Israel's Supreme Court Says Yes To Internet Anonymity 198
jonklinger writes "The Israeli Supreme Court ruled this week that there is no civil procedure to reveal the identity of users behind an IP address, and that until such procedure shall be legislated, all internet postings, even tortious, may remain anonymous. The 69-page decision acknowledges the right to privacy and makes internet anonymity de facto a constitutional right in Israel. Justice Rivlin noted that revealing a person behind an IP address is 'an attempt to harness, prior to a legal proceeding, the justice system and a third party in order to conduct an inquiry which will lead to the revealing of a person committing a tort so that a civil suit could be filed against him.'"
Re:Torturous? (Score:3, Informative)
Getting warmer. Tortious.
Unless they actually meant torturous - but most blogs aren't THAT bad.
Re:Topsy Turvy World We Live In (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Topsy Turvy World We Live In (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Topsy Turvy World We Live In (Score:3, Informative)
France? Left-wing? You must be in the “We in the US hate the French” reality distortion bubble.
The government there is full of right-wingers and even nationalists!
Re:Israel, not Turkey, deserves the European Union (Score:2, Informative)
The government was started with a clean slate, not the other political situations which abound from the illegal appropriation of Arab and Palestinian land. Their government was allowed to grow and mature under the auspices of cooperation ensured by the international community, esp Britain, France and the US. Even if Israel itself was breaking the law from day one, it felt almost no repercussions for it politically with the west. Its military strength bolstered by cold war paranoia is still unmatched in the region but it is quickly losing its ability to act against international law without at least diplomatic problems developing.
It will be a long time before Israel answers for what is has done, but let us hope that enough of those people who committed the crimes will be alive to be prosecuted for them.
Re:Wow! (Score:2, Informative)
"...antisemitism..."
Their neighbors are semitic, you idiot.
Re:Israel, not Turkey, deserves the European Union (Score:1, Informative)
I've been there multiple times, not that it helps in figuring out history. I think probably Zionists hate the Internet. If not for the Internet, we'd all think that the brave Israelis came and developed the land (which was empty, of course), and then neighboring hordes of antisemitic Arabs came and attacked them. Then the brave Israelis fought them off and reluctantly held onto the land for security reasons.
You can play the "oh you poor soul, reading the Internet, what does it know!" card all you like. The fact remains that much of the useful information on the Internet comes from other forms of documentation and proof.
The area was ethnically cleansed. They tried to be nice where possible (the world was watching), so bought as much of the land as they could. Then they intimidated where possible. Then they forced people off the land if they could. Then they burnt villages. Then they launched a war (1967, which they started and which documentary evidence proves was not a 'defensive' attack). In the end, a piece of land which had been majority Arab was turned in a very short time into majority Jewish.
Your own leaders at the time, incoluding Begin, Ben Gurion, Dayan, etc.. all had big mouths. They might have thought "the victor writes the history" but unfortunately for them we have the Internet now.
I'll leave you with this choice quote from Moshe Dayan
I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plough someplace where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was.
Re:Wow! (Score:1, Informative)
Irrelevant. It was invented with a specific meaning - hatred of Jews (basically a bad translation of German "Judenhass"). Modern words don't always mean what's literally implied by breaking them down into their Latin/Greek components.
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Informative)
In 1967, Arab armies were holding offensive formations next to Israeli borders, so Israel had to build up a reserve force for defense.
Israel's economy couldn't sustain holding the reserves for so long, so eventually Israel decided it had to either call of the reserves (and risk being defenseless against the coming Arab attack) or perform a preemptive strike.
Re:Topsy Turvy World We Live In (Score:3, Informative)
First, your statistical data is wrong. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics [cbs.gov.il] the median age of Jews in Israel is 30.6 years (as of 2005) and it's impossible the average is 10 years higher. The median age for Arabs is 19.8 years, so the average is indeed just a little over 20 (as of 2005, again).
