Dyrathror

In France the Internet Barrier has marked its first innocent victim.

As can be read at golem.de in France the Webdesigner Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim lost his job at TF1 on of the biggest french TV enterprises after he privately criticised the bill for internet barriers (Loi HADOPI).

Mid of February he sent a private mail to his elected representative Françoise de Panafieu who forwarded the mail to the administration which is in charge of the HADOPI bill. Two month later he was called into the office of his boss who read his mail word by word in front of him and opened him that he was fired.

At the same time in Germany a Petition against the Internet Barrier bill is open for signature and was attended by nearly 70.000 signers within the first of three weeks. The comment of one politician was:

We know that there are about 200.000 pedophiles in Germany. This petition cannot stop our law.

At the same time the second reading of the bill in the Bundestag took place in a nearly empty plenum.

Let me ask only one question:

What has all this still to do with Democracy ?

In Europe an EU directive has to be implemented in all member countries as law according to the subsidiarity principle of the European Union. Unfortunately the work of the European Parliament often doesn’t make it into the news so that the public is involved early enough to be able to take part in the discussion of interesting matters.

This interesting part of the democratic process in Europe should be discussed separately one day. At the moment, as I just read on Spiegel Online, they are reworking article 5 of the directive for privacy and electronic communication. The idea is to implement a mandatory procedure of agreement for the storage of each cookie which a website wants to store on your computer.

On the positive side the idea to protect the internet user from being tracked by services like Phorm against its will is a good intention! But in the ideas for a technical solution of this problem the politicians again show their lack of technical understanding. The idea to pop up a windows with the terms and conditions you have to agree to, so that the website is allowed to store a cookie on your computer, will lead to the situation that most users will allow all cookies in general to be stored instead of sensibilizing the user to the problematic that their surfing behaviour can be tracked by missuse of cookies.

The problem is a very delicate one because on one hand the user wants the service which is provided by the use of cookies like that he is remembered by websites, be it for a login into a forum or a personalized advertisment when surfing on amazon. On the other hand no user will agree to work on several Pop-Ups for each page he is visiting.

What I don’t understand is that politicians increasingly search for technical solutions for legal problems. My discomfort is that within this process there seem to be no technical skilled professionals involved. Therefore these decisions may lead to more damage then good. And please keep in mind that legal problems cannot be solved with technical measures.

Two weeks ago in my article What is “green” in Green Gene Technology I still praised the decision from germanys Minister of Agriculture, Mrs. Ilse Aigner, for her change of opinion which lead to the ban of the genetically altered Monsanto MON 810 corn. Now I have to read in Spiegel Online’s article CSU-Ministerin Aigner düpiert Seehofer that she allowed BASF, a german company, to sow the genetically altered potato Amflora.

It seem that I missunderstood Mrs. Aigners intentions thoroughly! Instead of getting her act together towards a natural agriculture which is able to supply us and our children with healthy food also in the future it seems that it is all only about politics and money, as always!

Mrs. Aigner, is this your contribution to the german economy in times of the crisis or is it already part of your election campaign for the upcoming election in Germany or are there other economic reasons which lead to this decision?

The 60′s of the last century have been a time of breakup in Germany and many other countries in the world. Young people didn’t agree any more with the moral and political ideas of the elder generation and cried for radical changes in the society.

In my eyes this was only natural regarding that they were born after the second world war in a fast changing time with nearly overwhelming progress in natural but also social sciences which has left them with the feeling that their parent generation was left far behind in its understanding of the new generation, which has perhaps in fact been so.

In this time in germany the young political activists gathered together in the APO (Außerparlamentarische Opposition) a political opposition apart from the normal circus of political parties, elections and government because they had the feeling that not a single of the existing parties represented their political positions. The reaction of the establishment was high pressure and control of the activists by police forces and other measures. This extreme course of action from the authorities split the APO and the sympathisers in their surrounding into two parts. The majority could be silenced and later found themselves in other activities and finally a political home in the Green Party but a minority was driven into the political underground which established the base for the RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion) a terror organisation which threw her dark shadow over Germany from the 70′s up into the 90′s.

When I read the articles about the new laws for control and law enforcement in Germany which are against all democratic and federalistic rules as you can read in the latest articles on netzpolitik.org (Warum wir dem BKA nicht vertrauen können und was das mit dem Föderalismus zu tun hat) which describes why the BKA laws are against the german federal constitution and from Jens Scholz Warum es um Zensur geht which analyses why the new anti child pornography law is not established to fight against child pornography, as it is not the right instrument for this goal anyway, but only to establish a control infrastructure in the german part of the internet, I have to ask myself:

Is there not a single politician in Germany who has learned anything from the german History?

