pouët.net

About German politicians and their computer knowledge... (Video in German)

FWIW - updates for the non-germans (and those german sceeners who don't follow the news):

Seems like we will get that censor-law we've discussed here. It's not active yet, but it's highly likely that our german BundesHorst signs the law.. (that would be the very last step).

The process to get the law through the political instances has been *very* fishy btw.. I spare you the details, it was dirty.

As a consequence of this I've joined the german pirate party yesterday. Now it's time to change things..

Cheers,
torus

I signed the petition, but sadly it didn't help.

nope, that wouldn't help.

The irony is, that over 130 thousand germans signed the petition and our Junta had the guts to use some political tricks in order to get the law through the legislation before the petition was even heared..

Great eh?

Currently we don't even know if these tricks are legal or not.

Oh - while we're at it:

Every german should see this (seven minutes that changed my life). It explains some of the things that have gone wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiX4wHFDt5w

One thing you should pay attention to: How many of our beloved politicans are actually sitting in the bundestags and are listen to the last hearing before they vote?

i don't even understand German, but I heard the phase "kinder pornographen". which instantly wins the debate on government internet restriction and control. \o/

How many paedophiles were arested before they posted their stuff on the internet, and how many were after?

That could be a good argument.

xermobyl, we had all these arguments. It just helped much. They simply ignored all of them or - if your argument was to strong - discredited you as a child-pron connoisseur..

Imho you can't even counter the kiddy-pron stunt with a well prepared godwin. It's perfect to get a censorship-law through the legislation.

I've started working on what i'd like to call "neusprach" yesterday. From now on, "Merkel" means awesome, superlatives are made with prefixes, all cases are gone and "Freidenker" means either "terrorist" or "national hero" depending on the subject's Merkelness. Example: "Von der Leyen ist ein doppelplusgut Freidenker". I propose you guys adopt it, it'll make things much simpler.

Wollen die sich eigentlich nur profilieren, sind da andere Interessen im Spiel oder sind die einfach nur dämlich genug um sowas blödes durchzudrücken und meinen das würde es jetzt bringen? Ich komm da nicht mit...

I can't actually recall the last time I heard about politicians paying any attention at all to petitions.

It's not just any petition, it's an "official" one. As such, they are pretty much required to pay attention to any petition of such kind with more than 50k subscribers. At last count there were more than 134,000. Too bad the resulting hearing (or whatever it is) is more of a formality than any political obligation to change the proposed law.

doom: it's very effective. Printing t-shirts works great too, and wearing an "I oppose internet censorship!" badge.

psonic: i actually think that we've got to the point where governments no longer care to listen to the public. they have plans they wish to implement and will persist until they get what they want, regardless of how many petitions and protests. they'll chip away and engage in propaganda and lies until we just give in.

call that cynical if you like, i consider it realistic reflection of "democracy" today.

psonice: but your post was probably sarcastic anyway ;-)

I don't think petitions work at all, unless they're signed by millions. What does work: poll ratings. If lots of people decide they don't like what the government is doing and that they'll vote for the guy that wants to stop it, they tend to change their minds. Or start shooting, depending on the country ;)

Problem with stuff like this is that most people don't really care. It's blocking some child porn, which can only be good, and it's not going to block google and youtube, so it doesn't really matter. Thinking a bit further about what is happening, and what is done to their rights.. well for most people it just doesn't happen.

Polls? Not really. There were two opposing polls here in the last weeks, one in which >90% voted FOR the censorship and one where it was the complete opposite - you just have to ask the question in the right way and people will give you a different answer.

Jörg Tauss, a former member of the German parliament (Bundestag) for the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany), left the SPD on June 20th, 2009, and joined the Pirate Party of Germany (PPD). Thus, the Pirate Party has gained its first seat in the German Bundestag. This will probably increase the general public's awareness of this party. However, I doubt it will increase its popularity among the general population and its chances to enter the German Bundestag with the next elections. :-(

Jörg Tauss was caught with child pr0n and I heavily doubt he just had it for "research purposes" and for "getting into the scene to take them down" as he claimed... You don't store that kind of stuff for longer than it takes to hand over the evidence to the police if you're not totally stupid.

Saga: by "polls" i don't mean stuff like this, but the standard "if an election was tomorrow, who would you vote for?" polls. If the government sees that last week they were popular, but now the people will kick them out, they will listen to that :)

Rare, that Tauss-story is a bit more complicated.

He had child pron, and he never denied that, so it's not that the police suddenly discovered CDs with kiddi-pron.

According to him he tried to proof that much more child pron is traded via mail, mobile phone and via personal meetings, not on the net. So it's not a question if he had or had not posession of it.

Of course he could have asked/informed the BKA (police) about his research, but the BKA wants more control on the internet (fact), and as you can guess they would not be that helpful if you want to prof them wrong and build up arguments against their want for more power.

I for one welcome a politican that makes up his own mind and does not blindly trust the lobbies. Furthermore we have a law that allows you to do research on the child pron topic *if* the research is part of your job.

Now someone has to decide if that law applies to his job as a Member of the Bundestag or not. That's all what's about it.

Btw - for some more background information: Tauss is a long-standing member of the german Chaos Computer Club. As this he surely knows how to do a safe encryption of the child pron data. He did not, because according to him he thought the reserach was rightful.


If it was a bright move not to inform anyone about his actions is another question though.

That exactly was my point.

Thanks for for the information about Tauss. Didn't know much about him.