Google May Close Gmail Germany Over Privacy Law

Matt writes "Google is threatening to shut down the German version of its Gmail service if the German Bundestag passes it's new Internet surveillance law. Peter Fleischer, Google's German privacy representative says the new law would be a severe blow against privacy and would go against Google's practice of also offering anonymous e-mail accounts. If the law is passed then starting 2008, any connection data concerning the internet, phone calls (With position data when cell phones are used), SMS etc. of any German citizen will be saved for 6 months, anonymizing services like Tor will be made illegal."

Phew!

[ScrewMaster]

Just when I thought Europe was going to be the last bastion of freedom in the world.

Congress, look out ... Germany is going to one-up you if you're not careful.

Re:Phew!

[Halo1]

Unlike what the summary suggests, this is not specific to Germany. It's the implementation of a European directive [edri.org] on data retention. And FWIW, the US is indeed less invasive than the EU [edri.org] at this point concerning data retention.

Re:Phew!

[Zarhan]

It IS specific to Germany in some respects. Remember, the directive only specifies the MINIMUM requirements for the law; The implementations are country-specific.

Outlawing Tor is very much specific to Germany.

Re:Phew!

[Halo1]

That's true, although it is quite "consistent" with the directive. One of our criticisms was that it is ridiculous to do what the directive requires because there are so many ways around it. Forcing ISPs to record all email from/to data can be worked around by using foreign email providers and tunnelling. Recording from/to data about IP-telephony can't be done without inspecting every single ip packet flowing through your network, and even then only if someone is using a documented protocol without encryption/obfuscation, etc.

Banning TOR, requiring foreign email providers to play by the rules of the directive etc are minimal requirements for implementing the directive in any "sensible" way, if you look at it from an data retention efficacy perspective.

So in the end, I am convinced it is perfectly correct to say that this is all because of that EU directive and the horrific combination of fascists and idiots that supported it "to save the children" and to "catch the terrorists".

Re:Phew!

[kocsonya]

> that supported it "to save the children" and to "catch the terrorists"

Don't forget the most common one: "to make money". The whole push for the Great European Constitution (and the just as strong push for not asking the citizens if the actually want it or not) is all about money. They managed to fill the ??? in the Underpant Gnomes business plan:

1) Unprecedented corporate freedom
2) Limited and closely monitored personal freedom
3) Profit!!!

Re:Phew!

[Halo1]

As someone once said, albeit in a different context: "That's not even wrong!" :)

Re:Phew!

[Opportunist]

Maybe it would help to see that politics is not just a one-dimensional "left-right" scheme. Politics is usually at the very least two dimensional (with economic freedom on one axis and personal freedom on the other), there've been people who suggested even three and more dimensional systems, but the two dimensional already works wonders, usually.

Generally you will notice that one-dimensional classifications don't work out. You had Hitler and Stalin (to take the politically extremes), one being, on the economic scale, a full blown free market supporter, with a no-bars attitude on the question how much you may profit from your workforce, the market and even the state (well, provided your bribes were high enough), the other one an (economic) communist with the forced collectivation of all production material available. So technically, in a one-dimensional system, they should be as different as they can be.

The reason we perceive them as near equal is that they were both on the "personal freedom" scale in the same bottom. Both were dictators to the fullest degree.

"Freedom" on both axes is a very liberal free market/free world model, bordering on anarchy. Such a system can actually be surprisingly stable if the people support it (the US were for some time quite close to this model). "Restrictive" on both axes is very close to a communist dictatorship. Restricting personal freedom while allowing the economy as much liberties as possible is a fascist dictatorship. And the complementary (personal freedom but tightly regulated/socialized economy) is ... something that hasn't been tried yet, I guess.

So I don't subscribe to the one dimensional "social - liberal" left-right notion. Politics is far more dimensional than that, it can't be condensed into one variable.

Re:Phew!

[moronoxyd]

Outlawing Tor is very much specific to Germany.

Tor will not be outlawed, but anybody who runs a Tor server from within Germany has to log the connection data, which pretty much goes against the idea of Tor.
But running or using Tor in general will not be illegal (from what I unterstand).

Re:Phew!

[octopus72]

Fortunately, it is irrelevant where Tor server actually runs :)
It seems that idea of such directives is to prevent common case of communication from becoming really secure, so that anyone can be a suspect just if he/she ever used that method way of communication.
For that reason we won't soon (or ever) see secure authentication and exchange of decryption keys in e.g. mobile-phones: so that police can tune in and listen whenever they want. Although we already see this "problem" with VoIP which is widely used as replacement for a fixed telephony.

Re:

[rtb61]

Interestingly what the law amounts to, if you were, in old world speak, to send a letter via snail mail with out a return address you would be committing the modern day equivalent of a criminal act, what other twisted extension could you have, putting up post it notes with out to name address and phone number, an anonymous verbal hi how are you with out declaring your full name and detail.

