"Wir löschen gerade 19 Terabyte Vorratsdaten": http://is.gd/9AYza

[Triple Zero]

FUCK YEAH

GERMANY FOR THE MOTHERFUCKING WIN

German highest court judge has decided EU data retention laws are "unconstitutional" according to German constitution.

data retention is when the EU orders telecom corps to save at least 6 months of logs on every customer. that means who-called-who logs on phones and mobile phones as well as GET request headers (who surfed what URL and did which Google query) for ISPs.

for no good reason at all, the Netherlands decided to make this retention time 1.5 years, but that's because we're retarded and ignorant of the concept of privacy or something. this will probably change when the new elections are up (which is soon cause our gvmt fell a few weeks ago cause of something about whether or not we ought to have sent our troops to Uruzgan or not) anyway for the new elections it seems like Bits of Freedom (the Dutch counterpart to the EFF) is pushing these issues a lot.

also, IANAL but i read somewhere that Dutch laws can't be tested against our constitution, which I think means something that you can't legally destroy a law just because it's unconstitutional, but more that they shouldnt make unconstitutional laws in the first place. ANWYAY the point is that in Germany they CAN test their laws to the German constitution AND the Dutch judges usually take the decisions of this particular German high judge as inspiration for their own decisions, so the discussions on data retention laws are once more WIDE OPEN

and, so, maybe we could dial the privacy up a few notches in my beautiful country.

seeing that currently the Netherlands has had more wiretaps in absolute numbers than the entire US. yet there's only 17 million of us 

Dutch wiretaps: http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=25FD498F-1A64-6A71-CEAF0A3C87F9AD1D

[Requia ☣]

Doesn't Germany also arrest people who use Tor?

[Remington]

Doesn't Germany also arrest people who use Tor?

I believe that was a mix-up in a childpron investigation.

The person operating the server had -perhaps foolishly- designated it as an exit node rather than a middleman node, so the police saw that all the requests for the illegal content were coming from his IP address.

They dropped the charges once he explained to the illiterates what Tor was, although it left him with a pile of legal fees.

[Z³]

Doesn't Germany also arrest people who use Tor?

I believe that was a mix-up in a childpron investigation.

The person operating the server had -perhaps foolishly- designated it as an exit node rather than a middleman node, so the police saw that all the requests for the illegal content were coming from his IP address.

They dropped the charges once he explained to the illiterates what Tor was, although it left him with a pile of legal fees.

Somewhat related note, a friend of mine who was visiting Germany was arrested for using a remote desktop in a cybercafe. They let him go after he explained to them that what he was doing was harmless, and he wasn't actually doing anything malicious to the terminal.

[Triple Zero]

Dunno, Germany is doing pretty good on privacy and computer security. With the Chaos Computer Club and all the hackers and supporting Open Source and such.

Hadn't heard about the guy's legal fees, though.



And Z3, remote desktop in a cybercafe? That's one of the places that have their own computers right? I can imagine, regardless of whether he had to install software to get at it, in full screen it looks just like you just changed the entire configuration of the computer and are running unknown software applications

If I'd work at a cybercafe, that'd piss me off. Although if I'm not having a bad day I would not call the cops but just request the guy to cut it out, point at the TOS and if he would please next time ask in advance if he wants to do something else than run Office, Acrobat or a Web Browser.

So yeah, the guy must have been having a bad day

Also, I suspect this story is quite a few years old, because nowadays you'd just bring your own netbook and sit in a Burger King or McDonalds, they all have WiFi in Europe. Loads of other smaller and much nicer cafes have it too, but they usually don't advertise it. you just see an unsecured network with the same name as the establishment and then ask the waiter if it's intended for guests, cause who knows it might be just that they forgot to secure it and you're having drinks there so you're gonna be polite about it :-P



Anyway, DATA RETENTION. Dutch electronic freedom lobbyist (?) BitsofFreedom.nl said this is a hopeful moment because it shows that their activities actually have a result. (Their activities consist of sending letters to politicians, organizing a yearly privacy/electronic freedom award (presenting some anti-awards as well), making press-releases and generally maintaining an online presence.)

[E.O.T.]

AND

          they just released Ernst Zundel

[Cramulus]

very interesting info, tripzip. Thanks for the peek at your crazy dutchbag legal system.

[Cain]

Somehow, I feel the EU is just going to ignore this, like it ignores everything else (Berlusconi's slide into fascism, Goldman Sachs' recession profiteering, the outside world in its entirety etc).

[Reginald Ret]

Next on the agenda: lets convince the dutch govt that they don't really need everybody's fingerprints.
My passport expires in august and i am not giving them my fingerprints just so i can get a new one.

[Cain]

I thought your govermment collapsed?  Or have you had the elections already?

[Triple Zero]

no they collapsed. elections are  gonna be rather quickly, in june or something. anyway they've been collapsing every 3 years or so, lately. it's cool cause we get to vote for a new one. unless we vote for exactly the same one, which also happened one time. but I'm pretty sure not this time cause the parties that were in govmt lost a lot of popularity. and Geert Wilders won a lot It's horrible but he's probably going to win big time If we were going to have a populist clown, I'd rather have had Pim Fortuyn, at least he was clever. And not nearly as scary, in hindsight.

[Cain]

Yeah, I disagreed with a lot of things Pim Fortuyn had to say, but he had some principles, even if I think he was misguided in certain areas. Wilders, by contrast, is a pure bastard.  I can't blame the Labour party for withdrawing from government though, NATO seems to take pleasure in leaving the Netherlands holding the bag without any sort of real support (like in Bosnia).   I mean, where the fuck was Bush in 2008, trying to get NATO replacements?  Thats right, nowhere.

[Triple Zero]

well yeah, I think a good part in the whole Uruzgan business was basically a lot of people smelling blood. The Labour party IMO lost most credibility cause they were first pretty medium-okay-ish center but increasingly started giving off messages that came down to "common people shouldnt have an opinion, they dont understand, let us just take care of this and don't bother us with your opinions too much", which of course a lot of "common people" did not appreciate, and is perfect populist-food. be warned however that I got this from a bunch of rather opinionated news-outlets and not directly from their mouths.

[Cain]

Sounds plausible, though.  Lots of centre-left parties in Europe act that way.  Our own dear Labour party mastered it, along with patronising attempts at a "national conversation" every couple of years or so, where they handpicked cronies to discuss with them "issues that matter to all of us".  You think they pulled out mostly to appease public opinion then, win back some support?  That would be novel over here, since all three major parties are still committed to the war (while the majority of the public is still against it - which soldiers then whine about on the news, as if our support were a material factor in victory, as if they could actually do anything useful in the country if not for our skeptical attitudes underming their mahadquickal state-building and counterinsurgent powers).

[Triple Zero]

yes. but we like to believe we're not quite there yet