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.'"
Topsy Turvy World We Live In (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok. Let me get this straight. Israel, one of the most right wing western countries has explicitly approved internet privacy, while France, one of the most left wing western countries, is actively trying to put the internet genies back in the bottle [spiegel.de].
Maybe my political analysis toolset needs to move out of the 20th century....
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? Talk about flame bait. All the other people in the region have tried to wipe them off the map several times, and continue to espouse the total destruction and death to every last Israeli.
Seriously... if you lived with those kinds of neighbors, you'd be a bit cranky as well.
If Israel was more like it's neighbors, the media would be controlled and all the locals would be driven out, like has happened to most of all the jews in Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Eqypt, etc, etc, etc.
Stick to the topic.
Kudos to Israel for respecting privacy rights.
Re:No constitution (Score:4, Insightful)
Capital letters make the entire difference here. It has no formal Constitution that's any more difficult to amend than any other law. It still has constitution, just not a constitution. In that regard, it's like the United Kingdom.
They still have constitutional rights, in the sense that there is no lawful means for approving some action against a citizen, which historically, has been the norm when referring to constitutional rights, rather than referring to some creative interpretation of a fundamental unabrogable Bill of Rights that take a more difficult procedure to amend.
Jefferson and Paine argued that George III was violating the English constitution, in that customs Englishmen typically enjoyed, they were being denied in the Colonies sans representation. “He has refused his Assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good” was one of the complaints in the Declaration of Independence. Not once did George III refuse royal assent to an act of the British Parliament; it was only the colonial legislatures. The last time a bill passed by the British Parliament was refused Royal Assent was in 1708, so to the Colonial governments, that was something completely unheard of, and violated their constitutional conventions (lowercase C's).
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Perhaps everyone hates them for a reason?"
And following your logic, perhaps the Nazis killed them for a reason, right? Yeah, it's called antisemitism and stupidity. It's found on both the far left and far right, both in great abundance.
Re:Wow! (Score:1, Insightful)
And following your logic, perhaps the Nazis killed them for a reason, right? Yeah, it's called antisemitism and stupidity. It's found on both the far left and far right, both in great abundance.
Not stupidity. Real reasons. But, you are right to say that doing something as drastic as mass extinction is evil. However, you people who use the holocaust and anti-semitism to shield Israel from criticism are the stupid ones. There are reasons to criticise, maybe hate is a little strong, but I can say that easily because I don't live in the Iron Cage.
Re:Topsy Turvy World We Live In (Score:2, Insightful)
"Prop up" implies that the people of Israel don't support it. Indeed, they do - it's a democracy. The people support it by definition. If you want a theocracy, look around at the neighbors.
And no, Israel is under no obligation to give citizenship to the Muslim Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. If you think they are, maybe you should push for the surrounding Muslim population to give citizenship to their Muslim Palestinian populations first. Funny how the UN doesn't pass resolutions for that to happen.
Re:Topsy Turvy World We Live In (Score:3, Insightful)
It could be because we mostly hear about economic issues, not cultural/nationalist sort of issues. On economics, Sarkozy is considerably to the left of even the U.S. left, being pretty openly against "Anglo-Saxon capitalism".
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh seriously? Can we please mention Israel without getting into a Zionists vs Hamas flame war?
Re:Topsy Turvy World We Live In (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. Read the entire history of Israel, not just the propaganda that you learned in Sunday School, and in the mostly biased United States media outlets.
Israel has the utmost contempt for a non-Jew's life and/or rights. They've proved that repeatedly.
GP's irony is on target.
Re:Wow! (Score:2, Insightful)
All the other people in the region have tried to wipe them off the map several times, and continue to espouse the total destruction and death to every last Israeli.
