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."

Comments

Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Reports

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Reports

- This just in, March 23 2009 Chinas central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund

- Russia too: It is necessary to work out and adopt internationally recognized standards for macroeconomic and budget policy, which are binding for the leading world economies, including the countries issuing reserve currencies - the Kremlin proposals read.

- President Barak "The Teleprompter" Obama is deeply connected to corruption, Rahm Emanuel (Radical authoritarian Statist whose father was part of the Murderous Civilian Killing Israeli Terrorist Organization known as IRGUN), Connected to Rod Blagojevich (Rahm inherited Rod's federal-congress seat), Connected to Ayers, a man who promotes the concept that civilian collateral damage is ok in a war against freedom, Preacher Jeremiah Wright, who is himself a black-elitist who wants all the people who largely "pay the freight" to suffer, 31 million on food stamps, more blacks are in prison and on food-stamps per capita than anyone else. The problem with Wright is simply this: the facts are "racist."
- Obama: Racist, AIPAC-bootlicker, Corrupted to the bone Chicago style and a Traitor to the US Constitution and a Liar whose real "legal" name could very well be Barry Sotero and an Indonesian citizen (The US does not allow plural citizenship) (If you care, not that it matters anymore under a Lawless Authoritarian Totalitarian Regime, you can see more here at an aggregator; obamacrimes.info )
- Raytheon lobbyist in Pentagon, lots lobbyists getting exemptions even though he promised not to have them.
- Goldman Sachs insider second in command at Treasury. Bumbling tax cheat idiot in "command" of Treasury with 17 positions unfilled as of late March 2009.
- Cabinet has had several nominees and appointees with multiple tax fraud issues.
- Lied about having a new degree of accountability and a SUNSHINE period of new laws, he has signed bills with little or no review at whitehouse.gov as promised.
- Appointed a second amendment violating Rich-pardoning treasonist Eric Holder as AG, the top cop of the USA, a man who helped a fugitive evade justice.
- Has not put a dime in for a single new nuclear power plant but wants to help bridges and roads to promote more driving.
- Obama, Blagojevich and Rahm Emanuel have a LOT to hide. They literally lived next to each other, Rahm had (until being Chairman Obama's Chief of staff) Blagojevich's old federal congressional seat. Blagojevich helped Chairman "The Teleprompter" Obama cheat his way to the Illinois senate by getting other candidates thrown off the ballot in Illinois. Why do you think Blagojevich was so mad? Obama DID owe him, big time. Rahm and Obama are using Blagojevich and trying to cut his head off to keep him away.
- Tony Rezko, Iraqi Arms Dealer Nahdmi Auchi, and of course Aiham Alsammarae. Chairman "The Teleprompter" Hussein Obama is so corrupted its a joke.
- Fools and "useful idiots" twist the pie charts by leaving welfare, workfare, interest on debt, social security, Medicare and Medicaid out and focusing only on non-whole "discretionary" pie charts.
2007 high level pie chart, Federal Budget, USA
2009 Pie chart, detailed, Federal Budget, USA
- Chairman Obama is drastically increasing spending and creating more entitlements that will make the US less competitive (especially against China, India, East Europe/Russia). This will be a huge disaster and change you can believe in will strap you and your grandkids with more debt. No taxation without re

tsarkon reports i saw this on twitter and rediff

[Anonymous Coward]

i saw this on twitter and rediff somewhere 18+ hours ago, what the fuck slashdot, are your lazy fat stupid sexless morinic buttfucking editors asleep at the wheel? cowgirlkneels, commander taco-snot, homos, Jew katz, and that fucking whore kathleen / sarcasta fent.

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[Anonymous Coward]

i miss the old crapfloods

lemme get this straight

[Swampash]

His house was raided by the cops because he was listed as the registrant for the domain wikileaks.de? Is that what passes for probable cause in the Fatherland?

WTF?

Re:lemme get this straight

[h4rm0ny]

Wow! I think I might actually start making donations to these people - If they're getting this much hassle and attitude of various governments and agencies, they must be doing something right.

Sure, I'll probably go on a government watch list, but the way things are going we either all already are or soon will be, so why should that be a discouragement?

Re:lemme get this straight

[AHuxley]

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 ;)

Re:lemme get this straight

[aetherworld]

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.

Re:lemme get this straight

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Is this "probable cause" thing required for a search warrant in Germany? Or are you trying to apply US law to a different country?

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice police state bro

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

VEE DONT NEED PROBABLY CAUSE. SHOW ME THE PAPERS! YOU WILL DIE IN THE OVENS! Tod für alle Juden. In die brennende Öfen werden sie!

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Die Glorreichen Rede von Reischsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in Poznan (Posen), (Polen / Poland)

Montag , Oktober 4, 1943 (04.10.1943)

Ich will auch ein ganz schweres Kapitel will ich hier vor Ihnen in aller Offenheit nennen. Es soll zwischen uns ausgesprochen sein, und trotzdem werden wir nicht in der Öffentlichkeit nie darüber reden. Genau so wenig, wie wir am 30. Juni gezögert haben, die befohlene Plicht zu tun und Kameraden, die sich verfehlt hatten, an die Wand zu stellen und zu erschiessen. Wie wir darüber niemals gesprochen haben und sprechen werden. Das war so eine Gottseidank in uns wohnende Takt, Selbstverständlichkeit des Taktes, dass wir uns untereinander nie darüber unterhalten haben, nie darüber sprachen, es hat jeden geschauert und jeder war sich klar, dass er es das nächste Mal wieder tun würde, wenn es befohlen wird und wenn es notwendig ist. Ich meine die "Judenevakuierung": die Ausrottung des jüdischen Volkes. Es gehört zu den Dingen, die man leicht ausspricht. "Das jüdische Volk wird ausgerottet", sagt Ihnen jeder Parteigenosse, "ganz klar, steht in unserem Programm drin, Ausschaltung der Juden, Ausrottung, machen wir, pfah!, Kleinigkeit". Und dann kommen sie alle, alle die braven 80 Millionen Deutschen, und jeder hat seinen anständigen Juden. Sagt: alle anderen sind Schweine, und hier ist ein prima Jude. Und zugesehen, es durchgestanden hat keiner. Von Euch werden die meisten wissen, was es heisst, wenn 100 Leichen beisammen liegen, wenn 500 daliegen oder wenn 1000 daliegen. Und dies durchgehalten zu haben, und dabei -- abgesehen von menschlichen Ausnahmeschwächen -- anständig geblieben zu sein, hat uns hart gemacht und ist ein niemals genanntes und niemals zu nennendes Ruhmesblatt. Denn wir wissen, wie schwer wir uns täten, wenn wir heute noch in jeder Stadt bei den Bombenangriffen, bei den Lasten des Krieges und bei den Entbehrungen, wenn wir da noch die Juden als geheime Saboteure, Agitatoren und Hetzer hätten. Wir würden wahrscheinlich in das Stadium des Jahres 16/17 jetzt gekommen sein, wenn die Juden noch im deutschen Volkskörper sässen. Die Reichtümer, die

Re:lemme get this straight

[commodore64_love]

>>>Is that what passes for probable cause in the Fatherland?

"Heil mein Fuhrer!" - ahhh one of my favorite movies (How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb). What people who own these wikileaks and other pro-liberty anti-censorship websites should do is fill their basements with explosives, and then when the cops enter through the front door, exit through the rear door, and press the detonation trigger. BOOM.

That will teach the Schutzstaffel... ooops, I mean German police not to enter a home with a phony, trumpedup warrant.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as The Pirate Bay is responsible for people comitting acts of copyright infringement by using their website, wikileaks are responsible for people sharing child ponography by using their website.

Since he is the registrant he is responsible for helping people commit those acts.

Right?

Re:lemme get this straight

[knarf]

Ah, but there is a relatively easy solution to that: don't spread the list itself, instead spread a list of secure hashes (sha256 or something similar) of the blocked domains. If you want to check whether your domain is blocked you run it through a similar hashing algorithm. If the hashes match the domain is on the list (assuming that the hash size has been chosen well so that the chance of collisions is negligible). You could run this whole process in a convenient web page. Add several lists of hashes for known blocklists and you've got yourself an online blacklist checker which the authorities can not (legally) touch. Should it ever come to a court case the actual list(s) can be revealed and the hashes recalculated so as to prove that they are correct.

Re:lemme get this straight

[rastos1]

And his laptop and an external HD were taken.

That it. I have enough. I'm starting to make backups. Some of them offsite.

Re:lemme get this straight

[aetherworld]

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.

Re:lemme get this straight

[commodore64_love]

>>>In Germany... 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.

"Das Juden Haus ist now empty."
"Die Zigeuner werd deported."

Is that the kind of report the German police file?

Re:lemme get this straight

[Mikkeles]

No, ordinary human rights.

Re:lemme get this straight

[knarf]

Nobody has to look at the list, the hashes can be made programmatically without ever looking at that list. The only time it needs looking at is when you have to prove that the hashes are correct. Assuming that this happens in court the judge will have to find a way to make this possible - it will no longer be your problem that the law says you can not look at the list...

Re:lemme get this straight

[c0p0n]

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.

Can't speak for our other euro colleagues, but certainly not in Spain pal.

Re:lemme get this straight

[aetherworld]

Yes it will. Acquiring the list or being in possession of the list is also illegal. Basically, with the new law, even if you don't look at it, you're storing child pornography (most likely for later use, you filthy bastard).

As i said, it's enough to TRY to acquire the list to get you in jail for as long as the government wants.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Schmorgluck]

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.

What, not even the possibility of an a posteriori examination?

I blissfully thought Germany was more strict than that about due process.

I personally have no problem with the executive branch (like the police is part of) taking quick action in case of an emergency: it's part of its role. Yes, even wiretapping, under certain conditions. But I find it disturbing when it goes unsupervised by the other branches, first and foremost the judicial one. Even if it's a posteriori, the relevance, proportions, and actual emergency of the actions taken should be examinated as soon as possible.

In the case at hand, if the police really invoked "Gefahr im Verzug" (which is not mentioned in TFA nor anywhere I've read of the story), they are at fault, at the very least on the emergency part.

Re:lemme get this straight

[asdir]

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.

Re:lemme get this straight

[jambox]

Or, instead of p1ssing money up the wall on a broken banking system, get the cash and use it to pay, bribe anyone necessary, all around the world, to wage war on the child p0rnographers on this list. I care about privacy, state control issues and so on, but a lot less than I care about shutting down these monsters.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:lemme get this straight

[aetherworld]

You're right in that they had the permission of a judge. However, as you can read in your linked article, this is a recent update. The information wasn't available when I wrote my post.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:lemme get this straight

[strikeleader]

Welcome to the New World Order

Re:lemme get this straight

[Cowmonaut]

Okay, I'm no pacifist by any means. But that's a fucking retarded idea. There are other ways to fight, that won't allow them to justify declaring you a terrorist. Remember, *most* police officers in *most* countries are largely innocent. They might be naive or even cowardly, but they aren't exactly evil.

Don't let a few bad apples ruin the rest. Though I've noticed over the years the number of "bad apples" has been growing. The point is this: let them draw first blood. Don't give them an excuse. You need to make it abundantly clear who is the bad guy, and blowing up a SWAT team doesn't do anything to help. It's the reaction of a child. Grow up.

Re:lemme get this straight

[furby076]

Wow! I think I might actually start making donations to these people

Wow that's so generous of you - to think you might actually start donations. Couple that with your "if they're getting this much hassle....various gov'ts..." - you are one of those scary people who believe everything the gov't does = evil.

Re:lemme get this straight

[DiSKiLLeR]

So by downloading Integard you are breaking the law, because it contains 'the list' ?

Re:lemme get this straight

[furby076]

Gave some extra information, but was biased - heavily - against the BND. I have a hard time believing biased articles because they tend to present facts to help their cause even if it is a blatent distortion of the truth.

Re:lemme get this straight

[furby076]

Wait attempting to acquire/read, let alone posting, of CLASSIFIED documentation is illegal? Why, oh my god, what is this world coming to. Will this new radical law is obviously a failed george bush policy. Because we all know that classified documents, before georgey, were distributed by the gov't to anyone who wanted one....

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a problem with that statement:
There is only one reason why a democracy should _ever_ have anything classified: That is an ongoing investigation which would be in danger if the details about it were public (the criminal would know he is investigated).
And even then _everything_ should be made public after the investigation is over.

Democracy means people can decide stuff. People can only decide if they are informed. Classified (government) documents should be a criminal offense in any democracy.

Re:lemme get this straight

[zsau]

He posted links to child porn. That's not "doing something right". That's disgusting. Uncovering links to sites that shouldn't've been censored is good; I'm all for saying "hey look the Australian government's censoring us and these pro-lifers". Uncovering links to sites that should never have existed and whose owners should be, at least, jailed for the rest of their life, is bad. Knee-jerk reactions of either kind are completely unnecessary.

Re:lemme get this straight

[icebraining]

Or in Portugal. They can search your car if they think there suspicions of a crime being committed, but never your house.

Re:lemme get this straight

[replicant108]

Freenet's time is almost here.

Re:lemme get this straight

[GuldKalle]

But you could have someone outside Draconiland make the hash-list. Should be a simple one-time operation.

Re:lemme get this straight

[bluesatin]

Remember, *most* police officers in *most* countries are largely innocent. They might be naive or even cowardly, but they aren't exactly evil.

Many of these police officers probably have families and morgages to pay; and therefore probably stuck in a horrible situation where they can't speak out against their orders, without fear of being fired.

Unfortunately I presume a lot of police officers don't agree with what they're doing, but have no alternative but to just follow orders.

Re:lemme get this straight

[DrgnDancer]

Well, first this is relevant to Australia and Germany, so I doubt Bush had anything to do with it (You were making a joke, I know, "Whoosh!", etc. but it was pretty poor). Second, I think the objection here is not that publishing classified documents is a crime, most non-libertarian fringe people on the site would probably agree with that, but rather that this document, which has significant potential for quelling free speach and political dissent, is classified. Here we have a list of sites that an entire nation worth of the "Free World" is not allowed to look at. A list which clearly contains sites not relevant to the original purpose of the list (basically to block kiddie porn). A list, in short, which the Government of Australia could conceivably use to block any speech that they see fit, and NO ONE is allowed to know what is actually on the list to protest.

There has been some screwed up crap going on in the US, but I don't think even Bush would have tried something like this.

Re:lemme get this straight

[mcgrew]

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.

Here in Springfield, the cops take a dumpster, weld it shut, put a fake camera on top and place it near dope houses. It's a stupid idea, but we're all cartoon characters here anyway - what do you expect from Police Chief Ralph Wiggum?

The linked newspaper story mentions that the dumpster in question is on (no shit) Enterprise Street!

This is no different than the German "Black Lists". Just as they should take the illegal sites down, the cops here should just bust the dope house. Or better yet, put the gang banging dope dealers out of business by legalizing drugs and selling them from legitimate drug stores.

It's nice to know that other governments are as brain-dead as my own cartoon government.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Nursie]

you are one of those scary people who believe everything the gov't does = evil.

Until such time as the western governments stop being evil all the time, I think that's a perfectly reasonable position to take.

Re:lemme get this straight

[xouumalperxe]

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".

Re:lemme get this straight

[Nursie]

I'm not sure it is.

I will fight censorship wherever possible, I think the creation fo secret blocklists is despicable and open to abuse (which means they definitely are already and will continue to be abused).

BUT, where Freenet is concerned, I'm sorry, but I'm just not willing to give over any resources whatsoever to the storage and propagation of child porn.

Freenet's a nice idea, but I'm not participating until I can control what's on my node. And I know that this is fundamentally against the design and principles of Freenet.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Never heard of state censorship? Do not be fooled from the fact that those are nasty pedo-sites, try to see the largest picture (if at all capable). Here we have an house raided, understand? An house raided because somebody uncovered a list of censored sites of any kind.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Arancaytar]

So wait, are you criticizing him for considering to donate, or for not actually donating?

Re:lemme get this straight

[moronoxyd]

So what you're saying is basically:
Since you didn't know whether they had a warrant or not you just said that they didn't as if you knew that for a fact?

And you're accusing them of improper process?

Re:lemme get this straight

[Shakrai]

They can search your car if they think there suspicions of a crime being committed

That's bad enough.

Re:lemme get this straight

[iknowcss]

Raise your hand if you just had to mouse over that link to see where it pointed ...

Re:lemme get this straight

[furby076]

Yea it was a joke, people blame bush for everything (and i do blame him for a lot) I just figured to carry it to an extreme :)

Anyhow - if the document contains information which should not be classified it is not up to joe schmoe to determine this and release the information. First off joe schmoe may not have all of the facts (and often doesn't) - there may be some legitimate reason why those sites are classified. They could tell you those reasons, but it would release more classified information. Yes some would say "that's shady, etc" but that is life. We, humans, want to know everything. We want to be the ones in on the secrets - so when we aren't we are saying they are doing things to hurt us. Which is a false arugement.

But even if this guy was correct and that all of the information he posted was fine to post - it was still a classified document and there are ways to go about doing things. He should have gone through legal channels, lawyers, court system, etc. But to release the information, while blatently violating the integrety of the classified documents is to break the law. Breaking the law carries penalties.

Re:lemme get this straight

[moronoxyd]

Two thing:

The black list in question is the list used by the Australian government, not a German lists.

Second, the problem with taking those sites down is that most of them reside in other countries, often even countries where child pornography and the like are not illegal.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Arancaytar]

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.

Catch 22!

Re:lemme get this straight

[zsau]

Doesn't slashdot automatically show the domain name of links for you? I thought did that for everyone to help us avoid goatse and similar.

Re:lemme get this straight

[zsau]

There is, but responsible media says "look, in addition to child porn, these guys are censoring a, c and d. they said they were only censoring child porn". The child porn links were completely unnecessary.

Re:lemme get this straight

[furby076]

Until such time as the western governments stop being evil all the time, I think that's a perfectly reasonable position to take.

Yup evil things, like public education (even if it sucks, it's better then nothing), social security to help our elderly, roads so we can drive our cars, the Internet....all evil things.

Re:lemme get this straight

[aetherworld]

No. The old heise.de article said they didn't have a warrant. The original article on wikileaks.org also claimed thed didn't have a warrant.

Correction: they DID have a warrant. The original articles just claimed that the warrant wasn't sanctioned by a judge.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Em Emalb]

Oh come on, obviously there is some good there. But go ahead and mention a few things that weren't setup 40+ years ago that are "good".

You might be able to list a few, but the list of things that are essentially removals of freedom is LONG.

Re:lemme get this straight

[canajin56]

Adding conspiracy just increases your jail sentence.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Olotila]

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.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Arancaytar]

That is a very good idea - have the government keep the real list under locks and only distribute an officially sanctioned hash-list.

However, you make the assumption that the stated reason the list is classified is the actual reason. The government doesn't want you to vet the list, even for a URL you already know. That's the point of censorship; to make information disappear as thoroughly as if it were never there.

Re:lemme get this straight

[4D6963]

Good thinking, just one problem, domain names being usually quite sort and in base ~40, how long would it take to discover a domain by bruteforce (by generating every possible domain name?). Worse, a lot of them must be mere IP addresses, that's only a few billion hashes to generate and check against the list..

Re:lemme get this straight

[Curunir_wolf]

Until such time as the western governments stop being evil all the time, I think that's a perfectly reasonable position to take.

Yup evil things, like public education (even if it sucks, it's better then nothing), social security to help our elderly, roads so we can drive our cars, the Internet....all evil things.

Yep.

• public education = Indoctrination centers for your children that the government owns. Don't send them to their indoctrination and go to jail.
• social security = ponzi scheme designed to provide the government more money, enslave the population, encourage the beneficiaries to vote for more benefits, and which will inevitably bankrupt the entire system as more people go on the entitlement list and fewer are paying into the ponzi scheme pot. Maybe they'll just send old people those IOUs that the treasury has filled the SS "trust fund" with.
• Roads so we can drive cars, and spend money on gas to get to our isolated homes where no stores or businesses are within walking distance, and enrich the global oil conglomerates and the tyrannical dictators that control the oil supplies.
• The Internet, mostly built with private funds and the vast majority of which is privately owned, but which governments are quickly trying to get under control so they can censor the dissenting voices.

Yep, all those evil things.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Raise your hand if you clicked on it...

Re:lemme get this straight

[Talderas]

Yes, it's a great thing that America is a democracy.... oh wait.....

Re:lemme get this straight

[Arancaytar]

In the words of one of my favorite webcomics:

"No, then you'll really be terrorists." :P

Re:lemme get this straight

[HungryHobo]

perhaps the editors of wikileaks weren't too keen on the idea of looking at hundreds of childporn images themselves.

Re:lemme get this straight

[TheGratefulNet]

yes, bush did try this.

it was ashcroft's idea (remember that asshole? too bad his mother didn't have an abortion..)

he wanted to sign up anyone who has the job of entering peoples' homes (pizza delivery guys, phone repair/installers, cable guys, even apartment managers). there was a secret society he was creating of snitches. this has all been leaked and documented and perhaps it shamed the BA into rethinking it. probably they just took it even MORE undercover.

large companies had 'reps' who would meet with other 'reps' and they even had the gov-given 'right' to use force in times of 'emergency'. yes, untrained non-cops using deadly force if the president gave the ok and declared some kind of local emergency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_TIPS

I WISH I was making this up! ;(

it was very real and it was (is?) very scary.

thsi is NOT your father's america. its not, anymore. its been converted into something that we always used to joke about - we have become 'just like' soviet russia.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has links to CP, should they be shut down too? What about sites with terrorist-related links; should we shut down Wikipedia too?
Oh wait, you say that the difference is that you actually have to go actively looking for it on places like Google? Well guess what, it's the same with Wikileaks. No one's forcing you to go to any of webthese sites (I didn't), and it's your choice to view the list. I don't see the difference, personally.

And a great number of those links are not what the Aussie government likes to claim, either.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

No court was involved in this raid. The police claimed "Gefahr im Verzug" ("imminent danger") in which case they can ask for a search warrant after actually doing the raid.

Of course, a court can later decide that the raid was illegal, but due to the nature of German penal law that doesn't necessary mean that obtained evidence can't be used in court (even if that evidence doesn't have anything to do with the original reasons for the search).

Re:lemme get this straight

[xouumalperxe]

There is, but responsible media says "look, in addition to child porn, these guys are censoring a, c and d. they said they were only censoring child porn". The child porn links were completely unnecessary.

That's a tempting position to take, and one I seriously pondered before posting what I did. But the thing is, I'm not sure whether it was an accident or on purpose, but the example (c) I listed as hate speech and implicitly stated was OK to censor is something that you seem to have posted as bad censorship. That, in and of itself, is enough reason for Wikileaks to post the complete list, insofar as they can gain access to it: that way you and I judge what's legitimate and what's illegitimate censorship by ourselves, rather than seeing the leaks through already filtered lenses.

Ultimately, I don't think posting those sites on wikileaks meaningfully spreads or promotes child pornography, and the last thing I want from a site that specializes in political leaks is editing (beyond compilation and readability, of course).

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, in Germany they are not allowed to raid one without court order. "Gefahr in Verzug" was abandoned a few years ago, nethertheless most policemen don't care or even know.

Re:lemme get this straight

[interested pyro]

*raises hand because I was sooooo bored i clicked on the link* if /. didnt provide the name of the link here, i would have just not clicked. Governments have set up entrapment sites before, and I dont intend to visit one in my lifetime

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, okay. So I suppose they were expected to through every one of those 2000 URLs, download the contents, examine it and determine for themselves whether or not it was CP, in full violation of the law. That would be beyond idiotic, and posting an edited version of the list would itself serve as a confession to having knowingly possessed CP. The idea of posting a link like this is to let people make their own minds up, which they have every right to do.

As it is, I don't see the problem. They are not hosting images, they are hosting text. And if we're reached the point where posting non-libelous text can be a crime, then the situation in Australia is the least of our worries; it puts this country back on the level of totalitarian regimes which censor and outlaw the possession of certain books (and even those countries generally allow people to access the list of banned books).

Re:lemme get this straight

[russotto]

Wait attempting to acquire/read, let alone posting, of CLASSIFIED documentation is illegal?

This case was in Germany. But since you seem to be in the USA, here's some information on a landmark case about publishing leaked classified information:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB48/

Summary: The New York Times and Washington Post published the so-called "Pentagon Papers", illegally leaked to them by Daniel Ellsberg. The government sought and obtained an injunction against further publication, but the Supreme Court overturned the injunction 6-3.

