Germany Legislates For Mandatory Web Filters

An anonymous reader writes "Germany's Minister for Families has announced a legislative initiative to force ISPs to implement a government-mandated block list (in English), which will be updated daily. The BKA (Germany's equivalent of the FBI) will be in charge of generating and maintaining the list. As usual, this is being brought in under the 'fight child porn' guise. The minister is quoted as saying: 'We must not water down the problem' in reply to being challenged that this law and technology could be used to censor other content. She then went on to say: 'I can't know what wishes and plans future governments will develop.' She has agreed the principle of the legislation with the interior minister and the technology minister, which in German coalition government terms means it's pretty much a done deal."

Comments

Voters' apathy has consequences...

[Lazy Jones]

Finally, the formerly democratic governments have realized that the voter does not punish legislation (and illegal actions on behalf of the government agencies that are legalized later) against his own interests and now they are beginning to exploit it.

I am opposed to elitism in general, but people who are so easily manipulated with FUD tactics and those who think voting expresses only ideological affinity, should not be allowed to vote.

*evil laughter* indeed.

[Valdrax]

What's most worrisome is that the excuse is so, so bad.

Child porn? On the open web? Really?

I'm pretty sure at this point, anyone peddling child porn is entirely doing it through encrypted networks and through isolated darknets even. All the low-hanging fruit of publicly available actual child porn has either been dealt with or can be dealt with in a manner far, far less heavy handed than web filtering. What good does filtering the general web do?

Crying "child porn" is just the sugar to make the poison go down.