Before you go and start to criminalise our youth which grew up with technology as internet, handy, copies of music and films in original quality … only because you don’t understand them and get yourself heared by them, you should be exchanged by a younger generation of politicians as fast as possible! You cannot put everyone in germany under suspect of crime without thinking that this will not have far reaching consequences for our future.

It seems that Germany and China are going in opposite directions when it comes to the freedom of their people.

While China is willing, at least according do their communiques, that they want to strengthen the human rights in their country which also includes the right of information, the German Government is just establishing a law Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Bekaempfung der Kinderpornographie in Kommunikationsnetzen which allows the police to establish internet filters within their own discretion and without the normal rule of right controls of a democracy.

All articles in the german press and on politically active blogs like Bundesregierung beschließt Zensurgesetz and Gesetzesentwurf zu Web-Sperren beschlossen are shocked and ask themselves if the politicians are really ruling the country unhampered by any knowledge of which consequences the technical measures they are establishing will have for the future. I am sure that this will not only cut back the democratic rights of the internet users in germany but also have an effect on the economy, as all control measures which were established in the past have shown.

German politicians are always on a high horse when they look down upon the chinese governments dealing with their population when it comes to human rights and personal freedom. I think it is high time for them to step down!

Does anybody recall the novel Catch 22 from Joseph Heller? One of the main characters in the novel is the army B-25 bombardier Yossarian who tries to escape the war by playing crazy which is the reason why he is found to be perfectly healthy by the doctors and qualified to attend the war.

In one word:

Within the book, “Catch-22″ is a military rule, the self-contradictory circular logic that, for example, prevents anyone from avoiding combat missions.

Why do I refer to this book?

In Germany the authorities are exactly playing a Catch 22 against all internet users!

With the argument to fight against child pornography german authorities forced the biggest internet providers in germany to sign a contract according to which they have to establish internet filters according to a list from the german BKA (highest police in germany) as stated in BKA filtert das Web on Spiegel Online. As everybody in this circus knows, all arguments why these measures are not leading to the desired results and are therefore only duped to establish a control mechanism can be read in the article Die Argumente für Kinderporno-Sperren laufen ins Leere.

Now the content of a draft of the bill for the fight against child pornography is published in Kinderporno-Sperren: Provider sollen Nutzerzugriffe loggen dürfen. Further thoughts about this subject are expressed in Zensursula: Gesetzentwurf am Mittwoch & Gedanken zur medialen Wahrnehmung.

The Catch 22 in this is: Not only the criminal content is targeted in this new law but also the filter lists are secret because the content of the domains on these lists is criminal and because the filter lists are secret nobody is allowed to check if the content which shall be filtered is really about child pornography because as soon as you try to check the doing of the BKA you are a criminal too!

To go further, the internet providers are allowed to store all connection data concerning the domains on these lists which means when you are stumbling on such a website, automatically you are under suspicion to be a criminal.

The german constitution stipulates the separation of executive, judicial power and legislation. This means that normally measures which effect the basic law of the people in Germany cannot be decreed by the police without the agreement of a judge. Now the basic law of information and free communication can be restricted by the police without control by the judicial powers or anybody else! This especially because only the police decides about which domain is set on its list. In my eyes this is a violation of the german constitution!

Please keep in mind:

To make this clear, I am the first one to fight against child pornography or abuse for I have children on my own! Therefore it is even more horrible for me that this argumentation is used to suppress the opposition against establishing internet control mechanisms.

Sometimes I ask myself if in the fight for a political position nowadays everything is allowed because in my eyes a major part of all this is already the fight for the next election.

As I mentioned earlier, once the possibilities for gathering informations about you over the internet are established, they will be used!

I just read an article in the New York Times about the NSA: N.S.A.’s Intercepts Exceed Limits Set by Congress. This fits very well together with the plans in Germany about data retention which can be found under http://www.bundesnetzagentur.de and which is explained in the Heise article Entwurf zur technischen Umsetzung der Vorratsdatenspeicherung veröffentlicht.

The British Telekom even tested their Phorm-System which does Deep Packet Inspection to analyse the user behaviour of their internet customers without even asking them what they should have done according to the law, as can be read at Golem.de in EU geht wegen Phorm gegen Großbritannien vor.

And South Corea just implemented a “three-strikes law” even for web forums, to punish internet users when attending filesharing as can be read on netzpolitik.org in the article: Südkorea implementiert “3 Strikes” – auch für Webforen.

When we assemble all these informations we get the following image:

1. We will have the technical conditions for the control of the internet established
2. There will always be someone, even in good intent, who will use these instruments to their maximum possibility
3. And the punishment will be at least to be kicked out of the internet which means the loss of the basic democratic right of information or even more

Once Pandora’s Box is opened it cannot be closed again!