Re:lemme get this straight

[_Sprocket_]

"Responsible media" reduces things to sound-bytes and incomplete, and often completely misunderstood, information. If you really want to understand what's going on, it takes getting past "responsible media" to get the real information and make an informed decision.

The parent's example is quantifying the information. You can see line by line what this list is doing. Specifying the "kiddie porn" links shows specific cases of where the list apparently hit it's mark just as well as classifying other links shows where they don't - or where the analyst is unsure. This isn't irresponsible - it's factual.

Your example is playing games. Either you're not providing solid numbers, evidence to substantiate your claims, or you're calling attention to the gaps by not labeling them. In any of these cases, you're being ineffective.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

You are saying that this list is classed as a state secret. Are you sure about this? Source?

Re:lemme get this straight

[Nursie]

All the new initiatives, all the rhetoric on security, all the police powers. All evil.

Not only that, but in the UK the education policy has resulted in a decade or more of both grade inflation and falling literacy, the elderly are being given a raw deal on pension rises due to a change in the measurement of inflation and the government are trying to monitor and restrict the internet.

Those are not good examples of areas where the government is being good, pure, honest and beneficial to the people.

Re:lemme get this straight

[GrantRobertson]

And you have just fallen prey to the scam. Giving up the right to protect ourselves against overreaching governments (which are primarily controlled by the wealthy and corporations) will eventually lead to far more suffering than child pornography. By making you fear and hate child pornographers so much that you are willing to give up your rights they have made you a pawn in their system of exploitation. You should hate child pornographers, but you should find ways to fight them other than simply giving up your rights - and those of everyone else.

Re:lemme get this straight

[mdwh2]

Right, but apart from education, social security, roads and the Internet, what have the Government ever done for us?

Re:lemme get this straight

[IgnoramusMaximus]

And because your position is quite popular it is why the fascists will in the end win, and when it comes to the Internet and they will "bring it under control" i.e. no dissenting views will be allowed.

It is really very simple: you decided that "child porn" is something you will not allow to propagate via anything you own. But what does this really mean? Put another way, you decided that some (arbitrarily chosen by you) patterns of bits are not allowed storage and passage. But if you do that to some patterns, when faced with a situation where even you yourself cannot see what these patterns contain as they are encrypted or incomplete, you decided that it is "more reasonable" do that to all patterns, since you have no way of distinguishing them. With sufficient numbers of Internet communication nodes thus blocked, soon followed by ISPs who of course want to "play it safe", so ends privacy and anonymous communication, for anyone with your mindset demands to see what the bits are in order to determine if they are sufficiently "icky" for you to deny passage. And the fascists rejoice for privacy and anonymous communication are at the core of any democracy. Game over.

It is precisely why we keep hearing all those power hungry control freaks whine about "child porn" all the time and the supposedly ever-expanding bazillions of "child molesters", because in this they found the Holy Grail of Censorship and Control of Access to Information. If you can make the general public believe this crap and then get them into unthinking outrage about it, you also succeed to paint anyone opposing whatever piece of nasty work you are doing to enslave everyone, as a "child porn user" and shut down your opposition before it has a chance to get going. And this article provides just the latest example. "Child porn", the very thing that shakes your universe, is being used to shut down Wikileaks.de for reasons of having the "wrong sets of bits" (as decided by some bureaucrat), as it was used before over and over again, with the prominent cases like that of Scott Ritter, the inconvenient head of UN WMD inspections in Iraq accused and arrested (but never charged) for possession of computer "child porn" just in time to be removed as an obstacle to the Iraq invasion, coming to mind.

The logical answer is of course that not the bits themselves, but it is the actual physical molestation of children which is a despicable crime. But once you decide that any information can be "criminal" there is no avoiding the only logical outcome, that all information must be controlled and censored all the time, with all the associated totalitarian consequences, in the name of "safety" ... err .. "war on drugs" ... errr ... "war on terror" ... err ... "children". There is just no way out of this bind.

And I will not even get into the repercussions of some patterns of bits being "crime" when it is so easy to put them on anyone's computer, in most cases remotely and without any trace...

Re:lemme get this straight

[TheP4st]

I care about privacy, state control issues and so on, but a lot less than I care about shutting down these monsters.

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

Re:lemme get this straight

[berzerke]

...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)...

What most people seem to forget is that winning in court, in criminal cases, is still a loss. You've sat in jail, unless you can bond out and that has a cost. You've had to hire a lawyer, at your expense. And don't get started with a public defender. They are so overworked you're not likely to get more than a "We'll take the plea bargain." defense.

Then there is having your stuff confiscated, and quite possibly being lost or damaged upon return. Will your job still be there while you get all this settled? What effect will have on your family? Your reputation?

I assure you, police can do a lot of damage to your life without ever getting a conviction.

Re:lemme get this straight

[jambox]

You can't compare communists to child pr0nographers.

Re:lemme get this straight

[mdwh2]

And his laptop and an external HD were taken.

I think one big problem is that somewhere along the line, a "search warrant" turned into a "search and confiscate anything they like" warrant. AIUI (at least in the UK), you can expect to lose all electronic equipment for many months or more, with no chance to make backups. No compensation offered for lost use, and tough luck if it's damaged or data is lost when you finally get it back.

People running businesses may go under as a result of lost equipment and (more importantly data). Even for private individuals, you lose your means of communication (Internet access, phone) which are increasingly becoming a necessity in modern life (not everyone can pay to replace stolen[*], er, confiscated items). You lose access to all sorts of personal items, from email to photos - not to mention the privacy implications of having strangers look over private and perhaps intimate items (theoretically a search warrant has always had this risk, but firstly they'd be less likely to look in say your photo album or love letter collection unless it was relevant, and secondly they'd have to look there and then with you watching - they couldn't take it away to look it over at their leisure, with god knows who looking at it).

But people support this, because we still think of it simply as a _search_ warrant.

[*] Of course, not stolen. You'd actually be better off if they were stolen - you could claim on the insurance, and there'd perhaps be more chance of getting it back...

Re:lemme get this straight

[mdwh2]

often even countries where child pornography and the like are not illegal.

Citation needed.

(And what do you mean by "the like" - are you suggesting other kinds of images need to be illegal to possess too?)

Re:lemme get this straight

[redcaboodle]

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.

Can't speak for our other euro colleagues, but certainly not in Spain pal.

"Gefahr im Verzug" means imminent danger to persons. Like when the police hear someone screaming for help. It's not applicable in this case and I don't think it was used.

I'm pretty sure you've got the same rule in Spain, pal. That's covered under help in an emergency.

Re:lemme get this straight

[MaskedSlacker]

The only reason Bush wouldn't have tried this is because he couldn't come up with an argument that explained how this would fight terrorism. Kiddie porn was never a focus of his.

Although (and this is the only reason why I maintain Andrew Jackson was worse than Bush) he actually stopped doing things if the Supreme Court told him to knock it off--he didn't give a fuck about following the Constitution, but even he wasn't willing to tell the Supreme Court to fuck off.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

The government could just take down the child porn sites.

I went to the wikileaks site and did some DNS queries on the ones that are obviously related to child porn. None of the domains are even registered.

So I'm not sure how listing a non-existent domain could be considered linking to that type of material, since there isn't even anything there.

Voila! They successfully used peoples hatred agains child pornography to censor anything they want.

Bingo. I guess that despite outlawing "Mein Kampf" they still hold to Hitler's maxim that the surest way to get the will of the people is to convince them their children are in danger.

Re:lemme get this straight

[jambox]

By no means! I'm not saying this justifies shutting down wikileaks at all. I think the governments concerned should get off their backsides and actually try shutting the kiddie fiddlers down and getting them in prison where they deserve to be, rather than trying to suppress information that only helps them block those people out from casual viewing.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Nursie]

I'm sorry, but you've missed the point.

There are other ways to go about this. I am not responsible for propagating your speech if I consider it offensive. Sorry.

I think you should be able to, but I'm damned if I'm giving my time and resources (i.e. *money*) to you to propagate things I violently disagree with. It's not just bits. I don't think for a second that the government should have the power to intercept or decode anybody's private communications, but that is a far cry from "I am prepared to disseminate any and all information".

I'm not.

"But once you decide that any information can be "criminal" there is no avoiding the only logical outcome, that all information must be controlled and censored all the time, with all the associated totalitarian consequences"

And here is where I suggest you go back on the medication.

I said nothing about the legality of anything. I said the *I*, personally, a private citizen, am not willing to take part in information exchange that I can't monitor, because I am not comfortable doing so. You feel free to do what you like and I will support your right to do so. Just don't expect me to actually actively support your activities. These are different.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Nursie]

Actually, that said, I don't support anybody's right to distribute CP. But I do dispute the government's right to spy on any/all communications "just in case".

I'm perfectly happy that some bit patterns be illegal. That's fine. Neither do I accept the argument that if the rules are not set at an absolute (i.e. no information can ever be illegal) that we necessarily invite the opposite extreme (totalitarianism), so long as we don't allow the fact that illegal data exists to be a license for government intervention.

Absolutionist thinking is generally nonsense, anyway.

Re:lemme get this straight

[h4rm0ny]

So wait, are you criticizing him for considering to donate, or for not actually donating?

I think he's criticizing me for the sake of pleasing his own sense of self-righteousness, actually. ;)

Actually, I haven't donated yet, but I emailed them earlier to ask for details to set up a regular payment. It will only be small but I'll feel good about it.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

But it only show the domain, it could be www.example.com, www.example.com/example_of_k_port.jpg or something else.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Locke2005]

So, isn't the government agency which compiles and distributes the blacklist guilty of collecting and distributing child pornography, by their same standard that a link to an unlawful site is as bad as hosting the unlawful material yourself?

Re:lemme get this straight

[h4rm0ny]

I also despise the creation of child pornography. But I believe that various governments are deliberately mixing the issue up with others so that it can be used to justify totalitarian measures. If we adopt a passive acceptance that whenever "child pornography" is mentioned the government can overpower any law or objection to their behaviour, then we'll be hearing the a Hell of a lot about "child pornography". Which come to think of it, we are.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

So just how many pictures of children did the man who had his home invaded take? If this was ACTUALLY about child pornography, those sites wouldn't be censored or blocked, they would be DOWN.

Re:lemme get this straight

[commodore64_love]

Yeah but once you get out, you go off and buy a sniper rifle on the black market so that, someday, you will get your revenge. Down with the employees that abuse their power & turn free citizens into serfs.

And if they catch you, well, you've already served the 1-2 years of time in jail, so your sentence will be shorter.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

well, maybe this little overview of the child porn scene may show you how the governments are completly out of the game if they think they can stop child porn by filtering and spying their citizens...
https://wikileaks.org/wiki/My_life_in_child_porn

Re:lemme get this straight

[Sique]

The main problem is that a censorship list only works if it is secret. Hey, even the Index Librorum Prohibitorum was itself indexed and not open to the public.

A public index list is nothing else than free advertisement for the allegedly forbidden items. Most of them would remain in obscurity and not known to most of us if they were never indexed to begin with. And especially with child pornography one of the arguments about censoring the sites (instead of waging criminal actions against the operators of the site and taking it down), is that it should stop the exploitation of the children portrayed. If now everyone checks out if the link actually contains child pornography, then exactly what you tried to achieve with censoring the site is reversed.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand. LOOKING at the list is illegal and punishable by up to 15 years of jailtime.

You're full of shit. I am a german law student, and i dare you to name the section (Paragraph) of the german penal code (Strafgesetzbuch, StGB) which would prohibit you from *looking* at a *list of websites* or even direct links, no matter the content. I'm sorry, i also think that we're slowly (?) turning into a police state. But what you just wrote is just plain wrong.

We actually do have a provision for the right to inform yourself from all publicly available sources. This is a constitutional guarantee our "basic law" (Grundgesetz, GG) gives us (Article 5). The GG always trumps "simple laws" (such as the StGB).

Please inform yourself about german law before you try to explain in to the english-speaking world :-)

Re:lemme get this straight

[cayenne8]

"Roads so we can drive cars, and spend money on gas to get to our isolated homes where no stores or businesses are within walking distance, and enrich the global oil conglomerates and the tyrannical dictators that control the oil supplies."

I was with you on most of your stuff, except for this one. I can't really buy into it...people live spread out because, in general, we WANT to live spread out, have some breakthing room, a house with a yard....land to do and grow stuff on. It is a big country, and we've grown up as a culture with that in mind. I personally can barely stand living in a double (or duplex if you wish) sharing walls with one neighbor..I can't deal with box apartments with that many people crowded together with the noise, having to watch YOUR noise..etc.

That ,and with reference to the hwys...weren't they originally established as a military defense mechanism early on? (Einsenhower?).

Anyway, I can't see the roads there being part of an oil company conspiracy. But, I do like your other topics.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it isn't. There is an exemption in the german penal code for "lawful public or professional purposes" for posessing child pornography (roughly translated). If you understand german, you can have a look at This page; the "subsection" ("Absatz") i am talking about is (5).

Re:lemme get this straight

[anonymousmeatbag]

Posting a link can't be disgusting, or wrong or bad. It is the content that is foul not the link.

Censoring achieves nothing. The foul site is still there, just not available to everyone. Also censoring makes more censoring to appear normal everyday activity, a bad legacy for the generations to come.

Re:lemme get this straight

[cayenne8]

"Right, but apart from education, social security, roads and the Internet, what have the Government ever done for us?"

The aqueduct?

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you provide a link to a Wikipedia article that would describe a similar 'operation' in the USSR?..

I didn't think so.

Re:lemme get this straight

[cayenne8]

"The list is classified."

Classified where?

Wasn't this an AU list? If it is classified there, is it classified everywhere else in the world?

Re:lemme get this straight

[Hordeking]

He posted links to child porn. That's not "doing something right". That's disgusting. Uncovering links to sites that shouldn't've been censored is good; I'm all for saying "hey look the Australian government's censoring us and these pro-lifers". Uncovering links to sites that should never have existed and whose owners should be, at least, jailed for the rest of their life, is bad. Knee-jerk reactions of either kind are completely unnecessary.

The domain was registered to him. It doesn't mean he actually posted anything. It's a wiki site, which potentially means anyone could post something. I could be wrong, and maybe he had some sort of editorial control, which would legally be a pitfall for him.

That aside, if he posted the list in its entirety (or nearly enough so), and it was for protestant purposes, then I completely stand by him. I'm guessing the majority of internet users aren't into child pornography per se. These lists will quickly morph into something far worse, and probably already doing so. First its CP sites. Then it's websites that companies see as competition. Before you know it, the governments all use it to control any communication that isn't in line with their official position.

Sunshine has a habit of melting bad legislation: the good of posting these secret lists far outweighs the evil of some perverts getting their jollies.

Re:lemme get this straight

[averner]

Remind me to use tinyurl next time....

Re:lemme get this straight

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I said nothing about the legality of anything. I said the *I*, personally, a private citizen, am not willing to take part in information exchange that I can't monitor, because I am not comfortable doing so. You feel free to do what you like and I will support your right to do so. Just don't expect me to actually actively support your activities. These are different.

No, they are virtually the same. Since the entire Internet is essentially a (private) network of (private) hosts, such attitude means, in practical terms, no anonymous information transfer for there is no way to establish a path from A to B without going through some C and D etc, where the intermediate nodes are either ISPs with governmental syphons or a (shrinking) number of other private entities willing to help carry anonymous traffic. If there were other means of transmitting the data, somehow not involving you or other privately owned hosts, then the problem would not exist. But the very structure of the network is such that it creates the "all or nothing" scenario. Which of course the fascists are all too happy to exploit.

Re:lemme get this straight

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I'm perfectly happy that some bit patterns be illegal. That's fine.

That is not only not "fine", that is actually a logical fallacy. Determination of "illegality" of bit patterns is, quite easily and using some simple transforms, mathematically, demonstrable to be utterly arbitrary and subjective and this, combined with other merry characteristics of information, makes for a totalitarian asshole's field-day.

Neither do I accept the argument that if the rules are not set at an absolute (i.e. no information can ever be illegal) that we necessarily invite the opposite extreme (totalitarianism), so long as we don't allow the fact that illegal data exists to be a license for government intervention.

Well you can't have it both ways. The whole point of making some bit patterns "illegal" is to provide a pretext for (essentially arbitrary) governmental intervention. There is no other reason for it.

Absolutionist thinking is generally nonsense, anyway.

Yea, so some people should be allowed to charge others for the air they breathe ... since the "all the air you breathe is free" is such an outdated "absolutist" garbage ... "Micropayment" Air Economy, here we come!

Re:lemme get this straight

[Nursie]

"Well you can't have it both ways. The whole point of making some bit patterns "illegal" is to provide a pretext for (essentially arbitrary) governmental intervention. There is no other reason for it."

Total nonsense.

Sorry.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

if you don't look at it, you're storing child pornography (most likely for later use, you filthy bastard)

The act of having the list is equal to storing child pornography? Huh?! It's the same thing as living near a nursery, since you're clearly selecting your victims already. In conclusion, children should be locked up in camp surrounded by electric fences and located in a classified position somewhere in the northern Siberia. Oh, of course, the Google images must be censored in order to avoid peeking.

Re:lemme get this straight

[neomunk]

Example.com is a reserved domain name, kind of like 192.168.X.X and 10.X.X.X are for ip addresses. The purpose of example.com is exactly what the OP used it for, an unowned domain for use with examples, documentation and specifications where you need a generic domain name to demonstrate a concept.

AFAIK there isn't any content worth speaking of on the site, except an explanation like the one I offered above.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

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 might, but do keep in mind that Germany does not have the "fruit of the poisoned tree" doctrine that categorically rules out the admissability of any evidence gathered illegally. Depending on the circumstances, such evidence may still be admissible in German court rooms.

Re:lemme get this straight

[mundanetechnomancer]

a CLASSIFIED document is simply information that someone more powerful then you doesn't want you to see. You can be sure that they don't want you to see if for a reason, but you can't be certain that it's a good, or possibly even legal, reason. restricting publication of classified documents is a sure path to government control over what knowledge is legal to know, for any reason they choose.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So by downloading Integard you are breaking the law, because it contains 'the list' ?

Others have said it before - the future is not George Orwell's "1984," it is Kafka's "The Trial."

Re:lemme get this straight

[commodore64_love]

>>>There are other ways to fight

Like what? In the courts??? Even if you win, you still lose due to the high expense. It's like taking your brand-new Honda or VW and ramming it into a wall - that's how much personal wealth you will lose, even if you manage to win.

>>>Remember, *most* police officers in *most* countries are largely innocent. They might be naive or even cowardly, but they aren't exactly evil.

That was true of the Redcoats too, but my great-great-great grandfather still shot them dead. "What matter is a few deaths in a century? The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is a natural fertilizer and a little rebellion is good for its growth." - Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic Party.

And as for the cops: They should know that entering a house without a warrant is illegal.
If they're going to commit illegal acts, then they are in NO way innocent.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I could have sworn that the scotus ruling about the pentagon papers had been essentially reversed in the last few years. Too lazy to look for the details since your link doesn't seem to contain the name of the original case to use as google starter.

Re:lemme get this straight

[commodore64_love]

>>>Ursula von der Leyen...People, companies and organizations who have criticized these efforts have been smeared and had their motivations questioned.

Then the people need to rise up, drag her into the public square, and hang her. Just like they did with Mussolini.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Cederic]

The British Government are. Images of sexual violence are being made illegal, even if made consensually.

Bit of a blow for the bondage porn industry really..

Re:lemme get this straight

[Cederic]

Who is the German Federal Minister for Men?

Re:lemme get this straight

[linhares]

you are one of those scary people who believe everything the gov't does = evil. Until such time as the western governments stop being evil all the time, I think that's a perfectly reasonable position to take.

I have to disagree profoundly. I think the governments are here to help us out.

Respectfully, Dr. Linhares, Senior Vice President, AIG

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I thought it was to get away from black people.

Re:lemme get this straight

[linhares]

So, isn't the government agency which compiles and distributes the blacklist guilty of collecting and distributing child pornography, by their same standard that a link to an unlawful site is as bad as hosting the unlawful material yourself?

you must be new here

Re:lemme get this straight

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Total nonsense.

Oh really? Enlighten me. Tell me about a single case of "illegal information" whereby the governmental powers were not directly involved in the establishment of what is "illegal", subsequent "investigations" or "prosecutions". For bonus points, demonstrate a case in which the definition of "illegal information" can actually be shown as not wholly arbitrary and subjective.

Re:lemme get this straight

[commodore64_love]

FOR THE HUMOR IMPAIRED: This is a joke. It's supposed to make you smile. If you're offended by it, you need to chill-out. Like the 1960s-era hippies. Relax. Laugh. Play. Enjoy life.

>>>In Germany... 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.

"Das Juden Haus ist now empty."
"Die Zigeuner werd deported."

Is that the kind of report the German police file?

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Men don't have a minister. We're on our own.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Nursie]

"Tell me about a single case of "illegal information" whereby the governmental powers were not directly involved in the establishment of what is "illegal", subsequent "investigations" or "prosecutions"."

Why should I?

That's not what I'm claiming.

You claim that the only purpose of making information illegal is as a pretext to interfere and intervene in communications. I disagree. Banning the propagation of some materials is an end in itself, especially if backed up with adequate protections to stop the government routinely intercepting everything in a trawling expedition.

For many decades there were types of information that were illegal to propagate (treasonous plots for example), but that didn't mean that the postal service was considered fair game.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy into your all or nothing libertarian dogma, and neither do many others.

Re:lemme get this straight

[mcgrew]

Intentional or not, that was a great pun!

Re:lemme get this straight

[moonbender]

That's not exactly what "Gefahr im Verzug" means, which apparently translates to exigant circumstance, btw. Anyway, police can do a search without warrant if they claim that the suspect is destroying evidence, because waiting for a judge to sign a warrant would result in the loss of significant evidence in that case. (Source: German Wikipedia, IANAL.) Apparently they did claim it in this case, which seems absurd even if what he did was illegal. All of this if very fucked up and at the same time totally in line with what's been going on for a while now. And there's absolutely no sign of improvement in sight.

Re:lemme get this straight

[zsau]

Oh, okay. So I suppose they were expected to through every one of those 2000 URLs, download the contents, examine it and determine for themselves whether or not it was CP, in full violation of the law.

Not at all. Most of the URIs indicate pretty well what's behind them. The only value in posting links that are child porn is that someone can click on it to see if it really is child porn: Why is wikileaks any less responsible for that if they've actively made it possible than if they'd done it themselves? I don't see a problem with investigating Wikileaks for having done this.

And if we're reached the point where posting non-libelous text can be a crime, then the situation in Australia is the least of our worries; it puts this country back on the level of totalitarian regimes which censor and outlaw the possession of certain books (and even those countries generally allow people to access the list of banned books).

Libel isn't a crime as far as I know in western country; it's a civil matter. But many countries do outlaw certain sorts of speech: Germany, for instance, you can't deny the holocaust; most countries will forbid you from advocating the violent overthrow of the country; or it might be illegal to provide information about how to commit suicide to someone you could tell was suicidal. Certain books are banned in Australia. Certain videos and computer games are refused classification or rated X18+ and therefore banned from all or "merely" most of the country. Courts can forbid you from distributing material that's true.

And this has always been the case. What's new is they're just trying to apply the same standards to the internet as there've always been in physical media.

Re:lemme get this straight

[mpe]

So, isn't the government agency which compiles and distributes the blacklist guilty of collecting and distributing child pornography, by their same standard that a link to an unlawful site is as bad as hosting the unlawful material yourself?

Presumably those people have to pass an exam in hypocrisy before taking the job. Though this exact issue has previously been brought up in relation to the IWF who do not appear to have any special legal exemption for their activities.

Re:lemme get this straight

[mpe]

Yes it will. Acquiring the list or being in possession of the list is also illegal. Basically, with the new law, even if you don't look at it, you're storing child pornography (most likely for later use, you filthy bastard).
As i said, it's enough to TRY to acquire the list to get you in jail for as long as the government wants.

In reality it's more likely to do with such lists not actually being very good at what they claim to be blocking. Combined with the oversized egos of those advocating them.
It would actually be news for a such a list to surface which actually was a good attempt to target only child porn...

