A Black Day For Internet Freedom In Germany 420
Several readers including erlehmann and tmk wrote to inform us about the dawning of Internet censorship in Germany under the usual guise of protecting the children. "This week, the two big political parties ruling Germany in a coalition held the final talks on their proposed Internet censorship scheme. DNS queries for sites on a list will be given fake answers that lead to a page with a stop sign. The list itself is maintained by the German federal police (Bundeskriminalamt). A protest movement has formed over the course of the last several months, and over 130K citizens have signed a petition protesting the law. Despite this, and despite criticism from all sides, the two parties sped up the process for the law to be signed on Thursday, June 18, 2009."
I know the feeling. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I know the feeling. (Score:4, Insightful)
OpenDNS is the solution.
At least until the DNS queries are hijacked.
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Hell, my college network does this and I'm pissed.
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vpn can carry dns queries aswell :)
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And I am sure it won't be long before DNS proxies will show up on ports other than 53...!
And we all know those can't be hijacked.
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That's what VPNs are for.
And offshore servers.
And I bet the administrators of those censorship servers read Slashdot too, so we can work with them.
Hahahaa... Seriously. This government is such a joke.
If we only had some weapon against the real reason for this all: The intimidation and getting used to this.
Re:I know the feeling. (Score:5, Insightful)
We've had that in Denmark for years now. OpenDNS should be the solution to all of your problems...
Do you really think that the government doesn't know about other DNS servers? I assure you there is some sort of plan and reason why they have not asked the ISP's to block or MASQ any request with a destination of 53.
My simple guess is any request with a destination of 53 is logged and then resolved at some later time. A database of people who use these other servers is maintained and flags are included such as "pedophile, hacker, warez, terrorist, etc". This list then is used to help law enforcement and or they will just come and round all of you up one day.
What's going to end up happening is someone is going to have to run a hacked all the hell bind server that takes encrypted requests on port 80 and replies back with your request which will then need to be cached locally so as not to totally hose your browsing. Then the government is going to start banning those server's IP addresses and someone is going to have to make a DNS resolver that runs in a distributed manner. Then the government will do something else, probably make it a huge crime to use any of this stuff and we will all be basically where we are now with copyright infringement which is to say that people don't respect that law and so all law becomes less respected. This is all the same as what happened in the 1930's US Prohibition of booze.
"All of this has happened before, and it will happen again..."
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My simple guess is any request with a destination of 53 is logged and then resolved at some later time.
I have a hard time believing that this would be the case; at least here in Denmark, everything about the different filtering we've experienced points at zero-knowledge politicians telling some IT staff what to do - and do it now!
No real blocking is taking place, just sort of placebo blocking.. by the way, on the Danish version of the 'page with the red STOP sign' it says that ones visit to that page has not been logged.
Our government, just like the rest of the 'civilized' world are acting crazy with pa
Re:I know the feeling. (Score:5, Funny)
In Nazi Germany... wait, that isn't funny.
Re:I know the feeling. (Score:5, Insightful)
honeypot theory?
you may be right. letting port 53 outbound thru but LOGGING who connects out of the country.
yup, very plausible.
expect it to spread to other countries, too ;(
this is the century of anti-freedom, worldwide. yes, its really that bad and its getting WORSE each passing day.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Tor will bypass all their logging. Presumably they know this, but I'm not sure how they intend to fight it.
In the UK Freedom of Information requests have been made on the subject, but no response so far.
Even more worrying is what happens when sites from the list leak out. Even if we don't have the full list, as soon as someone visits a blocked site they can note the URL. Then all they need to do is send you an email with an in-line image link pointing to said site (or a hidden image on another site, an ifra
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When are we going to start countering the current trend?
When the tech-hostile ultraconservative 60-somethings from whom the parties that bring up such laws draw the majority of their voters have died off. The CDU/CSU parties which pushed this horrendous law is highly popular amongst people over 60 [ptrace.fefe.de] with low education [ptrace.fefe.de]. (Source: Zeit.de [www.zeit.de], screenshots courtesy of this excellent blog [blog.fefe.de])
And I suspect the situation in other countries to be similar. Those people do not understand what the Internet is and how it works, and they have an unwavering trust in the state and gove
Re:I know the feeling. (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you really think that the government doesn't know about other DNS servers?
