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Israel's Supreme Court Says Yes To Internet Anonymity
jonklinger writes "The Israeli Supreme Court ruled this week that there is no civil procedure to reveal the identity of users behind an IP address, and that until such procedure shall be legislated, all internet postings, even tortious, may remain anonymous. The 69-page decision acknowledges the right to privacy and makes internet anonymity de facto a constitutional right in Israel. Justice Rivlin noted that revealing a person behind an IP address is 'an attempt to harness, prior to a legal proceeding, the justice system and a third party in order to conduct an inquiry which will lead to the revealing of a person committing a tort so that a civil suit could be filed against him.'"
Ok. Let me get this straight. Israel, one of the most right wing western countries has explicitly approved internet privacy, while France, one of the most left wing western countries, is actively trying to put the internet genies back in the bottle.
Maybe my political analysis toolset needs to move out of the 20th century....
May the Maths Be with you!
Seriously? Talk about flame bait. All the other people in the region have tried to wipe them off the map several times, and continue to espouse the total destruction and death to every last Israeli.
Seriously... if you lived with those kinds of neighbors, you'd be a bit cranky as well.
If Israel was more like it's neighbors, the media would be controlled and all the locals would be driven out, like has happened to most of all the jews in Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Eqypt, etc, etc, etc.
Stick to the topic.
Kudos to Israel for respecting privacy rights.
Is there a good argument to cover even tortuous actions under this? I'm for a free Internet, but defamation on the Internet is still defamation (for example).
Of course, an anonymous source who defamed someone else could be judged by society; (if you're not willing to sign your name then why should we trust you?). That said, there's a strong argument for a defamation plaintiff that even if the defamer is anonymous he or she is still subject to the harm from an anonymous person's defamation.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled this week that there is no civil procedure to reveal the identity of users behind an IP address, and that until such procedure shall be legislated, all internet postings, even torturous, may remain anonymous.
The occasional posting may well be tortuous, but the vast majority of postings on the Internet are torturous. Check out MySpace and Facebook to see what I mean.
Getting warmer. Tortious.
Unless they actually meant torturous - but most blogs aren't THAT bad.
Israel, not Turkey, deserves to be a member of the European Union (EU).
The Turks have long attacked human rights. In Turkey, suppressing free speech on and off the Internet is almost a national sport. You can be arrested and imprisoned for claiming that the Turks are responsible for the Armenian genocide.
After a Congressional committee approved a resolution ascribing responsibility for the genocide to the Turks, the Turks withdrew their ambassador from the USA.
This sort of behavior is not what we Westerners want to see in the European Union. The Israelis act more like Europeans than the Turks and deserve EU membership far more than the Turks.
Capital letters make the entire difference here. It has no formal Constitution that's any more difficult to amend than any other law. It still has constitution, just not a constitution. In that regard, it's like the United Kingdom.
They still have constitutional rights, in the sense that there is no lawful means for approving some action against a citizen, which historically, has been the norm when referring to constitutional rights, rather than referring to some creative interpretation of a fundamental unabrogable Bill of Rights that take a more difficult procedure to amend.
Jefferson and Paine argued that George III was violating the English constitution, in that customs Englishmen typically enjoyed, they were being denied in the Colonies sans representation. “He has refused his Assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good” was one of the complaints in the Declaration of Independence. Not once did George III refuse royal assent to an act of the British Parliament; it was only the colonial legislatures. The last time a bill passed by the British Parliament was refused Royal Assent was in 1708, so to the Colonial governments, that was something completely unheard of, and violated their constitutional conventions (lowercase C's).
"Perhaps everyone hates them for a reason?"
And following your logic, perhaps the Nazis killed them for a reason, right? Yeah, it's called antisemitism and stupidity. It's found on both the far left and far right, both in great abundance.
Isreali file sharing proxy service here I come! :)
The government was started with a clean slate, not the other political situations which abound from the illegal appropriation of Arab and Palestinian land. Their government was allowed to grow and mature under the auspices of cooperation ensured by the international community, esp Britain, France and the US. Even if Israel itself was breaking the law from day one, it felt almost no repercussions for it politically with the west. Its military strength bolstered by cold war paranoia is still unmatched in the region but it is quickly losing its ability to act against international law without at least diplomatic problems developing.
It will be a long time before Israel answers for what is has done, but let us hope that enough of those people who committed the crimes will be alive to be prosecuted for them.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Uh seriously? Can we please mention Israel without getting into a Zionists vs Hamas flame war?
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
"...antisemitism..."
Their neighbors are semitic, you idiot.
They weren't trying to kill Israelis. There really is a difference.
Of course, Hitler would no doubt have targeted Israel had it existed at the time, but you need to stop with the Godwinism, because a, say, '30s-era Krakow optician had little in common with any Israeli you're ever likely to meet.
Example: I have many Jewish friends, which is hardly surprisingly, since I too am Jewish. But I have very few Israeli friends. The reason? Because I've met few Israelis I care to be associated with. The majority of non-extremist Jews probably share a similar view.
