Germany Implements Sweeping Data Retention Policies 210
G'Quann writes "Starting next year, all communication providers in Germany will have to store all connection data for six months. This includes not only phone calls but also IP addresses and e-mail headers. There had been a lot of protest against the new law, but it was ignored by the government. Quoting: 'The content of the communications is not stored. The bill had been heavily criticized. Privacy [advocates] had organized demonstrations against the bill in all major German cities at the beginning of this week. In October there had already been a large demonstration with thousands of participants in Germany's capital Berlin. All opposition parties voted against the bill. Several members of the opposition and several hundred private protesters announced a constitutional complaint.'"
At least they saw it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Before we in the U.S. get to patting ourselves on the back for not being this bad, consider the story [slashdot.org] just two posts down that discusses how this is probably already being done here with no one's knowledge or consent. I say "probably" because no one really knows. No laws passed, no protests staged (hard to protest something you don't even know about), just government silently doing whatever it wants after slapping a "national security" label on it.
It's not right in Germany, and it's not right here. The difference is that at least in Germany, this type of gross invasion of privacy happened on the public record and they can react and do something about it now.
Of course, we in the U.S. can do something about it too, but most people won't get worked up over what government might be doing without it being proven true, and our government is mercilessly exploiting that fact right now by keeping everything secret and implying that anyone who thinks otherwise is some kind of kooky conspiracy theorist (while they spy on them to make sure they don't get too far out of line).
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The people who see this coming are a minority. I don't think Germany is special in this way. Governments all over the world are doing this quitely and slowly, so almost nobody will notice the difference or will do anything, because the difference is so small.
Germany just introduced fingerprints in their id cards. Very few people think that this is a bad idea.
20 (maybe less) years and we are in 1984.
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Im confused, its 2007 isn't it?
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In other words, "groundless speculation."
The Bush administration doesn't have a really good record of keeping such programs under wrap. Why would this be any different?
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I would call it content.
Envelope information is fair game (Score:3, Interesting)
It was ruled long ago by the American courts, that the information on the envelope of a letter is not subject to privacy expectations and can be examined by the police without a warrant.
Germany's surveilance of the e-mail headers and connection's IPs is no different — fair game, as long as the contents is not looked at.
It's been "right" here and there for decades
logical fallacy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Envelope information is fair game (Score:4, Insightful)
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It was ruled long ago by the American courts, that the information on the envelope of a letter is not subject to privacy expectations and can be examined by the police without a warrant.
Germany's surveilance of the e-mail headers and connection's IPs is no different — fair game, as long as the contents is not looked at.
It's been "right" here and there for decades — possibly, centuries. I can not even find any links quickly, which means, it is certainly a pre-Internet thing...
Yes, but no.
Envolope: Address, adressee, sender, return address, location where it was mailed from (Via Postmark)
e-mail: Address, adresse, sender, return address, server that it was sent from, a list of every server it's touched since being sent, subject, unique identifier, what software was used, what's being responded to, what type of document is included in the message, possibly spam status flags (Anything Bold is not located on the outside of an envelope)
There's a lot more information in e-mail headers
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Most people won't get worked up over what government might be doing even with it being proven true. That's been shown many times already.
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They don't understand the implications.
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The way this is intended to work is that the traffic captured goes unencrypted. As soon as SMTPS [whoopis.com], IMAPS and possibly POP3S is used all this effort is just a waste of resources because the mail headers will also be encrypted. Same goes for HTTPS.
Of course it's possible to do a man in the middle attack from the government on this, but it will be a waste of effort and unless the traffic is restricted to always going through government approved servers and proxies it will be a wa
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It's the provider handling your e-mail that will save it, it's not 'read' in transit. The provider has access to the unencrypted data.
As long as you don't encrypt the e-mail it self.
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Re:At least they saw it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
When did I say it was?