Just because it is now in the digital world and governments or corporations are capable of invading everyone's privacy

Re:

[rmstar]

Outlawing Tor is very much specific to Germany.

Do you have any other links discussing this? Is this "Germany Outlaws Tor" for real?

Re:

[TubeSteak]

And FWIW, the US is indeed less invasive than the EU at this point concerning data retention.

Well, that's a relief.
[/SARCASM]
Now what about all those other metrics we use to measure privacy?
How's the US Government doing with those?

Re:Phew!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now what about all those other metrics we use to measure privacy?"

That's why the US doesn't use metrics.

Re:

[kill-1]

This is specific to Germany. The European directive was massively supported by the German government. There wouldn't be such a directive if Germany hadn't pushed this forward the whole way. That's how you bypass national legislature in Europe nowadays.

Re:

[Halo1]

There wouldn't be such a directive if Germany hadn't pushed this forward the whole way.

I doubt it, since this was mainly pushed through by the UK Presidency. And pretty much the only fundamental opposition came from Ireland. But guess what: not because they're against data retention (in fact, a framework decision on this topic was approved under Ireland's presidency of the Council), but because they don't think it's a third pillar [wikipedia.org] competence (the data retention directive was a codecision procedure).

Re:

[Belacgod]

Bwa ha ha...If you're not gambling online, violating copyright, or arbitrarily arrested, the USA is in fact far freer than Europe.

It's because of the terrorist threat

[Jerry Smith]

http://news.google.co.nz/index.html?ned=nz&ncl=111 7499403&hl=en&scoring=n [google.co.nz]"Germany faced an elevated threat of terrorism on Friday because of its involvement in Afghanistan, according to officials who say the risk of an attack here ...." so that's the excuse for this push-through tactics.

Re:Phew!

[Dachannien]

How is a country that makes it illegal to speak favorably about Nazis a "bastion of freedom"?

(Not that I have anything favorable to say about the Nazis, mind you.)

Re:Phew!

[Elemenope]

I'm sorry; I'm sure your concerns are genuine. I'm just confused that a UK citizen would be comparing just about anyone else unfavorably to themselves on the issue of surveillance. Am I totally off base, or is the UK that place in the world where CCTV cameras are more common than traffic lights? Isn't constant visual surveillance a hallmark of controlling, manipulative, and draconian regimes?

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Phew!

[Elemenope]

I submit to you that the distinction between a public and a private act is nearly dissolved in this day and age. Most meaningful tasks cannot be completed except by some portion occurring in traditionally "public" space, including all forms of communication but speaking in situ, all commerce, and indeed preety much all social life. A person's public habits and actions, when reviewed in full and codifiable such that they may be stored and compared, are a very powerful inferential tool for predicting private behaviors, opinions, and actions.

The distinction between public and private was meaningful at a time and a place where an indivudual was exposed to public scrutiny only when they call attention to themselves. That is no longer true; surveillance technologies allow constant monitoring of individuals. For those who see no problem with this, ask have they ever had a bad hair day? A cranky mood? Occassionally sped or missed a stop sign? Problem is nobody is perfect in action, even in the narrow sense that they always do what they intend, all the time.

Laws were designed to maintain public order; they cast a net of proscripted behavior slightly wider than those behaviors that actually are a threat to public order, because it is generally recognized than a simple practical safeguard against overintrusive law enforcement is that acts which are technically illegal but raise nobody's heckles are probably not a threat to public order. To wit, someone has to complain in order for one to believe that someone is aggrieved. With surveillance that is no longer the case; and yet we execute those same old laws in a heavily surveilled world.

If the entirety of UK's public space were surveilled, then yes, I think that it would be nearly as destructive as comparable forms of private surveillance. The fact that on narrow philosophical grounds it seems more justifiable, due to our clinging to notions of "public" and "private" that are today practically dead, is why fewer people seem to care. And that is a pity.

Re:Phew!

[vidarh]

Funny. You do realize that they can't push through the new treaty without the agreement of the member states government, don't you?

Furthermore, that one of the real points of contention is that the UK is trying it's best to prevent the treaty from making a charter of fundamental rights for EU's citizens legally binding.

So for once, rather than complaining about the EU in general and Germany in particular, those of us living in the UK should instead be complaining about how our government at every turn tries to prevent from being bound to give it's citizens any form of protection against it's government.

Re:Phew!

[Original Replica]

those of us living in the UK should instead be complaining about how our government at every turn tries to prevent from being bound to give it's citizens any form of protection against it's government.

How did you get them to sign the Magna Carta?

Re:

[drsquare]

Funny. You do realize that they can't push through the new treaty without the agreement of the member states government, don't you?

The governments that were elected by a minority (35% in Britain), and who didn't list signing up to the treaty in their manifestos?

Re:

[tolan-b]

I hope you realise the UK already has far more draconian data retention laws than the new EU directoive is bringing in, and in fact was instrumental in getting the directive brought in too.

We log more and for longer and we also allow bulk trawling of the collected data by MI5.