Interestingly - at least, I think so - I and many other Jews have Muslim friends. Jews and Muslims have much in common, and we get along rather well, generally speaking, but the same cannot be said about Israelis and Muslims, unless you include the fact that they are vying for the same dirt.
Too many Israelis, all of them really, roll out the Nazis, and the Holocaust, and all of those other terribly emotive images whenever they or their motives and behavior is questioned or challenged, but the truth is that Israelis are their own worst enemies.
Now watch the mods spill their crack as they scramble to consign my post to the oblivion of -1 land, because we all know that Israel is sacred.
Seriously. Read the entire history of Israel, not just the propaganda that you learned in Sunday School, and in the mostly biased United States media outlets.
Israel has the utmost contempt for a non-Jew's life and/or rights. They've proved that repeatedly.
GP's irony is on target.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
All the other people in the region have tried to wipe them off the map several times, and continue to espouse the total destruction and death to every last Israeli.
It's hilarious this got modded insightful. Can you name the specific times "all the other people in the region have tried to wipe them off the map"? Please don't embarrass yourself and say the 1967 war. Israel started that war, and it takes 30 seconds of googling to see their own leaders at the time admit it was not a "defensive attack". They attacked because they wanted "Judea and Sumeria" which they consider theirs based on some God or other "giving" it to them. They also wanted a security buffer against the people whose land they had ethnically cleansed (though I will admit they did so with a minimum of bloodshed).
Furthermore, nobody has espoused the total destruction or genocide of the Israeli people, at least nobody with any power. Even Ahmadeenanutjob didn't do so, he's called for the destruction of the "Zionist regime", meaning the theocracy and near-apartheid government that currently runs Israel.
Seriously. Read the entire history of Israel, not just the propaganda that you learned in Sunday School, and in the mostly biased United States media outlets. Israel has the utmost contempt for a non-Jew's life and/or rights. They've proved that repeatedly. GP's irony is on target.
Seriously. Get out of your cave and look at some of the current news. If by "Israel" you mean the government then I can find quite a few examples disproving your statement. A nation with utmost contempt for a non-Jew's life probably wouldn't send a response team to Haiti, which isn't exactly known for it's thriving Jewish poplulation, accept and provide aid to Somali refugees or send relief units to Kenya. How many other western countries have done that? And if by "Israel" you mean the population then you just made a gross over-generalization. I live in Israel and neither my friends nor myself have an "utmost contempt for a non-Jew's life and/or rights". Quite the opposite actually. You accuse the OP of listening to biased news outlets, but it seems as if you prefer to extrapolate from your narrow understanding of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to Israel's view of the entire world. Wow.
In 1967, Arab armies were holding offensive formations next to Israeli borders, so Israel had to build up a reserve force for defense.
Israel's economy couldn't sustain holding the reserves for so long, so eventually Israel decided it had to either call of the reserves (and risk being defenseless against the coming Arab attack) or perform a preemptive strike.
You know, I usually don't feed the troll, but seeing as you are not being modded down at the moment:
I live in Israel. Roughly 60% of the jewish population is completely secular. There are several parties in the current ruling coalition that are Religion-based, yes.
However:
1) The press here is free. Hell, it's so free that our citizens are getting somewhat tired from scandals being exposed.
2) There are "Arab" parties as well. They are represented in parliament according to the number of votes which they received.
3) I can - and often do - buy pork.
4) I can drive my car during Shabbas and have worked an unfortunate number of Saturdays. Almost all businesses are open 7 days a week.
5) I can convert to ANY religion I want and suffer no repercussions.
6) While we do study the bible (old testament) during our school years, we also study the theory of evolution (and believe you me, there is NO controversy here).
7) Our legal system is mostly based on British laws (due to their brief stay in power here).
You can disagree with current/past actions of the Israeli government (god knows I - and many other Israelis - do), but your attempt to paint Israel as a theocracy is either extremely naive or plain misleading.
So you're either an uninformed fool, or a propagandist asshole. Care to share which?
"can't run, can't hide...oh well, return 0"
If his assassination outrages Europeans, what that reflects is the lack of respect that Europeans have for fundamental human rights and international law when it comes to Jews.
Dear sir, we are not cowboys and this is not the far-west. In Europe we have this thing called Court of Law. There was no international arrest mandate for al-Mabhouh, and even if there was one, he was supposed to have a trial (call us old fashioned here in good ol' Europe, but we kind of believe that before assassinating people, they are kind of supposed to have a trial and check if the accusations against them stand in a court of law).
There are international arrest mandates for former Israeli ministers here in EU but that's strange, we don't see intentions here for going after the guy and murdering him: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/british-court-issued-arrest-warrant-for-livni/
I do know that is not something that country believes in so I understand that since you where not raised in a society that values legality, respect for human life and moral, you simply fail to see my point.