Germany Institutes Censorship Infrastructure 235
An anonymous reader writes "Germany's government has passed a draft law for censorship of domains hosting content related to child pornography. A secret list of IPs will be created by the BKA, Germany's federal police; any attempted access to addresses on this list is blocked, logged (the draft seems to contradict press reports on this point) and redirected to a government page featuring a large stop sign. The law has not yet passed the assembly, however five of the largest ISPs have already agreed to voluntarily submit to the process even without a law in place. Critics argue that with the censorship infrastructure in place, the barrier for blocking access for various other reasons is very low. The fact that the current block can easily be circumvented may lead to more effective technologies to be used in the future. There are general elections as well as elections in several of the states later this year."
STOP (Your IP has just been logged) (Score:1, Interesting)
From Article: "They will not have their personal details or IP addressed recorded."
Suuuure they won't.
RickRoll Germany (Score:4, Interesting)
If every breach is logged a huge percentage of Germans will be found out as perverts.
A good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
So... i2p2.de is getting a lot of press as an anonymous network in which to proxy your traffic.......
and...
The German BKA is planning to put up actual "STOP SIGNS" on the Internet?
If this does not force the average German to start participating, or at least thinking about way around this, I don't what will. Hopefully, you will see a ridiculously huge level of participation in this new networks and we can see on of these networks operate on something other than developer levels of participation.
There could be a silver lining in this after all...
/facepalm (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Inc. China (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Interesting)
Germany's "Meinungsfreiheit":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#Germany [wikipedia.org]
Under criminal code, some things you can't say: ...
"Disparagement of
* the Federal President (Section 90).
* the State and its Symbols (Section 90a).
Insult to Organs and Representatives of Foreign States (Section 103).
Rewarding and Approving Crimes (Section 140).
Dissemination of Pornographic Writings (Section 184)."
There are others, but Gerhard Shroder, former Chancellor, actually got a court order banning the media from mentioning his hair:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Freedom_of_the_press [wikipedia.org]
Oh, and if you curse at a bureaucrat, those worthless sacks of shit of which there are way too many, that's "Beamten Beleidigung" and you can get fined 5000 Euro on their word. Germany has Freedom of Speech like Iran has freedom of religion. Some people will undoubtedly point to it's recent past for legitimacy of some of the rules, but I maintain it's from people worshipping the concept of the state and having a strong central government.
Re:Don't worry (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:To all the germans out there (Score:1, Interesting)
There is, in fact, a german Pirate Party ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party [wikipedia.org]):
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piratenpartei_Deutschland [wikipedia.org]
But they need more signatures to get permitted to enter the general election: http://ich.waehlepiraten.de/ [waehlepiraten.de]
Re:Inc. China (Score:1, Interesting)
But look at what ended up on our blacklist here in Australia (it's also on wikileaks). It too was set up to counter the scourge of child porn.
But we ended up with blocked sites containing euthanasia abortion malware online gambling
It's not much of a stretch to see other politically sensitive topics being blocked.
But we ended up with blocked sites containing euthanasia abortion malware online gambling
You forgot gay porn. You had gay porn on that list. Someone you elected a ruler really hates gays.
BTW, we Germans won't get gambling blocked. The brother of the politician that has started this madness is BIG in the online gambling industry. But as we already put our national wikileaker behind bars, you can easily imagine what they will do with that list.
Re:massive criticism (Score:3, Interesting)
Sources:
This article [heise.de] (in german) sums up most of the counter-arguments in an excellent way. It also includes a link to this interview [tagesspiegel.de] with someone who was abused as a child and opposes the new law very strongly.
Choice quote from the interview:
Because the government only wants to fight the pictures of child abuse, not the child abuse itself.
Re:Inc. China (Score:4, Interesting)
Norway must have a very tame Government then because here in the UK the IWF (a quasi governmental body answerable to just about nobody) has been making a serious grab for power over the last year. It started off with hidden lists of child porn sites and now is spreading / has spread to include "terrorist" material and "violent" pornography and they want to block more material.
Of course because the list is completely secret and it's not strictly a government body there is no accountability, they are free to do pretty much anything they want. My problem with this situation is not that they want to block access to some material it's the way the system is set up. It's so ripe for abuse it's untrue.
For a start the list should be open for review along with the reason for the block and a review period. There should also be an appeals process against a block which can come from either the site owner or a user (can't see this getting used all that often but it should be available).
Also, since it is essentially a Government body it should be accountable like a Government body not hiding behind some "we're a business / charity / trust and therefore not accountable" wall.
Re:Inc. China (Score:3, Interesting)
politically incorrect material. Here in Norway, we've had a similar filter[1] in place for a few years now, and it hasn't been extended in any degree to include anything other than what has been deemed as child porn.
The article you reference contradicts that claim: "Many of the sites on the list have no obvious connection to child pornography."
Steganography (Score:2, Interesting)
The government "detected child pornography steganographically concealed in those innocent images".
Actually, I, like you, think they just made a mistake. But since steganography exists, the government can justify blocking any website using the above excuse.
One more reason this is a very, very bad idea.
Re:RickRoll Germany (Score:4, Interesting)