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Germany Scores First: Ends Verizon Contract Over NSA Concerns
schwit1 (797399) writes with word that, after revelations that Verizon assisted the NSA in its massive surveillance program, Germany is cutting ties with Verizon as their infrastructure provider. From the article: The Interior Ministry says it will let its current contract for Internet services with the New York-based company expire in 2015. The announcement comes after reports this week that Verizon and British company Colt provide Internet services to the German parliament and other official entities. ... Ministry spokesman Tobias Plate said Thursday that Germany wants to ensure it has full control over highly sensitive government communications networks.
New York and New Jersey.
Verizon has been fucking them for years...hard!
Never thought I'd feel bad for people from Jersey...
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
Nobody wants anything communications-related from the U.S.A. anymore.
Someone needs to show Verizon that its customers don't like their data NSLd out.
The NSA has ways around all the trite attempts to keep your privacy. Nothing will change unless we have a massive change in the powers-that-be.... and even then I only give it about a 5% chance.
But hey, it doesn't really matter... The USA got to the World Cup!!!! Woohoo!!!!
Just a friendly alert, the phrase "nut up" does not mean what I think that you think that it means.
It's slang for punching or otherwise hitting a man so hard in the scrotum that it's as if his testes (that is, his "nuts") permanently end up located over his penis (that is, they were previously "down" relative to the penis, but now they are "up").
The phrase you're thinking of is "balls up". That term means to toughen up when facing an adversary. "Nut up" does sound similar, but it clearly has a very different meaning.
Snowden is truly a hero.
This rocks.
That would be biting the consumer that feeds you. American companies spend much time telling politicians what to think: Why didn't lobbyists make this an issue? I've posted the "nations of tomorrow" monologue (Network, 1976) on SlashDot a few times. But fascism needs traditional government because traditional government has the guns and jails. Which means that corporations which obviously have no fear of jails, can be facing an economic and possibly a literal gun barrel.
I wonder if Verizon's lobbying budget is big enough to bring about any changes... maybe AT&T will help out on this one to keep the same from happening to them in other countries?
...never forgiven them for blighting us with that abortion they called a "reality show".
As for TFA, I'm kind of surprised that Germany's Interior Ministry hadn't been with Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile all this time.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
For their corporate lobbyists to actually get some movement on Capital Hill and attempt to undo this.
Do you really think you can put a positive spin on that?
I'm confused.
At first I thought this was retaliation for the wiretapping of Angela Merkel. But DER SPIEGEL says that the wiretap was setup by CIA and NSA employees from the roof of the US embassy, and had nothing to do with Verizon.
So are they saying that because Verizon let the US Government spy on Americans in America, they won't let Verizon operate in Germany? That seems odd to me. Verizon in Germany should be operated by German employees and is subject to German law. What Verizon did in the US seems unrelated.
Personally, I welcome them sanctioning multinational companies for bad behavior. But it is surprising.
The way to evade beta, for now, is to use the URL http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1 before you open any other Slashdot page. It's a cookies thing.
This public service announcement was brought to you by Beta Sucks (tm).
lol. keep up the reasoned, well-balanced discussion ppl. :D
Requiem for the American Dream
There's an illusion that the USA is unique in this. It isn't, it's just that there aren't any other whistleblowers.
If you contract with Deutsche Telecom, you'll be subjected to German intelligence interception certainly.
Realistically---you'll be subjected to German, British, Chinese, French, Russian, American and Israeli intelligence interception to some degree or another.
Germany should've learned their lesson, when a telegram sent to their Ambassador in Mexico was intercepted by the British — and shared with the US-government.
Had we not obtained that piece of intelligence, the history of the world could've been quite different...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You don't understand. It could be impossible for him to disable it. The footer link and the nobeta=1 QS parameter sometimes just don't work at all for me, I guess because Slashdot Beta is just that fucking broken. But other times they do work just fine. It's a crapshoot, really. Even legends like Bjarne Stroustrup or Sir Tim Berners-Lee could get stymied by the same bug, and they'd have no choice but to make similar complaints, too. The real fix is just to totally get rid of the dung heap that's called the Slashdot Beta. That'll fix the problem completely, and properly.
VZ stock hardly changed today.
in the title.
Requiem for the American Dream
For a second I thought Slashdot was starting to get into sports reporting.
I wonder how many people are disabling the footer with no script or something? And I would guess that the do not track stuff built into browsers as a work around for websites ignoring the do not track marker might be the problem with the nobeta=1 QS parameter.