I'm referring to things such as the practice of extraordinary rendition, torture by waterboarding, silently monitoring all Internet traffic, etc. Stuff that the administration in charge keeps waving their hand at us and telling us, "There's nothing to worry about."
There's an unprecedented level of government secrecy in the U.S. now, secrecy about stuff that has little or nothing to do with national security. Well, secrecy except when it comes to disclosing the names of CIA personnel who happen to be involved with your political enemies. That's what makes me so nervous, it's secrecy for political reasons, not secrecy for security reasons.
It's kind of ironic that all of this is done in the name of protecting me from terrorists. I'm more afraid of my own government today than I've ever been of terrorists. And frankly, I feel that the government that has spent so much time, money, and effort, breaking laws whenever convenient, to protect me from terrorism has made us more vulnerable than ever.
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Ah, you're right, it does make more sense now. I was wondering how you got aliens out of my post.
Nice reply.
Heh, Bushbots. I'll have to remember that one.
Re:At least they saw it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm also more afraid of a government using its power to eliminate my freedoms than of terrorists using violence to achive the same goal. Simply because of statistical probability of either happening and the relative likelyness of success.
What can a terrorist do? He can strike a certain target to limited damage. It can be a serious blow like what happened at 9/11, but this hardly affected the whole country directly. What affected the whole country were the actions taken by the government as a response to it.
So yes, I'm more afraid of an abusive government. It has far more effective means on its hands to have a negative effect on my life than any terrorist could have.
Re:At least they saw it coming (Score:4, Insightful)
People get all het up about changes to Facebook, what's on Reality TV, the price of gas, road traffic enforcement -- but stuff like this, stuff that really matters. Meh, forget it, nobody cares...
Are people already brainwashed? It's really impossible to imagine The American / French / Russian / etc revolution happening now. What happened? Seriously, how did this happen?
No Revolution for you...Not yours (Score:4, Interesting)
And YES, we have at least a million Americans totally brainwashed and mindf*cked enough that if, for some highly outlandishly unlikely chance, President Bush decides to declare a State of Emergency and suspends elections next year, these people would not terribly mind this inconvenience. They would come to believe that this would be a necessary action and the President Bush would be in the right for doing it. For them, the President cannot be wrong and can do no wrong. I guarantee we will hear a LOT from this group during the next 12 months because they don't like any of the current Republicans and they certainly hate the Clintons with all of their soul.
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Now, the US economy is maybe moving downwards currently, but we're far from the point of starvation and economic desaster. Everyone's fed, everyone's entertained. That's how the Roman
Meta-conspiracy theory (Score:4, Interesting)
The result is that independent media is totally unreliable because every fact is swamped by a million paranoid half-truths and lies. But the official media is also unreliable due to bias. So, (1) people have no reliable source of information, and (2) almost any criticism of the Government can be dismissed as the ravings of a crazy conspiracy theorist.
The problem is... where totalitarian dictatorships went wrong in the past, is that they try and shut people up. That causes trouble. There's really no need to to quieten and remove dissidents. No-one really cares.
Indeed yes. You don't need to "disappear" the dissenters. You just need to make them look like crazy paranoids, and in many cases, they are perfectly capable of doing that for themselves.
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Whereas people in the past would debate publicly, people now happily go about buying shit to craft their identities (which is what marketing is all about).
If we don't teach child
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Actually, during the cultural revolution [wikipedia.org] in China this technique was used for a bit. Basically, they let people to openly criticize the government and even encouraged it. The went around and said "See! We are democratic! We let people complain about the government!"
Later, they thought it was a bad
Re:At least they saw it coming (Score:4, Funny)
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So how exactly would pgp stop my email address being nicked from someone elses adress book? Do tell.
Not all of us live in a state of paranoia and therefore we don't use PGP for everything.
First, best solution to this.... (Score:4, Insightful)
One Word:
Crapflood.
Defeat it by.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Flood the internet with grabage
Oh, wait, spammers, worms and bots are already doing this.
Spoofing? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Germany is officially off my list (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe somewhere in the Swiss Alps?