Re:lemme get this straight

[mpe]

a CLASSIFIED document is simply information that someone more powerful then you doesn't want you to see. You can be sure that they don't want you to see if for a reason,

The reason may be as trivial as this being the default in the absence of anything forcing them to do otherwise. As well as all too common situation of "national security" actually equating to protecting some fool who getting rid of would actually improve actual security...

but you can't be certain that it's a good, or possibly even legal, reason.

Typically we only find out about this happening when things are "leaked" anyway.

Re:lemme get this straight

[mundanetechnomancer]

and those were exactly my points, sorry if i didn't make that clear

Re:lemme get this straight

[DrgnDancer]

Anyhow - if the document contains information which should not be classified it is not up to joe schmoe to determine this and release the information. First off joe schmoe may not have all of the facts (and often doesn't) - there may be some legitimate reason why those sites are classified.

In general you are correct, but like anything else it is sometimes necessary to go to extreme lengths to defend one's rights. It's a slippery slope to be sure, when you break the law you are labeled a law breaker, though to outside observers or to history you might later be labeled a hero or a freedom fighter. Think of the Civil Rights movement here in the states. Lots of those people broke the law in various ways, yet they are scene as courageous heroes now, not criminals. Of course other people who broke similar laws in other places are still considered criminals. Either their cause never caught the public imagination (rightly or wrongly), or they were beat down so thoroughly that no one ever heard their stories. Whether this turns out to be a case of heroic civil disobedience or a simple criminal act probably depends a lot on your perspective, and the eventual judgment of history.

Having said all of that, it's not at all clear how posting information the AUSTRALIAN government considers classified could be a crime in GERMANY. It's not like these are NATO secrets, properly considered classified in all signatory countries. It's not like a crime was committed in Australia and then the perpetrator fled to Germany (that would, again properly, be a matter for extradition). This is information that the Australian government wants to keep secret, which a citizen of another country, a country with no apparent applicable law, published in his own personal bit of the web.

Re:lemme get this straight

[spiffmastercow]

Yeah, but that's only if your city is adjacent to a water square. Otherwise you have to wait a few hundred years until you can build a hospital.

Re:lemme get this straight

[ElectricTurtle]

You're right, relatively small scale child abuse probably doesn't carry the same weight as the deaths of hundreds of millions, killed by policy-driven famine, violent torture for dissent, being shot on sight by border guards keeping people in their workers paradise, etc. Yup, it's pretty insulting to child pornographers to compare them to communists.

Re:lemme get this straight

[zsau]

"Responsible media" reduces things to sound-bytes and incomplete, and often completely misunderstood, information. If you really want to understand what's going on, it takes getting past "responsible media" to get the real information and make an informed decision.

That doesn't sound like responsible media. The first isn't responsible, the second's neither responsible, nor media. I don't have time to go through lists of facts. Responsible media is there to collate the information for me.

This isn't irresponsible - it's factual.

What, like those are opposite poles? This is the sort of knee-jerk I've tried to warn you against. Responsible media includes an element of self-censorship. If you're Australian, you probably haven't noticed that newspapers don't like showing shots of dead bodies. I certainly haven't. But it's taboo. They might say "the body was mutilated beyond all recognition", but they don't show the photo they have access to. They do in other countries, where dead bodies aren't taboo in the same way.

It's factual, the exact way the body was mutilated happened. A textual description probably has necessarily more subjectivity than a photo would have. But it's not irresponsible. I don't need to see the dead body. I've seen real dead bodies twice in my life: one grandfather (done up for a viewing), one grandmother (on her hospital bed, maybe two hours dead). That's enough for me.

Apparently the media is responsible enough to know that I don't need to see these dead people. Wikileaks was being irresponsible when they posted something that is universally taboo: links to child porn. I'm willing to bet you all the money I have no newspaper would knowingly publish an ad for child porn, even if the ad was evidence in a particular case.

That's the very idea of responsible media. It's not drowning us in facts or evidence, it's giving us the right information to understand the situation. One single link to a legal website would've been enough to discredit the firewall. Responsibility would say, if you don't want to see something, you shouldn't show it to others. They could easily have said "at least x per cent of links are to benign sites such as blah, blah, blah", because most links clearly state what's behind them.

They didn't. They linked to child porn, and the police reckoned that's worth investigating, and I reckon it's unacceptable. I don't think it's worth locking them in jail and throwing away the key, but I do think it's worth inconveniencing them and warning them that they're playing with fire. If they've been warned already, it's worth a penalty.

Slashdotters too often think right and wrong are black and white. Providing a link to a website is not criminal, they think: but society has deemed providing instructions on how to commit suicide is wrong. Information wants to be free, they say, but we've decided that particular combinations of one and zero can't be distributed, because they represent child porn.

I'm not making some knee-jerk reaction. I used to have your kind of view, it's just information. Now, I understand more about what we need and I understand more about my own culture and even the place of culture in real life. It isn't necessary for all information to be out there. People aren't computers and we don't behave like them. The only similarity, really, is that we both process information and can use it to control our actions.

Re:lemme get this straight

[zsau]

Posting a link can't be disgusting, or wrong or bad. It is the content that is foul not the link.

Why? What you've done is given me an opinion, without trying to justify it. Not useful in an argument, if you're arguing with me, I know you're opinion is different from mine!

Censoring achieves nothing. The foul site is still there, just not available to everyone.

So people become less likely to produce it in future, that's simple economics. Additionally, if I can access all the child porn I want, it probably makes me think "this isn't so bad". If I have to go meet big guys with guns, I realise I'm doing something wrong.

Re:lemme get this straight

[X0563511]

Are you saying the eastern governments are universally good?

(good used as antonym of evil, here)

Re:lemme get this straight

[jambox]

For heaven's sake man! I wasn't saying one was better than t'other!

One is a legitimate political movement that was co-opted by tyrants, another is child abuse. Apples and oranges.

Time to chill the f*ck out, eh?

Re:lemme get this straight

[Nursie]

Hell no, I'm just not in a place to make a fair judgement!

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

These lists will quickly morph into something far worse, and probably already doing so.

indeed. One of the first sites I spotted in the Australian list was anonym.to, which is not hosting any CP content - it is just a link anonymizer that allows people to link to websites without the link targets knowing the actual referrer.

Any more questions??

Re:lemme get this straight

[neonsignal]

You've got to wonder why they need to raid his house looking for content when it is already posted up in plain view on the public internet?

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

In theory, couldn't you pay cash for a prepaid credit card and use that to donate anonymously?

Re:lemme get this straight

[_Sprocket_]

I don't have time to go through lists of facts. Responsible media is there to collate the information for me.

At some point in your life, you better do your own fact checking. Especially if it is a subject that is important to you. Media outlets get things wrong; and they get it wrong often.

What, like those are opposite poles? This is the sort of knee-jerk I've tried to warn you against. Responsible media includes an element of self-censorship. If you're Australian, you probably haven't noticed that newspapers don't like showing shots of dead bodies.

The problem here is that the story is about censorship. The intent is to prove the very serious allegation that the Australian Government is either incompetent or lying about what actions they're taking. That's quite a charge and it takes more than a "trust me." Which is what has gotten the Government in trouble to begin with.

If the issue is whether people are being killed or, even worse, bodies are being mutilated it may take public record of these events to prove it. I'm not saying everyone must be forced to view photos of dead bodies. But those interested in doing fact checking may require the ability to review the facts on their own.

There is a requirement for "self censorship" for the sake of decency. I agree. However, there is a limit to how far that censorship should go.

That's the very idea of responsible media. It's not drowning us in facts or evidence, it's giving us the right information to understand the situation. One single link to a legal website would've been enough to discredit the firewall. Responsibility would say, if you don't want to see something, you shouldn't show it to others. They could easily have said "at least x per cent of links are to benign sites such as blah, blah, blah", because most links clearly state what's behind them.

Again - you need the facts, drowning or not, to make an informed decision. One link is one link. Does it really mean x per cent? Or is this some snow job by someone with an axe to grind against the Government or censorship? If you get to see the activist's data, you can determine if he's a nut-job or not.

I'm not making some knee-jerk reaction. I used to have your kind of view, it's just information. Now, I understand more about what we need and I understand more about my own culture and even the place of culture in real life. It isn't necessary for all information to be out there. People aren't computers and we don't behave like them. The only similarity, really, is that we both process information and can use it to control our actions.

It's a pity you haven't been able to hold on to some of that idealism as you've aged. So few do. But those that do tend to be true patriots.

I understand the danger of some information. Google around for my posts on Slashdot defending why child pornography is rightfully illegal. But I also understand the need to limit how much information we make illegal.

I don't mistake people for computers. I see computers as tools for people and any information handled by a computer is ultimately serving a person. And I understand that the fundimental guarantees to freedom are endangered by those too willing to induce controls such as censorship for the bennefit of society; that such chipping away at our freedoms must be stringently guarded against.

You imply that this is a knee-jerk reaction. I in turn would accuse your support for censorship as being a knee-jerk reaction to what you personally find objectionable.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to ask a simple question:
How do you know the link is in fact illegal?
If you can not check it yourself? Isnt the worst sort of censorship ever?
Illegal to even find out what it is that is been censored in the first place?
Why not censor all websites that disagree with you as kiddie porn and then anyone who goes there
gets arrested for breaking the law and gag order and branded a terrorist and a pedophile!
Reasonable people can see what it is, keep power in check: and let laws still be enforced.
this is just wrong.

oppression of free will - protection of status quo-- put people in fear.

Re:lemme get this straight

[mdwh2]

Oh, I know :( It's a mad law. And for anyone not following, next on this list is sexual cartoons with any character that looks like they're under-18.

Re:lemme get this straight

[fractoid]

Or, perhaps, the editors of wikileaks are in the business of posting the full contents of leaks, rather than just the bits they like? I mean, isn't that the entire point of wikileaks?

Re:lemme get this straight

[fractoid]

The problem here is that the story is about censorship. The intent is to prove the very serious allegation that the Australian Government is either incompetent or lying about what actions they're taking. That's quite a charge and it takes more than a "trust me." Which is what has gotten the Government in trouble to begin with.

I'm really starting to doubt that either incompetence or lying are considered serious allegations these days, when levelled against Australian politicians. The rules of politics as observed by me are:

1) Tell them what they want to hear (even if it isn't true) so they'll like you.
2) Do whatever the hell you want.
3) Say you didn't.
4) If the shit hits the fan, lie about it. Say there is no shit and no fan.
5) When photos of politician posing with both shit and fan are published, claim they're faked.
6) Charge the publisher with "distributing personal photos of a public figure" while still claiming that no neither photos , shit nor fan exist.
7) Hide for the next 15 minutes until the next footy game starts and the stupid fucking populous forgets 1-6 ever happened.

This happens every. single. time. Where's the screaming big red button to press to say "EXCUSE ME, MEMBER FOR BLOGGS, YOU'RE LYING YOUR ASS OFF AGAIN"? Why is there no accountability for anything anyone says once they're elected? Is it just that humanity as a whole are a bunch of lying bastards, so honesty and accountability would be unrepresentative?

Re:lemme get this straight

[fractoid]

Cheers bro. I had the right to vote for one of two politicians, neither of whom said anything about this shit and both of whom wanted to do it, so I know it's my fault.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that what passes for probable cause in the Fatherland?

AFAIK the legal notion "probable cause" exists in a single country on Earth.

Re:lemme get this straight

[fractoid]

Freenet's a nice idea, but I'm not participating until I can control what's on my node. And I know that this is fundamentally against the design and principles of Freenet.

Exactly. And, in fact, you're not really, philosophically, against censorship. You're just against censorship of stuff you think shouldn't be censored. Don't feel bad about it, that's what people usually really mean when they're talking about being against censorship.

Personally, I think that attacking child porn is treating the symptom, not the disease, and gets ridiculous when you start prosecuting people for cartoons or computer renders that resemble CP. What needs to be stopped is child abuse, and the suffering that it causes. People often seem to lose sight of this amongst all the moral posturing.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey you've got a good idea! Whip up some hysteria by misrepresenting the truth! Use hyperbole to prove you don't know what you are talking about! Good job troll! I'll only bother correcting the first of your incorrect assertions.

Yep.

• public education = Indoctrination centers for your children that the government owns. Don't send them to their indoctrination and go to jail.

People can home school their kids if they don't like public education. They certainly are not thrown in jail if they are home schooled. Sure, the parents need to have the kids take tests periodically to verify that the kids are learning something. Although, enforcement on testing is so lax in many states that some home school parents just ignore it anyway.

Re:lemme get this straight

[kocsonya]

Police in Australia just have been empowered to secretly enter a suspect's home *and* secretly enter to anybody's home is that helps them in observing the suspect. So basically they can get into your house, sniff around and go, and if you accidentally find out, they can tell you that they were looking at John Doe who looked very suspicious, but later turned out that he was not a terrorist miniaturised by space aliens, but a terracotta garden gnome. Sorry about the inconvenience, and if you could give all the bugs we planted in your house, that'd be great, in these economic times every penny counts...

Re:lemme get this straight

[fractoid]

OK, I'm confused - you're saying that fighting in court is too expensive (like crashing your new Honda into the wall) so you should instead asplode your house?

Personally, I think what WikiLeaks etc. should do is just host their websites in a country with less punitive censorship laws.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

People can home school their kids if they don't like public education. They certainly are not thrown in jail if they are home schooled.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're wrong.

Of course, this is just the beginning, but it will continue in this direction. Already the voucher program has been killed in D.C. (it was part of the "stimulus" bill), so now the elite in Washington have the actual (educating) schools to themselves, and none of the poor are allowed to go there now instead of the indoctrination centers.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

This smells more like the DDR. During the cold war, all communist countries where seen as one, in a similar way as some are thinking about Muslims in general today.

Re:lemme get this straight

[IgnoramusMaximus]

You claim that the only purpose of making information illegal is as a pretext to interfere and intervene in communications. I disagree. Banning the propagation of some materials is an end in itself, especially if backed up with adequate protections to stop the government routinely intercepting everything in a trawling expedition.

What you are talking about is something that has historical significance only. The change in the communication technology has brought on a radical change in what the government must do to intercept such "banned" information, in addition to the fact that the same technology has made it possible to practically perform full-time automated inspection of all communications. What worked in the age of wax-sealed envelopes is not what happens in the age computer communications. You should perhaps note that none of our electronic mail enjoys even a fraction of the protections afforded the dead-tree version. In fact what would be considered utterly outrageous and would have resulted in an armed revolt back in 1800s, if done to the postal mail of that time, is now a daily, unremarkable routine conducted by governments all over. This alone tells me that what I have stated above is right.

For many decades there were types of information that were illegal to propagate (treasonous plots for example), but that didn't mean that the postal service was considered fair game.

See above. And as far as "treasonous plots" (amusingly, "treason" is a rather subjective definition, too) were concerned, anonymous pamphlets nailed to lamp-posts were a viable (due to the sizes of communities and the nature of their lives) way around these restrictions. As to postal service, your own comparison works against you here, as I already mentioned email is routinely scanned and analyzed by various governmental agencies in bulk daily. NSA in the US for example has backbone level access to all the top tier ISPs for (amongst others) that very purpose. There appears to be no functional supervision of NSA's (and other agencies) activities in this area. At all. Note that this is different from monitoring telephone conversations, which being and "old" technology still enjoy the protections no longer afforded to the new communication methods, which is why the whole FISA hoopla took place.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy into your all or nothing libertarian dogma, and neither do many others.

I am not a libertarian. I merely observe that governments of today are simply out of control and long have since ceased to behave in a sane fashion on many fronts. And that this behaviour of governments is in turn simply a function of the attitudes of those governed, such as you, when faced with new social and technological changes.

This, historically, is a cyclical trend whereby Enlightenments are followed by Dark Ages, bloodshed and war, only to be replaced by another Enlightenment ... unfortunately it appears that we live in the twilight of the last Enlightenment and an onset of some seriously messed up Dark Times.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

She presented child pornography to reporters in an attempt to explain and emphasize the need for these measures

Guess what? She would be prosecuted for distributing child pornography for that in Finland. And she would be determined guilty for the existing precedence. Ah, the irony! Perhaps, if she visits Finland, the police could kindly organize a diplomatic mess by arresting her.

Re:lemme get this straight

[ultranova]

Sunshine has a habit of melting bad legislation: the good of posting these secret lists far outweighs the evil of some perverts getting their jollies.

One might argue that perverts getting their jollies from pornography would be far better than the alternative, at least for the children if not for moral overlords.

Re:lemme get this straight

[ultranova]

thsi is NOT your father's america. its not, anymore.

Well, no. Nowadays it's terrorists rather than communists who get into the black list.

its been converted into something that we always used to joke about - we have become 'just like' soviet russia.

In Nazi Germany, the police raids you!

Re:lemme get this straight

[KlausBreuer]

From politicians with quotes like "How can we stop people from accessing websites outside of Germany?", what do you expect?

And, no, this wasn't some door watchmen, it was Ms Zypries, one of the (so-called) leaders.

Re:lemme get this straight

[KlausBreuer]

> police can enter the domain without judges under certain circumstances

However, getting a judges permission is absolutely trivial. I read an interesting number as in the percentage of such requests approved by a judge - I do not remember the exact number, but it was over 95%.

Re:lemme get this straight

[yurigoul]

In Germany you are responsible for the content of the sites you link to. It was also discussed on Slashdot a while back. Apparently a note on your website saying you are distance yourself from content on the websites you link to is not enough.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

I care about privacy, state control issues and so on, but a lot less than I care about shutting down these monsters.

Fair enough. So why don't they shut them down then. There is no jurisdiction on the planet that will not take down kiddie porn, arrest the local smut pedlars, and work at tracking back to the perpetrators.

Instead the sites are left alone, and used as a smokescreen to allow censorship of anything 'deemed' dangerous. Which makes the policy makers guilty of protecting kiddie porn. Which I'm pretty sure falls foul of their own laws, and they do not have immunity. (Sure they have immunity for checking the sites are KP, and that's legitimate - but then doing nothing about it, well the checking wasn't for a legitimate purpose then was it, and the immunity evaporates).

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Oakaley Doakaley, time for you to get some Re-Neducation!

Re:lemme get this straight

[jambox]

Yeah exactly. They don't care as long as it's on the other side of the border. It could all be shutdown, but it would cost too much money. Hell, they could probably wipe out 90% of malaria and malnutrition for £100bn, and save 5,000 lives per day. But do they?

Re:lemme get this straight

[c0p0n]

You're right, it seems the parent was slightly inaccurate when explaining what Gefahr im Verzug is, for "security of the state or other citizens" is certainly not the same as "imminent danger to persons", as in some dude screaming his head off for help.

Just to make it clear, in Spain, a policeman can enter your house without a warrant only if there's obvious and immediate danger to the physical integrity of a person. Emergency services as well. Which I actually find very reasonable. Suspicion is not enough, they need reasonable proof that they are in fact needed in the property.

Warrantless home entry (with the excuse of drugs) was tried many years ago and received with a political thunderstorm and partially declared unconstitutional.

Re:lemme get this straight

[randyleepublic]

...most non-sensible people would probably agree with that...

Fixed that for you.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Saint Fnordius]

It shows the heavyhandedness of cops at a certain level - this wasn't done in the interest of gaining evidence or preventing a crime, but for intimidation purposes. I think this was also prompted by economic minister Guttenberg's claim that the cabinet was going to submit a new bill to force all ISP's to blacklist child porn pages. However, this particular incident has backfired, drawing negative publicity.

As for why they don't simply take them down, the reason is because often the pages themselves are "offshore", the domains and servers located in countries where the laws are laxer. And yes, this is simple look-busy activity, as they freely admit that simple tricks can circumvent any filter.

Me, I think it's a bad idea because any filter would be riddled with false positives and other errors. Trying to dam child pornography with filters only addresses the symptom, and doesn't even do a good job at that. Some of the bills I've seen bandied about were even worse, making it possible to convict a person as a sex offender if their computer had been exploited by malware, hosting porn without their knowledge.

To use a bad anolgy (this is Slashdot, after all), it's like trying to filter toxic waste from the Mississippi instead of trying to catch the guy who dumped the waste in it in the first place. Too much emphasis is being placed on the filters, and not enough on cutting out the polluters.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no jurisdiction on the planet that will not take down kiddie porn, arrest the local smut pedlars, and work at tracking back to the perpetrators.

No, but different countries have different definitions, which may not cover everything that the US definition does. Notably different countries have different ages of consent and different definitions of what is considered "obscene" or "pornographic"; in some places, simple nudity is enough, in others it's only considered such if the pictures depict actual penetration. CP is universally considered to include pictures of pre-pubescent children engaged in sexual acts with adults, but beyond that the line blurs somewhat.
Incidentally, it's no news that Germany has more than a few bones to pick with Wikileaks, this is just their latest excuse to cause them trouble in whatever way they can.

(LOL. Captcha for this post is "puberty"... How ironic and strangely appropriate. :) )

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that you're not obliged to click on any of the links. The analogy to your dead body example would be if Wikileaks actually placed CP images in their article, which they obviously did not do.
If you click a link in full knowledge that you will be offended by what you see, then it's your fault for clicking the link. Trying to blame Wikileaks for your own action and its consequences would be like trying to blame Google for showing you offensive results when you search for "dead body". Take reponsibility for your own actions, and stop blaming others; or are you really so weak of mind that you must feel compelled to click on every link you find?

Most of those sites are not CP anyway, I'd wager that 99% are legal sites with actors dressed to look young. Some aren't even porn-related at all.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all. Most of the URIs indicate pretty well what's behind them.

Actually, they don't. Many (most) of those are spam domains and doorway pages, and apparently most of the rest are nothing more than legal sites and thumbnail galleries which just include the word "lolita" in an attempt to get hits from people trying to find CP.

The only value in posting links that are child porn is that someone can click on it to see if it really is child porn.

Why should they not? Checking a page to see whether it actually contains what the powers to be like to claim does not make someone a child molester. In fact the two are so radically different that I can't see how anyone could honestly hold that view without being congnitively dysfunctional.

Why is wikileaks any less responsible for that if they've actively made it possible than if they'd done it themselves?

Indeed, why is the shop that sold someone the knife any less guilty of murder than the person who stabbed the victim?

Germany, for instance, you can't deny the holocaust

No, but you can tell someone the name of a person or organization that does deny the holocaust.

most countries will forbid you from advocating the violent overthrow of the country

Yes, but there's a difference between that and preventing someone from simply discussing or reporting on those who are planning or advocating a violent overthrow of the country.

Certain books are banned in Australia

And yet the list of prohibited books is publically viewable. Why should this list be any different?

Re:lemme get this straight

[commodore64_love]

Fighting in court is a waste because the government will protect itself. No result.

At least with an explosion, you get to kill off the officers who are in direct violation of constitutional law (entering a home without warrant). You get actual results.

Re:lemme get this straight

[fractoid]

Fair 'nuff. I guess if your chance of personal absolution is equally small either way, you might as well take 'em down with you. :)

Re:lemme get this straight

[anonymousmeatbag]

Why? What you've done is given me an opinion, without trying to justify it. Not useful in an argument, if you're arguing with me, I know you're opinion is different from mine!

Because link != data or file. Wikileaks posted a list of the internet sites to be censored, and it was raided because of it, not because of the child porn. The list was availble to the public, police could just download it. Looks like someone wants to close Wikileaks.de at any cost.

So people become less likely to produce it in future, that's simple economics. Additionally, if I can access all the child porn I want, it probably makes me think "this isn't so bad".

Filtering is not the solution to the problem, it is like turning head away from it. Filtering does not strike the crime, it strikes around it. I was expecting Interpol raid on the foul internet server containing child porn, not the Wikileaks.de site.

I'll make an example. Lets assume that I have link on my homepage pointing to the site that explains how to make explosives or an A-bomb.
Does that makes me a terrorist?
Should that site be filtered out?
Should my home be raided because of the link?

There is big difference between thinking, saying and doing. Sadly today saying seems to be equal to doing.

I just wonder how long before thinking would become equal to saying.

Re:lemme get this straight

[Tuoqui]

Well I understand Wikileaks likes to post the entirety of it...

However they could have spared people the trouble and not made every URL a hyperlink. Just to spare people with pre-fetching browsers.

Re:lemme get this straight

[makomk]

Not easily. The wiki software they're using automatically makes URLs into hyperlinks.