You can rag on Europe over fishing and carrot jam if you want, but Europe is actually a strong restraining factor on the UK in terms of privacy and human rights in general.

Historical analog

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Disclaimer: I am an American, however, I was forced to take European history. Are people in Europe ever required to take American history?

Let's start with your major contention: Basically it means they can push through the EU constitution that was thrown out by voters in 2 of the countries last time, without the pesky annoyances of, oh lets say, the people of the EU [Ed's note: I assume you mean the people of the two dissenting EU contries] voting on the matter...[A constitution that requires] only a majority of countries are needed for things to be agreed upon not unanimous...

An example from US history would be the movement from the Articles of Confederation (which did require unanimous ratification of the Articles and the laws) to the US Constitution (which required a 3/4 ratification for the Constitution and simple majority for the laws). The reason the US Constitution only required 3/4 ratification was to force Rhode Island and Providence Plantation and North Carolina to join the Union (since they were known to oppose it) and leave a one state buffer. The reason why the simple majority system works better, well perhaps I best use a European example: "Poland was a country ruled by a council of 500 barons, all of whom had to agree for anything to happen. This allowed Poland to get ****ed by anyone who could make a simple decision."

Basicailly, the Articles of Conferation were a flop, and there needed to either be one or thirteen states. Similarly, any EU requiring unanimous consent will also fail. History abounds with examples where the needs of building or running a nation mean forcing people into the social contract. There doesn't seem to be any other way for the world to work.

Re:

[Moridineas]

the difference between us-american and european history is fundamental. in other words, a few thousand years. us-american history is in fact european history.

That's a very Euro-centric point of view!! Ironic?

but some us guys treat their 500 years of history like it was going back to the antique ages. that's not the case.

How so? Who exactly treats it that way? This seems somewhat out of the blue... Are you trying to claim that because American history is at most 500 years, there is nothing to learn--lessons or otherwise? That seems a rather shocking thing to say..

the usa population quite successfully wiped out their two real histories: natives are forgotten and europeans are not americans.

Again, where the heck are you getting this? I went through 12 years of public education in the US, and believe me--we learned a great deal about our nation's treatment of native americans. Everybody knows of the

Re:

[the_womble]

Because the British government (meaning the cabinet and prime minister) love to have the EU do the sort of things they want to do, but might not be able to do if Britain was independant because of parliament and public opinion.

The EU concil of ministers, being unelected, are not bothered by MPs or public opinion.

Re:

[Richard_at_work]

The European Council consists of heads of state and government of the EU. The members therefor are, by default, elected by each countries populace. The European Council also has no legislative powers.

The European Parliament consists of ministers elected by the populace of member states every five years, last elections held in 2004. The parliament has legislative powers.

The Council of the European Union consists of ministers from each member state, and is transitory in that which minister attending

Re:Phew!

[kill-1]

I think the poster referres to The Council of the European Union. This council isn't elected directly. As you describe it consists of ministers of the governments, which are members of the executive. So the executive suddenly gains a tremendous legislative power.

Your description sounds nice and democratic, but in reality checks and balances are way out of control regarding European legislation. And given the enormous impact some EU directives have, there is almost no political discussion let alone media coverage. The leading governments of Europe basically can change laws at will.

VOTE PARENT UP!

[SmokedS]

I very rarely post vote parent up posts, but this is just too important to languish at Score:2.

Our national democracies is being systematically taken over by this mockery of a democratic system and the mainstream press is all but silent on the matter.
The semi-informed Europeans point the finger at the present state on non-democracy in the US and feel superior. The truly informed Europeans are attempting to make the rest realize that we are just a few years behind. The same powers that have almost completely removed any real democracy from the US are hard at work doing the same to the EU.

Please people, wake up and make your voices heard through protests, and through votes before it is too late.

Re:

[Opportunist]

A few years behind? Personally I think we're about to show the US how to build the road to a democratorship.

Re:

[SmokedS]

Indeed. With movements such as the one I assume you are referring to [guardian.co.uk]: the UK is just a few steps away from protesting being redefined as terrorism in the Orwellian landscape of current political newspeak. The UK will be in dire straits indeed then. Protesters could be legally incarcerated or whisked away to other countries for a bit of friendly torture/reeducation.

I think the basic problem is that people do not want to believe that their leaders could be capable of such acts. Somehow most people disengage

so will it be a crime to have open 802.11 routers?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF?

I can walk around San Francisco and find hundreds, if not thousands, of open or misconfigured wireless routers. Anonymous access to anyone with a notebook.

How does germany plan on enforcing this?

Re:so will it be a crime to have open 802.11 route

[Wellington Grey]

How does germany plan on enforcing this?

Dude, they one of the largest people moving exercises in history with only the most primitive of computers [amazon.com], I think they could handle easily detectable wireless in 2007.