As for the number of births per woman, the number for Israeli Arabs is 3.72, for Israeli Jews 2.69, so the difference is not that great. The prediction is that by 2025 the Arab population will count for about 25% of the population in Israel. If you look further away, you're only guessing, as there are changes due to cultural changes, but there will probably never be an Arab majority in Israel, because you didn't count for demographic changes in the Jewish population. The ultra-orthodox (Haredim) have much higher birth rate than the Arabs, so if you'll just extrapolate based on current birth rates, you'll see they'll become the dominant group by the end of the century, while the Arabs never pass the 40%. However, the birth rate in the Druze population dropped from 3.5 to 2.6 per woman between 1995 and 2005. The birth rate in Arab population is already going down, it used to be around 4.4 in the 90s.
Oh, and all this numbers are about Israeli residents, which include a large group of permanent residents who are not citizens, mostly Arabs from eastern Jerusalem
As for an Arab prime minister, I wouldn't bet on it. You don't know Israeli politics. First you have the fact Jews will continue to be the majority. Second is that voting percentages are higher in Jewish population than in Arab population (although I can't find the numbers at the moment, it should be around 75% for Jews, 60% for Arabs for Israeli citizens living in Israel). Then you should remember that significant part of the Arabs vote to parties led by a Jew.
Regarding the poll, I don't think it means much. Teenagers tend to go for extremes, but when they grow up they, well, grow up. The poll also noted 31% saying they'll disobey an order in military service to serve in the occupied territories and 48% said they'll disobey orders to help in evacuation of settlers (also in the occupied territories, of course). This numbers have nothing to do with what the Israeli army is actually dealing with, with soldiers who are just a few years older (in Israel we have conscription just after high-school, 3 years for men, 2 for women).
In general, given a Palestinian state will exist, Israel might remain a democracy with a strong Jewish majority for many decades. In fact, the only real danger to Israel's existence as a democracy with Jewish majority (what people here call "a Democratic Jewish State") is the inability to separate from the Palestinians, but that's a different matter...
Re:Topsy Turvy World We Live In (Score:3, Informative)
They "deserve their own state"? Do the Chechnyans, Kurds, Bedoins, Coptic Christians, Atheists, Mestizos, Tibetans, Taiwanese (not Chinese immigrants), each individual native tribe, Aborigines, Okinawans, and so on deserve their own state? Frankly, every single one of those groups deserve their own state more than the Palestinians, who are largely just Arab Muslims. None of those groups supported terrorist leadership while suckling off the international teat for the past 50 years, and none have a homeland. Last I checked, Arab Muslims have many states of their own, mostly cleansed of other religions, especially those darned Jews.
Yes, Israel has leaned to the right compared to their communist/socialist beginnings, but they're still to the left of the American Republican party. It's a natural reaction to the constant calls for death, the repeated Palestinian rejections of peace, the absolute Palestinian intransigence, the Gaza vote for terrorist Hamas, the spitting in Israel's face over the withdrawal from both lebanon and Gaza, and so on, and so on, and so on. There's no peace because the Palestinians don't love their children nearly as much as they hate the Jews - end of story. They've never missed an opportunity to miss and opportunity.
It's just plain nasty to say they'll implement Jim Crow laws. You're buying into the antisemitic apartheid BS foisted by the far left. Israeli Arabs know they've got it better economically than pretty much anywhere else in the region, and they also know they absolutely have far more freedom than anywhere else. The list goes on and on, but I'm so off topic here in response to your off topic post, it's all a waste.
Re:Wow! (Score:3, Informative)
I live in Israel. Roughly 60% of the jewish population is completely secular. There are several parties in the current ruling coalition that are Religion-based, yes.
However:
1) The press here is free. Hell, it's so free that our citizens are getting somewhat tired from scandals being exposed.
2) There are "Arab" parties as well. They are represented in parliament according to the number of votes which they received.
3) I can - and often do - buy pork.
4) I can drive my car during Shabbas and have worked an unfortunate number of Saturdays. Almost all businesses are open 7 days a week.
5) I can convert to ANY religion I want and suffer no repercussions.
6) While we do study the bible (old testament) during our school years, we also study the theory of evolution (and believe you me, there is NO controversy here).
7) Our legal system is mostly based on British laws (due to their brief stay in power here).
You can disagree with current/past actions of the Israeli government (god knows I - and many other Israelis - do), but your attempt to paint Israel as a theocracy is either extremely naive or plain misleading.
So you're either an uninformed fool, or a propagandist asshole. Care to share which?