Re:lemme get this straight

[flaming error]

> untrained non-cops using deadly force if the president gave the ok and declared some kind of local emergency.
As despicable as "Operation TIPS" would be, I find no reference to anything close to "non-cops using deadly force" within the article cited.

> I WISH I was making this up! ;(
Apparently your wish has been granted.

Re:lemme get this straight

[HungryHobo]

well they could have done a find and replace on the text to make every period into a character not valid in URL's.

German "CIA" are still enraged

[AHuxley]

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.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the guy should fabricate some crap - something absolutely fantastic that names those beyond reproach, AG's and prime ministers, heads of departments. You could have a lot of fun when the poison pill gets 'discovered'.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[jeti]

But none of these issues were mentioned during the search. The search protocol names "distribution of porn" (AFAIK not a crime) as the reason. It's fairly obvious that the reason for the search are the leaked filter lists of various countries. The home of a German blogger linking to the lists on WikiLeaks has already been searched. So has the home of a person maintaining a website linking to the blog post.
Several German ministers are keen on introducing mandatory DNS black lists in Germany. It's currently a hot topic.

Btw, the search was warrantless, citing "Gefahr im Verzug" (an immedeate danger).

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Xest]

I didn't realise German secret services were involved in that sort of thing.

That and this article certainly shines a whole new light on German politics for me. It seems hypocritical that they're not willing to perform combat operations in Afghanistan because of fears this will make people link it to it's Nazi past in being seen as an oppressive force yet meanwhile, back home, their security services are, well, acting as an oppressive force?

It sounds like Germany's political elite are suffering an identity crisis - do they accept they've moved on (which they have) and that they can stop worrying about how people will view them and actually do something useful in Afghanistan or do they keep living under that cloud of fear of what people think of them and their past, in which case, they need to stop doing shit like this because this sort of thing links them to their past much more strongly than actually doing their fair share in Afghanistan would.

They can't have it both ways, either do something useful in Afghanistan and stop caring what others think or stop doing this kind of shit to oppress your citizens back home.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

The germans are back to kill all the jews! the real reason the fucking krauts banned the swatstika is to erase history so they may rise again! HEIL HITLER SEIG HEIL!

Tod für alle Juden. In die brennende Öfen werden sie!

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Die Glorreichen Rede von Reischsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in Poznan (Posen), (Polen / Poland)

Montag , Oktober 4, 1943 (04.10.1943)

Ich will auch ein ganz schweres Kapitel will ich hier vor Ihnen in aller Offenheit nennen. Es soll zwischen uns ausgesprochen sein, und trotzdem werden wir nicht in der Öffentlichkeit nie darüber reden. Genau so wenig, wie wir am 30. Juni gezögert haben, die befohlene Plicht zu tun und Kameraden, die sich verfehlt hatten, an die Wand zu stellen und zu erschiessen. Wie wir darüber niemals gesprochen haben und sprechen werden. Das war so eine Gottseidank in uns wohnende Takt, Selbstverständlichkeit des Taktes, dass wir uns untereinander nie darüber unterhalten haben, nie darüber sprachen, es hat jeden geschauert und jeder war sich klar, dass er es das nächste Mal wieder tun würde, wenn es befohlen wird und wenn es notwendig ist. Ich meine die "Judenevakuierung": die Ausrottung des jüdischen Volkes. Es gehört zu den Dingen, die man leicht ausspricht. "Das jüdische Volk wird ausgerottet", sagt Ihnen jeder Parteigenosse, "ganz klar, steht in unserem Programm drin, Ausschaltung der Juden, Ausrottung, machen wir, pfah!, Kleinigkeit". Und dann kommen sie alle, alle die braven 80 Millionen Deutschen, und jeder hat seinen anständigen Juden. Sagt: alle anderen sind Schweine, und hier ist ein prima Jude. Und zugesehen, es durchgestanden hat keiner. Von Euch werden die meisten wissen, was es heisst, wenn 100 Leichen beisammen liegen, wenn 500 daliegen oder wenn 1000 daliegen. Und dies durchgehalten zu haben, und dabei -- abgesehen von menschlichen Ausnahmeschwächen -- anständig geblieben zu sein, hat uns hart gemacht und ist ein niemals genanntes und niemals zu nennendes Ruhmesblatt. Denn wir wissen, wie schwer wir uns täten, wenn wir heute noch in jeder Stadt bei den Bombenangriffen, bei den Lasten des Krieges und bei den Entbehrungen, wenn wir da noch die Juden als geheime Saboteure, Agitatoren und Hetzer hätten. Wir würden wahrscheinlich in das Stadium des Jahres 16/17 jetzt gekommen

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[morgan_greywolf]

T-Systems (Deutsche Telekom) was exposed revealing over two dozen secret IP address ranges used by the BND.

There's no such thing as a 'secret IP address range' on the Internet. Source and destination addresses are coded into each packet transmitted. Keeping an IP address a secret on the Internet, even with spoofing, is impossible.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[commodore64_love]

>>>The home of a German blogger linking to the lists on WikiLeaks has already been searched. So has the home of a person maintaining a website linking to the blog post.

Who needs the former Soviet Union or DDR as mortal enemies, when you can have the same "joy" right there at home? Domestic enemies.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

> But none of these issues were mentioned during the search.

Of course not. Why would they embarrass themselves like that?

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

The secret part is the fact that they were being used by the police. Nice try.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[m.ducharme]

You seem to be under the impression that military intervention in Afghanistan is actually "useful". I agree with some of the aims of the Afghan war -- toppling a theocratic dictatorship, liberating women from oppression, maybe even hunting down those responsible for 9/11 (maybe) -- but the fact is, we're not accomplishing those goals there. The Afghan people have been kicking the ass of world powers for decades now, and if they don't want you there, you can't succeed there. Maybe the Germans recognise this.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[morgan_greywolf]

The secret part is the fact that they were being used by the police. Nice try.

With some basic network forensics techniques, someone who knows what they are doing can determine the owner(s) of just about any IP address.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

So, where in the packet is encoded, that the IP belongs to the BND?

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if they are owned by shell companies, almost all intelligence services I know of do this for their operations. - I work in Digital Forensics, not that it matters since this is common knowledge.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[furby076]

Clandestine organizations tend to frown whenever their agents true identities are revealed. Typically their operations are illegal because they do not have jurisdiction that country. Then again, technically the the US army and it's allies in Afghanistan and Iraq are illegal. Pretty sure the Taliban and Hussein did not give the US army and it's allies permission to attack.

Agents' identities who get released = endangering their lives and their families' lives. So yea making those lists illegal to acquire, distribute, read is a good thing. Organizations like the CIA tend to do things like find out information to help save lives. I feel safer with them around. Do they have a less then steller reputation, yes, but look at what they are dealing with? They (actually all of us) deal with people such as muslim extremist terrorists who bomb weddings, mexican drug cartels which kidnap spring break kids to ransom/kill them, countries attempting to gain nuclear technology - you know the countries I am referring to...you know the ones that would like to use the bomb about 3 seconds after they acquire it and broadcast it to the world they are going to use it.

People love to mock organizations like the CIA, and they fail to show thanks when a terrorist attack is countered. BTW, this isn't a post 911 mentality, this is a mentality that has been going on for MANY MANY years.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[morgan_greywolf]

But if they're owned by shell companies, the shell companies have to be owned by someone right? That means that once you track something back to a shell company, it would take old-fashioned detective work to determine who or what owns/controls the shell company.

I agree that that's not pure network forensics, but is, instead, full-blown investigation work, but it's still possible.

Of course, if you have to go that far, is the fact that the IP addresses are used by the police really public knowledge? I guess not, but here's some ancient Chinese philosophy for you:

A secret that one person knows is a secret. A secret known to two people is no secret. A secret known to three people is information shouted to the world.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

to Xest for post http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1174735&cid=27327501
Actually, your comments show how much you know. Germany and other EU nations provide most of the support services for all the troops engaged in the middle east. That means vehicles, medical support, food services and others. Sure they may not be all over the front line like the US tends to do for "the moral good judgement of the entire world". We all know how the US is the little angel on everyone's shoulder and does no harm. Heck, they did such a good job in Bosnia and Serbia that millions of people lost their right and homes to the aggressors of the whole situation. If you don't know wtf you're talking about stfu.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Xest]

Military intervention absolutely is useful, the issue is that it's not being backed up by the improvements to peoples lives through engineering projects and so forth that must go with it.

Part the issue in Afghanistan, particularly in the South is that as soon troops clear an area and move on to clear the next the Taliban are moving back in and destroying any projects created to help the people or preventing any new projects being started.

More combat troops are required to keep ground held so that the other, longer term changes can be made to improve things like providing reliable road networks, power sources, fresh water and so on.

So we do need more combat troops for sure, it's just that that's not all we need - we need to back it up with real changes to make people's lives better. My comments regarding Germany's politicians using the excuse of the past to avoid combat operations is also not based on speculation but fact, as we have had on the news here in the UK German politicians stating this as the very reason they are not interested in combat so it does seem to be a very real feeling that they don't want to get involved because they're afraid of how people might see them rather than because they don't think it'll help.

If Germany didn't feel troops would help then there's little reason for them to be there at all. But also the idea that the Afghan people don't want us there seems false, documentary after documentary from countless impartial sources shows that most Afghans want peace above anything else, but as a secondary objective would love to have peace without the Taliban being the ones imposing it - they would much rather it comes from us. The people do want us there, they just want us to do the job properly and it's that that we're not doing. A lot of current schemes seem to be focussed on actually using the Afghan people who want us there to fight with us - I remember reading a very recent article on the BBC about Afghan militia that were fighting against the Taliban.

It's not like the soviet occupation or the 19th century British occupation where the majority of the people didn't want what we were imposing, your average Afghan is on our side this time round and that's the fundamental difference and why it's wrong to make a direct comparison to past invasions. In the 19th century the British were there to impose colonial rule, in the 80s, the Russians were there to bolster an unpopular communist government, neither had the support of the general population.

It's also worth pointing out that further evidence as to us being wanted there is the fact that Afghanistan is nowhere as messy as Iraq - the only people attacking us and the civilian population are the Taliban as opposed to the various tribes and religious sects fighting each other which would undoubtedly be the case (as it was in Iraq) if the Afghan people weren't aligned in what they want. A lot of people say we're failing in Afghanistan but really, the quality of life across large parts of the country has increased massively and the kind of death tolls we see in Afghanistan are absolutely minimal compared to Iraq. The real problem is that we're stalled and breaking away from that requires more troops, more investment, and more effort to work with the people (rather than accidently killing them all the damn time). The real danger is if we don't break away from that, because then we certainly will see decline.

A suggested increase of the Afghan army to 200,000 troops, another 17,000 troops from the US are going to be a good help, even if it only means we can stem the flow of Taliban from Pakistan by defending Afghanistans borders better.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[morgan_greywolf]

See RFC 3514. :)

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Shakrai]

The Afghan people have been kicking the ass of world powers for decades now, and if they don't want you there, you can't succeed there

Has it occurred to you that they want us there and don't want to go back to life under the Taliban?

Maybe the Germans recognise this.

The Germans, like many other NATO members, apparently don't take their alliance commitments seriously. As an American I find it extremely disappointing that we've staked our blood and treasure on defending the freedom of our NATO Allies for generations and many of them can't even be bothered to send troops without caveats to Afghanistan. You do recall where Article 5 was invoked right?

Apparently the NATO alliance is a one way street. Thanks Europe.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[moronoxyd]

The search protocol names "distribution of porn" (AFAIK not a crime) as the reason.

Well, distribution of porn to underaged people is a crime.
And since Wikileaks has no system of age verification in place (AFAIK) there is atleast some kind of reason.
Plus, child pornography is illegal as well.

Btw, the search was warrantless, citing "Gefahr im Verzug" (an immedeate danger).

And you know that for a fact?
I'm asking because elsewehere in this discussion somebody posted a link to an article that mentions a warrant...

It might be wise to check the facts instead of just claiming something to be true.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[mcgrew]

No, the real reason for the Afghan war is revenge for attacking the US on 9-11. I would have nuked its capitol.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Lars T.]

You must be mistaking Afghanistan with Iraq - but then Americans have problems finding their own country on a map.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[m.ducharme]

I'm surprised at you McGrew, I thought you'd have more sense than that. How would nuking a bunch of innocent people (along with the malefactors) do any good at all? And also, do you have any idea what kind of mess would be created by dropping a nuke on the capitol? I would bet that it'd result in a full-scale, multi-nation nuclear war. All to avenge 3000 people. That would be monstrous.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

toppling a theocratic dictatorship, liberating women from oppression, maybe even hunting down those responsible for 9/11

eh....
I'm an intelligent dude who reads newspapers, watches BBC and votes.
Yet I have No-Fucking-Clue what we are doing in Afghanistan.
I suspect $leader has No-Fucking-Clue what we are doing there either.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, someone's been into the kool-aid. The invasion/war/whatever-you-want-to-call-it was a unilateral declaration of war by America, I don't see that Europe should be impelled to involve itself in a fight that doesn't concern it. Not that I'm saying Afghanistan was an unjust war, after all, it was home of the group who'd done 9/11. But that doesn't mean that any NATO member is necessarily inclined to act on a fight between two countries that doesn't involve them, and it especially isn't inclined to act on Iraq (which was not in direct response to an attack on America, don't even try to pretend that it was). Besides, America doesn't exactly have a great track record of helping their allies just-because. Did America join WW2 before it became their problem (see: Pearl Harbour)? Are you critical of the nearly 2 years America spent doing nothing whilst the Nazis were rampaging across Europe? They almost certainly would not have involved themselves if it weren't for Pearl Harbour. And how come you didn't help Australia liberate East Timor outside of UN obligations? We're your allies, we've fought alongside you in the past (WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq/Afghanistan - though that was after East Timor). And you talk about a one way street. Hypocrite.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[m.ducharme]

I don't think they want us there anymore, the news from Afghanistan isn't so good these days, and the soldiers on the ground are reporting more and more resistance among the civilians.

They were happy to receive us there (I'll concede that, though I don't think it's that simple) but they're not thrilled with taking "collateral damage" and are starting to resist our "liberation" more and more.

Also, several Nato commanders in the region (and our own Prime Minister, who's a conservative and a hawk) have basically said that we can't win in Afghanistan through combat, and need to start thinking seriously about changing the mission or getting out, or both.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[mdwh2]

And since Wikileaks has no system of age verification in place (AFAIK) there is atleast some kind of reason.

They don't host images.

Even if they did - is it illegal in Germany to have any kind of adult site that doesn't have age verification? (This isn't the case in many other western countries such as the US or UK - hell, here you can walk into a newsagent and pick up newspapers and magazines on the shelf showing such stuff...)

But moreover, are you suggesting that merely linking to any kind of adult site is illegal? That would catch a lot of people!

Plus, child pornography is illegal as well.

Thank you, Captain Obvious, but they aren't guilty of that.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the north atlantic treaty. Everything in your post is bullshit. An attack on one treaty member is an attack on all - that's the entire point of the treaty. Dumbass.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you cant compare the current invasion with the previous ones, but to say they have the support of "the people" is flat out wrong. They HAD the support of the people, but then they started to burn the poppy-fields. Big mistake, when there are no alternatives in that area. They left the farmers destitute and in the hands of the local warlords and/or Taliban. That's what causing the slow loss of support and thus territory.

Even worse than that is the fact that the US forces aligned with the scum that brought a lot of misery upon Afghanistan in the first place (the northern coalition, raping and shelling its way through the countryside) and guess what: most people don't like them, and neither do they like the allied forces that support them. This was a very costly mistake.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[david_thornley]

Did America join WW2 before it became their problem (see: Pearl Harbour)? Are you critical of the nearly 2 years America spent doing nothing whilst the Nazis were rampaging across Europe? They almost certainly would not have involved themselves if it weren't for Pearl Harbour.

Yes, the US joined WWII before Pearl Harbor (which is the correct spelling). In mid-September 1941, the USN was ordered to wage war against the Germans. The USN didn't do so well (had some destroyers torpedoed, didn't damage any U-boats), but the USN was in the war. Roosevelt had been pushing US actions in favor of Britain for some time, and would have gotten the US fully into the war eventually (perhaps when better prepared - in the first six months to a year after US full entry, the US was less helpful than when the US was neutral).

As far as doing less than you think should have been done, did you know that it was Chamberlain's policy to keep the US at arm's length? Chamberlain recognized that the US would push decolonialization, and preferred to forego more US assistance rather than accept more pressure to break up the Empire. Churchill's policy after the fall of France was considerably different, but the US was then swift to ditch legal neutrality in support of the British.

History's more complicated than the rah-rah popular histories of $COUNTRY will tell you.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

Has it occurred to you that having us or the Taliban aren't the only options these people are considering?

Just because the poor bastards don't want the Taliban back doesn't mean they want to hand over control to us either. It could be they just want their own government that isn't the Taliban.

In all honesty I've not seen a single interview where a citizen says they still want our soldiers there. I've seen them say they appreciate our motives, our attempt to help them - but every single one of them says they still want us out. They want to control their own destiny, and they don;t want people who don't understand/respect/comply with their culture to be in there messing things up.

It seems fair enough to me. If Scotland was invaded by a dickhead neighbor, then I would appreciate EU support and help - but I'd be buggered if I was going to put up with EU soldiers on the street and EU marshal law, just to stop soldiers on the street and marshal law. In other words we're not gonna swap one group of control freaks for another.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems fair enough to me. If Scotland was invaded by a dickhead neighbor, then I would appreciate EU support and help - but I'd be buggered if I was going to put up with EU soldiers on the street and EU marshal law, just to stop soldiers on the street and marshal law

How would you stop it? You guys gave up all your guns ;)

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Nick Ives]

Afghanistan didn't attack America. The Taliban were very much aware that the USA (and Israel, funnily enough) were responsible for them being able to defeat the USSR in the 80s.

The Taliban initially insisted on being able to try Osama in Afghanistan without US troops setting foot on their soil. Bush insisted that they hand over Osama to them or face invasion so they tried to agree an extradition but it was blocked by Pakistan.

The Taliban, like almost all the other Muslim clerics in the world (except for certain notable mentalists), condemned the attack on the World Trade Centre.

This is the real stupidity behind Bush's invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban were reasonably pro-US - despite being clerical fascists and condemning our way of life, they didn't want to invade or kill us and privately acknowledged the debt they owed the US. Now Russia is playing the same trick we pulled against them - how do you think the Taliban has re-acquired large amounts of arms and came into a position to attack our forces?

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[godless dave]

Many Germans think the best way to do something useful in Afghanistan is to stay the hell out of Afghanistan.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Rich0]

Typical approach used to circumvent democracy. Make almost EVERYTHING a crime. Then when you want to punish somebody for a behavoir which isn't illegal you can instead get them with some statute nobody has ever heard of.

Get a random tip that somebody's home is being used to manufacture drugs? Too flimsy for a warrant? No problem - just walk down the street and notice they have a crack in their sidewalk (violation of local ordnance). Then knock on their door to let them know about it. Once their door is open you notice something inside (maybe what looks like a copied DVD, or a DVD player that might play region-unlocked disks, or maybe you "smell solvents," or whatever). Then you continue to expand your invasion one step at a time until you've searched the entire house.

Likewise - maybe full thermal imaging of houses isn't legally admissable without a warrant. No problem - just do the imaging and find out where the homes of interest are. Then you go up to the house and follow the process above to find admissible evidence. You don't even bring up the thermal imaging in court.

Unfortunately, search and seizure seems more like a game these days than a real protection of privacy. Authorities are constantly stretching the bondaries of what they can get away with...

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Hurricane78]

is it illegal in Germany to have any kind of adult site that doesn't have age verification?

Yes. As perverse as it sounds. It is. But you can go to the kiosk, and buy porn anyway.

I know this, because I worked at a large internet portal with a porn section. We had to close it down, back then.
It was initiated by some fundamentalist mothers organization.
It is called PostIdent, and it works like this: You have to go to the post office, with your ID card, to prove that you are 18, and to sign the contract to get a PostIdent ID.
Of course nobody goes to the post office so say that he wants to watch porn on the internet.

In Germany, is is law, that porn sites have to lock their sites with PostIdent.

Of course it is major bullshit, because you can simply host your site in another country, or go to another site if you search for it.

I guess that's one additional reason, why they want to have blacklists.

I wonder, if those politicans never fapped to porn magazines when they were 13.
With the mothers, it is clear. They had no need for porn, because they could get sex anytime and anywhere anyway, as soon as boys in their age started to want it.

So the source of all this is pure ignorance.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Hurricane78]

Well, my uncle is the head of the union of Afghanis in Germany. And according to him, it went like this:

There was an evil dictator king, that ruled Afghanistan.
Then the Taliban removed him, which brought much joy to most Afghanis.
The Taliban then became just as evil. But mostly only to non-believers. Which is not such a big problem in Afghanistan. They are very religious anyway.
The USA then removed the Taliban, and put the king back in place. People hate him, and this is not going to change.

So now, instead of only punishing you for not being religious enough, now you can be punished for anything again.

The problem is, that Afghanistan, and Iraq, are clan hierarchies. They all belong to a clan. People there have a hierarchy of trust.
You can't create a democracy there. Because they will vote for their clan leaders anyway.

So what you get is a parliament of all the clan leaders and the now hated king, bashing their heads over the same shit, that they fought each other over for the last centuries.
It changes nothing. If it does, then it only makes things worse.

If you want to imagine how Afghanistan works, think of the people and organizational structures of the USA, Russia, France, and some other countries, in one single country. Merged all over the place. They often do not like each other. But you can't separate them by splitting the land. They live right next to each other, and they will not move.

The only thing you can do is give them education and to actually have the free time to learn stuff. Because only this this gives them the ability to resolve their differences, which they do not have now! (After generations of war, they only know hate and war.) And it removes extremist religious movement like the Taliban too.
But with the USA, this will not happen. Because the USA -- please do not take offense here -- can't even resolve the religious and educational problems in their own country.

Oh, and my father was a mujaheddin and son of a city leader btw. If you saw Rambo 3, you saw what his life looked like. Including the bullet-proof Russian helicopters and Stinger rocket launchers.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[m.ducharme]

Thanks for this, it's good to hear and learn more about what's really going on in Afghanistan, now and in the past. I'd heard a lot of this through our own media here, but it's better to have confirmation that's closer to the source.

Also, I'm not from the US, I'm from Canada, so I can't take offence to your statement about the US religious and educational problems.

So, speaking as a Canadian, whose country also has troops in Afghanistan, my question is (and it's a serious question, I'd really like to know):

What do you think the solution is? Do you think increasing the West's military power there is going to do the job? Or should we be putting money and people into infrastructure development instead of soldiery? Or do we all just get out and let the Afghans work it out on their own? I'm really curious, and I hope you can tell me your thoughts.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[mpe]

But none of these issues were mentioned during the search. The search protocol names "distribution of porn" (AFAIK not a crime) as the reason. It's fairly obvious that the reason for the search are the leaked filter lists of various countries. The home of a German blogger linking to the lists on WikiLeaks has already been searched. So has the home of a person maintaining a website linking to the blog post.

I wonder if they would have taken anything like this level of action in a case involving a spammer, scammer or botnet operator. Especially if it involved something in another country...

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[mcgrew]

It was a completely irrational, emotional response.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Tom]

It seems hypocritical that they're not willing to perform combat operations in Afghanistan because of fears this will make people link it to it's Nazi past in being seen as an oppressive force

Nonsense. I've not heard that as a reason once, and I live in Germany.

The actual reason is that anyone who fights a land war in Afghanistan has completely lost his mind. Ok, in the case of Bush Jr. there wasn't much to lose in the first place, but still. Pretty much nobody has ever "won" in Afghanistan in any meaningful sense of the word, and that's if you go back 500+ years in history.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

The Taliban, like almost all the other Muslim clerics in the world (except for certain notable mentalists), condemned the attack on the World Trade Centre.

Do you have a cite for this? If not, STFU.

This is the real stupidity behind Bush's invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban were reasonably pro-US - despite being clerical fascists and condemning our way of life, they didn't want to invade or kill us and privately acknowledged the debt they owed the US.

Wrong answer. The stupidity of the invasion was using proxy soldiers (so-called warlords on the payola) to do our bidding. Within 90 days of 9/11 there should have been 150k pair of US boots on the ground searching for bin Laden and his cronies.

