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."
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!
It really is depressing, so many states are bringing in their own petty versions of the chinese firewall that it's getting close to critical mass where in any country where it isn't done the call will become "well they're doing it in all these other countries!They care about the children there! Protect the children!"
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.
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
Silence anybody who accuses you of wearing it...
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)
because it is not about Child Porn, it is about control.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
The irony is the Doublespeak.... er talk:
- "We must not allow children to have access to pornography or nudity!"
- "We must start teaching our children about sex and sex-related diseases - even as early as kindergarten."
Um.
So how do I, as a parent and teacher, educate my children about sex & how to avoid disease, if all the sites are being blocked by government filters? Ooops! I swear the pro-big-governent people have split personalities - the left side of the brain doesn't know what the right side is doing, and so we get contrary policies that nullify one another.
Freedom is the answer. "From time to time some persons may abuse their freedoms, but the inconvenience of these abuses is minor compared to the inconvenience of loss of liberty for all persons, also called tyranny." - Founder of the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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").
Since access to pornography seems to correlate with reduction in sex crimes such as assaults, I'd have to say that no, it isn't a good thing, not for the children at least. It's quite understandable, really: a pedophile with one hand on a mouse and another in his pants doesn't have a third one to molest a child with simultaneously, and just doesn't have the energy to afterwards.
I've never quite understood why our politicians want pedophiles out in the streets, sexually frustrated and amidst all the temptations, rather than quietly masturbating with pornography and hurting no one; maybe these politicians simply hate children and want them to get molested ?
So, German politicians: why do you hate children so much ?
Ah, I guess that would explain it. I have to admit, thought, advocating a policy that will get children raped just to advance their own career is pretty low, even for a politician.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.
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.
funny thing. racism isnt dead in germany. media and false education reflected the picture of a racist now a days. ppl that hate jews or whatever dont feel themselves as racists etc...
a racist/nazi in germany has a shaved head wearing boots and a bomber jacket. --- see the similarity to "how to recognize a jew" back in the NS days? nothing changed in germany.
try it out yourself with only having 3mm hair length... ppl will look at you like you just ate a baby while the german government is taking a fascistoid(?) path... without anyone noticing...
not all fascism looks like that what we already saw in history.
oh and the approach of killing child porn with a filter is in my eyes the wrong way, how about getting the pages down? how about not cooperative country receive an embargo on whatever hurts them? oh wait that would eliminate the tool to limit the freedom of any citizen on our planet...
- 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.
We all know the old
"Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam."
Is there an equivalent to this old form for child porn?
This news item advocates a
( ) technical (x) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam.
This idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to this particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
(x) Other legitimate uses would be affected
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
etc etc etc
Has anyone made one yet or should I start?
He's viewing a child being molested, or some more or less accurate facsimile of it. Whatever he's viewing, if it's real, it's already happened, and his viewing of it doesn't affect it at all anymore, unless the laws of causality have been overthrown. So why punish him from it ?
Go after producers, leave consumers alone; the existing material won't disappear, and with advancing state of the art in 3D software, it's just a matter of time before more can be produced without harming anyone.
No, I'm suggesting making the "masturbating to existing child porn" a safe option and "molesting children" a non-safe option, thus giving anyone interested in children an incentive to do the former instead of latter.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.