-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]

They have the infrastructure in place

[localroger]

Germany already requires licenses for TV sets and things like baby monitors. And they enforce it. They actually have vans equipped with detection equipment that scan for electromagnetic radiation from these devices, and if you're not on record as having paid the tax their is a knock on your door. Extending this to 802.11 will be trivial.

Re:They have the infrastructure in place

[thebigbluecheez]

Similarly when you pick up a pre-paid SIM card for your phone, you get a form asking you to register your phone number. You have to go show ID and then the O2 (or whichever) shop keys your information in. They took my passport number, an address, punched it into the computer and said have a nice day. Had I not gone in and registered my SIM card? Phone number goes dead in two weeks, no questions asked.

Compare this to the 'States, where getting pre-paid service is about as anonymous as a cell phone gets.

Does anyone (any Germans in the house?) know what they DO with this? Why is it required to register my phone? Why?

Re:

[Lars T.]

Does anyone (any Germans in the house?) know what they DO with this? Why is it required to register my phone? Why?

Relax, it isn't the evil government asking you for the data, it is the benevolent mega-corporation - your data is in safe hands.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

These vans are a (widespread) urban legend. I live in Germany and I know a lot of people who don't pay those dues, despite having a radio and/or a tv. Actually, I have a radio and a TV-Card and don't pay them myself. They really come and knock on my door from time to time (like once a year...) and ask me wether I have devices I want to register, but so what? I just say "no" and I don't have to let them in.

Re:They have the infrastructure in place

[icepick72]

And now that they're retaining Internet usage records and can trace your Slashdot comment back to you, you will receive a knock at your door to register the remainder of the equipment.

Re:They have the infrastructure in place

[dunkelfalke]

the GEZ vans are an urban legend [rundfunkge...nzahler.de]

Routers are not misconfigured in Germany

[Colin Smith]

They come pre-configured for high security.

 

In other news

[Timesprout]

GMail Poland excutives were looking rather nervous after this announcement.

Re:In other news

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

I know that's a joke but in reality there's almost certainly some truth in that. Not just Poland of course, but all of the EU. Germany is one of the most influential members of the EU in terms of forming EU law. If this law gets passed in Germany it's only a matter of time before they try and push it on the rest of the continent.

Re:

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Its based on an EU directive so the whole of EU will get similar laws.

Thus Google will have to shut down in the whole of EU if they do it in Germany.

Off-topic grammar nazi post

[geobeck]

...if the German Bundestag passes it's new Internet surveillance law. (Matt)

...it's only a matter of time... (LighterShadeOfBlack)

Matt, please pay attention to the proper use of "it's".

Feeling grammar-nazi-ish today... I wonder if it has anything to do with privacy-threatening laws being passed in Germany?

Re:

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Not outlawing privacy as such. More like outlawing anonymity, althouh there's plenty of privacy-infringing stuff in there too. It's a pretty easy sell to government ministers, basically anyone who goes against it can be rebuffed by saying that people should be held accountable for their actions. Which of course is true to an extent but doesn't tell the whole story of why at least a reasonable degree of anonymity is also necessary to ensure the continuation of things like freedom of speech.

Your website's ccT

China

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Google will do in Germany what it didn't do in China? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google# China [wikipedia.org] (OK, not exactly the same thing but you get the point). I won't bet on it.

Pressure can make a difference in the West

[weston]

One difference is that in the West, you can pull maneuvers like this and sometimes they actually make a difference. China probably wouldn't have cared much at all if Google had gotten petulant, and it certainly wouldn't have mattered to them whether or not their citizens lost access to something valuable. In Germany, who knows?

And cynical types can always note that China is a much bigger market than Germany.

Re:Pressure can make a difference in the West

[J'raxis]

Exactly. Google's company policy seems to be the (rather prudent for a corporation) "follow the law in the countries in which you operate." In the US, they were able to refuse to refuse to do this [slashdot.org] because they have legal recourse, for example. This probably doesn't fly in China.

Re:

[crazyjimmy]

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I was under the impression that Google has refused to provide any functions other than search in China. They don't host their gmail servers or any of their info that contains user info. They don't want the government using them to track its users, and that's the same here as it is in China.

Or has something changed that I hadn't heard about?
--Jimmy

Re:

[s4m7]

Hmm....
>br/> Germany pop.: 82,400,996 (July 2007 est.)
China pop.: 1,321,851,888 (July 2007 est.)

I'm sure china having sixteen times the population of germany has nothing to do with it.

Re:

[MightyYar]

Yes, some states in the US execute people who have killed another human being. China executes people for things like corruption or drug trafficking.

Inmates in the US typically spend over 10 years winding their way through the legal system before they are actually executed. Is there any semblance of due process in China?

Last I checked, the UK, France, Germany, Poland, Brazil, etc had standing armies - sounds like those countries seem to think that "government enacted murder" is okay sometimes, too.

Minimum Flare

[Portikon]

I wonder if they are going to start requiring their citizens to wear flare as well.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they are going to start requiring their citizens to wear flare as well.