Yes, after some TV magazine report, I know that they don't think that far.
Blocking people from getting there is not the point. Intimidation, and getting the people used to this kind of government, is the real point.
Besides: Who stops you from using another port, and encrypting the data trough a VPN? Hell, my router can do that. Trough a simple web-interface. I don't need to change anything on my pc. It's done in 5 minutes. Now if you offer me an offshore DNS server with a VPN, a good connection, and just the price of keeping it running, you will have a client. (Those free ones are too slow, and the others that you buy are way too expensive, because they want to profit big time from it.)
I smell a nice non-profit business model here. Especially since half the world can be your clients.
As long as they don't go to war against our small island full of servers, and as long as they do still allow data into the net, we can circumvent their censorship. And offer the whole world to do so too, in one click (insert USB stick, run autostart, click OK, done).
I wonder how one could protect those servers better, even in case of attacks? :D
Hey, I know it: Infect the censorship servers *themselves*!
Who wants to apply for a well-payed job in this emerging censorship-server-market? :)
If we storm them, all of us will pretty much be moles. Meaning we can perfectly disable the censorship proxies/routers for users with our special client patch.
My god, and they thought they could stop *us all*. They can't even stop me alone.
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Do you really think that the government doesn't know about other DNS servers?
Yes, after some TV magazine report, I know that they don't think that far. Blocking people from getting there is not the point. Intimidation, and getting the people used to this kind of government, is the real point.
I can reinforce that. The music industry is already calling on the government to include filesharing and torrent networks.
So you can see where they're heading...
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actually, most senior techs here handle these requests whenever they come in. we're all cleared to handle sensitive data.
What I was talking about wouldn't be classified as sensitive it would be secret and probably would run on it's own machine but maybe your right and your elected officials really are as stupid as you say they are. But then that really says something about Denmark doesn't it?
Well, I'm Danish, i follow the news and specifically politics regarding IT. You know, being a normal, concerned citizen in the country i reside in
So you support DNS filtering? and you support your Politicians even though they are stupid? On the one hand it sounds like you are proud of your country and on the other hand it sounds like you think your government is incompetent and thu
Re:I know the feeling. (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect political viewpoints judged "extreme" by those in power are already on the blacklist in Germany.
Hasn't Denmark put opposition political websites on the blacklist too? I recal a /. story on that.
Does anyone really think that blacklisting opposing political viewpoints is merely an "unfortunate side effect" of schemes like this?
Re:I know the feeling. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if you consider the UK a functioning democracy, but recently they rounded up a group of hippies on the grounds that they might be thinking about causing disruption at a power station.
They were then released on bail, the conditions of which were that they weren't allowed to be hippies, weren't allowed to be against power stations, and weren't allowed to talk to anyone who was either a hippy or against power stations. More or less it amounts to house arrest. Without any form of trial or due process.
Note: I don't agree with the aforementioned hippies policy wise. But when they came for the hippies, I didn't speak out...
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OK, I'm getting a few replies pointing out examples of government policies to block certain dissidents. I think you'll find, however, that these policies to block dissidents have another side to them, where the expression of such dissidence is, itself, considered offensive (especially the hate speech). So, while I admit what I said was incorrect, I'd like to make a new argument, one that's closer to what I meant.
I meant that censoring dissidents is rarely, in a functioning democracy (yes Hognoxious, that in
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Or, if you are a real masochist, /etc/hosts.
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I feel bad for the people in Germany, but I'm glad its not me.
I'm sure there's a word that describes my secret joy about their bad-luck, but I can't remember it.
Probably in some foreign language or something.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude [wikipedia.org])
Geez! (Score:5, Funny)
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Wait, is that why all of my .pl requests are going to .de all of a sudden? Spoooky....
