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German Police Seize German Pirate Party Servers
fph il quozientatore writes "The German police have seized today the servers from the German Pirate Party after an attack on the French company EDF. Apparently they are looking for evidence of allegiance with the Anonymous group. In completely unrelated news, the website of the German police was down this afternoon."
The official state apparatus being used to harass opposition parties? In Germany? Days before an election? No, I'm not touching this one with a ten foot pole.
The German pirate party was probably not involved in anything. They host an etherpad service (piratenpad.de) that was working well and provided anonymity. Some attackers probably used it to share data without the PP's knowledge.
Also many sources say that shutting down all servers of the political party was really exaggerated and that there will likely be legal consequences. It might sound like a joke, but Germans are a bit sensitive when seeing the police raid a political party. I think that this accident will, rightfully, help the pirate party.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
So when some group attacks some company we seize the property of a random pro-liberty group?
Is that your understanding of democracy?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is the same as confiscating all of Googles servers because somebody used Google Docs for an illegal purpose. The police did not even try to contact the party before taking their servers. And they did not just take the server that might have been used for an illegal purpose, but all servers at the site.
The timing is interesting, as the DDoS attack that allegedly was planned on this public EtherPad installation took place months ago. And now - two days before election day in a federal state - they confiscate almost all their servers.
Why do governments love chasing what they can't catch?
Because you can do it for as long as you want, and no particular results are expected. See "war on drugs" - there is no metric that is commonly used to show that "the war" is successful or not.
For a cubicle dweller it would be equivalent to reporting to the boss every day that "I'm working on it" year after year, and still being paid in full for delivering nothing but appearance of effort.
Leaving the individual and your rather cheap ad hominem at him aside: The Pirate Party is one of the few smaller parties here in Germany with the potential to bring really disruptive change to the political landscape; Not so much through their own share of votes, they do not usually fare all that well in elections, but because they almost single-handedly brought matters formerly at the fringe of public interest - freedom of information and expression in the digital age, a sensible approach to compensating artists, governmental transparency and accountability - to the centre of attention for all parties. And by now they have left the initial image of an anarcho-nerdy kindergarten behind. People above the age of twenty are beginning to recognise them as a serious political movement.
And now, two days prior to a state election (that in and of itself is not really important considering it is "only" about a rather small city-state but that is closely watched as a barometer of public opinion for the next federal elections) police take their whole infrastructure offline under very questionable circumstances. I am biased as I am both German and a Pirate Party supporter, but I do consider such an act newsworthy even for such a diverse audience as slashdot's.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.