I believe they tried that once, along with a friendly salute. Apparently it didn't go down too well...

Re:

[phoenix321]

It's "flair" BTW.

And we don't have to wear it - yet, BUT we have to *always* carry our passports or other state ID with us at all time.

"Papers please" is not that far off, and some religious minority WAS forced to wear yellow pieces of flair once upon a time in German history...

I think the EU is becoming worse than the USSR in maybe a decade. Thank God "rogue" states like Poland are bombarding and vetoing every decision the EU makes, so even the lowest common man is starting to realize what's happening at t

Re:Minimum Flare

[mjbkinx]

we have to *always* carry our passports or other state ID with us at all time

I think you're misunderstanding "Ausweispflicht". We are required to possess a national ID card or a passport, not to carry it with us (which would be "Mitführpflicht"). There is a Mitführpflicht for drivers licenses, but only while driving.

a New wall

[jrwr00]

Great We take down one wall and another comes up, why does the government fear computers so much that they must spy on everyone, can't they have a little trust

Brazil has had such laws for years

[mangu]

According to Brazilian constitution, the right to "personal dignity" always trumps the right to privacy or freedom of expression. You cannot say anything that could be considered "offensive" about anyone, even convicted felons have their right to personal dignity.

Brazilian ISPs have always had the duty to record and keep everything that's sent by anyone over the internet. If someone feels defamed by anything that can be proved to come from that ISP, the company is held responsible if the author cannot be found. Brazilian judges have always been very, very eager to grant injunctions against any publication of personally derogatory words or images.

This includes books too, a famous example was a few years ago, when a biography of soccer star Garrincha [guardian.co.uk] was pulled out of bookstores at the request of his daughters. The reason? It was stated in the book, based on his lovers' declarations, that Garrincha's penis was approximately 27 cm (11 inches) long. This book was later released, after an appeals court decided that saying a man has a large penis is not a derogatory statement.

Re:Brazil has had such laws for years

[CptPicard]

These kinds of "right not to be offended" laws are among the most ludicrous pieces of legislation you can imagine, sad to hear Brazil has such an extreme case. In Finland we've got a law against "incitement against a group" which sounds harmless enough (you'd fall foul of the law if you went declaring out on the street that you believe Jews/blacks/redheads should be killed, say).

It's just way too easy for some group to have their sensibilities oh so deeply offended when one even tries to reasonably discuss whether something about them that affects you, too, should be perhaps reconsidered. I like to participate in Finnish language-policy discussions (long story short, the 93% who are Finnish-speakers are supposedly as Swedish-speaking as the 5,5% of them, and if they aren't, they must be made so), and it's incredible how massively offended some Fenno-Swedes can be at the mere suggestion that I happen to be Finnish-speaking, and that no, I don't think it is much of a flaw in my character (or that of my possible children) that needs fixing by state intervention...

Of course, this offends their dignity much and I've been told on numerous occasions that I'm close to inciting against a group.. :-)

Re:

[Doctor_Jest]

That's the rub, isn't it? Now, I hope that Germany errs on the side of caution, but hey... anything can happen. If they do not provide a criteria like current personal property investigations, and if they allow more blanket rules abiding on "national security" (the current buzzword to trump personal liberty these days)... then we have a problem.

I don't suggest that Germany's law is any of these things, but when they get their ideas to start enumerating and "modernizing" their laws, we tend to be on a slip

Re:

[CptPicard]

Lived the first 15 years of my life in Sievi, so at least the Finnish-speaking part of Ostrobothnia is very familiar to me... my father's side of the family comes from Northern Karelia, I studied in Helsinki and now am settled in Nurmijärvi. Been to most parts of the country during my lifetime... got some Swedish-speaking friends, the smarter of them are capable of discussing this, although from their annoyingly typical POV that just simply refuses to see the Finnish-speaker's side of the coin. When it

Re:

[shinma]

Why couldn't he have all three?

I'm a little out of it, but I'm not sure what I'm missing, here.

Inevitable my dear watson

[wamatt]

Its taken the luddite politicians 20 years notice the rise and power of the internet. Virtual will mirror real world as power is rested from the techies into corporate and gorvernments. Privacy will never be mainstream. Although it will still exist for those willing to go the extra mile. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Privacy != anonymity

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Maybe I'm missing something, but this law sounds like a storm in a teacup, and this story sounds like yet another PR exercise on behalf of Google.

Privacy is not the same as anonymity. I have often suggested around here that on-line anonymity may do more harm than good in practice. For the record, that does not mean that I think ISPs should release personal data about their subscribers to just anyone, nor that they should retain such data indefinitely, nor that governments should be able to look up such da

Re:Privacy != anonymity

[BoberFett]

I notice that you're using a pseudonym rather than posting under your full, legal name. What are you hiding?

Re:Privacy != anonymity

[Wellington Grey]

I notice that you're using a pseudonym rather than posting under your full, legal name. What are you hiding?