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What I know of Silvio Berlusconi, I see a dreadful present for your country as well.
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Re:Geez! (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, it's only a selected few politicians.
Everyone outside their small circle is opposed to this. From techies to NGOs and even abuse victims.
alternative dns servers; (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.opendns.com/ [opendns.com]
http://www.dnsserverlist.org/ [dnsserverlist.org]
Re:alternative dns servers; (Score:5, Informative)
apt-get install bind9
127.0.0.1 top of resolv.conf
Any slashdot discussion about DNS will imminently fill up with hundreds of recommendations for opendns.com ...which is fine, but also a bit puzzling.
Don't most of us have at least one linux machine somewhere, where you can put a caching nameserver, then point any windows machines on the LAN to that.
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Yeah, because that caching nameserver just magically pulls its DNS info out of thin air...
Re:alternative dns servers; (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, because that caching nameserver just magically pulls its DNS info out of thin air...
Err, yes? Or rather, it starts with the root servers, which is as good as anything gets. Certainly better than OpenDNS, which isn't above manipulating answers.
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Doesn't bind9 still require a third party DNS server to get those addresses in the first place?
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You'll need to maintain your root hints.
Re:alternative dns servers; (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's not fine to recommend OpenDNS [slashdot.org].
Gigaton Fail - (Score:5, Insightful)
For whatever naive reason I allowed myself to assume that Western Europe had finally begun to understand that police states are regressive and undesirable. Each passing day, it becomes clearer and clearer that realization has still yet to be made.
Re:Gigaton Fail - (Score:5, Interesting)
Or browse like the Iranians. There's currently a pretty decent number of people helping set up proxies around the world for use in Iran. Austin Heap [twitter.com] managed to setup some VPN servers on gigabit-ethernet.
I'm working on a Virtual Appliance that runs Squid, Tor, Polipo+Tor, ziproxy & ssh for use by people who don't quite know how to setup squid for themselves or want to sandbox it.
Re:Gigaton Fail - (Score:5, Informative)
My host forgive me. http://www.exstatic.org.nyud.net:8080/proxybox/ [nyud.net].
Again, this is just something I thew together last night when people on Fark (VII threads and counting) were wanting to help but not able to figure out squid.
I would appreciate any feedback or help hardening it or adding features or getting the download size down or etc...
jjarvis98@gmail.com
Re:Gigaton Fail - (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if every single person in Iran thought that before they went outside.
I'm just a white collar guy that works 9-5. People asked for proxy servers. People wanted help setting up proxy servers. I did what I could.
I should have just watched American Idol.
Re:Gigaton Fail - (Score:5, Funny)
That's not what the Ministry of Truth told me.
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Oh, most people here would agree that police states are bad. But on the other hand they would say that there are exceptions (child pornography, terrorism etc.). And of course "our politicians would never do something really wrong!!!"
People in Germany live in a rich land which has last experienced war 64 years ago - so most people see it for granted that they will always live in a democracy, where their freedom is guaranteed.
Intellectually they know that in other countries this isn't so, but if you personall
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Easily circumvented? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that easy circumvention of a bad law makes it okay, but as a practical measure wouldn't it be easy to just use a DNS server in a different country? Or is Germany planning on firewalling all DNS queries except those from 'official' servers?
What are they censoring? (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember back a year or so, when the .alt newsgroup was taken down because something like 1% of the newsgroups in that domain had child pornography on them? You might as well have gotten rid of the whole internet because people could have found child porn there. It doesn't make sense.
I would have expected something like this "DNS blacklist" in Iran or China. But Germany??
This sounds like censorship for the sake of censorship
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I would have expected something like this "DNS blacklist" in Iran or China. But Germany??
This sounds like censorship for the sake of censorship
You must not know much about Germany to be surprised by this. Have a good read on this [wikipedia.org] article.
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
This sounds like censorship for the sake of censorship
You mean there is another kind?
What's Next? (Score:4, Interesting)
Then we start with those older folks suffering from dementia?