As far as Pakistan goes, add them to the nuclear targeting list. If they want to be a big boy nuclear power and harbor bin Laden, treat them like one.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[timq]

Germany isn't engaging in active combat activity in Afghanistan because the Grundgesetz (the german constitution) is quite strict about when, how and why the country can engage in a war, and the current engagement is already stretching it by a considerable margin.

(The GG sure is a wonderful piece of work, and that is mostly thanks to the WW II allies.)

The raid still stinks though.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

And why do we care about Afghanistan? Why are we there? Why not Burma? Or North Korea? Why? WHY?

We need to abandon the imperialist doctrine.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[jeti]

Btw, the search was warrantless, citing "Gefahr im Verzug" (an immedeate danger).

And you know that for a fact?
I'm asking because elsewehere in this discussion somebody posted a link to an article that mentions a warrant...

It might be wise to check the facts instead of just claiming something to be true.

The prosecution claims that a search warrant existed. However, if you look at the official search protocol (large PDF), you can see that "Gefahr im Verzuge" is checked. Look at the top right corner.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[DarKlajid]

Sorry..
"Citation needed".

Your opinion is _vastly_ different from mine: Military intervention is almost never useful at all.

Neither is backed up yet.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[DarKlajid]

It's a poor "Alliance", where _offensive_ actions have to be backed up by all members of the treaty.
See - there are good reasons to call that action "necessary", but about the same number of reasons to call this a major mistake.
Sidenote: You DO understand that the NATO treaty is about _defense_, right? Invading a country for immoral/suspicious reasons is not covered. Sorry.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[mjwx]

So we do need more combat troops for sure,

One more big push, that's all we need to push the huns out of france^w^w^w^w Taliban out of Afghanistan. Your entire post read like a WWI era general requesting more troops for another suicidal run at enemy lines. Remember that the Soviets had the same idea back in the 80's, also the same thing was tried by the US back in Vietnam. Both of those campaigns were failures because both failed to take in the most important factor, the needs and desires of the people.

You dont need more troops or engineers, what is need in Afghanistan is trust, the US had this trust when they were helping out the Northern Alliance but lost it when the US invaded Iraq illegitimately. No-one in the Arab world objected when the Taliban were taken down because not even other Muslims particularly liked the Taliban and Afghanistan was already in the middle of a civil war anyway, the US had the chance to make real inroads for peace for the Afghan people but then threw it all away in an ill fated campaign in Iraq. Now to the middle east (and far west Asia) the US has lost all trust that it once had and is viewed as little more then conquering bullies, until this image is changed there is no hope for salvaging Afghanistan let alone Iraq no matter how many troops you throw at them.

your average Afghan is on our side this time round and that's the fundamental difference and why it's wrong to make a direct comparison to past invasions.

I suggest you read up on Afghan history, there hasn't been a successful occupation in hundreds of years. The average Afghan was on the side of the Northern Alliance back before the ill fated Iraqi campaign, but when the Iraq invasion happened the opinion of the US changed, your motives became questioned and the Taliban remnants seized upon this. Right now, after 8 years of occupation and 5 years of being ignored by western powers they are really starting to ask themselves, "was the Taliban right". Life has not improved for the Afghani's and this is due a lot to the fact that the US is not a force to be reckoned with any more, a group of Iraqi insurgents proved that. The thing is, that if the occupation of Iraq never took place, the illusion of US invincibility would still be in place and the average Afghan would not be questioning your motivation.

If Afghanistan can be saved from descending into Taliabanism or Anarchy al a Somalia, which is more likely to happen with the number of warlords that have already established significant power bases, it can only done by removing that which they find distasteful, by that I mean that the US needs to take a back seat to all significant decisions. This problem cannot be solved by US methods, Afghans need to decide for themselves. The only way that Afghanistan can recover is if enough Afghani's decide to do it and right now they are divided between the Northern Alliance (interim government), local warlords (they've got the guns) and the recovering Taliban, the only thing the US is doing at the moment is driving the Afghan people away from the Northern Alliance and interim government by acting as an occupation force.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[fractoid]

The search protocol names "distribution of porn" (AFAIK not a crime) as the reason. It's fairly obvious that the reason for the search are the leaked filter lists of various countries.

Just because the list of URLs is a leak that the government is trying to suppress in Australia doesn't mean it's not also a huge fat list of active kiddie pron links. I'm pretty sure that if I published a picture of the king of Thailand doing a 12-year-old, I wouldn't expect the fact that lese majeste is a crime there to protect me from the fact that distributing kiddie pron is a crime here.

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[fractoid]

Military intervention absolutely is useful, the issue is that it's not being backed up by the improvements to peoples lives through engineering projects and so forth that must go with it.

<troll>No, the issue is that most cultures in that whole region are batshit insane and have thousands of years of blood feud built up against everyone around them. Once you get rid of the fundamental religious nutjobs the problem will go away.</troll>

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[HeadlessNotAHorseman]

>>Pretty much nobody has ever "won" in Afghanistan in any meaningful sense of the word, and that's if you go back 500+ years in history.

All the more reason to fight - we are due for a win any day now!

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Hurricane78]

I think boosting education is your best bet. But you have to be very patient, and wait at least 20 years. (Until the educated can start to gain power, and it becomes the mindset of the people.)
Remember, that the Taliban massively destroyed schools and schoolbooks. (Educated people are much harder to fall for them.)

Millitary and diplomacy (why restrict to one of them?) can help, if they can keep thinks quiet, so people will be able to pursuit other careers than fighting. But Afghanistan is so big and so complex, that this is nearly impossible. But only nearly. So it really depends on how you execute the task.

(Oh, I hope my English is understandable. It is my third language of four.)

Re:German "CIA" are still enraged

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't realise German secret services were involved in that sort of thing.

Oh they are. Additionally nearly every member of the political elite is either stupid or evil. Here are some examples:

1.) Germany's police is building a "Bundestrojaner" (A federal trojan horse).

2.) Programming and distributing software for scanning security risks in networks is illegal.

3.) They are thinking about banning cryptography.

4.) They want to ban "Killerspiele" (3d-shooter) because they are bad for kids. Considering the fact that those games are to be sold only to people that are 18 or older and that you cannot buy any game actually showing blood, this is plain stupid.

5.) The Minister of the Interior says the Basic Constitutional Law is getting in his way.

6.) The Federal Attorney General said, that she never used a browser at all.

Actually, I believe they learned a lot from former STASI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi) members.

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[Anonymous Coward]

She is an ugly, fat *fucking* pig. Check out her disgusting fat face here.[http://www.eugenia.co.uk/images/eugenia.jpg]

Here is her lame shit bio:

Name: Eugenia Loli-Queru [AKA FAT PIG STUPID BITCH]

Title: Editor-in-Chief [Editor? HAHAHAHA. That's a laugh. Cant spell or speak and is not technical.]

Email: eugenia@osnews.com [fat.pig@goatse.cx]

Personal website: http://www.eugenia.co.uk/

Birthday: 24th May, 1973

Current residence: Foster City (San Francisco Bay Area), CA, USA

Short biography: I worked for 2 years at BeNews, serving the BeOS and its community, and before that I was contributing as a news editor for a well known Gaming news site for about 8 months and I also co- held a fan site (LandOfEden) in the early development days of Lionhead's Black'n'White. For more information about me, you can always check my homepage.

I am Greek and english is not my native language. We do OSNews for fun (however, OSNews takes most of my time every day), so if you have a problem with my spelling and grammar either a) do not come back (spare us and save your time too) b) send me a proofread version of the article in question.

Whining about something I can't radically improve overnight, is not an option.
[osnews.com]

I have to agree. And now for posterity's sake I will post a fine collection of Eugenia treatises.

Ok. I am really getting tired of Slashdot reposting the crap rag OSNEWS on here. Please, PLEASE stop "editors". I don't know which of you has a fetish for Eugenia Loli, but this is supposed to be a Nerds site, not a technically impaired idiot site. Please, I implore you, please, STOP RE-POSTING OSNews *Crap* here. Here stuff is devoid of technical cross examinations, rife with conjecture and poor spelling and grammar, and she does what has long been disallowed here, the censoring of Anonymous Cowards. It is bad enough Slashdot isn't critically edited or reviewed, but in the absence of recourse by a commenting public free from censorship and suppression, OSNews is a totalitarian one way street. Please consider that she is likely to be getting kickback to review and announce things, and with her one way system, she could very well be lying to suit the needs of her underwriters without having recourse.

Hi there fat fucking pig lard ;p How are you you sweaty ugly fat Greek pig?

Why does anyone listen to Eugenia fat pig. she is a fucking cunt. Did you ever read her shit in OSNews? she censors out fucking everyone. its worse than the cunt moderation here on Slashdot. dude, it is a sad day here on Slashdot when you listen to a stupid fat bitch who is clearly dumber than any Ziff (Sith Davis) Davis idiot, and dare i say it, even fucking lamer than Jon the Jerkoff Katz.

Eugenia Loli needs to exposed. I will post 3 articles that show how fascist the Greeks can be, and that people like Eugenia perpetrate. Then I will cover My Big Fat Greek Wedding, with Fat being the operative word. Then some random Eugenia quotes. I hate you Eugenia, for being a fascist at OSNEWS. You are a pathetic waif who can not accept dissent, and you dictate to your small and withering community. I hope you get ovarian cancer.

Fat Eugenia Loli's Friends Ban all electronic games by mistake. Its people like Eugenia Loli that show that the formerly great state of Greece has eroded into a festering inbred, stupid hairy totalitarian fucks like herself. Now is the fatty greases sweltering out of her cellulite that makes it seem like Grease would be a more apropro name than Greece.

The Night Defender Fat Eugenia Loli Fat

Sweating and farting nervously on the verge of mental meltdown, ELQ reloads each of her precious OSNews pages, making sure all is well. Fifty Internet Explorer windows are open in W

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[Anonymous Coward]

Tsarkon Reports 9 Step Yoda Grease

9 steps to greasing your anus for Yoda Doll Insertion!
v 4.95.0
$YodaBSD: src/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/yodanotes/9stepprocess.sgml,v 4.95.0 2009/03/23 01:04:20 tsarkon Exp $

1. Defecate. Preferably after eating senna, ex lax, prunes, cabbage, pickled eggs, and Vietnamese chili garlic sauce. To better enhance the pleasure of this whole process, defecation should be performed in the Return of the Jedi wastebasket for added pleasure.
2. Wipe ass with witch hazel, which soothes horrific burns. (Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda certifies that his lips, raw like beaten flank steak from nearly continuous analingus with dogs, are greatly soothed by witch hazel.)
3. Prime anus with anal ease. (Now Cherry Flavored for those butthole lick-o-phillic amongst you - very popular with 99% of the Slashdotting public!)
4. Slather richly a considerable amount of Vaseline and/or other anal lubricants into your rectum at least until the bend and also take your Yoda Doll , Yoda Shampoo bottle or Yoda soap-on-a-rope and liberally apply the lubricants to the Doll/Shampoo/Soap-on-a-rope.
5. Put a nigger do-rag on Yoda's head so the ears don't stick out like daggers!
6. Make sure to have a mechanism by which to fish Yoda out of your rectum, the soap on the rope is especially useful because the retrieval mechanism is built in.
7. Pucker and relax your balloon knot several times actuating the sphincter muscle in order to prepare for what is to come.
8. Slowly rest yourself onto your Yoda figurine. Be careful, he's probably bigger than the dicks normally being shoved up your ass!
9. Gyrate gleefully in your computer chair while your fat sexless geek nerd loser fat shit self enjoys the prostate massage you'll be getting. Think about snoodling with the Sarlaac pit. Read Slashdot. Masturbate to anime. Email one of the editors hoping they will honor you with a reply. Join several more dating services - this time, you don't select the (desired - speaks English) and (desired - literate). You figure you might get a chance then. Order some fucking crap from Think Geek. Get Linux to boot on a Black and Decker Appliance. Wish you could afford a new computer. Argue that cheap-ass discount bin hardware works 'just as well' as the quality and premium hardware because you can't afford the real stuff. Make claims about how Linux rules. Compile a kernel on your 486SX. Claim to hate Windows but use it for World of Warcraft. Admire Ghyslain's courage in making that wonderful Star Wars movie. Officially convert to the Jedi religion. Talk about how cool Mega Tokyo is. Try and make sure you do your regular 50 story submissions to Slashdot, all of which get rejected because people who aren't fatter than CowboyNeal can't submit. Fondle shrimpy penis while making a Yoda voice and saying, use the force, padawan, feeel the foooorce, hurgm. Yes. Yes. When 900 years you reach, a dick half as big you will not have.

All in a days

Whack-a-mole

[Dracophile]

To us, it looks like a game of whack-a-mole. To the authorities, however, it may look like a hydra, and I worry that they might start acting like it. If they haven't already.

Re:tsarkon reports i saw this on twitter and redif

[AHuxley]

Was in firehose a few times, just only now on slashdot main page.
YRO issues seem to just drop off.

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[Anonymous Coward]

So I came home from work the other day to discover my cat mittens laying on the floor. His breathing was very shallow and his eyes were very glassy. When I approached him I noticed a belt tied around his arm and both a syringe and a bent spoon laying beside him. Despite all his promises to the contrary, my beloved Mittens has started shooting up smack again!

Fortunately the paramedics showed up quickly and gave him some naloxone which saved him. Unfortunately the problem of my cat being addicted to heroin still remains. Last week he sold my stereo and this weekend Mittens offered to perform oral sex on me in exchange for a hit.

I love my cat and want to see him off this horrible drug. Unfortunately he won't stop on his own! Mittens says he can quit anytime he wants to and becomes combative when I force the issue. I'm tired of seeing him throw his life away. He could've been a great mouser, one of the best before he got hooked.

Can anyone recommend a way to get my cat off heroin? It would be much appreciated.

Also, this must be said; I dont want to fuck my poor cat mittens. I love him dearly. IF he offered oral sex as a hit, and I would never compromise the sanctity and trust of our brotherly (non gay, non sexual) relationship! I thank youall for your genuine concern for the safety of my genitals with regard to animal contact with sandpapery cat tongues, I assure your that fornicating with animals is not on the repitoire!

Please, if you know how to help poor mittens get off the smack, please, for the love of god help. Its mittens darkest time, and I dont want this to turn out like that beefy rugby guy who died on junk in Trainspotting. I dont want me or mittens to swim in toilets either. Please, help!!

What do the German's have to hide? Hmmm

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Apparently the German's have something they want to hide. Power to the people.

Re:What do the German's have to hide? Hmmm

[thhamm]

Power to the people.

nah, in germany, authority questions YOU!

Re:What do the German's have to hide? Hmmm

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I hope that he was able to scream out "FUCKING NAZIS" before they made him disappear.

Re:What do the German's have to hide? Hmmm

[ThePhilips]

Power to the people.

Jedem das Seine?

Re:What do the German's have to hide? Hmmm

[mcgrew]

This is completely offtopic (so mod me so, I'm checking the "no karma bonus" box as well), but would you people PLEASE learn what an apostrophe is for and when (and when NOT) to use it?

Re:What do the German's have to hide? Hmmm

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

The ' is the result of fast posting.

Thoughts go straight to the finger tips like playing an instrument.

funny comic though :)

Re:What do the German's have to hide? Hmmm

[mcgrew]

We all make typoos ;)

Smart Move

[Jane_Dozey]

Smart move, raiding the home of a person involved in a website devoted to leaking crappy behavior by companies and governments. Even smarter citing wishy-washy reasons for doing so. Real smart.

Re:Smart Move

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

It doesnt matter.

Civilians have no rights anyways. That is the great American lie that has been used by the US government, and now all foreign governments, to trick their citizens into believing as if they matter or have any say in anything. It helps calm the rage of the poor and suffering, and gives them hope that one day it might change.

It never will though.

All that matters is the ruling class and wealth.

Its all VIP, and you're not important.

Re:Smart Move

[Anonymous Coward]

Smart move, raiding the home of a person involved in a website devoted to leaking crappy behavior by companies and governments. Even smarter citing wishy-washy reasons for doing so. Real smart.

Yeah, I can't wait until this explodes on the mainstream news!

Oh, wait. It won't, and most people will never hear about it, or about wikileaks.

Re:Smart Move

[Anonymous Coward]

It has nothing to do with America. If you believe that, you need to do some serious reading in a little subject called "history".

Re:Smart Move

[morgan_greywolf]

Civilians have no rights anyways. That is the great American lie that has been used by the US government, and now all foreign governments, to trick their citizens into believing as if they matter or have any say in anything. It helps calm the rage of the poor and suffering, and gives them hope that one day it might change.

While I tend to agree with sentiment of what you're saying, what you are saying is not entirely true, but partly true. Civilians do have rights and the average citizen can evoke change. Look at what happened as a result of the civil rights movement in the 1960s: the end result is that we now have laws that specifically ban discrimination by race, gender and creed. (Not that these laws are always followed, but they do exist and they have produced some good results.)

In the end though, you are right: there is an oligarchy in this country led by the ruling class (read: the very rich and powerful) and though we have rights, they can sometimes be circumvented. It is up to each and every citizen to maintain vigilance and expose the government when it does things that go against our Constitutional rights.

Re:Smart Move

[Anonymous Coward]

Crappy behavior? I'm not sure if that adequately describes the act of oppression.

Crappy behavior is the asshole who cut you off on the road today. Opression is the act of employing physical force against peaceful indivdiuals in order to maintain a pyramid of consolidated political power.

Re:Smart Move

[Anonymous Coward]

If you actually did that and went beyond the myths, you'd actually find that this has much to do with America...

Re:Smart Move

[elrous0]

Yeah, I've done a little reading on that subject and I agree with the GP. There is a wealthy oligarchy in the U.S. just as there is anywhere else. It's somewhat easier to break into this oligarchy today than it once was (with the rise of the bourgeoisie in the modern era, it became possible to join just with wealth--no noble birth or title required). But the basic principle remains throughout history--with the gold comes all the power.

Re:Smart Move

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell us how leaking identities of agents have anything to do with "crappy behavior".

Unless you assume all espionage activities are crappy, or some similarly crazy ideological nonsense.

I'm all for leaking corruption, tax evasion, extortion, etc. but if the leaking of such materials can endanger lives of people, especially in cases where such leaks has nothing to do with "crappy behavior", such as international espionage, wikileaks only has itself to blame.

Re:Smart Move

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I think your example of the 1960's civil rights revolution really never happened. Hear me out:

Slavery took place because wealthy people enslaved blacks, everything was about power. Slavery had come to an end, and by the 60s when so called "civil rights" were won back by the masses, it really amounted to nothing. Those in power did not lose anything by appearing to represent the public. If anything they gained more power and support of the public.

In the big picture of things, everyone not in the ruling class, are treated like slaves. In effect Its no longer about race (which it never really was)... Its about wealth. Slavery was about wealth and power, not race.

Religion is about wealth and power... not god.

If i give you change for a $5 bill, because you need it to make a phone call, in end i still just gave you $5 in change. Nothing really changed except the form or perception.

In the 60's the public may have wanted civil rights, but in the end, they really didnt get it and what they got was slide of hand.

Re:Smart Move

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Exactly. I'm not saying America started this. This has existed as long as "history".

It just so happens that America became the pinnacle of hopes and dreams for freedom... and it was created out of that, perhaps with the best intentions but it ultimately was marketed and sold around the world and others bought into the concept as well... and It really amounts to nothing more than a dream because it never truely was a reality.

Perhaps the creation of America was that dream come true but it was merely a beginning, and not set in stone. It clearly is still not a reality. As many of the founders have said (and i'm paraphrasing), America is an experiment, neither given, nor sold... Its earned, daily. Its a constant struggle to push back our own human nature which is to control each other while at the same time our hypocrisy demands freedom from each other.

The founders referred to America as an experiment that requires enduring effort because they recognized man's nature to abuse power.

Just because we have a government, and a country name with a flag and some colors.... does not mean we are at all that we have fulfilled this experiment. If anything we are all failing it greatly.

Carnies and Rubes. When the carnival comes to town, the villagers think they can win, and they spend lots of money trying to win that really nice stuffed animal. Most of them end up winning cheap prizes that no one wants, and the few that do win those nice stuffed animals... they find out they're just cheap stuffed animals made poorly when they touch them. Its all a show, and the Carnies are making money hand over fist.

Re:Smart Move

[Anonymous Coward]

Civilians have no rights anyways. That is the great American lie that has been used by the US government, and now all foreign governments

Ok, hold on just a damn second.

Last time I checked China has been doing this type of crap for a couple thousand years. How exactly do you lay the blame for this behavior at the feet of the Americans? They've only been around for a couple hundred years. If anything all they did was follow the example of the British.

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I hate humans.

Seriously... Will all of you fucking die already?

Dual citizenship sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I've hardly stopped being ashamed for being American and already I am becoming ashamed for being German again.

More seriously, what the fuck did the police think they're doing? They are persecuting people for exposing censorship.

I hope that Wikileaks makes a noise and stirs up a shit-storm, so that people get fired and sued out of their pants for this. If we don't nip fascism in the bud we'll end up right back in the "good old days".

Re:Dual citizenship sucks

[morgan_greywolf]

More seriously, what the fuck did the police think they're doing? They are persecuting people for exposing censorship.

Well, you're a German citizen, right? Germany has, last I checked, a constitutional federal, parliamentary representational democratic republican form of government, correct? Does the Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland not guarantee your basic rights?

Well, then stand up for them and write your representatives in parliament. Tell them you, as a German citizen, won't stand for the rights of citizens being violated! Tell them that Germany is no longer a gestapo state. The Geheime Staatspolizei is no more! And you won't stand for having it recreated!

Re:Dual citizenship sucks

[dunkelfalke]

the problem is, they don't care.
if they write back, they write something along the lines of "i am a professional politician, i was elected so i know better than you what's best for the country".

don't believe me? read it up yourself

Re:Dual citizenship sucks

[Arancaytar]

I was elected so I know better than [the guys who elected me]

A delicious irony lies in that sentence. :)

Re:Dual citizenship sucks

[True Grit]

I was elected so I know better than [the guys who elected me]

A delicious irony lies in that sentence. :)

And the bitter tradegy is that it doesn't just apply to Germany, but everywhere that politicians/parties manipulate gullible/uninformed citizens for their vote.

Whack-a-mole, or B. Streisand effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikileaks has published censorship lists for Australia, Thailand, Denmark and other countries.

And all safely bookmarked and backed up.

Thanks, wikileaks!

signed,
a
fan

Unbelievable...

[owlnation]

I would have thought the very first post would have been Godwin-ed. Many posts so far and still no mention of Nazis -- and for once it's probably appropriate to mention them here.

Re:Unbelievable...

[Anonymous Coward]

#Deutschland Deutschland uber alles#

come on! sing vit me

Re:Unbelievable...

[thhamm]

Many posts so far and still no mention of Nazis

we don't need nazis anymore over here. we can fuck up just by ourselves now.

Re:Unbelievable...

[Anonymous Coward]

we don't need nazis anymore over here. we can fuck up just by ourselves now.

Er, the nazis were yourselves. They didn't arrive in a spaceship.

Re:Unbelievable...

[msuarezalvarez]

No, they were not. The immense majority of currently living Germans were not even planned at the time of the Nazis. Guilt is not inherited, you know...

Re:Unbelievable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, so no more "Original Sin" bylines ? ;-)

Re:Unbelievable...

[Cowmonaut]

First post WAS Godwin-ed. Rightfully so judging by the way they're acting. Governments in general suck because the people that want that kind of power and authority are not the kind of people you want with that kind of power and authority. But since they're the only ones going for it . . .

Re:Unbelievable...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they were not. The immense majority of currently living Germans were not even planned at the time of the Nazis. Guilt is not inherited, you know...

Are you sure all those Germans have been baptised?

Re:Unbelievable...

[dwarfsoft]

So does this mean that you are equating Hitler to Adam... does this then make Herman Goering his Eve? *shudder*.

Re:Unbelievable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Guilt is not inherited, you know...

Well not guilt per se but methinks we Germans have a certain obligation of making sure Auschwitz will never happen again, at least not on German grounds.

Anyway - what happens here makes me wonder. It's all pretty hysteric (think McCarthy era) and neo-fascist. The whole activity of unwarranted raids ("Gefahr im Verzug", dass ich nicht lache!) is only about putting pressure on people to calm the loudest ones.

