nice, if noone shows up for cebit anymore. And Oktoberfest as well. There are better places for that. In Estonia for example :)
...you have it pretty good? The quality of life is improving (throughout the world)? What, do you think we can only be happy when we're loudly whining, and that contentment is just a prison of complacency? Do you think that things are better when we have nothing left to lose but our lives? Yeah, I'm sure that's what's happening: the Government (ooooooooh!) is just fattening you up so Dubya can declare himself Supreme Lord of Earth, and can stand on your bare back and whip you for the shear sadistic pleasure it gives him.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Who are the idiots tagging this article with the tag "gestapo"?
I'm sure if someone hacked your PayPal account or your website from a Tor exit node you would be among the first ones to call the police on that EVIL IP.
Ah Europe, progressive land of freedom
What does this got do with freedom? If someone turns you in telling the police that he received bomb threats from your IP address (which happened in this case), the only thing the police can do is investigate. And that inherently involves obtaining physical evidence, in this case seizing the computers as soon as possible before the suspect (yes, a potential criminal) destroys the evidence.
Now if there had been no freedom in Germany, the man would have not been released within a few hours with explanation he is innocent.
For your info: Germans state security agency claims they have solid info that terrorists actually have an ex-soviet atomic warhead, not just a mere "dirty bomb" and they in fact plan to explode it in Germany to achieve Afghanistan military pull-out and to replace secular democracy with islam (there are 10 million+ turkish and kurdish migrant people in Germany working in the lowest-paying jobs, totally unintegrated into the white society).
This time it is not just peas at stake. Of course you are not worried, as geeks are well known resistant to girls and gamma radiation.
First: Trifish is right. After all, I was treated fairly and only little violence was used (means, I was cuffed and my civil rights were violated). And as trifish correctly pointed out, I was released shortly after the interrogation. They even drove me home. Nonetheless, it was an experience I didn't wanted to make.
/.
Secondly: I don't get the focus of all the discussions up here on
It's not about Nazis, Fascism or whatever, but merely about the incompetence of the police and the lawyer of the state. All those discussion are bizarrely drifting away in a mix of Kafka and Godwin.
The whole point is:
1) If you run an exit-node in Germany, think about the consequences.
2) Don't count on the competence of the authorities.
3) Prepare your family if you run a node.
4) Get a lawyer in case something goes horribly wrong.
5) You have the right to remain silent. Use it. (Unlike me, who just came back from a pub-crawl and was in the mood for extensive talking. Gnaaa.)
There's no great master plan of the evil German government to destroy Tor.
Alex.
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
"3) Prepare your family if you run a node."
Or, simply, "DO NOT RUN a node". The message is clear enough. Is TOR worth more than my life or possessions? No, it's not. Uninstalled pronto.
Everyone smart enough to read between the lines will do the same. TOR is dead. Bury it and get over it.
I don't agree, Tor ain't dead. It's just a bad idea to run a Tor exit-node in Germany. You can still run a middleman-node. And other countries aren't (yet) that aggressive. Just have a look at the Tor node-statistic[1] and see: It's not dead. Tor is still one of the best tools for privacy on the internet we have.
Alex.
[1] https://torstat.xenobite.eu/showstatistics.php
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
The problem was not he ran a Tor server or anything like that, the problem is with law enforcers not understanding technology. I mean, they simply checked the weblogs, saw the IP address of the person who supposedly posted the article, traced the IP address to such and such, maybe with a whois, and arrested and questioned the person. Sounds pretty cut and dry. The issue is, all he was was a proxy server for the real person who posted bomb threat, and after questioning for a couple of hours, they let him go. All this really goes to show is that you cannot hold John Doe at IP address such and such accountable, as said IP address may not even be issued to the person who actually did the "crime".
It's been suggested by RAH, but this one seems that it might actually be practical: http://ags.freeforumhost.net/lofiversion/topic25458/
(Yes, I know that from memory.)
All your sig are belong to us.
Because it was only in the late sixties the taxes started rising to greater heights.
The total taxation of a normal worker in Sweden is about 60%.
"Employer Fee": ~30%
Income tax: ~30%
VAT on normal goods: 25%
VAT on food: 12%
And so on.
1) If you run an exit-node in Germany, think about the consequences.
I'd omit the "in Germany" part.
You don't often have the time to make a proper long investigation in case of bomb threat. Oh, and his name was NOT dragged in the mud. had he not told himself he was arrested, nobody would have known.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
1. Read dupe article 2. Copy-paste sort-of-relevant post from last time 3. ...
4. Profit!
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Sure, and let me know how that works when you're 1 on 1 with a playground bully 5 times your size. Just because it isn't granted doesn't stop it from being forcibly taken. This is why armed robbery, wrong as it may be, actually works. When someone has a gun to your head you damn well better do what they say or you'll get your head blown off. Besides that, once they do so, you're dead and can't resist, so they get both your life and the goods. Sensible people would rather lose the goods than both their life and the goods, ergo, the armed robber is in charge through usage of force, and certainly NOT because the victim grants "authority", especially if they refuse to surrender. Same way with government. They can do all sorts of things to make it very costly for you to fight back. Secret executions, indefinite "terrorist detention", or silent seizures. Just look at all the trouble poor old Kevin Trudeau has to go through with the FTC.
- Conscription makes the war much more personal to the middle class majority, rather than the already-marginalized poorer families that produce the bulk of military volunteers. Make up any shortfalls with mercenaries instead; they can't be prosecuted for atrocities.
- Don't ignore the press: they're liable to go out and find things you'd rather they not find. Keep them occupied and content with canned reports of good news to send back home. Especially useful are the "But they're worse!" reports of the enemy's atrocities (in this case, such videos are often volunteered by the enemy themselves).
- Anti-war protests are best dealt with by diversions rather than head-on confrontation. "Free speech zones" help to marginalize both the protesters and their message; lazy journalists are given a non-story about a non-event.
- Keep the stated goals personal. Conflate Iraqi insurgents with Al Qaeda, a group that attacked the United States directly. Nobody ever believed Ho Chi Minh was going to attack targets in the US.
I could probably think up a few more if I were awake.Its three main planks are: Rejection of the concept of the transcendent objective, signified. That personal moral responsibility is a bourgeois notion to be rejected. That the greatest good is the Group Will to Power. Transcendent objective, signified are such things as the Torah, the Bible, the incarnation of Christ, any objective truth from 'outside'. Identity politics, State totalism, deconstructionism, those are fascism. Judaism and Christianity cannot be, they are antithetical in philosophical belief. But the real fascists like to make that accusation, for the same reason that they hated the Jews 60 years ago - that transcendent objective, signified, which they brought into the world, telling us that there is right and wrong, that we all have sinned, and that there is a way to forgiveness. And that the State or the "Race" are not ultimate.
This is why the constitution was created, no? The same paper that you ARE NOT DEFENDING no?
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Don't get me wrong. I love the constitution, and if the government would actually stick to it like it's supposed to, we would have far fewer problems.
Much as I hate to admit it, there are still parts of the government that don't account to the people. The CIA, the NSA, and "big brother" in general.