Then we go on next to those who committed felonies?
Finally, making it a requirement for all people who want to work, buy groceries, etc?
What's next?
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Are gonna start tagging "children" with gps locator tag subcutaneous inserts?
Then we start with those older folks suffering from dementia?
Whole families have been chipped in Florida by their choice.
http://www.miaminightout.com/spotlight/advop/11172002/microchip.shtml
Then we go on next to those who committed felonies?
We're on it. http://www.cs.unc.edu/~pozefsky/COMP006D_F05/Criminal.ppt
Finally, making it a requirement for all people who want to work, buy groceries, etc?
What's next?
There's firms that used to exist called city watcher that had their employees gain access to doors. U Conn developing chips to implant into soldiers to monitor vital signs.
Tag the monkeys (Score:2)
I dunno, they will probably start tagging animals once they run out of people...
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they already DO that...
SETI better hit a home run pretty soon -- the government is gonna need aliens to tag when they run out of earth-bound flesh.
and we humans are prime targets for them too, so it'll go both ways; as we'll all be well-versed by then in the bending-over-to-get-large-stick-rammed-up-the-ass maneuver.
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"Are gonna start tagging "children" with gps locator tag subcutaneous inserts?"
Sure, and Slashdotters have already been helping with "how-to" advice: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/01/1659209 [slashdot.org]
Mein Herr! (Score:5, Insightful)
First, switch to Open DNS, second, vote the bastards out. Keep voting the bastards out until you get your bastards in there.
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Re:Mein Herr! (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens when the ballot looks like this:
Please select the candidate of your choice
Re:Mein Herr! (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a Pirate Party over here in Germany, and it's about time they get some more votes so the major parties start to listen.
Money and votes are the only things the bastards are interested in, after all.
DNS spoofing is just one way to satisfy the law (Score:4, Insightful)
The law demands no specific way of intercepting the traffic, just one that works. If DNS spoofing proves to be unable to satisfy the law, then we will see more drastic measures, like blocking or rerouting access to alternative DNS servers and transparent proxies.
Officially the proposal is pushed as a means to combat child pornography, but politicians from all involved parties have already hinted at other possible uses for the filtering infrastructure which will be installed. The parties are quick to deny any intent to allow such an extension, but there are even official press releases clearly hinting at a not-so-hidden agenda.
Re:DNS spoofing is just one way to satisfy the law (Score:5, Informative)
Given that the whole world is moving to DNSSEC, have fun trying to spoof it two years from now.
Holy shit! (Score:5, Funny)
Think about it:
1. it's a story about government censorship (with all the usual iron-fisted delicacy wielded by big-government)
2. it's a process that is completely non-transparent, and creates a sort of internet-secret-police
3. it's happening in Germany
It's the perfect storm of internet flamewars, completely immune to Godwin's Lawn!
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"In Soviet Russia, jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous."
There, fixed your sig for you.
Re:Holy shit! (Score:4, Funny)
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You just blew my freakin mind... (Score:2)
Ignoring the other points you raised, didn't you just make it immune to Godwin's by mentioning Godwins? In effect isn't Godwin's just a case of Schodinger's cat, because you can't really discuss a thread's Godwin status in the thread without mentioning Godwin's, thus invoking the exception to the law?
Thanks for 'killing Godwin's cat', you nazi.
Old news for Finland, too (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Old news for Finland, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironically, his site is blocked by the child porn list by our Keskusrikospoliisi (federal police).
Dude, that's not ironic, that's inevitable.
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Seems like your Finnish ISP has the censor list in use - that's the page you land on.
For all I know, you might be some guy who tries to enforce Lex Karpela or something, so I won't give you any advice to circumvent the restriction. Sorry for that. Google around and you're bound to find it out yourself.
Before we use the 'police state' meme again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Before we use the 'police state' meme again... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't believe its at all the will of the people, on this one.
its a power grab for the gov, plain and simple.
germans tend to be technical, detail oriented and saavy and there is no way I can believe the population would WANT this.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
germans tend to be technical, detail oriented and saavy
You must be talking about a different Germany from the one I live in. Most Germans have no clue about modern tech.