Of course those are guesses but if you haven't looked into it, perhaps it might lead you somewhere productive. I disabled cookies altogether a while back and found most all of my web pages loaded differently and on some, I had to log in every time I clicked a link or it forgot I was already logged in. Now I just clear my browser cookies every so often and when opening new sites.
Mr. President! We must not allow...a mineshaft gap!
That's basically what this whole "We'll control it all ourselves. Mineminemineminemine!" idiocy is.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Will be somewhat off-topic but still (somewhat) related.
De-americanization has officially began when Russia signed gas deal with China bypassing dollar. This process started long ago but with this deal it's now official. Things seem to speed up since then. Germany Verizon thing is just another domino piece falling. Regardless of what Americans think of it, I see it as a good thing. Aside from taking (most of the) world of american hegemony, ending of US imperial project can benefit Americans themselves - granted that their (incompetent and incredibly corrupt) government manages to transition from imperial power to ordinary (but better managed) country in orderly way (that is, without inciting WW3).
Message to fellow Americans: you're still one of the most progressive folks in the world (yet NOT the most ones), it's just your fucked up government that sucks, causes mayhem (Ukraine being the last manifestation of this) and blocks your potential. It's time to abandon your imperial/global hegemony policies - you can prosper pretty damn well in a multipolar world (much better than most of the rest). It all depends on you. BUT there are few things to do. You need to bring your fucked-up out-of-control government back in control, forget about american exceptionalism and learn to live in (competitive) multipolar world (ie. do not solve all problem using military or inciting civil wars).
Unless it is porn
You don't understand. It could be impossible for him to disable it.
It's easily disabled. There was a time when only techies read /.; now techies are the exception rather than the rule.
Sad times.
If it can be shown that the company is working against the countries interests (company treason?), such as in this case, ban them from all sales in that country. That really would get the attention deserved.
Damn straight.
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
Its the only thing these bullies in america understand, profits so lets stop feeding the monster the one thing it desires
the low tech solution? login. I only see slashdot classic. the conversation view is better, it is easier to follow long threads. The best part? Slashdot classic allows you to login once and keeps you logged in. Mobile and Beta slashdot log me out of the system after every post, If I can login at all.
One would think Slashdot would have tested user logins without someone like 1password or apple keychain providing login every time.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Please correct me if i'm wrong.
This story has close to none coverage in Germany.
It's been dug up by a blogger (1) and reblogged by netzpolitik.org (2), who then started to ask questions.
There are some articles gathering up by now, but the big media seems to shush things.
The leading tv-stations (ARD & ZDF) that are publicly funded have no real content regarding this story.
This being said: ZDF does list a story in which the government looks as if it has addressed this problem entirely by itself. Some reuters-bot-written junk. (3)
But this was not the case, the government clearly had no intention to reveal it's ties to Verizon. If it wasn't for the blogger, they wouldn't have had to.
Now they're trying to downplay the story and to make the provided services look like a fallback routine or - even better - like an unused source.
The Fed. Ministry of Interior posted yesterday that it had contacted Verizon in 2010, ...they forgot to tell us when this would happen, but now it seems like they are ready for the big transition m(
telling them they would slowly withdraw from the contract, since the Verizon services were being replaced gradually by a new infrastructure for the Government. (4)
After the internet died last summer, this is a bad joke.
Anyhow:
also yesterday the big coalition has managed to finalize their decision regarding a hearing of E. Snowden.
They hold a majority within the exclusivly formed task force regarding the NSA affair.
They have decided mutually that a hearing can not take place on German soil - given the 'fact' that an extradition treaty with the US is in effect. (5)
1: Daniel Luecking http://medienkonsument.de/
2: https://netzpolitik.org/2014/arbeitserleichterung-fuer-die-nsa-deutscher-bundestag-bezieht-internet-von-us-anbieter-verizon/
3: http://www.heute.de/bund-baut-kommunikationsnetz-neu-ohne-us-partner-verizon-33792814.html
4: https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Kurzmeldungen/DE/2014/06/bund-wechselt-netzbetreiber.html
5: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nsa-affaere-grosse-koalition-verhindert-befragung-von-snowden-a-977742.html
umptions that the other way is better are silly.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It only ever happens to me on mobile, so no no-script there. What happens is you can see the link to use classic, and then it disappears behind some other div. To top it off, the stupid fucking website is "responsive," so it squishes itself down into a useless wad of mobile-site and fuck you if you'd rather it stayed a normal full page. So far as I know there's no way to disable CSS Media Queries without browser plugins so the design weenies have finally managed to get us good and stuck in their sweaty ass-crack of "modern web design."
Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
Add these lines to your hosts file, first (& do NOT take a cookie, perhaps disabling javascript too - I don't use them period unless I absolutely HAVE to on most sites, by setting a GLOBAL policy in Opera by default that way, & only creating "exception sites" as needed (db access stuff, see below)).
ALL very easy to do in Opera 12.17 64-bit, as it's the MOST flexible browser under the sun STILL!
Anyhow/anyways:
216.34.181.45 slashdot.org
216.34.181.45 beta.slashdot.org
216.34.181.46 images.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 it.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 developers.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 yro.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 mobile.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 news.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 ask.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 tech.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 apple.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 books.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 games.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 hardware.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 interviews.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 linux.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 science.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 idle.slashdot.org
---
* Note the BOLDED line above? It's key!
It forces you to go to "classic" /. that way by doing that (see the one above, same IP address), overriding the redirect, easy as apple-pie!
(To quote Tony Stark/Iron Man, regarding his Arc Reactor? "It works"...)
APK
P.S.=> You *may* also wish to force the other "normal/classic" sites that way beneath too, e.g.:
216.34.181.48 it.slashdot.org
216.34.181.48 beta.it.slashdot.org
& ANY others you may frequent - I note I don't have to, & always get "classic" pages... works for me, should for you too (however, for the "registered 'lusers'" here, they MAY have to play with their cookies they take, & stall javascript too... I never use it on ANYTHING but ecommerce database access related sites (else they won't work usually, fully))... apk
Is it the same Germany whose BND secret service collaborated with NSA to spy on internet backbone links?
So, first other countries start dropping the dollar as the international reserve currency. Now they’re going to stop buying our products and services. Our economy is going to hell in a handbasket.
I feel your pain there. I use dolphin which I think is a Safari clone or based on the same engine or something like that. Anyways, I had to set it to pretend to be a desktop browser to get Slashdot to appear correctly. I don't know if it was beta or what, I didn't stick around long enough to pay attention before switching it out. But there are stupid pages where ads don't size properly and crap like that so I guess if I happen to get the same beta issues on mine, I might have to stop browsing slashdot from it. 90% of my time here is from the phone.
problem with the short sighted spying and lets spend crazy money on the military misses that economic might is certainly more important. You cannot pay for stupid expensive spying and military programs or twist the arms of other countries if you are not economically strong. Not only is the spying program Constitutionally wrong it is weakening the US in real and lasting ways.
Most of what in the title?
First, what kind of numbnut country outsources their state communications services? Come on man.
Then who are they going to get as a replacement? Some other company that has no doubt already been suborned by a secret agency?
Russians have gas/oil and need money.
EU has the money and wants gas/oil.
They exchange them.
Putin has the power to upset everybody a great deal, to the point where he might not survive such a disruption. EU doesn't have the power to upset it's people by pushing Putin into such a situation- they still have democracy... Either way, they are not going to change their economic situation for long.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Have I missed something here? Are the German authorities really sending sensitive information over the internet unencrypted? It's just not that hard to set up VPNs
This sort of thing is starting to hurt, right in the pocket book where it counts. That is exactly the right response to companies stabbing their consumers in the back.
Maybe Germany is still grounded due to WWI and WWII. It would not surprise me if there were secret agreements in place that allowed the victors to monitor government communications for a long time.
No it isn't. From mobile it is no longer possible to disable, it just redirects nobeta links to beta, and there is no login to beta, so no way of logging in and enforcing your settings. Yeah it is THAT broken.
The regime in Washington has trampled the interests of the rest of the world continuously, since the end of WW2. It is time for European countries to cast off this crazed regime, and its utterly corrupt leadership. We should do this by fully isolating them. Everywhere that the United States interferes - without exception - has been destabilised, or subjected to war. As a European citizen, I want no part in the imperialist conflicts of this rotten turd of a country. 'Democracy', american style, is nothing more than having the right to buy your representatives, if you are rich. Whenever I go to the United States, it is clearly fascist through and through - from entry at the fascist style border control, where a dumb crazed militaristic robot subjects you to an interrogation, to the shameful excuse for media, America has become the ultimate dystopian nightmare. Why bother with border control at all - who would want to live there?
http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
It's just that I'm far more used to the 'classic' version is all - plus, I wanted to see how much MORE I could do with hosts (ontop of them adding more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity than any other single browser solution)... they're nigh 'ubiquitous' for MANY purposes - this, is just yet another, in overriding redirects (or perhaps better put, redirecting site redirects, as is the case here).