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As being German: Definitely yes. Island may be an other option to consider
If the current politics remain, Germany is going to be a police and surveillance state in near future...
History (Score:3, Insightful)
You would think that the German people would look back on their own history and say "Never again!"
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Living in Germany you should know better than that (Score:5, Insightful)
>As being German: Definitely yes. Island may be an other option to consider
>If the current politics remain, Germany is going to be a police and
>surveillance state in near future...
Living in Germany you should know better than that.
Don't worry. In two months from now someone will the surveilance will cost money and jobs and eventually eliminate 15% of the positions for human investigators at the federal german BKA, thus costing more jobs. An uproar will shake the nation. Some guy at some obscure bureau of the Interior Ministry will also notice that this law makes their recent pet project, the German Federal Trojan (TM) officialy 65% superfluos. Another big no-no. Some other intellectual will publically notice that all info about all Germans is either available at StudiVZ (Germanys Facebook/MySpace), Amazon.de Marketplace or Ebay Germany anyway - which is allready completely scanned and archived (backups included) by the German IRS - and we know everything worth knowing about everybody allready. 10-15 different factions and public bodies of interest groups will have allready filed 20 complaints to the Federal Constitutional Court and the country will be plaqued by a lengthy debate that will have Secretary of the Interior Schäuble eventually drive his wheelchair off a cliff in frustration. Just before the current coalition of two big parties ends it's legislature there will be a watered down full-compromise version of the law with 8500 exception rules and modifications delivered on 2000+ pages in three big-ass Leitz file-covers, German style. Two months after the federal vote and three months into the new law someone in the EU Gouverment Headquarters will notice that this law breaks somewhere between 23 and 65 terms of union contracts, the British will wine that the Germans are now also attempting to take over the EU lead in surveilance, directly competing the UKs last big resort of excellence. Eventually the then new German gouverment will be bitch-slapped into revising its 10kg online surveilance law into a new draft as not to be fined by Brussels for a kazillion Euros.
Bottom line: No need to worry yet. Even by the most optimistic projections I wouldn't expect this law to gain any tracktion before 2015.
Re:Living in Germany you should know better than t (Score:2)
Any way I can help? Grease the wheels? Or his breaks?
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http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-545223/ [privacyinternational.org]
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I almost posted this in the AT&T spying commen (Score:2, Interesting)
In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
- Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)
Re:I almost posted this in the AT&T spying com (Score:5, Funny)
And then they came for the warez d00dz, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a pirate;
And then they came for Napster, and I didn't speak up because I had
And then they came for my traffic, and by that time Request timed out.
IP addresses? (Score:3, Insightful)
IP Allocation, not connection (Score:2)
So, a few orders of magnitudes less data.
Blackmail material. (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple fact of the matter is that once you give someone the ability to spy on you they will use it, for themselves. This story and the one two posts down about the NSA make perfect sense. The best way to keep yourself and your party on top is to have all the information, all the secrets that you can about your opponents. That way anyone who might challenge your power could be cowed by threats to expose their, or their childrens' embarrassing secrets.
Quite some time ago Gonzales announced that the Justice Department would begin extensive investigations into the world of Pornography, legal pornography. He candidly admitted that they were not breaking the law nor did he expect to find that Playboy was in violation of some statute. He only said that he wanted to keep track of 'them'.
Forget finding criminals, the Mafia isn't real. It's all always about power. You think Bin Laden and Mullah Muhammed Omar are dumb enough to be googling "Bomb" no they're using trusted couriers and decentralized structures that don't rely on the use of easily traced e-mails. It's all of us and our elected representatives who are the target here.
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Convince Italy and I'll agree with that statement.
