Um den Druck auf die Regierung gegen die Internetsperren zu erhöhen habe ich folgenden Brief verfasst. Ich versende ihn an diverse ausländische Medien. Ich werde die Liste der angeschriebenen Zeitungen und ggf. Reaktionen später veröffentlichen.
Censorhip in Germany.docx (15,51 kb)
Censorhip in Germany.xps (211,30 kb)
Censorhip in Germany.pdf (152,70 kb)
Der Wortlaut wie folgt:
Dear Sir or Madam,
please note this is an open letter, more information at the end of this letter.
I would like you to catch a glimpse of the German government and its attempt to censor the internet. This is a quite difficult topic - even here in Germany - and I will try to explain it to you in a few words. If I miss something or you have further questions please do not hesitate to ask me. Also I want to excuse my English, it might be not as firm as to school times.
At first I want to introduce myself and tell you my motivation for writing this mail. My name is Alexander Schwoch, 28 years old, working as software developer at a company with 80 employees. I am member of the German Pirate Party and member of the "Gesellschaft für Informatik" (GI) one of the largest associations for computer science in Germany. However this is not an official letter and contains only my personal point of view though the position of the Pirate Party is very close if not identical.
Now I want to explain our governments plans and the problems that arise with the plans of the German government. A free internet is something we all like to enjoy. However most people who really fight for this right are the young generation in Germany as well as technicians and qualified people who have a minimal understanding of how the internet works.
The tool of censorship is a stop sign. The Christian Democratic Union Germany (CDU), currently in the government in coalition with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), wants to display a website with a stop sign to all internet users who access websites containing child pornography on the internet. If this would be so easy as it sounds, I suppose everyone would say "Yes, this is a good idea". I for myself never stumbled across child pornography - in contrary to German politicians who tell the people that this is happening each day.
But there are problems, problems that threaten freedom and which leads us to the surveillance state which no one really wants. I want to list the details of these problems here, however this list might not be complete:
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Realizing the technical part of surveillance to display stop signs to internet users, can be extended to less fatal crimes than child pornography. In fact there are declarations of politicians who do not deny this and at least want to think about a possible extension.
But even the smallest extension of this leads to a situation that is already exercised in China, where a free and uncontrolled internet seems to be an utopia. Chinese people are told that they are controlling pornography, although they seem to repress the freedom of opinion together with controlling the internet.
Right in this moment in Iran the access to the internet is being restricted, due to arbitrary acts by the government.
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There are already (young) laws in Germany - that also are being strongly criticized - like the telecommunications data retention. This could be used by the police to control anybody using telephone, email or the world wide web. Although this is preserved for criminal actions, nobody can tell when and how this will be abused. However this already could be used to pursuit criminals creating and distributing child pornography.
There are companies that already want to use the preserved data to sue people who downloaded illegal music from the internet. Although this was forbidden by the court, nobody can tell how long this will stay so.
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The technical realization is not safe, meaning the currently planned implementation of displaying stop signs can be bypassed easily by anyone with little technical knowledge. There are already manuals how to establish this in the internet. As this is basic knowledge for everybody with an IT education I will not cite this.
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The list of the websites containing illegal material shall be held by the BKA, a German federal police department, which can be compared to the FBI. At the moment nobody knows who will administer this list. There are no or little plans who shall control this list. It is commons sense that a list like this can be abused itself. It is unknown how anyone who is (innocently) listed on this list can answer back to this. It is unknown when and how this list is taken care of, meaning old entries should be removed when no illegal content is being held there (anymore).
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Criminals could be warned by the stop sign displayed on their website. They can now take actions to move to another URL which has no stop sign. And they are being warned and are able to destroy evidence which could be useful when they stand before the court.
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In my opinion one of the biggest problems: No child is saved by these stop signs. People accidently coming across such a website could be tracked down. I am sure you can imagine of how the suspicion of having something to do with child pornography can destroy someone's live. Meanwhile the distributor of the content might get away with this, see above. So it might be a little harder, but not impossible to access illegal content. Child abduction shall be punished, but German government tries to punish everyone else in developing the surveillance state instead to aid classic investigation methods and lock down the real criminals.
Right at this moment a petition addressed to the German government can be signed, which challenges the government to not enact a law for the arbitrary display of stop signs, as described above. This petition was signed by over 128000 petitioners which is almost a record. Up until now this is the second largest petition ever in the history of Germany, maybe this changes during the day. The petition can be accessed in German language here: https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/index.php?action=petition;sa=details;petition=3860
Additional links - all in German language:
· The current draft for the law, as described above, is available here as PDF: http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/16/128/1612850.pdf
· The official position of the "Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V" is available here: http://www.gi-ev.de/no_cache/aktuelles/meldungsdetails/meldung/statt-internetsperren-kinderpornografie-ernsthaft-verfolgen-222.html
· The official position of the "German Pirate Party" is available here: http://www.piratenpartei.de/presse/Rettet%20das%20Internet
Please note this is an open letter. Other addressees will receive or already have received this letter as well. I will publicize this letter and maybe reactions on it, at my blog available at http://blog.palc.de
I look forward to hearing from you and maybe I will read something in your online magazine about this topic.
Very truly yours
Alexander Schwoch
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