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Germany Implements Sweeping Data Retention Policies
G'Quann writes "Starting next year, all communication providers in Germany will have to store all connection data for six months. This includes not only phone calls but also IP addresses and e-mail headers. There had been a lot of protest against the new law, but it was ignored by the government. Quoting: 'The content of the communications is not stored. The bill had been heavily criticized. Privacy [advocates] had organized demonstrations against the bill in all major German cities at the beginning of this week. In October there had already been a large demonstration with thousands of participants in Germany's capital Berlin. All opposition parties voted against the bill. Several members of the opposition and several hundred private protesters announced a constitutional complaint.'"
Before we in the U.S. get to patting ourselves on the back for not being this bad, consider the story just two posts down that discusses how this is probably already being done here with no one's knowledge or consent. I say "probably" because no one really knows. No laws passed, no protests staged (hard to protest something you don't even know about), just government silently doing whatever it wants after slapping a "national security" label on it.
It's not right in Germany, and it's not right here. The difference is that at least in Germany, this type of gross invasion of privacy happened on the public record and they can react and do something about it now.
Of course, we in the U.S. can do something about it too, but most people won't get worked up over what government might be doing without it being proven true, and our government is mercilessly exploiting that fact right now by keeping everything secret and implying that anyone who thinks otherwise is some kind of kooky conspiracy theorist (while they spy on them to make sure they don't get too far out of line).
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One Word:
Crapflood.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
What if you use an exploit that takes only 1 packet, and spoof the IP addresses? If they try and trace the "hacking" back to one of these IPs, do they get into serious trouble since "of course it is you"?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
No, this is a state sponsored invasion of privacy of orwellian scope. Fascism is an authoritarian system of government involving a dictator and heavy on the censorship and public executions.
Yeah, sure. Whatever. If you're on a P2P network, or even just downloading a linux distro you're probably connected to hundreds of ips which have absolutely nothing with you to do. Good luck on mining that unmanagable mess.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
> Maybe somewhere in the Swiss Alps?
As being German: Definitely yes. Island may be an other option to consider
If the current politics remain, Germany is going to be a police and surveillance state in near future...
Please make a better attempt at understanding '1984'.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The quote at the bottom of the page says:
The road to ruin is always in good repair, and the travellers pay the expense of it. -- Josh Billings
Eerily appropriate?
you will care, when you have to login to the outside of your house. And when it will be tracked where you go. ... ALWAYS!
If you find a typo, you may keep it.
You would think that the German people would look back on their own history and say "Never again!"
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
In the early days (first 30 years) of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover made heavy use of his "special investigators" to gather dirt on members of congress, the President, and probably parts of the judiciary. This blackmail material was carefully saved for use to protect both himself and advance his power. He also used this against other such noteable figures as Martin Luther King whom he blackmailed with secretly recorded audio of his marital infidelity. Ironically some people regard this as King's fault not Hoover's. It also set the precedent for branches of the government spying on one-another.
The simple fact of the matter is that once you give someone the ability to spy on you they will use it, for themselves. This story and the one two posts down about the NSA make perfect sense. The best way to keep yourself and your party on top is to have all the information, all the secrets that you can about your opponents. That way anyone who might challenge your power could be cowed by threats to expose their, or their childrens' embarrassing secrets.
Quite some time ago Gonzales announced that the Justice Department would begin extensive investigations into the world of Pornography, legal pornography. He candidly admitted that they were not breaking the law nor did he expect to find that Playboy was in violation of some statute. He only said that he wanted to keep track of 'them'.
Forget finding criminals, the Mafia isn't real. It's all always about power. You think Bin Laden and Mullah Muhammed Omar are dumb enough to be googling "Bomb" no they're using trusted couriers and decentralized structures that don't rely on the use of easily traced e-mails. It's all of us and our elected representatives who are the target here.
The dark night of fascism is always falling in America, but it always manages to actually land in Europe.
So. Like. They have a law? That admits what they expect? And defines what they're allowed to do? And there's a limit to what they can do? And it can help identify evildoers? But after 6 months, the data goes away? And we're thinking that's scary? Sounds like goddamned paradise to me. Here, they just drag you off and you disappear and *no carrier*
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2013... Encryption is outlawed. Worldwide.
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2014... You are *$(*#ed and you LOSE! All encrypters is now jailed.
You forgot the key date:
2008/9 - When it becomes a felony to use any encryption that does not have a back door for the NSA (or RIAA... whichever comes first).
>> Maybe somewhere in the Swiss Alps?
>As being German: Definitely yes. Island may be an other option to consider
>If the current politics remain, Germany is going to be a police and
>surveillance state in near future...
Living in Germany you should know better than that.
Don't worry. In two months from now someone will the surveilance will cost money and jobs and eventually eliminate 15% of the positions for human investigators at the federal german BKA, thus costing more jobs. An uproar will shake the nation. Some guy at some obscure bureau of the Interior Ministry will also notice that this law makes their recent pet project, the German Federal Trojan (TM) officialy 65% superfluos. Another big no-no. Some other intellectual will publically notice that all info about all Germans is either available at StudiVZ (Germanys Facebook/MySpace), Amazon.de Marketplace or Ebay Germany anyway - which is allready completely scanned and archived (backups included) by the German IRS - and we know everything worth knowing about everybody allready. 10-15 different factions and public bodies of interest groups will have allready filed 20 complaints to the Federal Constitutional Court and the country will be plaqued by a lengthy debate that will have Secretary of the Interior Schäuble eventually drive his wheelchair off a cliff in frustration. Just before the current coalition of two big parties ends it's legislature there will be a watered down full-compromise version of the law with 8500 exception rules and modifications delivered on 2000+ pages in three big-ass Leitz file-covers, German style. Two months after the federal vote and three months into the new law someone in the EU Gouverment Headquarters will notice that this law breaks somewhere between 23 and 65 terms of union contracts, the British will wine that the Germans are now also attempting to take over the EU lead in surveilance, directly competing the UKs last big resort of excellence. Eventually the then new German gouverment will be bitch-slapped into revising its 10kg online surveilance law into a new draft as not to be fined by Brussels for a kazillion Euros.
Bottom line: No need to worry yet. Even by the most optimistic projections I wouldn't expect this law to gain any tracktion before 2015.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
You can see a present day example of Newspeak in the redefinition of words such as "liberal". In this topic, there is at least one example of someone using the new definition. It's quite amazing (1) how that word has been redefined to mean something bad, and (2) how many people have bought into the redefinition by using it. That's the power of television, I guess.
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?