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Well, a point can be made that all leaders are responsible for living a moral life. At least moral by their own standards - they would not be ashamed to admit it - and possibly confirming to society in all the areas which are not related to their agenda. Otherwise their mission gets lost in the
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No, but their couriers may be dumb enough to have done so in the past, or that kid googling today will grow up to be a courier. Analyzing networks of connections, many of them perfectly legal and harmless, has been an effective way to detect cutouts and others insulating high ranking criminals. It will work f
Future Projections... ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Step 1. Encrypt all outbound traffic (hushmail, https, sftp, ssh, etc).
Step 2. Use TOR to anonymize all your source/destinations
Step 3. Simultaneously run encrypted torrent traffic (say 25% of all your bandwidth) to increase volumes of crap they have to sort through, making their costs increase.
Step 4. Where possible borrow your neighbours unencrypted WiFi/WiMax connections to do your real encrypted/anonymous surfing.
2009... 100Gigabit Ethernet is standardized & sold to carrier backbones. 10G Ethernet becomes cheap & FTTH becomes more affordable. The crappiest computer you can buy now is a quad core with a combined core speed of 10Gigahertz speed.
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2010... Their retort: Use Quantum computing to break your encryption. Buy kilometers of underground bases and install thousands of rows of racks filled with multi-terabyte hard drives to store it all.
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2011... You upgrade your computer with a quantum chip and use unbreakable encryption.
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2012... They are *$(*#ed and you WIN! All Internet is now encrypted and unbreakable and everyone has multi-terabyte hard drives and multi-hundred Megabit or gigabit speeds to home.
Re:Future Projections... ? (Score:4, Insightful)
2008/9 - When it becomes a felony to use any encryption that does not have a back door for the NSA (or RIAA... whichever comes first).
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2008/9 - When it becomes a felony to use any encryption that does not have a back door for the NSA (or RIAA... whichever comes first).
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1) For instance, a friend of mine uses encrypted VPNs to access his work's computer from home. He works for a stock market fund managing company... it would seriously impact their business if their employees could not VPN in from home.
2) What about IT people that h
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2) The Youtube Videos: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Quantum+Cryptography [youtube.com]
3) The Quantum Computing torrents: http://btjunkie.org/search?q=Quantum+Computing [btjunkie.org]
There you go Russia/Romania... Now please don't dissapoint come 2012
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2011... You upgrade your computer with a quantum chip and use unbreakable encryption. ---------- 2012... They are *$(*#ed and you WIN! All Internet is now encrypted and unbreakable and everyone has multi-terabyte hard drives and multi-hundred Megabit or gigabit speeds to home.
Nothing is unbreakable. If a human created it, it has weakness. This may sound fatalistic, but it's the sad reality. It's an arms race for sure, and winning may involve keeping something secret for a determined finite amount of time, but in the end if there's a trace left, it can be solved.
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2008: Everyone starts using encryption and TOR. Everyone? No, just those that care about the whole surveillance (about 0.01% of the online population).
2009: A new law comes out that everyone in Germany who runs servers has to keep logs. This includes TOR operators, of course. Encryption for private use is outlawed, an exception is provided for online banking and corporation communication.
I guess you see where we're going.
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Yeah, apparently nobody sees a reason to upgrade to it.
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Same old shit (Score:4, Informative)
Um. (Score:2, Insightful)
Not everything. (Score:2)
Investigator: "You can't deny it. I know exactly whom you met in the forest 3 months ago."
Thats scary.
The German Government is Pissed (Score:4, Informative)
Why is it so hard for some otherwise reasonable people to understand that in a society where everything and everyone is tracable, sooner or later those in power can spank down a few annoying people and everyone will get the idea that if they speak out, they could be next?
IP address tracking: means your ISP IP address (Score:4, Informative)
Just to be clear on one point: the IP address tracking mentioned in articles on this subject is the IP address allocated by your ISP, not the IP addresses you connect to. Which is bad enough, and on the basis of existing laws there was a ruling that ISPs aren't allowed to retain your IP connection history for privacy reasons.
