Germany Legislates For Mandatory Web Filters 309
An anonymous reader writes "Germany's Minister for Families has announced a legislative initiative to force ISPs to implement a government-mandated block list (in English), which will be updated daily. The BKA (Germany's equivalent of the FBI) will be in charge of generating and maintaining the list. As usual, this is being brought in under the 'fight child porn' guise. The minister is quoted as saying: 'We must not water down the problem' in reply to being challenged that this law and technology could be used to censor other content. She then went on to say: 'I can't know what wishes and plans future governments will develop.' She has agreed the principle of the legislation with the interior minister and the technology minister, which in German coalition government terms means it's pretty much a done deal."
Re:In other words... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Come on! Censor all you want. (Score:3, Informative)
You mean something like Freenet?
Or I suppose I2P?
Or even Tor I believe...
And that is MY government?? (Score:4, Informative)
CDU: Merkel's party, Conservative, currently drifting to the middle. Schaeuble, our Minister for the Interior (which includes police in Germany), is one of the worst surveillance guys, and he's a CDU man. Lots of other 1984 fellows, too. --> No option.
SPD: Social democrats. One of the two big parties (together with the CDU). Currently in a coalition with CDU. Some good guys in there, but many others (including most of their MPs) agreed to laws like this. Used to be my party, but obviously it no longer is.
FDP: Liberal. Have a lot of good guys regarding civil liberties (including three who have repeatedly and successfully went to the courts to struck "Anti terror laws" down). But I don't like their economic model, and above all many of them have no backbone.
Greens: Same as FDP regarding civil liberties and surveillance. Might be an option (although for me they are too naive on the environmental area), but voting greens will mean a SPD-Greens coalition (because FDP and Greens are the smaller parties and usually form coalitions with one of the bigger ones).
Left party: Just a bunch of populists.
The reason why such a lot on internet censorship etc. is being passed now might be our "Grand coalition" (CDU+SPD), which has a strong majority. However when I look at other countries, I see similar problems, so that can't be the only reason.
Unfortunately many people willingly give up their freedoms if the government gives them an excuse (terrorism or child porn), but they just don't see how a filter like that could easily be transformed into an anti-government-criticism filter.
All that surveillance scares me. What the hell is wrong with my country?
PS: For the German-speaking guys around here, have a look at this [www.zeit.de] essay by Burkhard Hirsch (an FDP man). An excellent explanation on why civil liberties are so important.
. . . and Nazi propaganda? (Score:3, Informative)
What *really* creeps me out are these reprints of Goebbels stuff, that are being hawked today: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1871736,00.html [time.com].
The government doesn't seem to need to take any action against that.
The joke is that the publisher is a Britain.
Re:Where exactly is child porn legal to host (Score:3, Informative)
Absolutely. In Finland, a leading critic of internet censorship had his website added to the list [wikinews.org], and the list also contains [effi.org]: