Slashdot Mirror
A Black Day For Internet Freedom In Germany
Several readers including erlehmann and tmk wrote to inform us about the dawning of Internet censorship in Germany under the usual guise of protecting the children. "This week, the two big political parties ruling Germany in a coalition held the final talks on their proposed Internet censorship scheme. DNS queries for sites on a list will be given fake answers that lead to a page with a stop sign. The list itself is maintained by the German federal police (Bundeskriminalamt). A protest movement has formed over the course of the last several months, and over 130K citizens have signed a petition protesting the law. Despite this, and despite criticism from all sides, the two parties sped up the process for the law to be signed on Thursday, June 18, 2009."
We've had that in Denmark for years now. OpenDNS should be the solution to all of your problems...
Looks like it's time for Germans to learn how to browse like the Chinese; Encryption, proxies, darknets, deep web crawling, and leaving as few traces behind as possible.
For whatever naive reason I allowed myself to assume that Western Europe had finally begun to understand that police states are regressive and undesirable. Each passing day, it becomes clearer and clearer that realization has still yet to be made.
...History is cyclical my friend.
Before you get on ze net, ve neet to zee your papers. Your papers, bitte.
First, switch to Open DNS, second, vote the bastards out. Keep voting the bastards out until you get your bastards in there.
The law demands no specific way of intercepting the traffic, just one that works. If DNS spoofing proves to be unable to satisfy the law, then we will see more drastic measures, like blocking or rerouting access to alternative DNS servers and transparent proxies.
Officially the proposal is pushed as a means to combat child pornography, but politicians from all involved parties have already hinted at other possible uses for the filtering infrastructure which will be installed. The parties are quick to deny any intent to allow such an extension, but there are even official press releases clearly hinting at a not-so-hidden agenda.
Read TFA. This is not a 'police state' in the forming. This is a decision by the government, that apparently is backed by a majority of their citizens. We tend to forget here on /. that not everyone values freedom of the net like we do. We netizens are outnumbered by well-mannered, law-abiding individuals who aren't particularly net-savvy, don't understand the social dynamics of the net, and frankly don't want to. These people hear the stories about child porn websites, they read about "HACKERS!!!" (aka black hats) conducting cyber warfare in Estonia and other government institutions, and they see the power of porn in general on the net, and they are frightened by it. To them, having government institute censorship under 'reasonable' guidelines is the norm and should be enforced because that is the system they live in. They're sheeple. They don't want to take the time to understand the true nature of the issues at stake because to them, there is no need to. They live safe, secure lives. They perceive the internet to be an unregulated, dangerous place where their children could be psychologically damaged, their finances plundered, their identities stolen, and above all else, a world that is completely outside their own. Yes, politicians are going to take this to the limit. Yes, this is a dangerous trend. In order to fight this, we have to understand the basis of this, and the basis is that we are outnumbered by people who do value security and comfort above freedom, because that is how they choose to live their lives.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Dude and I thought I was the one with the tin foil hat! LOL
... laughed the man whilst talking to someone on his GPS-equipped phone.
... let's see, If it were a child pornography site, then yes, I would agree with censorship. Why is it that people always assume that governments are meddling with their privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of choice when it's the same governments provide a blanket of protection? I am a 'lefty' on many issues, but when I see blind reactions against government against censorship, I tend to do some research, why not create a 'whitelist' of website, test it and see of you get blocked and believe you shouldn't, if you do, file a legal action against the government agency. If that site really shouldn't be blocked and was, then I'm pretty sure the whole legislation would eventually be scrapped.
TOP DSLR Cameras Reviews of the top DSLRs
This sounds like censorship for the sake of censorship
You mean there is another kind?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Yeah, because that caching nameserver just magically pulls its DNS info out of thin air...
... Way to take a page out of *China & Iran's* playbook there Germany!!
The second thing is, "Isn't this exactly what Hitler would have done if they had the internet in the 40's?"
There is a war going on for your mind.
Ironically, his site is blocked by the child porn list by our Keskusrikospoliisi (federal police).
Dude, that's not ironic, that's inevitable.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
By the time your laundry list would be complete, you wouldn't be able to leave. There are already internal checkpoints--flown lately? Or driven within 100 miles of the border?
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
The real discouraging thing here isn't the law itself (though that'd be enough in and of itself), it's the fact that despite criticism from all sides, a huge petition, thousands of people writing their elected officials and several protests outside government buildings the law is still being passed. Hell I've even seen stickers protesting the proposed law at bus stops and train stations. The "Zensursula" stickers are everywhere around here. When your government flat out ignores these things what's left to do? Wait for the next election, elect some other party into the majority and hope they actually behave differently? Just seems like every year things get worse, no matter who's in office.
One other fun fact, the ruling parties (the CDU and SPD) have already mentioned using this blacklist for other things too, mainly gambling sites, Islamic sites and "Killerspiele" (sites that contain or promote violent games).
It all brings to mind that South Park baseball episode where Randy gets arrested, with one small difference, "Oh I'm sorry I thought this was a democracy".
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
What I know of Silvio Berlusconi, I see a dreadful present for your country as well.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
The "elect someone else" option unfortunately doesn't work. Basically there are two big parties (CDU and SPD) and both want the same in most of the cases. So you can be sure that one of them will lead the next government and nothing really changes.
It's like if in the US there is an important issue where Democrats and Republicans agree on. If you are against their plan, what do you do? What chance is there that a third party is going to take the house or bring up the next president? Guess why Ron Paul ran for the Republicans? Because he knew that as a third party/independent he wouldn't even get on the ballets / into the big TV debates.
We can define a new measure, the "Godwin score", which is how many times someone is mentioned in Googlespace along with Hitler.
Mike Godwin has a Godwin score of 156,000. Germany has a Godwin score of 17,400,000. Therefore Germany is over a hundred times more evil than Mike Godwin, or at least more Godwinized.
Slashdot, interestingly, has a Godwin score of 155,000.
Schäuble is suffering from PTSD since that failed attack on him many years back. His medical records are kept secret.
Dude, everyone's medical records are kept secret - it's that privacy thing we sometimes talk about on /., ....
Quite frankly, these people are dangerous and criminally insane.
Sadly not unusual in politicians. I sometimes wonder whether one or both are actually prerequisites for entering politics.
no taxation without representation!