It's hilarious this got modded insightful. Can you name the specific times "all the other people in the region have tried to wipe them off the map"? Please don't embarrass yourself and say the 1967 war. Israel started that war, and it takes 30 seconds of googling to see their own leaders at the time admit it was not a "defensive attack". They attacked because they wanted "Judea and Sumeria" which they consider theirs based on some God or other "giving" it to them. They also wanted a security buffer against the people whose land they had ethnically cleansed (though I will admit they did so with a minimum of bloodshed).
Furthermore, nobody has espoused the total destruction or genocide of the Israeli people, at least nobody with any power. Even Ahmadeenanutjob didn't do so, he's called for the destruction of the "Zionist regime", meaning the theocracy and near-apartheid government that currently runs Israel.
Re:Nazis killed Jews. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are Jews and then there are Israelis. Jewish or not Israelis aren't like other Jews. Israelis use the atrocities committed against Jews in the past as excuses for committing their own atrocities. This is why so many Jews prefer to live outside Israel, including me. Israel represents Israelis, not Jews, and many Jews do not like what Israel represents. Including me.
Re:Topsy Turvy World We Live In (Score:5, Insightful)
Token members are in the Knesset but Israel by over half [haaretz.com] admitted they want to deny rights to Israeli Arabs including the right to vote. This coming generation in Israel is leaning ever harder to the right and I would not be surprised if they start instituting Jim Crow laws.
The average age of a Jew in Israel is over 40 and 10,000 under the age of 55 leave Israel every year. The average age of an Arab is under 20 and they have almost twice amount of children. There is simply no way for Israel to stay Jewish unless they have significant uptick in immigration because most of the Jewish population is past child-bearing age.
Why should another state "want" the Palestinians, they deserve their own state and they will have both the Palestinian territories and Israel itself just by outbreeding the Jewish population within 30-40 years. That is of course as long as the Jewish population does not continue in their bid to delegitimize the claims of the Arabs to a full and open democratic system. In our lifetime there will be an Arab prime minister of Israel, let that sink in.
Re:Israel, not Turkey, deserves the European Union (Score:1, Insightful)
Not to mention using the word paranoia for the Cold War is incredibly offensive to also East Europeans.
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously. Read the entire history of Israel, not just the propaganda that you learned in Sunday School, and in the mostly biased United States media outlets. Israel has the utmost contempt for a non-Jew's life and/or rights. They've proved that repeatedly. GP's irony is on target.
Seriously. Get out of your cave and look at some of the current news. If by "Israel" you mean the government then I can find quite a few examples disproving your statement. A nation with utmost contempt for a non-Jew's life probably wouldn't send a response team to Haiti [latimes.com], which isn't exactly known for it's thriving Jewish poplulation, accept and provide aid to Somali refugees [bartamaha.com] or send relief units to Kenya [somalilandpatriots.com]. How many other western countries have done that? And if by "Israel" you mean the population then you just made a gross over-generalization. I live in Israel and neither my friends nor myself have an "utmost contempt for a non-Jew's life and/or rights". Quite the opposite actually. You accuse the OP of listening to biased news outlets, but it seems as if you prefer to extrapolate from your narrow understanding of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to Israel's view of the entire world. Wow.
Re:Nazis killed Jews. (Score:4, Insightful)
Example: I have many Jewish friends, which is hardly surprisingly, since I too am Jewish. But I have very few Israeli friends. The reason? Because I've met few Israelis I care to be associated with. The majority of non-extremist Jews probably share a similar view.
I have Israeli friends here in America, simply because they are much like Americans; other than a slight bit of cultural Israeli chutzpah. They even tend to want peace, as many elections, and governments, in Israel have demonstrated. (Yes, even Netanyahu's previous government.) I suspect you, Anonymous Coward, are actually not Jewish at all, and are just using this as a form of the "my best friends are Jewish but..." argument, and have a political axe to grind.
Re:Topsy Turvy World We Live In (Score:2, Insightful)
Compared to a country like the US, yes.
Terms like "right wing" and "left wing" are inherently relative. France of course has politicians that are fairly described as "right wing" by French standards, but they're still left-of-center (i.e., liberal) by US standards. If you prefer to look at things from the other perspective, the "moderates" in the US are pretty right-wing by French standards.