* At first, I thought I'd like "beta" (seemed to remind me of older UBB style/O'Reilly code based boards I spent years (1997-2004) on in other sites' tech forums) - however, I've been coming here since 2005 almost exclusively, & gotten VERY used to 'classic'... so, there ya are! Just proves how versatile hosts are, yet again.
APK
P.S.=> For even MORE of all the neat things hosts can do for you on the grounds noted above? Shameless Plug:
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ 32/64-bit:
http://start64.com/index.php?o...
Courtesy of "yours truly", absolutely gratis...
... apk
As long as 'classic /.' exists -> http://politics.slashdot.org/c...
* The folks @ DICE are pulling a "microsoft" (oh, no!!!) & Windows 8 GUI shell interface changes - wasn't the best move for MS, & from the sounds of it here and many other times in posts on forums? Not a good move here for this site either really... folks don't want the beta, largely - they're like myself: VERY used to "classic".
(E.G./I.E. -> For instance - I wouldn't want the steering wheel, gas, breaks, & stickshift + clutch in my car changed to crane or forklift style controls after all... analogy there, somewhat weak, but it fits!)
APK
P.S.=> You've got every RIGHT to filter out things coming into your home via your webbrowser, & to see what YOU want to see... that technique, using hosts, always works!
... apk
Just shut it down. Corporate execution.
The NSA has not only undermined our trust in the government (well... that's assuming there was any to begin with), but it's also wreaking huge devastation on our economy. How many US-based companies have lost huge amounts of foreign business due to these revelations?
It's NOT Snowden's fault for revealing these actions. It's the US Government's fault for having their fingers in every conceivable cookie jar in the world, and forcing US-based companies to assist them with it (willingly, unwillingly, and even unknowingly).
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
How many cast members were from Jersey?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Shore_%28TV_series%29
2 were from NJ, 6 from NY and one from rhode island... so .. don't be dumping so eagerly on NJ
I log in. I still get the beta pages (about 2 out of 5 articles) even though I've specified classic view. You can see in the comments how I'm dealing with it. There are alternatives.
That is all.
Never thought I'd feel bad for people from Jersey...
Because you normally feel extremely good for them?
Try this http://politics.slashdot.org/c...
Well, to be honest, the real solution is to encrypt. There are ASIC solutions that if massively deployed would make this much more practical (economy of scale effects). It stinks that we can't have fast(er) Internet access because we have to now encrypt everything and deal with the overhead that causes. If we heavily encrypted all international tunnels- err cables (LOL, thinking of I2P), then they would just find a way to get to the encryption key or compromise the routers. But that's no reason to give up - making it harder would at least be worth it. Not to mention that it's like the software upgrade treadmill and the technology is always changing, anyways.
The days of trusting the network are sadly long gone. You should be designing infrastructure where you don't trust yourself (or your successor/s) to not abuse it. The internet that evolved from ARPA's project (most people call this successor 'The Internet' or 'The WWW') had an implicit assumption of trust of the providers since packets were sent over telecom equipment that was behind closed doors, on US land often owned by the parties involved? Or maybe it was a habit from the days when most of the hardware was owned by the military or educational institutes and isolation between nodes was an effective countermeasure. Only a few physically secured links would be needed for connections between geographically-isolated local networks, in theory. There are ways to detect if cables have been messed with, especially if they're physically underground or on a high-tension line. Of course the art has advanced so now we have to worry even on land and a lot of the old techniques to detect meddling can be bypassed.
While I certainly can't fault anyone for ceasing to do business with an entity that they believe is working against their interests, I think it would be incredibly naive to believe this will improve security.
Network applications ought to already be assuming the network is compromised. If dumping a known-compromised network makes you feel safer, that indicates you're still doing something wrong.
Whatever Germany replaces Verizon with: just ass/u/me that infrastructure is also compromised by a foreign government too, ok? And the same goes for all of us.
All of us, including Americans. Our networks are compromised, and we should proceed as though this can't ever be prevented, and instead, treat it as something we need to be able to work with. If we want to also try to prevent it too (i.e. through the courts or Congress, firing egregiously-behaving contractors, etc.) fine, but we need to be able to win, even given the premise of a totally untrustworthy network. And we can.