Now is the moment to stop all these things or one day we will find ourselves in a world where all informations and all our doing is controlled. I don’t think that then we will still be able to diskuss these things open.

In Germany a big political discussion is going on about the establishment of internet blockers to fight the spread of child pornography. Netzpolitik.org is calling for a picket against internet blocks in Berlin on friday Mahnwache am Freitag: Keine Scheuklappen fürs Netz!

As studies about the actual situation show, nearly all of the servers with denounced content could be legally taken from the internet without any collateral damage which would be caused by internet filtering. Based on a list from https://scusiblog.org/ who set the published blocking lists from Finnland, Norway and Australia into relation of the position of the servers where the content is hosted, Rochus Wessel went one step further and analysed these countries according to a study from the Internatinal Centre for missing & exploited Children about the legal possibilities to ban these contents in compliance with the local laws in these countries “Netzsperren sind Vermeidbar“.

Interesting in this context is the conclusion Rochus Wessel took:

The analysis shows that the predominant part of blocked content is hosted on servers in countries which would allow a complete deletion of the content. This lesser intervention should by all means be preferred because it causes no collateral damage and is more effective because deleted content cannot be accessed any more while filtered content is always still accessible by bypassing the filtering mechanisms.

How is it possible that in country A, which prohibits child pornography, content is still continously available while in country B these contents are already known to and blocked by the police?

1. The classification in country B as child pornography was wrong
2. Country A has less strikt laws then country B
3. The public authorities in country B did not inform country A
4. The public authorities in country A did not act in spite of their knowledge

Supposed that country A would be the USA these contents would be deleted within 1-3 days so that case (4) can be ignored. As well case (2) can be ignored because in this case the USA has perhaps the most restrictive laws in the world. Remains case (3) which would show a drastic lack of international cooperation which should be eliminated at once or case (1) which would state that all raised fears of opponents of internet filters were legitimate.

I can only add that this kind of blind political actionism which is produced by germans minister Ursula von der Leyen is only good to distinguish herself but in the matter completely contra productive. To exploit the rule of law possibilities and strengthen the international cooperation might be politically less sexy but would be in my eyes a much more effective way if the real goal is a fight against abuse of the internet.

Otherwise, you can call me paranoid, the reason for these campaigns might be simply to establish internet filtering as legal instrument to control the internet and therefore us all.

As the chinese news agency Xinhua reported, yesterday the chinese government published for the first time a human rights action plan for China. During the next 2 years human rights shall be protected and promoted with an focus on:

• Civil and Political Rights
• Rights and Interests of Ethnic Minorities
• Education in Human Rights
• Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
• Performing International Human Rights Duties

As stated in Spiegel Online, specially the promise of better social benefits would be highly welcome from a vast majority of the population.

It is arguable how many of these good intentions can be realised and in which time frame because it takes a lot of time until a governmental policy in China becomes reality in local government decision making. But for the first time at all the chinese government approved that there might be a need for change in the human rights policies in China.

One of the first things which should be changed is the disparity between countryside and city citizens as explained in Lizhens article about the chinese Hukou. This disparity in my eyes is a shame for an communist country where all brothers should be seen as equal.

[Update]
The full text of the action plan can be found here: National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-2010) .

For me as computer scientist I am specially interested to see the implementation of II. Guarantee of Civil and Political Rights, (5) The right to be informed. Will this point cover a less strickt filtering of the internet as well?

As far as the chinese government does not exactly explain what they want to change and how they want to achieve these goals a slight suspiciousness about this program is indicated.

I am living in China, a country very well known for its ability to build the biggest walls in this world. One remarkable example can even be seen from the moon. The other one is not that obvious and quite immaterial.

As computer scientist I am depending a lot on the informations I get over the internet. My whole daily work actually cannot be done without the actual documentations of tools and components I am using.

Living behind the biggest firewall in the world has a big disadvantage for my profession and I believe that this must also have an impact on the chinese software industry. There are many strictly professional sites which are unreachable without additional measures, like www.jruby.org. All blogs which are hosted at www.wordpress.com are unreachable even though I have access to the main page. These pages should be easily reachable for you if you are living in Europe or America.

The normal behaviour is a timeout of the network connection or that the address cannot be found at all. But also some websites are unnaturally slow, actually so slow that you cannot really navigate on them. Many sites can only be reached after several attempts.

Actually it is getting worse in China again. A friend of me even complained about rejected mails to me which were filtered out by there IP address.

On one hand I can understand the discomfort with which most governments see the internet as an anarchical, uncontrollable zone which they are trying to get under constitutional legality but the internet is nothing else than real life. When you want to find a way around the laws you will find it. You don’t need the internet for this. And when you want to get informations you will get them.

Think about the saying: The word is more powerful than the sword!