Re:Before we use the 'police state' meme again... (Score:5, Insightful)
germans tend to be technical, detail oriented and saavy and there is no way I can believe the population would WANT this.
Flattering stereotypes aside, the general populous here is just as uninformed and boon-ish as anywhere else. They take their information pre-digested from the mass media and believe that politicians act in the best interest of the people. Combine that with an outstanding history of propaganda culture in my country and you have an uninformed flock of obedient yay-sayers. Most people read as far as "child pornography" and whatever is proposed to fight it can't be wrong, now can it? The majority of internet users will never even notice the blockades until their weblogs, gambling, filesharing and porn sites end up on the "to burn" pile. I'm disgusted by the shameful lies and deceit campaigns run by elected officials and I am bound to believe that this won't change in the near future. People are just too caught up in their daily existence to realize the big picture and fathom the depths of power structures within governments. One would think that Germany had learned lessons from her past but it seems like the only lesson learned is how to effectively manipulate the public opinion. Our media and political parties are largely bound by industry rule and won't take the risk of losing ad contracts or parliament alliances to defend freedom. After all, freedom makes a ruler's life hard. A sad and remarkable episode in German history has begun. This is the beginning of some disgusting schemes to protect the ruling class and their outdated ideas from reality. Next on the list are copyright infringements, there are several officials that have already mentioned this as the next logical desirable step. I doubt we can still stop it. The way this country is run by right-wing nuts and infiltrated from left over Nazis ever since WWII ended is despicable and unbeknownst to most a reason for this direction we're heading. I would say I'd emigrate but I just can't find any country where to.
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It's not the germans' trust in their government that is weird. It's the americans' distrust in their. Maybe it has something to do with how fucked up their election process is and how often their politicians screw them over?
Re:Before we use the 'police state' meme again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Censorship is *always* backed by the majority. Doesn't keep it from being a violation of human rights.
Re:Before we use the 'police state' meme again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Before we use the 'police state' meme again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Read TFA. This is not a 'police state' in the forming.
Indeed not. When the police can decide what you are and aren't allowed to access on the Internet, the police state is already here.
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Having the Consent of the Governed [wikipedia.org] doesn't mean it's not a police state.
For a list of the fastest DNS servers for you... (Score:3, Informative)
brothels? (Score:2, Interesting)
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It is all about the taxes, my friend, money is power, you retain power through the control of money, in the lawless wild west-ness of the internet, taxes are hard to obtain and control, but a nice campaign contribution might keep you off the blacklist.
The red light districts are monitored and controlled, assuredly taxed.
the illegal brothels are not, but then, those girls don't generally carry health cards...
Just because it is Germany? (Score:2)
...to block Internet sites in order to fight child pornography ... enabling the government to block content containing child pornography.
I don't get the outrage. Is it just because it is Germany, and stirs up memories of, "Die Papieren, bitte"? Otherwise, I don't see how this is any different than shutting down ANY illegitimate business (regardless if it is online or brick-and-mortar).
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Not just Germany. (Score:3, Informative)
Check the UK's digital Britain report released today. Under their plans to tackle file sharing they will start by sending letters.
If file sharing hasn't dropped by 70%, they're going to start blocking sites, packet shaping, etc.
It doesn't make for pleasant reading, there is absolutely no way they'll get a 70% drop in file sharing, especially not in 6 months so effectively it sounds like the government is using citizens not stopping file sharing as an excuse for a much greater censorship program by setting unrealistic targets on file sharing.
It's nice to know the Labour government is finished, but it's disturbing to know that the Tories will almost certainly follow through with this legislation and that even some of the Lib Dems support it.
Does that mean... (Score:2)
Does that mean us Americans can be Smug and Snotty to Europeans again?
The real discouraging thing (Score:5, Insightful)
One other fun fact, the ruling parties (the CDU and SPD) have already mentioned using this blacklist for other things too, mainly gambling sites, Islamic sites and "Killerspiele" (sites that contain or promote violent games).