I just spent 25 to Wikileaks a minute ago.

Re:Unbelievable...

[internerdj]

Guilt is not inherited, you know...
If only this were true. Everyone needs a scapegoat and if people near your recent ancestors did anything monumentally bad and your ancestors weren't the victim, then you will be forced by society to wear the sins of whatever group it is until the outrage has died down. It doesn't even matter if you are better towards the victim group than most of society in general.
This runs along the lines of why the US attacked Iraq. Iraq was our scapegoat for a notoriously difficult to find perpetrator of a real crime against the US. Not that Saddam was a stand-up guy, but America needed someone to take it out on that they could actually put their hands on.

Re:Unbelievable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it is and probably should be. As usual, The Onion makes a valid point:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nations_blacks_creeped_out_by_all

Re:Unbelievable...

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to improve your reading comprehension. The latter half of the quote

we don't need nazis anymore over here. we can fuck up just by ourselves now.

implies "we couldn't fuck up just by ourselves in the past", i.e. that something external was required to fuck up. And the first half of the quote implies that the something external was the nazis.

My point that the nazis weren't something external but were "yourselves", i.e. the people of Germany, is entirely correct. The fact that the current population of Germany is not the nazis and isn't responsible for them is beside the point. But if we don't understand that the vast majority of nazis were people just like us then we've failed to learn anything useful from the holocaust.

But maybe this is a bit subtle. If English isn't your first language I understand your incomprehension.

Re:Unbelievable...

[mcgrew]

Guilt is not inherited, you know...

Tell that to American blacks.

Re:Unbelievable...

[fallen1]

... at the time of the Nazis. Guilt is not inherited, you know...

Italics added by me. You would think that most people would realize this simple statement that guilt is not passed from generation to generation. I might be starting a flame war but the Germans (unless their actions dictate it) do not deserve to be treated as Nazis, just as caucasians/whites from the USA do not deserve to be treated as slave-owners, just as every black person does not deserve to be treated as a thug/gangster, just as every Oriental person does not deserve to be treated as a math genius, and just as every other racial/ethnic stereotype does not deserve to exist.

But they do. It is one of our human failings that, in some respects, the internet is breaking down and I for one am supremely glad of that fact. Unfortunately, we have Governments stepping in to shut down, block, black list, and filter the internet and it always boils down to one reason - power by control. I'm not saying we're headed to a utopia, but one can hope. I think we are more on our way to a global village that breaks down and lessens the control of governments power over their people. The free flow of information, even incorrect information, scares those in power because it gives control to the people. An informed populace is a well-armed populace. The power of knowledge cannot be denied and the more information an individual has, the better he/she can take charge of their lives.

Keep this firmly in mind when someone, anyone, tells you that a specific piece of information must be kept away from the people for reasons of security. Or for the "good of the children". Or for any of the myriad of other reasons those in power seek to deny the people they represent - and are supposed to maintain the freedoms of - the key points behind a law, or a treaty, or anything that is of consequence.

I'll stop my rant now and jump off this soap box. I think I hear the black 'copters hovering outside now...

Re:Unbelievable...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they were not. The immense majority of currently living Germans were not even planned at the time of the Nazis. Guilt is not inherited, you know...

Then why does the international media still side with Palestinians shooting rockets at Israel, as if they are defending some "homeland" that their parents heard about as kids?

Re:Unbelievable...

[Nick Ives]

You're missing the point. The Nazi party wasn't just something beamed into Germany from outer-space, it represented real social / political feeling that people felt they had the right to express; something like that just doesn't go away.

Fascism isn't unique to Germany and it doesn't always declare itself as such. We have the BNP here in the UK and both our main parties (Labour & Tory) have, in certain cases, adopted far-right rhetoric on things immigration, race and human rights in order to appeal to BNP voters.

An AC below made the point that the Nazis were ordinary people just like us. That's the key to understanding fascism, the idea that "the end justifies the means" or that it's OK to ignore human rights because we're the "good guys" is what lead the the atrocities not just of the Nazi holocaust but also Stalin's gulags.

Re:Unbelievable...

[Anonymous Coward]

My ancestor was a slave in 1820 so therefore you owe me a living even though it's 2009.

Unlike all the others came to America by paying their passage to America and worked to make something of themselves, we blacks expect you to give us everything because of something that happened back in the early 1800's.

Re:Unbelievable...

[Cederic]

At a guess, Eva would be his Eve.

Sorry, but if you're going to try a joke, at least avoid the obviously shite ones.

Re:Unbelievable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Guilt is not inherited, you know...

Tell that to American blacks.

Boy, you had better button up.

Re:Unbelievable...

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahahhahahaa, n1

Re:Unbelievable...

[syousef]

No, they were not. The immense majority of currently living Germans were not even planned at the time of the Nazis. Guilt is not inherited, you know...

I hear a lot of people aren't planned either.

Re:Unbelievable...

[MadMidnightBomber]

The last American black guy I was talking to had done his time in the Marines - not only had he worked really hard to get where he was, he was also a genuinely nice guy.

So fuck you.

Re:Unbelievable...

[Lost Race]

Well not guilt per se but methinks we Germans have a certain obligation of making sure Auschwitz will never happen again, at least not on German grounds.

Maybe the next Auschwitz will happen on Polish grounds instead. Oh, wait...

Re:Unbelievable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, so if Germany had taken over half of the countries in Europe, and then attempted to stop the war, a hundred years later guilt would not be inherited?

Re:Unbelievable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Guilt is not inherited, you know...

Tell that to American blacks.

Or christians...

Re:Unbelievable...

[True Grit]

Guilt is not inherited, you know...

Tell that to American blacks.

It was some American whites who felt *guilt*. What *some* American blacks feel is not guilt, but *resentment*, but you're right in that its now become counter-productive to hold onto that resentment for this long.

Of course the guilty always get over their crimes long before their victims get over it, so I'm not at all surprised.

Re:Unbelievable...

[mcgrew]

Or christians

I think you're referring to Jews and Muslims -- Christians are forgiven. You Christian-bashers (and most so-called "Christians" I daresay) would do well to read the first four books of the new testament to see what Christ actually taught.

Hint - it isn't "god hates fags". The actual quote is "God is love". Gays, just like everyone else, are forgiven.

Re:Unbelievable...

[mcgrew]

WTF does that have to do with the fact that the more racist, extremist blacks are trying to get reparations from me for what my anscestors may or may not have done?

You think the guy you're talking about is the only black guy who was ever in the service, or worked hard? WTF is your problem?

Re:Unbelievable...

[mcgrew]

My ancestors were Union soldiers in the Civil War, and before that other of my ancestors were part of the Underground Railroad who risked their lives and freedom freeing your anscestors. Who owes who what, now?

Who's going after who?

[dohzer]

What happened to the whole "Conroy: Go after our source and we'll go for you" thing?
Was their bluff called?

Re:Who's going after who?

[stavros-59]

What happened to the whole "Conroy: Go after our source and we'll go for you" thing? Was their bluff called?

Wikileaks Sweden has the protection of Swedish Law. That's why it's hosted there.

The German authorities must have assumed that an attack in Germany would be more fruitful as Germany has no similar protection of freedom of the press, press sources or whistleblower.

Might be time to donate to keep them available for countries subjected to heavy censorship and control information. Countries like Australia, UK, Germany etc.etc.

Re:Who's going after who?

[TapeCutter]

"Countries like Australia"

Don't belive all that you read on slashdot mate.

Re:Who's going after who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not, in this case?

This whole wikileaks thing is likely centered around an AUSTRALIAN censorship list...

Re:Who's going after who?

[TapeCutter]

"This whole wikileaks thing is likely centered around an AUSTRALIAN censorship list..."

That has not passed the senate and doesn't look like it ever will with the mandatory blacklist intact. And why would an arrest be centered around a list the government claims is fake?

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[L4t3r4lu5]

I've set my profile to browse at +2 so I don't get to read this rubbish.

I still see it. The system is broken.

Further, do not feed the trolls.

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you want Jackie Chan to die too? I'm willing to bet if you want to see Jackie Chan dead you have plans to rape the corpse until the skin slides off the bones like a greasy chicken dumstick. Fuck that dead body raw. Fuck al the skulls in the world! ALL OF THEM. Well, if you are a rice-paddie slanted eyed yellow chink gook or some other form of slat fuck, you have psychotic mass murdering killer in you. You fucking kill-em-all chink fucks. I get sick of all the slanted fucks in theworld like you and the best thing to hope for is a disease which wipes you out based on the slanted-eye mutation that you fuckers have.

POAST CEREAL TIME!

Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Reports

- This just in, March 23 2009 Chinas central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund

- Russia too: It is necessary to work out and adopt internationally recognized standards for macroeconomic and budget policy, which are binding for the leading world economies, including the countries issuing reserve currencies - the Kremlin proposals read.

- President Barak "The Teleprompter" Obama is deeply connected to corruption, Rahm Emanuel (Radical authoritarian Statist whose father was part of the Murderous Civilian Killing Israeli Terrorist Organization known as IRGUN), Connected to Rod Blagojevich (Rahm inherited Rod's federal-congress seat), Connected to Ayers, a man who promotes the concept that civilian collateral damage is ok in a war against freedom, Preacher Jeremiah Wright, who is himself a black-elitist who wants all the people who largely "pay the freight" to suffer, 31 million on food stamps, more blacks are in prison and on food-stamps per capita than anyone else. The problem with Wright is simply this: the facts are "racist."
- Obama: Racist, AIPAC-bootlicker, Corrupted to the bone Chicago style and a Traitor to the US Constitution and a Liar whose real "legal" name could very well be Barry Sotero and an Indonesian citizen (The US does not allow plural citizenship) (If you care, not that it matters anymore under a Lawless Authoritarian Totalitarian Regime, you can see more here at an aggregator; obamacrimes.info )
- Raytheon lobbyist in Pentagon, lots lobbyists getting exemptions even though he promised not to have them.
- Goldman Sachs insider second in command at Treasury. Bumbling tax cheat idiot in "command" of Treasury with 17 positions unfilled as of late March 2009.
- Cabinet has had several nominees and appointees with multiple tax fraud issues.
- Lied about having a new degree of accountability and a SUNSHINE period of new laws, he has signed bills with little or no review at whitehouse.gov as promised.
- Appointed a second amendment violating Rich-pardoning treasonist Eric Holder as AG, the top cop of the USA, a man who helped a fugitive evade justice.
- Has not put a dime in for a single new nuclear power plant but wants to help bridges and roads to promote more driving.
- Obama, Blagojevich and Rahm Emanuel have a LOT to hide. They literally lived next to each other, Rahm had (until being Chairman Obama's Chief of staff) Blagojevich's old federal congressional seat. Blagojevich helped Chairman "The Teleprompter" Obama cheat his way to the Illinois senate by getting other candidates thrown off the ballot in Illinois. Why do you think Blagojevich was so mad? Obama DID owe him, big time. Rahm and Obama are using Blagojevich and trying to cut his head off to keep him away.
- Tony Rezko, Iraqi Arms Dealer Nahdmi Auchi, and of course Aiham Alsammarae. Chairman "The Teleprompter" Hussein Obama is so corrupted its a joke.
- Fools and "useful idiots" twist the pie charts by leaving welfare, workfare, interest on debt, social security, Medicare and Medicaid out a

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for the "truth is out" there huh. You'd rather miss the truth and read a bunch of self-congratulating self-important groupthink from a bunch of near-do-well assholes that burn inordinate amounts of time sucking each other off while accomplishing nothing at work nor at home, or in the bedroom for that matter unless its Anime Porn or Furry related.

Plus Two. I browse at +2. Nobody fucking cares, you fucking tool. You are a fat sexless mediocritomaton who should fill out a donor card and shoot your brains out at the entrance to a hospital so someone can harvest your wasted organs. To think you heart keeps that fuckheaded brain of yours alive.

And now MOAR OF OBAMA'S CORRUPTION ===========
Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Reports

- This just in, March 23 2009 Chinas central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund

- Russia too: It is necessary to work out and adopt internationally recognized standards for macroeconomic and budget policy, which are binding for the leading world economies, including the countries issuing reserve currencies - the Kremlin proposals read.

- President Barak "The Teleprompter" Obama is deeply connected to corruption, Rahm Emanuel (Radical authoritarian Statist whose father was part of the Murderous Civilian Killing Israeli Terrorist Organization known as IRGUN), Connected to Rod Blagojevich (Rahm inherited Rod's federal-congress seat), Connected to Ayers, a man who promotes the concept that civilian collateral damage is ok in a war against freedom, Preacher Jeremiah Wright, who is himself a black-elitist who wants all the people who largely "pay the freight" to suffer, 31 million on food stamps, more blacks are in prison and on food-stamps per capita than anyone else. The problem with Wright is simply this: the facts are "racist."
- Obama: Racist, AIPAC-bootlicker, Corrupted to the bone Chicago style and a Traitor to the US Constitution and a Liar whose real "legal" name could very well be Barry Sotero and an Indonesian citizen (The US does not allow plural citizenship) (If you care, not that it matters anymore under a Lawless Authoritarian Totalitarian Regime, you can see more here at an aggregator; obamacrimes.info )
- Raytheon lobbyist in Pentagon, lots lobbyists getting exemptions even though he promised not to have them.
- Goldman Sachs insider second in command at Treasury. Bumbling tax cheat idiot in "command" of Treasury with 17 positions unfilled as of late March 2009.
- Cabinet has had several nominees and appointees with multiple tax fraud issues.
- Lied about having a new degree of accountability and a SUNSHINE period of new laws, he has signed bills with little or no review at whitehouse.gov as promised.
- Appointed a second amendment violating Rich-pardoning treasonist Eric Holder as AG, the top cop of the USA, a man who helped a fugitive evade justice.
- Has not put a dime in for a single new nuclear power plant but wants to help bridges and roads to promote more driving.
- Obama, Blagojevich and Rahm Emanuel have a LOT to hide. They literally lived next to each other, Rahm had (until being Chairman Obama's Chief of staff) Blagojevich's old federal congressional seat. Blagojevich helped Chairman "The Teleprompter" Obama cheat his way to the Illinois senate by getting other candidates thrown off the ballot in Illinois. Why do you think Blagojevich was so mad? Obama DID owe him, big time. Rahm and Obama are using Blagojevich and trying to cut his head off to keep him away.
- Tony Rezko, Iraqi Arms Dealer Nahdmi Auchi, and of course Aiham Alsammarae. Chairman "The Teleprompter" Hussein Obama is so corrupted its a joke.
- Fools and "useful idiots" twist the pie charts by leaving welfare, workfare

I have to ask

[aepervius]

I have to ask because i don't know. If some secret document from the CIA was leaked onto wikileaks, how quick and how hard would the CIA ask for a retraction ? Do we know ? Did this happen ?

Re:I have to ask

[AHuxley]

The CIA has learned from Daniel Ellsberg.
In Soviet Russia KGB tracks leak back and shoots you.
In Capitalist West CIA gets secret document (counter PSYOPS) leaked by you.
Audiences are then numb to the impact of real leaks :)

Re:I have to ask

[digitalchinky]

From a secret 3 letter agency point of view, it's no secret that the US and German governments share a limited amount of intelligence - google abounds with info on it, so you can bet your backside that anything leaked from either of those governments to wikileaks is going to come under scrutiny at some level. Australia is part of the big 5 (UKUSA), so if I were a betting kind of person I would lay good odds that Australia also has one or two agreements in place with Germany as well, thus the raid.

If the CIA finds any of their secret stuff on wikileaks, what they do about it will depend on the classification and severity of damage that would occur if they did nothing. Has it happened before? I have no idea, but not many people will be talking about it if it did.

The problem with leaking this particular Australian blacklist is that it will reveal to a few key people exactly how certain things got on that list in the first place. A pretty big heads up if you're at the centre of one of these child porn rings (or other criminal activities that can be deduced from the list)

Leaking certain types of secret isn't so bad it would seem, but leaking single source secrets, or slipping up with the source or methodology, that might get you a free visit from ASIS and a gun if you live outside the country, or ASIO if you're living locally.

All of that said, it wasn't me!

Re:I have to ask

[Arancaytar]

In Soviet Russia KGB tracks leak back and shoots you.

Oh come on. How can you pass it up?

"In Soviet Russia, KGB makes you leaky."

Re:I have to ask

[interested pyro]

"In Soviet Russia, KGB leaks you

fixed it ;)

Re:I have to ask

[russotto]

I have to ask because i don't know. If some secret document from the CIA was leaked onto wikileaks, how quick and how hard would the CIA ask for a retraction ? Do we know ? Did this happen ?

If they have any sense, they'll refuse to confirm or deny if it was even a real document. Once it's leaked, it's leaked, whether or not it's retracted. It can't be unleaked.

Of course, expecting government agencies to be sensible is silly.

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you just did.

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Well, I'll just have to say... Nigger nigger nigger...

Now i'm cool too.

Look at me! I said NIGGER!

Look at me world! I said a naughty word. oooooooooo... I just got a boner. NIGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAH!

Oh the joy... the giddy little joy of trolling...

I shall never understand.

May an aids infected monkey chew off your mothers face.

Eh?

[mokus000]

... however, the German government wants to keep the site down. According to their twitter page, ...

The German government has a twitter page? ;-)

Re:Eh?

[Chairboy]

The Bundestwittenseite?

What makes you think...

[Anonymous Coward]

... the wikileaks you are looking at is the same wikileaks that was there when that information was published, eh ?

Scary, I know...

:)

Niggers in the morning, niggers in the evening

[Anonymous Coward]

Niggers in the morning, niggers in the evening, Niggers all day long!

Artist: Johnny Rebel Song: who likes a nigger

L.B.J. was a-flyin' one morn', Over south Louisiana...feeling for alarm, When he looks down below, and what does he see?, Two cajuns pullin' a nigger on ski's!, So he lands, and says, "Thanks for helping your black brother!", And them two cajuns just looked at each other, And said, "He might be smart, but I'll tell you something...", "He don't know a thing about alligator huntin'!", O-wop-bop-bam-bam, Who likes a nigger?, o-wop-bop-bam-bam
(CHORUS), Who likes a nigger?, o-wop-bop-bam-bam, Who likes a nigger?, And the hatin', everybody, is a-gettin' much bigger, Rich man travelin' down thru the South, Stopped in Mississippi to get a tooth pulled out, When he paid the doctor the charges due, He said "My nigger chauffer's got a bad tooth, too", "Well, I'll pull it...", said the doc, "but you'd better not holler!, Cause I'll have to charge you $200.00, Cause here in Mississippi he can't open his mouth, We'll have to go thru his bottom, to get the thing out!"
Chorus
There ain't much difference 'tween a nigger and a donkey, 'Bout as much between an ape and a monkey, Ones a little bigger, but you gotta agree, There's not very much more that you can see., But a mule earns his livin' by the sweat of his neck, While a nigger sits down and draws a gov't check, The nigger should be smarter, as a general rule, But in a spelling contest, I'd pick the mule!

Artist: Johnny Rebel Song: nigger hating me

I like sugar, and I like tea, But I don't like niggers...no siree!, There's two known things that'll make me puke, And that's a hog eatin' slop, and a big, black spook!, You know it...cause I show it, Like a barn-yard rooster I crow it!, And the NAACP, Would sure like to get a-hold of nigger-hatin' me!, Roses are red, and violet's are blue, And nigger's are black, you know that's true, But they don't mind, cause what the heck!, You gotta be black to get a welfare check!, And I'm broke...no joke, I ain't got a nickel for a coke!, And I ain't black, you see, So Uncle Sam won't help poor nigger-hatin' me., Jig-A-Boo, jig-a-boo...where are you?, I's here in the woodpile...watchin' you, Jig-A-Boo, jig-a-boo...come out!, No! Cause I'm scared of the white man's a-way down South, You know it!...cause I show it., Stick your black head out and I'll blow it!, And the NAACP, Can't keep you away from little old nigger-hatin' me!, Mirror, mirror...on the wall, Who is the blackest of them all?, A man named King, and there ain't no doubt, That he's causin' lots of trouble with his baboon mouth., Brewin'...he's a doin', It's caused by the trouble he's a-brewin', And the NAACP, Can't win if the white men stick with nigger-hatin' me!, Hey! Mr. President! What do you say?, When are we whites gonna have our day?, The nigger's had there's such a long, long time, I'm white, and it's time that I had mine!, You know it...cause I show it!, Stick your black head out and I'll blow it!, And the NAACP, Can't win if the white man sticks with nigger-hatin' me

Artist: Johnny Rebel Song: Affirmative Action

Affirmative action, what's this country coming to?, Affirmative action, what's the white man gonna do?, It's another government handout and simply said, "You've got to hire a nigger instead", I was down at the office, cleaning up the joint, Just doing a little extra, making brownie points, Cause I'd heard somebody say, a promotion's on the line, So I was working hard, I wa.nted that promotion to be mine, So I asked the CEO if I could have a try, He said "you work hard, son and I know you qualify., You're the best man for the job but it's out of my hands, I've got to give it to a nigger, courtesy of Uncle Sam", Oh affirmative action, what's this country coming to?, Affirmative action, what's the white man gonna do?, It's another government handout and simply said, "You've got to hire a nigger instead.", Now I went looking for a new job the very next day., I got an interview and things

no

[unity100]

and you are on the wrong site.

Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[LaminatorX]

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Keep up the good work, wikileaks. Somebody's got to.

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[Yvanhoe]

Sometimes, they ignore you, then laugh at you, then fight you, then you lose. Just remember this as well.

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[Anonymous Coward]

First they kill you, then they mummify you, then they put you in the Smithsonian, then you win.

Yeesh, that Gandhi (Ghandi? Ghandhi? Ghahnhdhi?) quote is getting a little long in the tooth.

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[sortius_nod]

They can never win by fighting you...

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[siri_kan]

I am no grammar Nazi , but please use Gandhi and NOT Ghandi

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[Hijacked Public]

Andrew Jackson is on the US $20 bill.

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am no grammar Nazi , but please use Gandhi and NOT Ghandi

Good thing you're not a grammar Nazi, because OP's error was related to spelling, not grammar.

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, good one. Its a god thing I'm not an idiot Nazi.

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[Anonymous Coward]

... Then you die.

It's very easy to make somebody disappear nowadays, you know. The problem with the internet is that it doesn't create momentum like Gandhi did. If you don't have a million people to back you up, you're easy to dispose of. Even in a so-called "democratic" country.

The internet doesn't build up crowds like that. It's all a big lie, for those people who would like you to believe that internet creates social links. You're all alone posting stuff here. Alone with all of us other lonely people. A million isolated people is not a crowd. A million bacteria do not have the power that one million-cell organism has.

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[Quothz]

I am no grammar Nazi , but please use Gandhi and NOT Ghandi

I am a grammar Nazi. Gandhi's name is transliterated from Hindi; as is often the case with transliteration, either spelling is fine.

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[gargletheape]

No it's not. In Hindi, most sounds come in aspirated and unaspirated forms. In transliteration, the h marks aspiration for obvious reasons. "Ghandi" suggests that the 'g' in Gandhi is aspirated. In reality, it is the 'd' that is aspirated.

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[Quothz]

No it's not. In Hindi, most sounds come in aspirated and unaspirated forms. In transliteration, the h marks aspiration for obvious reasons. "Ghandi" suggests that the 'g' in Gandhi is aspirated. In reality, it is the 'd' that is aspirated.

You appear to be confusing transliteration with transcription. In transcription, one attempts to precisely reproduce sounds between alphabetical representations of words. While transcription is a noble goal in transliteration, it's not always the primary one.

In transliteration, one attempts to approximate a word in such a way that it is recognizable as the same word, using a standard methodology, deviating if necessary where reversibility or precise transcription is desired.

Reversible, or lossless, transliteration attempts to recreate a word in another alphabet in such a way that transliterating back to the original using the same transliteration system comes up with the same word. It's worth noting that no transliteration methodology does this for all words. You must deviate from the standard if you wish to produce reversibility.

However, neither "Ghandi" nor "Gandhi" are reversible, since each uses multiple characters as a representation of a single character in the original.

Similarly, standard methodologies rarely produce precise transcription of all words. And producing transcription removes reversibility.

Transliteration often entails deciding whether reversibility, transcription, or methodology is most important. In addition, various competing methods of transliteration exist for many languages. As a result, transliteration by different people with different goals often produces different results.