Personally I've alway assumed IP addresses are inherently traceable, so in a practical sense this doesn't make any difference to me (except that no doubt I'll end up paying for the extra costs incurred by my ISP). It's the other stuff I find more worrying - and completely asinine at the same time, because anyone with anything to hide (including teh terrorists) will know how to work round them anyway.
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All I have to say is ... (Score:3, Funny)
Ve haf Vays of making you talk you know.... (Score:2)
This is great news. (Score:2)
Email headers. How does one enshrine what a header is in law ([^: ]+): ?(.*)
Go
What is the penalty for not complying? (Score:2)
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The amount of data alone is stunning. The overhead to store this flood of information for 6 months costs millions.
So, unless the penalty is equally large, as an ISP I'd simply go "here's a binary 4, read my fingers. Sue me, it's cheaper."
Let them regress.. (Score:2)
EU law (Score:3, Interesting)
Germany are not the only country in EU that will pass this law. Every country in the union are obliged to have their telephone companies and ISPs keep the information for at least six years (I think Sweden are going to recuire the companies to keep the data for at least a year, but I have not followed the debate for the last months).
It is important to point out, however, that it's only the metadata that will be saved. You can see that a person have contacted another person, and probably even where this was (if it's a mobile phone), but you can't see what they have been talking about.
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Too often our politicians use the EU as a petty excuse to push unpopular laws. "We can't help it, the EU makes us" has far too often been the excuse. I don't buy it anymore. If they really don't want to implement it, they should vote against it in the EU Parlament or shut the f. up.
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some german ministers want to introduce some new crap law to become a police state.
then they see that this law could be rendered as unconstitutional (or they just try to implement it and fail).
they go to eu and spin-doctor that crap there so it goes back to germany as an eu directive and the ministers can say they could do nothing about it.
Protests ignored by the government (Score:2)
You and what army of disks? (Score:3, Interesting)
At some point, even if you have Terabytes of disk space, you're going to run out of room. Then what?
Here's a sure-fire way to mess things up:
1. Implement IP over SMTP headers. (already done, I believe)
2. Use it in Germany.
3. Watch as your ISP hates you. A lot.
But anyhow, it says that it's retaining headers, but not content. But sometimes there's content in the headers, right? Got a Catch-22 there, I think.
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It's time to write a nice little tool (Score:3, Informative)
With enough people participating, one could even create a network of some sort, where successful syncs are shared and repeated by others, so actual commections (and thus log entries) are created at an elevated rate.
As my statistics prof always preached, the only thing that's worse than having too little data is to have poisoned data.
...it was ignored by the government. (Score:2)
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Re:Fascism Anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fascism Anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
The constant vigilance of Big Brother was only to ensure that those who even hinted at seeing past Newspeak and the overall deception were properly dealt with.
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Re:Fascism Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Truly. The real thesis of 1984 is not the constant supervision of the people, but the twisting of thought by language. The concept of Newspeak is quite interesting because it erodes people's perceptions of something that is intrinsically bad, but twists it to seem, if not completely opposite, but neutral to the communication at hand.
The constant vigilance of Big Brother was only to ensure that those who even hinted at seeing past Newspeak and the overall deception were properly dealt with.
Sadly, we're already beginning to see this with English, but they're being far more subtle about it than were the engsoc's in 1984.
they're not trying to create a separate language, rather they're just starting to use existing words differently.
as an example: A bumper Sticker I saw the other day "My son is an Iraq Freedom Fighter" with a US Army Logo. "Freedom fighter" is what is sometimes used by the "Insurgants" as they are fighting to free their country from the ocupying force.
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> > "This is fascism."
> "No, this is a state sponsored invasion of privacy of orwellian scope."
No, this is a signal to invest in hard drive and tape storage manufacturers and distributors! To teh MOON!
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The road to ruin is always in good repair, and the travellers pay the expense of it. -- Josh Billings
Eerily appropriate?
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You are aware that they had no idea about the detail when they made up that law, right?
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Can't, anti-environmental (Score:2)
No, too many environmentalists in Germany.
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