It all brings to mind that South Park baseball episode where Randy gets arrested, with one small difference, "Oh I'm sorry I thought this was a democracy".
Re:The real discouraging thing (Score:4, Informative)
> "Oh I'm sorry I thought this was a democracy".
Do not confound democracy with liberty.
Elect someone else doesn't work! (Score:4, Insightful)
The "elect someone else" option unfortunately doesn't work. Basically there are two big parties (CDU and SPD) and both want the same in most of the cases. So you can be sure that one of them will lead the next government and nothing really changes.
It's like if in the US there is an important issue where Democrats and Republicans agree on. If you are against their plan, what do you do? What chance is there that a third party is going to take the house or bring up the next president? Guess why Ron Paul ran for the Republicans? Because he knew that as a third party/independent he wouldn't even get on the ballets / into the big TV debates.
This is not.. (Score:2)
Maybe they'll hire (Score:2)
the Green Dam folks to write the DNS firewall.
Really, I don't see how this is going to work unless you firewall DNS. Then your official DNS servers are going to have to do a lot of work. Eventually businesses are going to revolt if this is causing downtime....
Don't worry... (Score:3, Funny)
insane politicians (Score:4, Interesting)
When you read up a little on the history, views and personalities of the main politicians involved in this - Ursula von der Leyen and Wolfgang Schäuble - you find out quickly that they are both almost certainly borderline insane.
Schäuble is suffering from PTSD since that failed attack on him many years back. His medical records are kept secret.
von der Leyen is either a fanatic or crazy. The amount of disconnect from reality she displays certainly has a medical term, but I can't recall it right now. She's acting like the guy who insists on being Napoleon no matter what evidence to the contrary you come up with. You could show her a room full of scientific studies disproving each and every word she's ever said on the matter - and she wouldn't change her course one inch.
Quite frankly, these people are dangerous and criminally insane.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Schäuble is suffering from PTSD since that failed attack on him many years back. His medical records are kept secret.
Dude, everyone's medical records are kept secret - it's that privacy thing we sometimes talk about on /., ....
Quite frankly, these people are dangerous and criminally insane.
Sadly not unusual in politicians. I sometimes wonder whether one or both are actually prerequisites for entering politics.
Re:These parties are also big Linux supporters (Score:5, Funny)
Re:the wall (Score:5, Interesting)
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
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From TFA:
... circumcising constitutional freedoms.
A little snip here, a little snip there...
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It's Germany, and while some people like their boardgames, it's been clear for a long time that they take the "hysterical spinster" approach to censorship. Their approach isn't sane, consistent nor rational.
I simply shake my head sadly, thank Yog-Sothoth that I don't have to live there, and pray nightly to "He Who Is Not To Be Named" that German style government doesn't come to my country.
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Why is it that people always assume that governments are meddling with their privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of choice when it's the same governments provide a blanket of protection?
Because, by definition, that "blanket of protection" is being provided exactly BY meddling with privacy, freedom of speech, and freedom of choice. You fail to point out that the government actions in such things are meant to "protect you from yourself."
The two are not mutually exclusive. The former is the means to the latter, and, all apologetics aside, it's utter bullshit.
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Was there a time when petitions truly were effective?
Depends on locale. Can't speak for Germany, but there are states in the US where a sufficient number of signatures on a petition is enough to get the measure on the state-wide ballot
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I like how you're thinking...
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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WWHD(ITHTIIT1940S)?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Oops, please mod parent down, I got the URLs wrong:
If you're interested in expressing your opinion from an international point of view you may contact the German members of the bundestag here: http://www.bundestag.de/parlament/fraktion/spd.html [bundestag.de]
or here
http://www.bundestag.de/parlament/fraktion/cducsu.html [bundestag.de]
The party that cowardly shied away from a real election campaign because they were afraid of the boulevard press and thus helps installing the censorship is called "SPD", Social Democratic Party.
The party th