Slashdot Mirror
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."
Heil.
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."
In other words... MWAAAHAHAAAAAAAAAA!
and couldnt handle it... welcome to the new world order
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
When will legislators learn that censoring the Internet will not fix the problem, it will force it deeper underground. The creeps who want to look at child porn will still have access to it, they'll just get better at hiding it.
.. to the point where it is easier to filter the entire pipe rather than having the sites taken down?
I record my sleeptalking
Everyone should watch the film "The Lives Of Others"
It appears Germany is returning to the days of East Germany
DeutschBags
The only thing we need to implement a fully encrypted internet is a reason to do so.
And then the real fun will come.
Fuckers.
More people should read "the art of war" and concentrate on the paragraph about not starting battles you're going to lose until they finally understood it's meaning.
1st block sites that show/promotes child pornography... looks ok
then go after sites that shows models that look underage... a bit more debatable
then go after all porn... something is about to explode
then block "by mistake" the opposite party web sites around next election... oops!
It's all about hosing off the slippery slope. This is why the filthy speech movement had to be crushed at all cost. There must also always be a creep du jour to shine a light on the problem, remember. Once we run out of perverts we'll see about YOUR vile proclivities.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
There is a global push by certain interests to get governments and ISPs to support filtering. The reason has nothing to do with child porn, that is a justification that ensures no-one will complain... would you defend the rights of child pornographers?
The real motivation here from big business is first to block the global trade in copyrighted digital goods: music, movies, TV (Vivendi, IFPI, et al). Second, to sell masses of shiny technology (Cisco et al). Third, to lock down the computer and turn it into a controlled environment where FOSS is not permitted (MSFT et al).
Governments are eager for this because they trust big business to draw the line, and because they do not trust their citizens. They fear the end of the State thanks to a flat global digital economy, and the firewalls are about stopping and controlling that.
Note the Data Retention Directive passed three years ago which mandated the storage of data on every communication (phone call, email, web click), which banned anonymous wifi, cybercafes, and mobile phones, and which was also passed as a tool against "child pornographers and organised criminals".
This would be very depressing, since the State (and don't forget, every State in existence was born in blood) has all the power.
However, the digital society seems to have its first world leader, and IMO the old industrial world, with its censorships and tolls anti-social property models, is already on the way out.
My blog
Well, let's do the math...
Approximately 23% of the world population is online now. There are approximately 6.7 billion people on the planet right now. So about 1.5 billion people. And let's say 5% of them are regularily active and have contribute 1 web page per month; and everybody else is a lurker and never contribute anything. That's 900 million web pages per year, or 246,564 per day. Now we know the growth is far higher than this, but let's humor ourselves with the low-ball estimate.
Now, let's also assume that someone is going to be looking at these websites. We'll say it takes 20 seconds for them to view and categorize a website for their black list. and let's assume they're slaved to their desk for the entire 8 hours, never blinking. That's 480 minutes of slaving, which gives us 1,440 reviews they can make per day. So to keep up with our low-ball estimate, they need 172 net slaves doing nothing but reviewing web pages. All day. Every day. And they will not stop until all the pr0n is found. Now... stop and realize the numbers are orders of magnitude higher. -_- Also realize that the internet is not the web. There are dozens if not hundreds of protocols to monitor, across many mediums -- cell phones, telecommunications, wifi, and good old fashioned sneaker-net.. e-mails, text messages, picture messages... the list goes on.
This, fundamentally, is the problem with large-scale surveillance of the population. It's too resource intensive. Even if you have algorithms that are 99.9% accurate in identifying "bad" material, with 900 million new web pages per year, that's 900,000 webpages that are incorrectly flagged -- 2,500 people's lives ruined by false accusation. Per day.
And just like sex offender registries and other draconian measures to keep someone who's been "touched" by the system in it forever, as soon as the technology exists to do the same thing to people on the internet... They too shall be endlessly recycled and chewed on by a faceless and uncaring system. And the justification shall be that it's okay to ruin a few innocent lives if it protects the rest of us from the big bad boogie men.
Here's my point, fundamentally. Let's say there are a 200,000 -- in Germany alone -- that are pedophiles. Out of about 8 million. And let's say that you have a method of detection where you run these people through it and 99.9% of the time, it gives the right result. What that means is for 8,000 people -- would guess wrong if you ran the entire population through it. What that means is your "99.9%" accurate system flags about 1 person in 20 as a bad guy when they're not. Of course, this assumes that 1 person per 40 is a pedophile. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's unreasonably high... So that means that the 1 per 20 is an optimistic case. Think about that. 1 in 20 people that the system flags is innocent. When the hysteria over the crime is such that the mere accusation is enough to destroy a person, is this a number we're comfortable with?