France is not as far left of center as, say, Sweden.
And the US (or Israel for that matter) is not the most right-wing country there is, either.
Re:Topsy Turvy World We Live In (Score:2, Insightful)
> continue in their bid to delegitimize the claims of the Arabs
> to a full and open democratic system
Do the Palestinians *want* a full and open democratic system? That's news to me.
Language pedant fail (Score:1, Insightful)
"...antisemitism..."
Their neighbors are semitic, you idiot.
And the meaning of the word "antisemitism" isn't "being against Semites", you idiot. Natural language isn't math or computer languages. Live with it.
Re:Nazis killed Jews. (Score:3, Insightful)
Interestingly - at least, I think so - I and many other Jews have Muslim friends. Jews and Muslims have much in common, and we get along rather well, generally speaking, but the same cannot be said about Israelis and Muslims, unless you include the fact that they are vying for the same dirt.
If someone thought of me as of an inferior being, I certainly wouldn't attempt to consider him "a friend". That would be a very costly folly.
Re:Topsy Turvy World We Live In (Score:1, Insightful)
Indeed, why no Israeli prime minister of Arab descent? The Israeli of Arab descent certainly aren't "enemy agents", but simply humans who grew up in Israel. People do not have a certain ideology because of race, this is all experience and what they learned in (especially the early parts) of their life.
You'll also have a hard time to find some third-generation US Muslim who would actually stone someone, and not only so because of fear of criminal justice, but essentially because of the society they were born into. That they perhaps still retain some of their family's beliefs or traditions does will not even be noticeable unless you REALLY look closely in most cases. They have long found a way to not be radical or offensive...
You should be more scared of the racists that want to tell you that has the mentality of and thus cannot be allowed to have this . Always the same pattern for racist demagogues.
Re:Topsy Turvy World We Live In (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nazis killed Jews. (Score:4, Insightful)
No need to invoke Godwin.
when rockets start raining down on your town from a neighboring refugee camp, what will be your proposed solution?
As a side note- Yes, I know the issue is much more complex. Yes, I know there are settlements, and bad history and oppression. However, Israel has outgrown that phase in its history. Everyone except the most hard-core right wingers have accepted the need (and moral duty) to retreat from the occupied territories and allow the Palestinians to form their own country.
We even pulled out of Gaza. Completely. No strings attached. Just upped and went. We also had to evacuate about 10k families, some of them forcibly, so it really wasn't easy. Almost tore our country apart politically, but we did it because it was the right thing to do.
And the people of Gaza did rejoice, and they created their own country and, once they have achieved their long-fought-for dream, settled down to build their future in peace. Sort of. not completely. Well, actually, not at all. They started bombing Israeli towns across the border. When asked what they want in order to stop the bombing, their answer is "to destroy Israel". It's in their charter. Really. You can check.
So no. I don't have to invoke the Nazis. I'm not happy about what we do, but I'm damned If I'll apologize for it to fools like you.
Re:Israel, not Turkey, deserves the European Union (Score:2, Insightful)
If his assassination outrages Europeans, what that reflects is the lack of respect that Europeans have for fundamental human rights and international law when it comes to Jews.
Dear sir, we are not cowboys and this is not the far-west. In Europe we have this thing called Court of Law. There was no international arrest mandate for al-Mabhouh, and even if there was one, he was supposed to have a trial (call us old fashioned here in good ol' Europe, but we kind of believe that before assassinating people, they are kind of supposed to have a trial and check if the accusations against them stand in a court of law).
There are international arrest mandates for former Israeli ministers here in EU but that's strange, we don't see intentions here for going after the guy and murdering him: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/british-court-issued-arrest-warrant-for-livni/ [nytimes.com]
I do know that is not something that country believes in so I understand that since you where not raised in a society that values legality, respect for human life and moral, you simply fail to see my point.