He's a bounty hunter, Mr Fett.

-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]

Why I post "anonymously"

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I'm hiding my full real name. :-)

Actually, and perhaps rather paradoxically, very few of my on-line writings have my real name attached to them. I wrote here a little while ago about how I'd cancelled all my accounts on social networking sites as well.

I have a very clear reason for doing this: in today's culture, posting under my real name gains me nothing and risks a lot. This is, in fact, where I came in. What we should have are real privacy laws, which prevent the kind of arbitrary collection, sharing and mining of personal information that businesses and governments are increasingly using as technology makes it easy. Until we have these, pseudo-anonymity is a somewhat effective defence, but it's only a band-aid for a greater problem.

The other problem is that society hasn't yet learned that you shouldn't trust everything you read on-line and no-one is perfect. In a sensible world, a prospective employer finding a picture of you doing something stupid while you were a student a decade ago wouldn't be a problem, because they'd just think "Oh, well, a lot of us did stupid stuff when we were students". In a sensible world, a hint in a personal blog that you enjoyed chemistry would not result in police visiting your home because someone reported you as a terrorist. In a sensible world, mentioning your employer by name in a blog wouldn't get you fired (or at least, told to close down the blog or you'd be fired). And so it goes. But this is not, yet, a sensible world.

Before we can reach that world, people need to grow up and realise that no-one is perfect. Finding the odd character flaw or past indiscretion is not the best criteria on which to judge another human being. As I've noted before, if I had taken personal offence every time one of my friends did something that hurt another of my friends, then I would long since have run out of friends. And yet, I know that all of my friends are basically decent people, and that it is just an unfortunate reality that sometimes relationships don't work out and people get hurt, so I am very glad to have the friends I do regardless of any isolated incidents that I might have disliked if I'd been on the wrong end of them.

I am optimistic about this, but I think things have to get worse before they get better. With the current generation growing up with social networking sites who are data mining them like crazy, and who have little concept of personal privacy and why it matters, I think a lot of people are going to get screwed over the next 5–10 years. But after a little while, it will become pretty obvious to everyone that this is stupid. People will stop believing every little thing they read about someone, employers will stop vetting people extensively on their Internet footprint because the method will lack credibility, and when citizens/consumers realise how much they're getting screwed I think they will demand privacy laws that prevent the kinds of abuse that are increasingly happening today.

So, until we reach that point some way down the line, when society has grown up enough to understand the value of privacy and the need to respect people's public personas in a world where most people have an Internet presence somewhere, I choose to protect myself from the damage by posting under pseudonyms on "casual" forums like this one. But I would rather live in a world with serious privacy laws and a grown-up society, where I could write my genuine thoughts here and put my real name to them, knowing that I wasn't going to risk being sued for saying something that inadvertently gave the wrong impression. In that world, I wouldn't need anonymity, and I would be happy to stand by what I write here, with my real name attached.

Re:

[J'raxis]

If you're not anonymous, you don't have real privacy. If what you're doing online is being monitored and linked to you, then the only thing that stands between you and that loss of privacy is some flimsy company policy, or in some places, legislation -- both of which always have exceptions allowing the information to be handed over to law enforcement for a variety of reasons.

If the data exists, the government can get hold of it. You only have privacy if the data was never collected in the first place.

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

If the data exists, the government can get hold of it. You only have privacy if the data was never collected in the first place.

Sorry, but I don't agree with that for two reasons.

For one thing, nebulous arguments about "government" like this are always weak. "Government" is rarely a single person or institution operating executively (and when it is, that's usually an abuse of the intended system of representation that needs to be fixed for a whole host of other reasons anyway).

For another thing, I'm

Re:

[n3k5]

There seem to be way, way, way more instances of spammers, phishing expeditions, fraudsters, character assassins [...] than there are examples of genuinely good things like whistle-blowing and free expression under non-free regimes that might legitimately be protected by anonymity.

And where from do these shady characters get large lists of e-mail addresses, social security numbers, credit card numbers, and the like? From databases that retain such data. In order to combat these problems, it would seem pr

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

In order to combat these problems, it would seem prudent to limit such data retention to the strictly necessary minimum.

I couldn't agree more.

This is why permitting anonymity is not a sufficient substitute for legislating to protect privacy, with penalties that reflect the real damage that can be done by violations, and then enforcing those laws effectively.

Re:

[lostlyre]

You say there is a fine line. The line may be fine, but the choice is still clear: when in doubt, preserve a right - do not take it away. Surely you don't disagree with innocence until proven guilty or the right to bear arms in order to overthrow an oppressive government. Both can lead to bad situations such as setting a guilty person free for lack of evidence or murder. Anonymity is, up to this point, a natural human treasure-just another freedom we have. Once you let a ounce of it go, it's never coming ba

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I certainly do agree with your first comment: when in doubt, preserve a right. I have commented here previously that I think the most difficult decisions in law and ethics come when rights we would in general seek to preserve come into conflict.

