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German Police Raid Homes of Wikileaks.de Domain Owner
BountyX writes "First and foremost, wikileaks.org is back up after downtime due to server load; however, the German government wants to keep the site down. According to their twitter page, police have raided the home of Wikileaks.de domain owner Theodor Reppe (PDF) over internet censorship lists that were leaked two weeks ago. What the Australian government's secret ACMA internet censorship blacklist has to do with Germany is a mystery. This case is a prime example of multiple governments collaborating in support of censorship." Reader iter8 provides a link to coverage on Wikileaks itself, which says that police searched Reppe's homes in both Dresden and Jena, and adds:
"According to police, the reason for the search was 'distribution of pornographic material' and 'discovery of evidence.' Wikileaks has published censorship lists for Australia, Thailand, Denmark and other countries. Included on the lists are references to sites alleged to contain pornography, including child pornography. Wikileaks has not published any images from the sites."
The BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst ~ foreign new service) ie German CIA are still upset over its secret agents getting exposed in a black flag operation in Kosovo.
T-Systems (Deutsche Telekom) was exposed revealing over two dozen secret IP address ranges used by the BND.
The email of a top BND official might have also been listed.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Bundesnachrichtendienst&fulltext=Search should give slashdot readers some idea as to why Germany is so active around wikileaks.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Ernst Uhrlau, President of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) (German CIA) put out a nice press release that might give a hint ;)
http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/German_spy_chief_threatens_Wikileaks
Markus "Mischa" Wolf would be proud
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
And his laptop and an external HD were taken. Police in Europe (at least in Germany and here in Austria) are allowed to raid your house when they believe there is imminent danger to the security of the state or other citizens ("Gefahr im Verzug"). They don't need a judge's permission/order for this. If they don't find anything, they can just file a simple 2 page report and be done with it.
This was used in the case of wikileaks.de - the police didn't read his rights to Mr. Reppe and when he insisted the police add a witness name to the report, they didn't do so.
Basically it's just spreading fear among the people. The problem is, since the blacklists contain links to child pornography pages, you're not allowed to publish the list, as you would also make links to child pornography publicly available. Which is the whole point of the black list:
The government could just take down the child porn sites. But instead they create filters and blacklists for those pages as well as other websites that might be against their ideals. You're not allowed to check those lists for any illegitimate censorship because then you would also look at child porn. You're also not allowed to distribute them. Voila! They successfully used peoples hatred agains child pornography to censor anything they want.
You don't understand. LOOKING at the list is illegal and punishable by up to 15 years of jailtime. The list is classified.
Worse. Since January 1st, there is a new law which even makes TRYING to acquire the list by ANY means punishable.
Police in Europe (at least in Germany and here in Austria) are allowed to raid your house when they believe there is imminent danger to the security of the state or other citizens ("Gefahr im Verzug"). They don't need a judge's permission/order for this. If they don't find anything, they can just file a simple 2 page report and be done with it.
This was used in the case of wikileaks.de - the police didn't read his rights to Mr. Reppe and when he insisted the police add a witness name to the report, they didn't do so.
Actually, they did have the permission of a judge, at least according to this: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Hausdurchsuchung-bei-Inhaber-der-Domain-wikileaks-de-Update--/meldung/135147
Although you are right that police can enter the domain without judges under certain circumstances, evidence might be forfeit if they did it for the wrong reasons. It is not as easy as you depict it, even if it would apply to our case here (which it does not).
I too think that the German police has too much power (especially warrants like these are a bit fishy at times, not to mention copyrights, demonstration rights, etc), but we are still a democratic state with a halfway decent judicial system.
The raid is politically motivated. Ursula von der Leyen (Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth) is on a crusade against child pornography on the internet. She's fast-tracking all sorts of network blocking efforts, from voluntary agreements and contracts between ISPs and the BKA (Germany's FBI) to law initiatives which force all ISPs to block access to an unpublished list of web sites. She presented child pornography to reporters in an attempt to explain and emphasize the need for these measures. People, companies and organizations who have criticized these efforts have been smeared and had their motivations questioned. The organization of ISPs expects that these filters are only the spear head for more censorship obligations and a way to establish the infrastructure with as little opposition as possible.
It should be noted that German law does not unconditionally forbid use of evidence which has been gathered in an illegal way, e.g. in an illegal raid. The right against unlawful search and seizure is weighed against the seriousness of the crime proven by the evidence.
You mean I'll get bumped up to a higher priority? It's possible. But it's like being arrested for something. Before it happens, you're worried about getting caught for any little thing and possibly getting a record. But once that's actually happened to you and you've been through it, you're no longer afraid of being arrested for its own sake, afraid of being judged or labelled, but only because of estimated consequences which you weigh up for yourself. The emotional 'omg - I'll be accused of something' side of things is gone. This is particularly the case if you were hassled falsely or otherwise don't feel what you did was wrong. Going on a government watch list is the same - there might be different degrees of consequence but once the initial "we might add you to the list" threat is gone, it loses a lot of its power over you. I now accept that I'm probably on a list somewhere (not through actions, but through speaking my mind and membership of a few human rights organizations) and my behaviour has gone from a vague unease that something I might do could make me look suspicious to a feeling of what the Hell, they already said they don't trust me.
Have you seen these hysterical new posters for the UK police "anti-terrorism" campaign. It's hard to believe that those producing them think they'll have any actual anti-terrorism effect and that it isn't just a deliberate attempt to promote fear and distrust amongst people. Honestly - telling people to inspect their neighbour's rubbish for bomb-making materials? You could not make it up! When "lists" get too pervasive and warnings get so dumb,the concern about being labelled a suspect loses its power to control you because pretty much everyone you know and associate with is in the same boat. At this rate the only people not on the list will be the police themselves, at which point it becomes society vs. authority again and history takes its usual course.
I'm just waiting for the first "Terrorist Pride" march.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
There's a difference between "Hey, look! I got kiddie porn, check it out here", and "Look, these guys are censoring these sites: a, b, c, d. Seems that b is kiddie porn, c is hate speech and terrorist incitement, we're not quite sure a and d are anything except inconvenient".
I've never donated to any organisation just because they exist and do what they do. Until now. My 10e might not be much, but it sure felt good giving it to Wikileaks.