While "Gandhi" is often considered preferable to "Ghandi" by native Hindi speakers who care about such things, either is valid. The only correct spelling is in Hindi.

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[gargletheape]

All this, while it may be perfectly correct for all I know, strikes me as pedantry of the worst sort. Most people, native hindi speakers or not, aspirate the g when they encounter the name Ghandi. Most people, whether they are hindi speakers or not, aspirate the d when they encounter Gandhi. The latter is an excellent approximation of how a hindi speaker would in fact say the word - I'd know, I'm one of them. The latter is how Gandhi himself wrote his name in english. It is how his descendants write their name still. If what they're doing is "transcription" instead of "transliteration" (or is it the other way around?), fine, I'm delighted to concede the point. One spelling is still misleading where the other isn't.

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[Quothz]

pedantry of the worst sort

I'm proud to be pedantic while debating. Precise language and formality are how people should go about debating, rather than, say, name-calling. It's a skosh hypocritical, however, to shout "pedant" while criticizing the OP's spelling.

The latter is how Gandhi himself wrote his name in english.

Hmm. That's a valid point, but not entirely true. It's generally accepted that a person can determine the spelling and pronunciation of his or her own name, yah.

Unfortunately, if you look through photos of his writings, I think you'll find that he spelled his name "Gandhi", "Gandi", and even "Gandhiji" at various times. His passport said "Gandhi", tho'. I'll concede that he never used "Ghandi", so "Gandhi" is arguably more correct based on that.

His descendants, similarly, used variations on the spelling; Ela, his granddaughter, used "Ghandi" at times, although she appeared to ultimately settle on "Gandhi".

In the end result, I still don't think you can reasonably condemn someone for using "Ghandi", although it's fair to say "Gandhi" is preferred.

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[gargletheape]

'Pedantry' is name calling? Jeez, what a hothouse flower you are! :)

I don't see the hypocrisy charge; I don't think it sticks. We are not - and certainly not merely to avoid charges of pedantry - to avoid distinctions all together. It is excessive or overly sophistical distinction that we are to eschew. And which ones might these be, you ask? Well, obviously there is no clear cut rule set in stone for such things, and we are to cultivate such intellectual virtues as allow us, on a case by case basis, to judge whether a particular distinction is relevant.

Here's how I judge it: a) There are typically patterns that guide how words in a language/script are spelled in another. 'H signifies aspiration' is as uniformly applied a rule re Hindi/English writing as you're likely to find. b) I'll bet you a moderate sum even a class of fifth graders would pronounce Ghandi and Gandhi differently in predictable ways, that in particular the latter comes much closer to how both Indians and decently educated westerners pronounce the word. c) the spelling of a man's name is such a thing as he quite typically gets to decide. d) The alternate spelling, assuming it corresponds to 'ghan-di' is not even a common Indian name.

Now if you disagree (and reasonable people can disagree with each of a - d), contest actual frickin arguments! Instead, you, in response, brought up "transliteration" and how it differs from "transcription". Except inasmuch as you're arguing that name-spelling should abide by "transliterational" or "transcriptative" principle to conform to the pragmatics of hindi-english orthography, that display of technical vocabulary seems like no more or less than an empty show of erudition, a nitpicky display of casuistic quibbling. Just naming two concepts doesn't show that points a-d are mistaken or insufficient. Hence, I called it pedantry, though perhaps academic showing off is more apposite. IOW, do the actual argumentative heavy work. If you think a spelling - in a language that uses 'h' to signify aspiration - that aspirates the wrong phoneme of a word is perfectly kosher, make the case. If you think the words you introduced add something to that case, great, show how.

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[Quothz]

Here's how I judge it: a) There are typically patterns that guide how words in a language/script are spelled in another. 'H signifies aspiration' is as uniformly applied a rule re Hindi/English writing as you're likely to find.

I was trying not to sink into academic-style obfuscatory writing, I swear. But I will for a moment, for the sheer, unadulterated fun of it (whee!):

I think you'll find the phonology of English is such that an aspirated occlusive is neither contrastive (as in Hindi) nor, generally, explicitly digraphic. While digraphical phenomes may be indicated for contrastive words, particularly if transcription is prioritized, "Gandhi", as a proper name, is allomorphic with "Ghandi" in English.

Now, I'll agree that "Ghandi" is clearly orthographically defective, but has the advantage of demonstrating the monopthongal low-quantity nature of the "a". This is far more contrastive than aspiration, although as English is (largely) nonchrometic it can hardly be said to be fully distinct.

In real English, it doesn't matter. "Ghandi", "Gandhi", and "Gandi" are all just fine.

I'll bet you a moderate sum even a class of fifth graders would pronounce Ghandi and Gandhi differently in predictable ways, that in particular the latter comes much closer to how both Indians and decently educated westerners pronounce the word.

No bet, but stipulate a class of fifth graders who have never heard the name and we'll talk. I'll give odds that about half of them use a long 'a' for "Gandhi", but most use a short one for "Ghandi".

c) the spelling of a man's name is such a thing as he quite typically gets to decide.

Sure; I think I said exactly that, with the caveat that he didn't use a single spelling. While he seemed to prefer "Gandhi", and so do I, it's unlikely that he found it hugely important, given the variations.

d) The alternate spelling, assuming it corresponds to 'ghan-di' is not even a common Indian name.

I suspect that most common Indian names are written in Hindi, so we can walk around in circles with that all day.

Except inasmuch as you're arguing that name-spelling should abide by "transliterational" or "transcriptative" principle to conform to the pragmatics of hindi-english orthography, that display of technical vocabulary seems like no more or less than an empty show of erudition, a nitpicky display of casuistic quibbling.

Now, that's not fair. My first comment was brief and direct. Only when challenged to demonstrate my reasoning did I elaborate.

Mind you, the beginning of this post is an unnecessary show of erudition, but (I swear!) only for fun.

Re:Obligatory Ghandi Quote...

[gargletheape]

Lol. I'll decode that delightfully - though gratuitously - dense first para as best as my lay mind can. I think you're saying a) that aspiration or lack of doesn't separate words in english (so? we're talking about how to indicate sounds that english speakers *can* make, which are from a language where it matters which of two sounds *is* made) b) that the h in english doesn't necessarily or sufficiently indicate aspiration (so? in both ghandi and gandhi the h clearly DOES serve to aspirate, just different sounds) c) that because there isn't a separate name ghandi there is no need to mark the contrast (eh? The quantity we're seeking to satisfice here is proper pronunciation of name, not confusion reduction. We're talking about a famous person for chrissake) d) the a stuff, which might in principle correspond to something about long and short a's (cmon, what American didn't instinctively throw around long a's when dealing with foreign words? :) )

fifth graders etc: I think we've radically different intuitions about how the a's would come out in this experiment, so perhaps the bet is still a good one. Do you really expect to see father-a in Ghandi and ant-a in Gandhi? Huh.

My point with Ghan-di was about sounds really. That set of sounds is just odd to me. I don't think the aspirated gh sound goes with the long father-a in Hindi at all, almost certainly not to begin words. That needn't be a problem for your view of course, but I do want to clarify/suggest that it's the oddness of that word, not just the fact that it isn't in fact a word.

Re:lemme get this straight HITLER IS RISING

[Anonymous Coward]

The old germany I know and love is coming back Yar! YAR! We can now gas the JEW BANKERS!

          .,:codk0O'                  ';cldkO0l
         ,NMMMMMMWl                 .kMMMMMMM0.
        .0MMMMMMMk                  oWMMMMMMN,
        xMMMMMMMK.                 ;NMMMMMMWl
       cWMMMMMMN:                 .KMMMMMMMk
      'XMMMMMMMd                  xMMMMMMMK.
     .OMMMMMMMO.                 cWMMMMMMN;
     oWMMMMMMX'                 ,XMMMMMMWo
    ;NMMMMMMWc  ..,:c;         .0MMMMMMMO. ..';:l.
   .KMMMMMMMW0KXWWMMN;         dMMMMMMMMX0XNWMMMx
   kMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMWo         :WMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM0.
  oWMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMx         'XMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMX'
cWMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM0.        .0MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMW:
'XWNX0OxdXMMMMMMMN,         xWWNKOkdOMMMMMMMMd
.,..    ;NMMMMMMWl          '...   .OMMMMMMMO.
       .KMMMMMMMk                  oWMMMMMMX'
       xMMMMMMMK.                 ;NMMMMMMWc
      cWMMMMMMN;                 .KMMMMMMMx
     'XMMMMMMMo                  kMMMMMMMK.
    .0MMMMMMMO.                 lWMMMMMMN;
    dMMMMMMMX'                 ,NMMMMMMWo
   :WMMMMWNK:                 .0MMMMMWNx.
  .ldlc;'..                   ;doc:,'.

Oh come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you mean those same websites that could easily be found through Google, Yahoo, Live Search and countless others?
OH SHHNAP, LETS RAID THEM TOO!

Oh wait, that's right, the police only ever pick on the small guys they know they have power over.

Before it goes down again

[Anonymous Coward]

EDITORIAL (Wikileaks)

Shortly after 9pm on Tuesday the 24th of March 2009, seven police officers in Dresden and four in Jena searched the homes of Theodor Reppe, who holds the domain registration for "wikileaks.de", the German name for wikileaks.org. According to police documentation, the reason for the search was "distribution of pornographic material" and "discovery of evidence". Police claim the raid was initiated due to Mr. Reppe's position as the Wikileaks.de domain owner.

Police did not want to give any further information to Mr. Reppe and no contact was made with Wikileaks before or after the search. It is therefore not totally clear why the search was made, however Wikileaks, in its role as a defender of press freedoms, has published censorship lists for Australia, Thailand, Denmark and other countries. Included on the lists are references to sites containing pornography and no other material has been released by Wikileaks relating to the subject.

Some details of the search raise questions:

        * Wikileaks was not contacted before the search, despite Wikileaks having at least two journalists which are recognized members of the German Press Association (Deutscher Presse Verband).
        * The time of at least 11 police detectives was wasted conducting a futile raid on the private home of volunteer assistant to a media organization.
        * Police asked for the passwords to the "wikileaks.de" domain and for the entire domain to be disabled.
        * Mr Reppe was not informed of his rights; police documentation clearly shows that box to be left unchecked.
        * Contrary to what is stated in the police protocol, Mr. Reppe did not agree to "not having a witness" present.

Ultimately, Mr Reppe refused to sign the police documentation due to its inaccuracies.

The raid appears to be related to a recent German social hysteria around child pornography and the controversial battle for a national censorship system by the German family minister Ursula von der Leyen. It comes just a few weeks after a member of parliament, SPD minister Joerg Tauss had his office and private house searched by police. German bloggers discussing the subject were similarly raided.

Mr. Reppe sponsors the Wikileaks German domain registration and mirrors a collection of Wikileaks US Congressional Research Service reports but is not otherwise operationally involved. Mr Reppe is also maintainer of one of the most popular German Tor-proxy servers (morphium.info) but only the connection to Wikileaks was mentioned during the raid.

Wikileaks.de and other Wikileaks domains were unaffected by the raid.

Wikileaks is a non-profit project, sponsored by transparency groups and investigative journalists world wide. To support our defense of this and other cases, see http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks

Re:Before it goes down again

[Lars T.]

Some details of the search raise questions:

* Wikileaks was not contacted before the search, despite Wikileaks having at least two journalists which are recognized members of the German Press Association (Deutscher Presse Verband).

Okay, this is stupid. Do they actually expect the police to kindly ask a suspected criminal if they could raid their premises?

But he would have nothing to do with the content

[Chrisq]

Don't they realise that the national wikileaks sites are mirror sites, the guy has nothing to do with the content!

Why should that be a discouragement?

[denzacar]

Sure, I'll probably go on a government watch list, but the way things are going we either all already are or soon will be, so why should that be a discouragement?

Because the list is probably numbered, graded and color-coded?

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. The solution here would be to simply hide away and pretend there are no problems anywhere in the world.

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[h4rm0ny]

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.

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[h4rm0ny]

Bugger! Mistyped a tag. The UK government's parody-defying "anti-terrorism" posters are here.

Honestly - an Anti-Terrorism hotline? Are they so swamped with calls that they need to filter them off from regular police calls?

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[interested pyro]

i love the posters, even though they are sometimes non-sequiters. Whenever I go to a grocery store as I walk to the door I look for the cameras there. At the hardware store I look to see where the cameras are in case I have a problem with a employer or other shopper. next thing you know Britain will start to have posters that say "if you see someone avoiding a certain spot, report it" even though a dog may have just heard the call of nature there.....

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[denzacar]

I'm just waiting for the first "Terrorist Pride" march.

I'd suggest you watch it on the TV when and if it ever happens.

While a threat list "hosting" everyone everywhere and still having "threat levels" may seem ridiculous and/or impossible to an intelligent, well-read individual - to a troglodyte with a truncheon doing what he's told such a list is a very useful tool.

For example, should you just be held for a while when crossing borders or strip-searched.
Should an accident or a burglary that happens to you be investigated promptly or are you actually the prime suspect looking to cash in on your insurance.
Is it OK to pick you up from your place in broad daylight or is it better to do it late at night when you are already in your bed.
Alone or with backup.
Calmly with the display of authority or quietly displaying nothing.

Wonderful tool - the list. So useful, yet so simple.

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just waiting for the first "Terrorist Pride" march.

(with insidiuos voice) "It started from streets of Egypt and Palestine, spreaded from the ghettos of Riyadh. It was battle-tested between the valleys and mountains of Afganistan, (with festive voice) and finally it has arrived to your community! Now, take the Terrorist Pride to the next level, while you are marching besides nursery, hospital, police station, church, temple and mosque! Dare to be different, dare to be proud! Order you tickets now. (with fast and silent voice) Bombs and weaponry not included in this limited time offer. Obligatory insurance does not cover intense police violence or the likely neo-nazi beat-up.
END.

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[h4rm0ny]

Yeah. The poster telling you to report anyone looking at CCTV cameras is particularly entertaining. For now... : /

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[ciderVisor]

I'd suggest you watch it on the TV when and if it ever happens.

The revolution will not be televised.

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[aynoknman]

Because the list is probably numbered, graded and color-coded?

Color coded? The entire population is on the list and coded either yellow or orange.

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[mpe]

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.

This also happened before 6 terrorist suspects were ordered released by a judge.

Honestly - telling people to inspect their neighbour's rubbish for bomb-making materials? You could not make it up!

It's possible that "Wacky Jackie" might actually believe some of her own nonsense.
Whilst a movie about a government making up daft conspiracy theories about imagined (Islamic) terrorists whilst being unable to handle real (Irish/Christian) terrorists would be a comedy it just isn't funny at all.

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[turgid]

Yeah. The poster telling you to report anyone looking at CCTV cameras is particularly entertaining. For now... : /

But! I always wave at CCTV cameras to brighten the days of the police men and women watching them. It must be a really boring job.

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[turgid]

Honestly - telling people to inspect their neighbour's rubbish for bomb-making materials?

What, like empty bags of chapati flour?

Kaboom!

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[ultranova]

Bugger! Mistyped a tag. The UK government's parody-defying "anti-terrorism" posters are here.

You know, I would probably consider someone going through my trash pretty bloody suspicious. And be sure to call the Terror Hotline every time you happen to look at a CCTV camera and let them know it was a mistake, so they don't waste resources investigating. Tell your friends to do likewise; it's your patriotic duty.

But seriously: what kind of moron came up with these? I can understand trying to build a police state on fear - that's the oldest trick in the book - but how can anyone be so bloody incompetent at it? Or is it an attempt to make everything "suspicious behaviour"?

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Where have you been? That was exactly how it was written in Orwell's 1984.

"anti-terrorism" campaign

The terrorists aren't the psychopathic super villains hiding out among us that they'd have the masses believe. The terrorists are you, me, and any dissenters willing to oppose this nightmare. As Orwell said himself, "totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere". And that fight is what's being suppressed.

You could not make it up!

You're right. He wrote 1984 based on past and present(during World War II) offenses.

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it interesting that the only terrorizing is coming from our governments?

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[Repton]

Don't forget the American logo: Terrorist Buster!

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[fractoid]

I'd consider someone going through my trash to be pretty bloody hungry. Not that there are that many food scraps in there, but still.

Re:Why should that be a discouragement?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. The solution here would be to simply hide away and pretend there are no problems anywhere in the world.

And when you do have something to say, to make sure you always do it as an Anonymous Coward

Wikileaks treads a fine line

[abigsmurf]

If this looks like the first case of international collaboration over a wikileaks takedown, it could be a sign of things to come.

Wikileaks relies on the fact that, although they piss countries off, they never piss of a lot of countries at once. As such a takedown in one country means little because of its distribution.

However what would happen if something really major got posted on Wikileaks, something that a government would need to go all out to remove. Say someone posted a list identifying all CIA agents. Would the US government make its allies act to take down wiki leaks presence in each of their country? Would they get ICANN involved and order them to wipe all of its urls off the web? Even block all wikileak IPs at a root server level?

The second a website like Wikileaks which tries to evade potential countermeasures becomes a nuisence to enough people, there'll be plans (if they don't already exist, it's hard to see intelligence agencies not having thought about it) drawn up about how you'd go about wiping a site from the internet. If this does happen, it'll have dire consequences about the future of the net.

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[u38cg]

If the information was that hot, it would be an irrelevance getting it taken down. Say you *did* publish names and addresses of every field agent the CIA has. It doesn't really matter whether you redact the list or not: it is out there and you need to burn your bridges, regardless.

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[hesaigo999ca]

I do not believe this story is what it says it is, first off, in today's age of technology and persecution, pedophiles have accepted encryption as a norm , of which any content distributed would not be out in the open as they would have you believe.

Secondly, hiding behind the premise of "we could show you, but that would incriminate you" is a scam to stem fear into those who would question such tactics. I for one know there is a small margin that is offered in such cases where R&D is needed for that field, and for developing new ways to track if not capture such "types".

Last, if we were to hear that the same website also posted personal data or email addresses of government officials or ambassadors to the sited nation, whether in error or not, and then decided not to retract the information posted after being asked nicely, would constitute a good indication of why this cover story is being used.

my 3 cents

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[ducomputergeek]

You piss off enough intelligence agencies (or just piss off Putin) and eventually they'll come gunning for you with real bullets. Getting raided by police is one thing. Once domain registers start having a rash of bad accidents, or more overtly, wind up dead in front of their homes with small caliber bullet holes to the back of the head, the ball game changes.

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[cagrin]

David Icke said he had a CIA scientist come to him to tell him about what was going on. This scientist in the CIA is apparently a "genius" with electromagnetics and once he realized what he was being asked to do, he tried to leave the CIA. Apparently the CIA took exception to him leaving them and decided to "patch" him (make him dependent on a drug that only they could provide - he would die without it). According to this scientist, one of the many things that the CIA is working on are microchips that can be implanted in humans, both to identify individuals, but more importantly to CONTROL them, and he meant control quite literally (somewhat similar to why sodium flouride is added to our drinking water). I think the CIA could do with some much needed transparency myself. I got this from a video of one of David's lectures, sorry don't know the exact video but it was in this series: Ruled by the Gods Take the Red Pill.

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[TheGratefulNet]

However what would happen if something really major got posted on Wikileaks, something that a government would need to go all out to remove. Say someone posted a list identifying all CIA agents. Would the US government make its allies act to take down wiki leaks presence in each of their country?

I am an american and mostly proud to be one.

however, I lost complete faith in our so-called freedom and democracy.

I would believe that the US would have anyone killed that it finds to be a PITA. it will look like an accident or something, but the US has shown, time and time again, it will 'do whatever it wants' in the name of censorship and keeping the status quo of those in power.

we have, in the past, done 'extradition' and we had our own private gulag in cuba. its not at all farfetched to think that, if you piss off the US gov enough, you'll be 'disappeared'.

in the US they also have 'sneek and peeks' where the gov can enter your house, not tell you about it and gag anyone who was helpful in letting them in.

don't fuck with the govs. they LIKE their power and if you threaten them they will fight like rabid dogs. it won't be pretty.

welcome to the new world order ;(

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[zwei2stein]

If it was feasible to "erase" site from internet (and gathering global support for inital pedo-porn-stomp would be fairly easy; politicians would see benefits of continuing this cooperation in order to get everyone's favorite dissent site stomped too), they would not attempt to create such, well, amateurish, filters and this wikileaks incident would never happen.

But it seems they actually need those filters ... curious.

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[Anonymous Coward]

I would imagine citizens of the US that were involved would be charged with treason, and foreigners with sedition or such.

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[cagrin]

Ignorance and apathy are two of the most dangerous diseases of our time, and very difficult to cure. Take the Red pill.

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[dotancohen]

Say someone posted a list identifying all CIA agents.

Actually, this is the first time I've found myself on the other side of the fence. If a list of _human_beings_ were published on wikileaks, I would be all for taking it down. I don't care what those humans have done, do, or may do. Wikileaks should not endanger real living humans.

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[Anonymous Coward]

If wikileaks leaked the identities of all CIA agents, they'd probably at high risk of extraordinary rendition. even if the CIA didn't officially endorse their abduction a CIA agent or two could always take matters into their own hands. and that, of course, is assuming that Sweden didn't intervene officially. after all, the CIA and Swedish intelligence could be collaborating and leaking all CIA agents could jeopardize some of Sweden's own interests.

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[Kaboom13]

Information like the identity of all CIA agents would be pointless to take down once its public. The fact the wikileaks got a hold of it alone means the list is compromised, and it's safe to assume every enemy and foreign government already has it or will have it. A large scale reaction by the US government would just legitimize the accuracy of the list. Foreign intelligence agencies don't sit at their desks waiting for big intelligence leaks to hit the front page of digg you know. Once information like that, or the blacklist for that matter, hits the internet, it's over. Someone determined enough will find it, wikileaks is just a convenient place to see it all aggregated together.

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come now. It's not the safety of all people that has you modded up, it's that they're your people(whether from your country or your country's allies) who also have high-ranking and secret identities. There have been plenty of other named people on wikileaks, should they be removed because they may be endangered? Meanwhile, there are +5 comments under this same article in favor of war in third-world countries, where millions of civilians have been killed.

As it is, I don't see the CIA lifting a finger to help anyone. America is becoming a totalitarian regime and you want to protect from "endangerment" these guys, who also obviously can't protect themselves right? You seem to imply that they're more deserving of the people's care.

Wikileaks should not endanger real living humans.

Neither should those who make it onto wikileaks, which is pretty much it's purpose; to shine a spotlight on those in our governments and institutions who engage in unethical behavior.

I can't tell if your post was made out of ignorance or what, but it definitely comes off as you playing protectionist to the government.

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[rastoboy29]

Even better would be a list publishing all the secret agents of every country.

Maybe then we wouldn't need secret agents any more.

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[HeadlessNotAHorseman]

>>Ignorance and apathy are two of the most dangerous diseases of our time, and very difficult to cure. Take the Red pill.

Q. What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?

A. I don't know and I don't care.

Re:Wikileaks treads a fine line

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikileaks should not endanger real living humans.

Its not Wikileaks endagering the humans in that scenario. Choosing a Job wich involves torture and drug dealing is the dangerous part. As a tax payer you should rather be encouraged to get informed about everything you pay for. BTW: US-Citizens enjoy far more tranparency in terms of government activities compared to german folks. Thanks to the freedom of information act there are pretty interesting informations 'leaked' by design - in the US. A good exaple is the project MK-Ultra (mind control) - which even was reported in the german tv channel 'phoenix'

Move wikileaks to Cuba

[Anonymous Coward]

The should be some use for outcast and semi-kind-of-outcast regimes.

Gov'ts working together

[furby076]

This case is a prime example of multiple governments collaborating in support of censorship

I am not sure (haven't RTFA yet) what they are posting on their site and what the gov'ts want to block but I am happy when governments work together. If we had more of that we would have less criminals fleeing to other countries. Meaning joe murderer who was born in in Iran kills his family plus five other people then flee's to iran immune from prosecution. So good for germany working with Australia. As for what they are doing - I can't comment because I don't know.

Re:Gov'ts working together

[mdm-adph]

Somebody please mod this down as a troll, I have no points.

It's so easy even I noticed it, and I've been described by people I know as "dense as a bag of rocks."

Re:Gov'ts working together

[furby076]

My post wasn't a troll, but people like you are why I firmly believe most people should NOT be mods. You disagree with me so your desire is to mod it troll. Maybe, just maybe I disagree with you. Actually considering you brought no value to the conversation I would wager you are the troll.