The thing is, anonymous speech is not a natural right. The natural way of things is that if you say something, you can be seen and heard when you say it, and you can therefore be held responsible by your peers for what you say. If what you say is fair, there is no

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Once you try to start saying some anonymous speech is ok and some is not you have lost the value of anonymity.

Some anonymous speech is OK and some is not. That much is clear. The problem is that there is no objective way to define which category any given piece of anonymous speech falls into.

On this basis, since IME far more of the stuff done anonymously on-line is damaging to innocent people than helping them, I take the pragmatic position that on-line anonymity is not automatically a good thing, and

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Your comment is irrelevant, AC. I am not talking about the decryption keys aspect of RIPA. In fact, that was exactly what I had in mind when I observed that there were some parts of the Act that I don't think should be law.

What I am talking about is the ISP records of people's on-line activity. If these were being used against innocents in court, then since most courts are open, it is likely that this would have come to light long ago. (And the issue of closed courts and secret terrorist trials and so on

Why not just do what we do in the US?

[weston]

Why bother with the law? Seems to me all you need to do is *let* businesses do the tracking (which of course they're going to want to do, because data mining is especially useful for marketeers), and government just needs to occasionally ask nicely for copies?

Better yet if you've also got a unitary executive to go along with it.

Pick and Choose Where to Make a Stand?

[Black-Man]

Stand up and fight Germany, but let China and their ilk off the hook. Glad to see consistency w/ these companies.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

This is starting to annoy me...

[Lispy]

6 months ago I used gmail and pandora for all my music and e-mail needs.
First they took pandora from us and now gmail. Whats next? digg.com? /.? Linux?
Should I sell my PC now, or what? Honestly. Just when I thought my country (germany) is getting a little relaxed in a paranoid world. ;-(

How would they enforce it

[antifoidulus]

Couldn't Germans just sign up with another countries gmail and then use that? Or is the german government going to force ISPs(which they have a large say in one of the largest ones, Telekom) to block access to gmail? I am an American currently living in Germany and I use my gmail account(which I registered for while I was still a student at Penn State) as my main email address. Would I be affected by this? TFA is pretty light on details.

Well

[trifish]

Could this be an attempt to strike back for this [slashdot.org] or perhaps this [slashdot.org]? (EU:Google 2:1)

Or rather a lame attempt to weaken the impact of things like this [slashdot.org]?

Info...

[Raven737]

Here the original Spiegel Article [spiegel.de](in German, of course).

Information about the draft law and what people can do to prevent it from being passed can be found at the following site:
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/ [vorratsdat...cherung.de] (also in German)
What's scary is the range of people that are supposed to get access to the collected information,
it's not just the police but also "Nachrichtendienste" (news agencies!?) and "ausländische Staaten" (other countries, apparently any that ask)

I'm guessing this is caused by some lobby/bribe action of organizations like the RIAA/MPAA.
I can't think of one good reason of why this might be good for anyone,
criminals will just use bot proxies or other means to bypass the tracking/collection and in the end
it will just be the honest people that get f#cked because with general government incompetence
the the data will end up in the criminal's hand's and used for who knows what.

Re:

[Ajehals]

"Nachrichtendienste" (news agencies!?)

Intelligence Services, aka the Bundesnachrichtendienst* [bnd.bund.de].

*Nice website entry page, subtly menacing.

What would Hitler do?

[Skapare]

Make Gmail users where 5 point-down triangles colored blue, red, yellow, blue, green?

A german's view

[babooo404]

FYI, I asked my German friend to comment on the topic and at the bottom of the article are his comments:
http://www.centernetworks.com/first-flickr-now-goo gles-gmail-has-issues-in-germany [centernetworks.com]

When...

[Kyusaku Natsume]

the NSDAP won again the elections in Germany?

As a resident of the Federal Republic of Germany

[vorlich]

Gründlichkeit or thoroughness is just so much part of the German character. Back in Scotland you could read the important parts of the Blue Book tax guide in the bookshop and easily identify any new legal tax avoidance strategies. You couldn't do that with the German Tax Books there are about 127 of them. My accountant just photocopies pages out and sticks them in the tax return. You have to pay canal tax but there's no canal and you don't get one either. As for thoroughness, Non-German partners are often very surprised when they clean the entire house from top to bottom only to have their partner point out that they forgot the single cup they drank their post cleaning coffee in which is standing on the immaculate sink - dirty. There is no mention of all the good work, because the concept of balancing good things against negative things (one good thing outweighs loads of bad things) is rather specific to English speakers. German anthropology uses the concept of a linear measure of perfection (or distance from it!) and the streets are so clean you could eat your dinner off them. Well, almost but this is the real reason behind this action, more national character than conspiracy.
I should confess to reading lots of Tabloid newspapers though but I have also read Critique of Pure Reason if that counts for anything curiously neither activity appears to have had any lasting effect, whereas Counterstrike, now that's a whole different kettle of fish...

