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."
Not that easy circumvention of a bad law makes it okay, but as a practical measure wouldn't it be easy to just use a DNS server in a different country? Or is Germany planning on firewalling all DNS queries except those from 'official' servers?
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Remember back a year or so, when the .alt newsgroup was taken down because something like 1% of the newsgroups in that domain had child pornography on them? You might as well have gotten rid of the whole internet because people could have found child porn there. It doesn't make sense.
I would have expected something like this "DNS blacklist" in Iran or China. But Germany??
This sounds like censorship for the sake of censorship
Are gonna start tagging "children" with gps locator tag subcutaneous inserts?
Then we start with those older folks suffering from dementia?
Then we go on next to those who committed felonies?
Finally, making it a requirement for all people who want to work, buy groceries, etc?
What's next?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Or browse like the Iranians. There's currently a pretty decent number of people helping set up proxies around the world for use in Iran. Austin Heap managed to setup some VPN servers on gigabit-ethernet.
I'm working on a Virtual Appliance that runs Squid, Tor, Polipo+Tor, ziproxy & ssh for use by people who don't quite know how to setup squid for themselves or want to sandbox it.
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I don't believe its at all the will of the people, on this one.
its a power grab for the gov, plain and simple.
germans tend to be technical, detail oriented and saavy and there is no way I can believe the population would WANT this.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Oh, most people here would agree that police states are bad. But on the other hand they would say that there are exceptions (child pornography, terrorism etc.). And of course "our politicians would never do something really wrong!!!"
People in Germany live in a rich land which has last experienced war 64 years ago - so most people see it for granted that they will always live in a democracy, where their freedom is guaranteed.
Intellectually they know that in other countries this isn't so, but if you personally never experienced something else, then it is hard to imagine that this might change. And because they fail to grasp the fact that their freedom and their rights could be endangered they see no reason to defend it.
Do you really think that the government doesn't know about other DNS servers?
Yes, after some TV magazine report, I know that they don't think that far.
Blocking people from getting there is not the point. Intimidation, and getting the people used to this kind of government, is the real point.
Besides: Who stops you from using another port, and encrypting the data trough a VPN? Hell, my router can do that. Trough a simple web-interface. I don't need to change anything on my pc. It's done in 5 minutes. Now if you offer me an offshore DNS server with a VPN, a good connection, and just the price of keeping it running, you will have a client. (Those free ones are too slow, and the others that you buy are way too expensive, because they want to profit big time from it.)
I smell a nice non-profit business model here. Especially since half the world can be your clients.
As long as they don't go to war against our small island full of servers, and as long as they do still allow data into the net, we can circumvent their censorship. And offer the whole world to do so too, in one click (insert USB stick, run autostart, click OK, done).
I wonder how one could protect those servers better, even in case of attacks? :D
Hey, I know it: Infect the censorship servers *themselves*!
Who wants to apply for a well-payed job in this emerging censorship-server-market? :)
If we storm them, all of us will pretty much be moles. Meaning we can perfectly disable the censorship proxies/routers for users with our special client patch.
My god, and they thought they could stop *us all*. They can't even stop me alone.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Do you really think that the government doesn't know about other DNS servers?
Yes, after some TV magazine report, I know that they don't think that far. Blocking people from getting there is not the point. Intimidation, and getting the people used to this kind of government, is the real point.
I can reinforce that. The music industry is already calling on the government to include filesharing and torrent networks.
So you can see where they're heading...
Martial law/internal checkpoints - The last time I used Greyhound, I was accosted both boarding and exiting by Immigration. Mind you, I'm in Pennsylvania and white as can be. By the way, have you flown since 2001? I didn't think so... Did you notice how ever increasingly Coast Guard/Reserves/etc have been used for domestic policing lately, such as in Louisiana? (Remember that state militias were, unfortunately, federalized long ago.) National loyalty oaths - So many places across the country *require* school children to recite "The Pledge", or at the very least allocate time for it... Military conscription - Selective Service is still around and active. It just hasn't been utilized. Before you can get a student loan in the US, you must sign away that you're on the list, as well as some other certain things... National communications filtering - FCC yields extreme power over broadcast TV, and are trying to exercise even more over non-broadcast TV, too. The government of NY (a state, not even federal!) basically caused the death of Usenet in the US...
When you read up a little on the history, views and personalities of the main politicians involved in this - Ursula von der Leyen and Wolfgang Schäuble - you find out quickly that they are both almost certainly borderline insane.
Schäuble is suffering from PTSD since that failed attack on him many years back. His medical records are kept secret.
von der Leyen is either a fanatic or crazy. The amount of disconnect from reality she displays certainly has a medical term, but I can't recall it right now. She's acting like the guy who insists on being Napoleon no matter what evidence to the contrary you come up with. You could show her a room full of scientific studies disproving each and every word she's ever said on the matter - and she wouldn't change her course one inch.
Quite frankly, these people are dangerous and criminally insane.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Yeah, because that caching nameserver just magically pulls its DNS info out of thin air...
Err, yes? Or rather, it starts with the root servers, which is as good as anything gets. Certainly better than OpenDNS, which isn't above manipulating answers.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?