Re:Gov'ts working together

[mdm-adph]

I'm sorry, but just... no.

You post that "you're not sure what they are posting on their site," even though it says it right in the summary. You make sure and state that you "don't know," because if you did read the summary, you wouldn't be here applauding these actions.

Then you come out and talk about how it's great that "countries are working together to fight crime," even though that has absolutely no bearing on what this story is about.

Conclusion, you're a troll.

Re:Gov'ts working together

[cagrin]

Ignorance and apathy are the two more dangerous diseases of our time, and very difficult to cure. Take the Red pill.

Re:Gov'ts working together

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation:

"I don't like what you have to say, so I would rather see your viewpoint censored rather than attempt to debate it on its merits."

Re:Gov'ts working together

[Anonymous Coward]

> If we had more of that we would have less people criticising their government fleeing to other countries. Meaning Ghandi independence-speaker who was born in in India speaks and then flees to Pakistan, immune from prosecution. So good for germany working with Australia.

oops.

There, fixed it for you.

"governments work together" means "governments' politicians collude together to further their private agendas (money, power) on the expense of the people".

The police, maybe? okay. But _governments_? Want a huge clusterfuck of all nations, a "brotherhood of man"? At least I don't, thank you very much.

Re:Gov'ts working together

[mdm-adph]

Viewpoint I don't like: "I don't care if governments are abusing their power, England must prevail."

Obvious troll: "I don't know what's going on, and I haven't read the article, but I'm sure that these governments are doing what's right."

See the difference?

No, of course you don't -- what am I wasting my time for...

This is what happens...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what happens when a bunch of drunken retards run the one world government. The first strike against them was letting junior run the government for eight years too many. The second strike was when they forgot to pay Diebold that lump sum before the last election. They can't even keep simple drug smuggling and money laundering under wraps any more. Those damn n00bs couldn't remember to put back a simple hidden attribute back on that super secret text file with the internet list. And now they can't even nab back the contraband without the suspected terrrrrr-orists knowing what items they took? What good now are the super triple dog secret overlords?

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[L4t3r4lu5]

I apologise, the FAQ is a little vague. I set my MESSAGE threshold to +2, and didn't use the slider at the top of the comments.

SlashDot is again full of win!

Achtung!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Behavior is taught, modeled, and learned from those around you.

If there aren't nazis left over there there would be no reason for this. This is the definition of Nazi behavior.

"Today, German stormtroopers broke down the door to the house of a well-known website owner. The charges were thinking about possibly having something to do with considering looking at a list of websites posted to his server by someone else with no intervention from himself. There will be no further information, and no further questions. UNDERSTAND?"

AUS Government did it too

[Anonymous Coward]

They posted it to ISPs.

And how many governments leak information? ALL OF THEM.

So the AUS government is guilty of distribution of KP links too.

German police to raid Australia in 3, 2, 1...

How they came up with the name??

[pig-power]

the "You're-A-Pee-On" Union...
Anymore questions?

Re:But he would have nothing to do with the conten

[Lars T.]

By that logic, simply mirroring a child porn site would be okay?

Like a movie almost...

[Subm]

Don't they realize that the more they tighten their grip the more web systems will slip through their fingers?

It's almost like you can see the rebellious side winning this one from the start.

Re:Like a movie almost...

[Vladus2000]

I'm pretty sure if governments put their collective minds to it, they could win. Complacency leads to defeat. There are enough ignorant sheepish humans out there to go along with whatever a government wants to do. Don't be surprised when censorship comes and most people do not give a shit.

Nice rosey glasses, there, eh?

[Mathinker]

> Organizations like the CIA tend to do things like find out information
> to help save lives.

Organizations like the CIA tend to do whatever the US government wants them to do. This may include trying to save lives (but, most probably that would be in actuality, lives of citizens of the US and, to some extent, its allies), but it most likely also includes things like toppling foreign governments which the US dislikes, irrespective if this would likely make Americans safer. It is really not clear, and actually rather unlikely, that the CIA is able to accurately predict the consequences of its present-day actions on the future safety of US. Kind of like what happened with the banking system.

The reality, if you would take off your glasses, is that as long as everything the CIA really does is kept secret from you, you have no idea whatsoever if what they do is actually what you believe they do. After living for a while in an Internet-enabled world, I, for one, become less and less willing to blindly believe whatever the US government tells me "the CIA is doing for me".

Re:Nice rosey glasses, there, eh?

[furby076]

Organizations like the CIA tend to do whatever the US government wants them to do

Yes that is a duh statement. They are employees of the US gov't and do what the US gov't wants. Just like the KGB did what the Communist Russian gov't wanted. Just like the Mossad does what the Israeli gov't wants. Makes sense.

This may include trying to save lives (but, most probably that would be in actuality, lives of citizens of the US and, to some extent, its allies), but it most likely also includes things like toppling foreign governments which the US dislikes, irrespective if this would likely make Americans safer.

Yes the CIA tries to topple gov'ts and while there can be abuse your statement of "irrespective" makes it sound like that is their primary goal. I would argue their primary goal is to make the US safer. You would have to prove otherwise.

It is really not clear, and actually rather unlikely, that the CIA is able to accurately predict the consequences of its present-day actions on the future safety of US

Nobody can accurately predict the future - but when you stop a terrorist cell you are pretty sure you did something to help save lives - or do you think terrorist cells are going to support the Infidels?

The reality, if you would take off your glasses, is that as long as everything the CIA really does is kept secret from you, you have no idea whatsoever if what they do is actually what you believe they do. After living for a while in an Internet-enabled world, I, for one, become less and less willing to blindly believe whatever the US government tells me "the CIA is doing for me".

The reality is I do not wear glasses, nor contacts. My vision is 100% fine - so is my perception of reality. While I do not know everything the CIA does I realize I do not need to know everything. If everyone knew every inch of the CIA there is no way they would be effective. It would be in the news "CIA investigates Joe"...well first, Joe may get harassed by people as many may already assume Joe is a criminal (hey if you are being investigated you did something wrong)...second if Joe was a criminal may stop or shift his activities foiling CIA plans to figure this out.

I am not asking you or anyone to blindly believe the US gov't is 100% kosher - make sure you vote and get the right people into office...or better yet, get yourself into office and on the right comittees. Join the CIA/FBI and do the right thing - but realize secrets are needed because our enemies have no qualms about using secrets or using our knowledge against us.

Re:Nice rosey glasses, there, eh?

[Quothz]

I would argue their primary goal is to make the US safer. You would have to prove otherwise.

Easy enough:

The Central Intelligence Agency's primary mission is to collect, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence to assist the president and senior US government policymakers in making decisions relating to the national security.

Mind you, I acknowledge that the two goals are not entirely exclusive. But "make the US safer" is very broad and leaves a lot of discretion, whereas "collect, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence" is specific and narrow. For the record:

The CIA may also engage in covert action at the president's direction in accordance with applicable law.

But note that this is under the direction of the President, within Congress' laws as evaluated by SCOTUS. Also pretty narrow.

they aren't working together on that

[Anonymous Coward]

they're working together on consolidating their power over their citizens by using proxies.

Better encrypt them

[Mathinker]

Given the contents of those lists, be careful to keep them encrypted and without obvious names linking them to the original files (e.g., first pack them up in an archive with other random files to thwart attempts to match file sizes or other meta-information).

Personally, I wouldn't go near those lists, even if they do contain non-child-porn sites which might be interesting to find. I'm sure that even if I tried to filter out the real child-porn sites using cross-validation, I'd still end up with a lot of more-disgusting-than-goatse stuff which I wouldn't want to wade through.

Questions for Conroy

[Anonymous Coward]

Steven Conroy will be appearing on a public forum broadcast live on Australian TV on Thursday, March 26, 2009 at 10:30:00 UTC (9:30pm AEST). Questions for this forum can be posted at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/

my 3 cents

[hesaigo999ca]

First of all , i do not believe this story is what it says it is, first off, in today's age of technology and persecution, pedophiles have accepted encryption as a norm , of which any content distributed would not be out in the open as they would have you believe.

Also, hiding behind the premise of "we could show you, but that would incriminate you" is a scam to stem fear into those who would question such tactics. I for one know there is a small margin that is offered in such cases where R&D is needed for that field, and for developing new ways to track if not capture such "types".

Lastly, if we were to hear that the same website also posted personal data or email addresses of government officials or ambassadors to the sited nation, whether in error or not, and then decided not to retract the information posted after being asked nicely, would constitute a good indication of why this cover story is being used.

my 3 cents

Information Control!

[cagrin]

There would seem to be a concerted effort across the globe to tighten control of information that gets out to the public. Jay Rockefeller trying to take down the existing(free) version of the internet is another example. One of the many sources of information out there that the "establishment" is concerned about is the Alex Jones Show (or infowars.com) Inform yourself, we are coming to an important time in history where those in power(our so-called leaders) are moving to a global government that has been planned for many years(i am not against global government per-say but i AM against one lead by the current corrupt pricks in power). Also something of interest: The Movie - The Obama Deception One other thing: I Want You to get MAD!!

Re:Information Control!

[cagrin]

Like how my post was labeled "off topic". Ignorance and apathy are two of the most dangerous diseases of our time, and very difficult to cure. Take the Red pill.

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many, mini-Obama's running around Chicago. We met a bunch of them. They were full of Obamisms; they all had met or interviewed him to hear them tell; and they all claim him as their savior. (They are of this mind concerning him: Matthew 9:21: "For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole." Awkward!)

We flew to Chicago to picket the foreign embassies of Brazil, the Netherlands, and India, then the University of Chicago, the Chicago Theological Seminary, and the University of Chicago Law School. We happy six went to glorify God in proclaiming his truth and righteousness and in hope of that crown of righteousness, which is laid up for us, which shall by the Lord, the righteous Judge, be given us at that day: and not to us only, but unto all them also that love his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:8). Is there a single Chicagoan that shall love his appearing? Not a chance.

They will cry out in horror for the rocks and hills to fall upon them and hide them from the face of Lamb that sits enthroned for the purpose of executing judgment upon them, in hopes that they will be hidden from His wrath. (Revelation 6:16). Yo, listen up dummies! Read a little Richard Baxter, 1615-1691, and learn some things. He points out the obvious. The Lord God of eternity, who while on earth commanded the winds and the waves, and they obeyed his voice (Matthew 8:26), certainly is in full control of the rocks and the mountains. Indeed, "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision." (Psalms 2:4).

Part of the prologue to the Westboro Baptist Church saints' everlasting rest ("There remaineth, therefore, a rest for the people of God" Hebrews 4:9) is the public and solemn process at the judgment of the Chicagoans c. 2009, where they shall first themselves be acquitted and justified, and then with Christ judge these Chicagoans. Young and old, of all socioeconomic classes and races, that ever were from the creation to that day including Chicagoans, must here come and receive their doom.

"O terrible! O joyful day! Terrible to those that have forgotten the coming of their Lord! joyful to the saints [at Westboro Baptist Church], whose waiting and hope was to see this day! Then shall the world behold the goodness and severity of God; on them who perish, severity; but to his chosen, goodness. Every one must give an account of his stewardship. Every talent of time, health, abilities, mercies, afflictions, means, warnings, must be reckoned for. The sins of youth, those which they had forgotten, and their secret sins, shall all be laid open before angels and men. They shall see the Lord Jesus, whom they neglected, whose word they disobeyed, whose ministers they abused, whose servants they hated, now sitting to judge them. Their own consciences shall cry out against them, and call to their remembrance all their misdoings. Which way will the wretched sinner look? Who can conceive the terrible thoughts of his heart? Now the world cannot help him; his old companions cannot; the saints neither can nor will. Only the Lord Jesus can; but there is the misery, he will not. ⦠All in vain is it to "cry to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne;" for thou hast the Lord of mountains and rocks for thine enemy, whose voice they will obey, and not thine. I charge thee, therefore, before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing, and his kingdom, that thou set thyself seriously to ponder these things." (Richard Baxter's, The Saints Everlasting Rest, Page 47-48, Published by Samuel T. Armstrong, Charlestown, Mass., 1811.)

But they will not ponder these things, like zombies they roam the streets of Chicago awaiting the general judgment and their doom. When we arrive on their streets to show them the everlasting Gospel on signs (God Hates Fags, American is Doomed, and Obama is the Beast/Antichrist), and to expound to them these truths in word and

Reason?

[Anonymous Coward]

the reason for the search was 'distribution of pornographic material' and 'discovery of evidence.

So they searched his house to find evidence and give him porn?

Re:Obligatory Gandhi Retort

[Anonymous Coward]

First they march you through several hundered of miles of jungle without water, then they shoot you, then they disembowel you, then you lose.

-- Gandhi, had the Japs won WW2

Wikileaks is the least of your worries, then

[Mathinker]

> but realize secrets are needed because our enemies have no qualms
> about using secrets

I daresay that any information which has hit Wikileaks is 99.9% likely to previously already be known to any intelligence agencies which would be interested in it. All Wikileaks is doing is letting us see it also. Security through obscurity is usually bad security.

> or using our knowledge against us.

So it's good that we remain as uninformed as possible? Yes, I understand that you probably didn't mean it that way. Just couldn't resist.

There is a fine balance which needs to be maintained between secrecy which protects the public interest and secrecy which is against the public interest. It's not clear to me that this raid, or rather, having secret Internet censorship lists, falls in the "protects the public interest" side. Even if I think people producing, selling, or distributing child pornography should have their own special corner in a Hell which I don't even believe in.

Re:Wikileaks is the least of your worries, then

[True Grit]

I daresay that any information which has hit Wikileaks is 99.9% likely to previously already be known to any intelligence agencies which would be interested in it. All Wikileaks is doing is letting us see it also.

True, but please note that the GP was responding to a troll post about the American CIA, and Wikileaks of course was raided by German law enforcement, not the US CIA.

The CIA's mission is gathering foreign intelligence about threats to the US, they aren't interested in porn, they're interested in knowledge, and I suspect their normal response in a situation like this would be to keep monitoring a website, and/or try to infiltrate/crack it to gain even *more* info, rather than try to shut it down. Basically, the CIA is in the spying business, not the law enforcement business.

Security through obscurity is usually bad security.

There is a fine balance which needs to be maintained between secrecy which protects the public interest and secrecy which is against the public interest.

Agreed.

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[GargamelSpaceman]

I say let there be this 'International Currency'. Guess what? I bet people still use the dollar. People can keep a basket of international currencies in their portfolio without having a 'basket currency'. People can buy things with whatever currency they feel like spending by first exchanging that currency for the one the item is being sold for. And 'International Currency' will just not be adopted because there will be no compelling reason to do so.

Re:Porn Nazis

[GargamelSpaceman]

That's it. NO PORN FOR YOU!!!

Summary makes it sound like the government

[ACAx1985]

Summary makes it sound like the government uses Twitter.

Secret censorship lists confuse me

[skinfaxi]

How can you get in trouble for linking to a site that is on the "bad" list, if you aren't allowed to know what is actually on the "bad" list? I know I must be missing something. Will they actually fine people for linking to a site that is secretly on the "bad" list? What would stop them from fining anyone they wanted for linking to any random thing if there is no list for the link-er to consult ahead of time? Do they assume that what is on the "bad" list is so obviously illegal that anyone that links to it deserves what they get? Are they just afraid people will use the "bad" list as a salacious index to the best of the worst of the internet?

Never thought about donating to wikileaks before

[pwilli]

But there you go, 25 EUR sent on their way.

Just watched an interview on TV with some guy who is representating interests of (some) ISPs in germany. He actually referred to the leaked Australian censorship list and how it was used to block sites that were not cp. He also mentioned that they are already forced (not by law, but somehow else) by government to block access to certain sites and how they are already breaking laws by doing so.

The interviewer didn't react to these statements at all - I mean, c'mon, he just said (some) ISPs in germany break the law many times because government wants them to - but just went on with some stupid questions about how germany still hasn't such censorship laws although they work so flawlessly in other countries ...

That's sickening.

I think it's cool the police are twittering.

[DigitalReverend]

From the summary " According to their twitter page, police have raided the home of Wikileaks.de domain owner ...."

I can just see it. "Arresting transsexual prostitute on 5th St." and "Eating a free jelly filled donut"

Re:Move wikileaks to Cuba

[Nick Ives]

That's not a bad idea: move it to a country where we already know about the human rights abuses!

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[Omestes]

If you had something to say, you would say it with a name, not anonymously. Obviously you either lack the balls, or are frightened of people who think your a raving lunatic being able to ignore you, as they should be able to. Either that or your paranoid delusions have grown to the point where you really think that "they" (they of course being people of differing opinion, i.e. the conspiracy) will come and get you for coughing up your own personal version of the "truth".

Personally the fourth option is the most viable, your a stupid troll. Meaning your probably some form of teenager, probably socially maligned by your peer group, probably in ill physical shape, and probably lashing out under the cover of anonymity since you lack the ability to do so in real life. In other words, a genuinely pathetic individual.

I'm not even sure if you have a valid point, since I still haven't bothered to read a single of your bizarre rants, since they are not presented in a way that grants a single shred of credibility. You sound like a schizophrenic hobo, thus the only accord you deserve is perhaps a pitiable glance, and some beer money. You have no valid sources, and your just quoting right wing talk-show conspiracy theories, none of it is new, most of it is long refuted or disproven, and most of it is lazy ad-hoc justification for being firmly trompted in a popular election by people who are completely sick of your backwards, harmful, political ideologies which are based on nothing more than shallow theories, and personal feelings of petty greed and Ayn Randian idiocy. Oh, and a large helping of "Sky Daddy says so".

Good for you. Now go shut up and let the adults talk. /. really needs to get rid of open "AC" access, its getting annoying. Keep the AC action, but force registration to use it, so I can block these "copypasta" morons. Since the death of goatse, and the advent of overly political rantings, they've lost their amusement value.

Oh, and I hear that Obama and HITLER have been having dinner together a lot lately? Any thoughts?

History repeats...

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like Germany has taken a page out of the history books about the old Nazi/Gestapo/SS days. Of course, this time it isn't just Germany, but the whole world that's playing the censorship game. The world's governments are fucking hypocrites for allowing this to happen the fucking corrupt bastards!

Why is this modded insightful?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I'm quite sure it was intended as Funny.
(In case it wasn't... 1) Public education isn't the same as indoctrination, and experience taught us that without it you end up back in the stone age within a generation. 2) Living in a country with social security (and at various times both having paid for it and being supported by it) I can say that social security is a very liberating thing, because it shields you from the costly random events that would enslave you otherwise. 3) I drive a bicycle. I still need roads. 4) The government isn't alone. MAFIAA anyone? Net neutrality? The private sector wants to screw over the Internet just as badly, and at least the government can be voted out of office and replaced.
Oh, and why the addition of 'western' in that post? Is say China particularly western? Turkey? Iran? Western governments may not do a terrific job, but compared to non-western goverments they're doing quite allright.)

Bridges and Trolls

[NoobixCube]

Don't get me wrong, I see the merit of posting anonymously, and the need for it to be an option, but what really pisses me off is the trolling. There's a difference between free speech and the bullshit we always see within the first three posts. It's enough to make me give up moderation and browse at +4 (is +4 even an option?). I normally browse at -1 so I can mod people up when they've been unfairly modded down, but there's been an explosion in trolling lately, and it's getting impossible to sift the good comments from the bad. Look at the majority of the replies to the comment I'm replying to. It's a fair bet they're all by one or two different people. Can't we IP-ban repeat offenders? Sometimes it's not obvious what's a troll and what's unpopular, but when you see the same shit pasted into post after post after post, I'd say it's likely that's a troll.

Re: twitter page

[neonsignal]

twittering... it's what parliaments are good at.

Been rolled back!

[Anachragnome]

The page I viewed this morning had this mornings date on it.

The current page is what was up 5 days ago, the 20th of march.

All information about the search warrent, etc. , since it had not happened on yet, on the 20th, is now absent from the main page.

Is Engadget distributing child porn as well?

[Innovative1]

So is this site (which links to the list of sites which include child porn) also distributing child porn under that same logic? If we go to Wikileaks are we then also breaking the law? How do we verify the sites on the list are legitimate to be censored without looking at the list? It seems to me that by making the list the government itself is also 'storing' child porn. It is a catch 22. Also, if the German government knew about the list and had seen it or possessed it then aren't they also storing child porn too? I don't see how anyone can get around this obvious contradiction.

Re:Is Engadget distributing child porn as well?

[Innovative1]

For all of the grammar Nazis...I have already caught my misuse of also and too in the same sentence so save your fingers for typing on-topic replies. It was a typo.

Re:Is Engadget distributing child porn as well?

[Innovative1]

Ok, I am not on Engadget...I am obviously having a mental impairment today. I meant Slashdot. I am done posting for the day. *wishes there was an edit feature*

But

[MichaelSmith]

The Germans, like many other NATO members, apparently don't take their alliance commitments seriously. As an American I find it extremely disappointing that we've staked our blood and treasure on defending the freedom of our NATO Allies for generations and many of them can't even be bothered to send troops without caveats to Afghanistan. You do recall where Article 5 was invoked right?

Apparently the NATO alliance is a one way street. Thanks Europe.

Afghanistan isn't a member of NATO, and the USA is not being directly attacked by Afghanistan, If anything it was Saudi Arabia which launched the attack.

And in any event there is no immediate threat to the US.

(and since Germany was the aggressor in the second world war they can hardly be said to owe the US for their intervention in that instance.)

Re:But

[Shakrai]

and since Germany was the aggressor in the second world war they can hardly be said to owe the US for their intervention in that instance.)

Actually I was thinking of the fact that we staked our blood and treasure on protecting Germans from Russian vengeance. Vengeance that was (IMHO) entirely justified after the Germans raped, pillaged and murdered their way across Mother Russia. I suppose you've heard of the Berlin Airlift and Cold War?

Brilliant posters!

[Blancmange]

I'm seriously considering printing and laminating copies of those fear posters to use here in New Zealand. First I'll put the rubbish-fear poster on the side of my council wheelie bin.

Then I'll splash the fear-CCTV-watchers poster somewhere prominent in town (I gather there are 30 CCTV in Cathedral Square alone).

I'm more tempted than ever to add a reassuring poster to any traffic counter I see. "ATTENTION, VISITING BOSTONITES: This is not a roadside bomb. It is not even a Mooninite. It is a traffic counter. DO NOT BE AFRAID!"

I expect people to fall over in the streets laughing when they realise that the posters are more than mere derivatives of the propaganda posters in Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

Re:Brilliant posters!

[sumdumass]

Maybe you should warn them that it isn't a zombie warning system either. You know, just to cover all your bases.

Is HIstory Repeating Itself? (Scientology Raids)

[alerma]

There are a number of congruencies between this and the 1995 raids by Scientology...see Alt.Scientology.War cover story in Wired Magazine December 1995.

In 1995 an anonymous remailer in Amsterdam called anon.penit.fi run by Johan Helsingus was visited by police, who sought the the logs, using an excuse (cover story, shore story, suitable guise) that there was pornography involved...

Johan's remailer had been used backthen, for posting Scientology secret rubbish to the net...by a nickname "scamizdat" which turned out to be an ex-scientologist named Joe Harrington... who admitted this on his death bed.

I believe that complaints about the porno turned out have come from scientology...

I just got raided and sued by the scientologists for posting the XENU story, that you guys watched on South Park a while ago..

Wikileaks has been recently publishing thousands of pages of scientology secrets and internal memorandums...

Perhaps history is repeating itself?

Use for botnets/ worms

[dotar]

Why doesn't someone do something useful with their programming expertise and deliver the real news straight to people's boxes?

How difficult would it be to set a million people's homepages to a news article, and make the public aware of what's going on?

If people are going to get viruses anyway, can't we make them useful?

they just got more attraction to that list...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and thougth pretty much of these sites really have very "hot" material, some sites are just laugh (to be in THIS list), 2girls1cup for example

Re:Obama Policies Will Bankrupt USA Tsarkon Report

[Anonymous Coward]

A pachyderm is an elephant...

And.

Wow. Not a single word of that was your own. What wasn't taken from the Bible was taken from Bible-thumpers who fed it to you. You are a dittohead. Utterly mindless. Stop wasting air and die.

Zombie Warning System

[Blancmange]

Beautiful! I'll do that!