Re: Inevitable my dear watson

[Elemenope]

Yeah, privacy is dumb. Who could possibly use privacy for good purpose?

Perhaps the political dissident who would be jailed for expressing himself in public.

Perhaps the gay man who is unfortunate enough to love someone in Ala-fucking-bama.

Perhaps the abused wife who is trying to flee from an obsessed husband.

Perhaps the ex-con who wants to escape the shadow of his past and live legitimately.

Yeah, privacy is the darkness that clouds everything. Sure.

Re:

[Kennon]

Privacy should disappear. It's the darkness that allows evil to grow and spread.

Wow why does it not surprise me that the url in your header points to a berkley.edu server? Disconnect from reality much? Anonymity does allow for evil but it also allows for an amount of good that outweighs any amount of evil. The ability to speak out with zero fear of repercussion is a foundation of free speech. If you remove that you begin dismantling the first amendment, at which point we start exercising the second amendment.

Re:

[jjh37997]

That's why we have the 2nd amendment.

Besides, most of the fear of repercussion comes from the fact that the powerful can do things to you with complete anonymity. If they were forced to do their dirty work in the full light of public opinion you'd see a change. How many times have you heard about a company or government office screwing the little guy until his plight became public knowledge and suddenly they reversed their tune? Remember the powerful already have all the anonymity that money can buy. All

Re: Inevitable my dear watson

[Elemenope]

So, riddle me this: if "The 2nd Amendment" is all that was required for people to exact satisfaction from corrupt politicians who act with impunity, why haven't the leaders of our USA, surely a corrupt bunch whose shady dealings and flouting of constitutional rule have been more than amply public, been dropping like flies under a hail of patriotic bullets?

Most bigots against homosexuals et al. are plenty public about their hatred and sometimes even murderous intent. Doesn't, in most cases, seem to help.

The "light of the public eye" in most cases has very little but prosaic value, especially for people powerful enough to craft their own public image or, shock of shocks, actually own a PR firm or media outlet who will spin about them and their actions however they desire for the consumption of the viewing and judging public. You seem to have a very simplistic view of just how far the projection of power can extend its corrupting influence if you believe that people, upon being exposed to public wrongdoing will cancel the corruption of the powerful.

Re:

[bitingduck]

Privacy should disappear. It's the darkness that allows evil to grow and spread. What the techies should do is set up a system that eliminates the illusion of privacy that the masses currently enjoy and finally starts to spread a light into the lives of the powerful.

says the guy who doesn't even show an email address in his slashdot profile...

It is important to have transparency in government though, and limit the amount of data that governments collect about their citizens and how they can use it.

Re:

[robably]

Privacy should disappear. It's the darkness that allows evil to grow and spread.

Privacy can hide evil so privacy is bad? OK, blankets can hide Nazis so blankets are bad. See what you've done there?

Don't tar privacy with the same brush as one of the bad things it can do - it is also essential for freedom of expression if you don't agree with the majority view. For many people a life without privacy would be unbearable.

Instead of working to eliminate privacy, work to strengthen it. It may be a harder fig

Re:

[jjh37997]

You're making my point..... these things are powerful only because they are private. If I publish all the info that you ask of me I have no protection because I don't have access to everybody elses. However, I don't have a problem letting all that be public (and much more) if it's a two-way street.

Re:

[jjh37997]

The fact that you think celebrities and politicaians are good examples of the rich and powerful that I'm talking about just goes to show how much anonymity they truly have. Now.... while a free media is a good check it does not go nearly far enough.... they are handcuffed by privacy laws and their own corporate interests. Give the legal protection of the press to everyone and maybe we'll start seeing some progress.

USA is a war country

[Skapare]

USA is a war country. The only way for the president to gain power is to declare a war. A war on drugs, a war on hippies, a war on terrorists, a war on geeks, a war on freedom. Good war or bad, it's what power hungry presidents have to do.

Re:

[c6gunner]

What exactly does this particular bit of stupidity have to do with German privacy laws? And why is it that no matter what the problem or where it occurs, someone will use it as an excuse to say something derogatory about the US?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose of data retention, of course, is for long-term profiling. The first example of how this was put to use by an oppressive regime is described neatly in Amazon's review of IBM and the Holocaust:

The crucial technology was a precursor to the computer, the IBM Hollerith punch card machine, which Black glimpsed on exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, inspiring his five-year, top-secret book project. The Hollerith was used to tabulate and alphabetize census data. Black says the Hollerith and its punch

Re:

[cpghost]

That's not the solution. Germany has jurisdiction over DeNIC, the .de registry. So they could have them pull the DNS records for any reasons. The solution is for privacy-aware Germans to use a generic gTLD domain like, say, .net, .org or .com.

If Google closed shop in Germany, so what? All what Germans need to do is to use google.com, over which Germany has no influence whatsoever. Actually, it's Google that's pushing Germans to google.de and force them use googlemail.com instead of gmail.com for GMail, wi