And if you're thinking it's "just" a black list.. Don't forget that your access attempts are logged. Just why were you trying to access a site we know to have child porn on it, Citizen?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Most chlid porn isn't distributed over http, this is a complete waste.
~= scwizard =~
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.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Why would anyone have a problem with burning pages deemed degenerate by ze deutsche government? Only degenerates themselves (who'll be next).
Or what Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri taught me: Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Does Goodwin's Law still apply even if references to Nazi Germany are factually correct? :-)
The key sequence to access my Slashdot bookmark in Firefox is Alt-B-S. I don't believe this is a coincidence.
I agree, right up until the point where making things difficult for evil people impinges on the freedom of non-evil people. When forced to make that choice, I always choose the rights of the non-evil, even if it means allowing some evil to exist. Others, apparently including you, would optimize in the other direction. I doubt anything either of us could say would change the other's mind.
The key sequence to access my Slashdot bookmark in Firefox is Alt-B-S. I don't believe this is a coincidence.
Seriously, we'll have federal elections (and a bunch of other elections: european parl., state-level) this year, but I doubt that anything will change.
CDU: Merkel's party, Conservative, currently drifting to the middle. Schaeuble, our Minister for the Interior (which includes police in Germany), is one of the worst surveillance guys, and he's a CDU man. Lots of other 1984 fellows, too. --> No option.
SPD: Social democrats. One of the two big parties (together with the CDU). Currently in a coalition with CDU. Some good guys in there, but many others (including most of their MPs) agreed to laws like this. Used to be my party, but obviously it no longer is.
FDP: Liberal. Have a lot of good guys regarding civil liberties (including three who have repeatedly and successfully went to the courts to struck "Anti terror laws" down). But I don't like their economic model, and above all many of them have no backbone.
Greens: Same as FDP regarding civil liberties and surveillance. Might be an option (although for me they are too naive on the environmental area), but voting greens will mean a SPD-Greens coalition (because FDP and Greens are the smaller parties and usually form coalitions with one of the bigger ones).
Left party: Just a bunch of populists.
The reason why such a lot on internet censorship etc. is being passed now might be our "Grand coalition" (CDU+SPD), which has a strong majority. However when I look at other countries, I see similar problems, so that can't be the only reason.
Unfortunately many people willingly give up their freedoms if the government gives them an excuse (terrorism or child porn), but they just don't see how a filter like that could easily be transformed into an anti-government-criticism filter.
All that surveillance scares me. What the hell is wrong with my country?
PS: For the German-speaking guys around here, have a look at this essay by Burkhard Hirsch (an FDP man). An excellent explanation on why civil liberties are so important.
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.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
What *really* creeps me out are these reprints of Goebbels stuff, that are being hawked today: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1871736,00.html.
The government doesn't seem to need to take any action against that.
The joke is that the publisher is a Britain.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I'm pretty sure at this point,
How do you know this? Please speak clearly into the microphone, and don't mind the good officer who is getting ready to arrest you.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The pretext for this filter was preventing people from viewing child porn. It is not aimed against child molesters or the people who produce child porn. It's aimed - or so the government claims - against Joe Masturbator, not Joe Predator. Hell, if it's successful, it might even turn a few of the former into the latter due to mounting frustration.
By, for example, preventing them from hiding their evil deeds with censorship ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Och, are ye nae?
A braw bunch o miserable bastids, aye, that they were. Och.
Noo awa wi ye, or I'll put the heid on ye.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
- It puts in place an infrastructure to block off access to anything. The filters don't care if the list feed to them is child porn or bomb receipts or the political program of the opposition to the government.
- You can avoid stealth censorship under the flag of filtering child porn if you publish the list regularly for scrutinity. But then all people actually interested in child porn will know where to look. That's one of the reasons why any filter list which was used for a longer time was considered secret and not to be published. So this means the filter list will be a secret then.
- It doesn't solve the problem, it makes it worse. If you block the public access to child porn, it doesn't go away, it just is more harder to find. And the people creating it and putting it online are harder to find too.
- People who look at pictures of children to masturbate don't stalk real children to get sexually aroused. And they don't feel an urge to kill the child to cover their tracks.
But in principle, I have no problem with the government banning unprotected stuff like this. Never, including at our nations founding, was this sort of material considered protected free speech.
I'm sorry, but the founding fathers didn't have child pornography in mind as a possible exception to the rights protected by the First Amendment. In fact, the Supreme Court only ruled that child pornography was unprotected speech in 1981 (or 82?).
Despite the predominant groupthink of the past few years, the possession of certain pictures being considered the most heinous crime imaginable was not always the case.
And it's not a black and white issue. Child pornography has always had a vague and fluid definition, as evidenced by the latest inclusions into the category, Simpsons cartoons and anime.
So, apparently: we are at war with child porn; we have always been at war with child porn.