> People are just too caught up in their daily existence to realize the big picture and fathom the depths of power structures within governments.

Unfortunately very true. And if you approach them they will tell you that they simply don't care - but hey wasn't the last Bayern Munich game great? Gravity is a powerful force when it comes to ones ass up and doing something :-( For that matter I admire the French, they still have enough energy to go protesting if needed.

> I would say I'd emigrate but I just can't find any country where to.

And so would I. But I'am at the same point. The problem is that it's not about countries, but societies. Fact is that in every society only a small percentage of people do really care. The large masses consume and watch FOX, RTL / read SUN, BILD etc. So I think to find a good matching country you have to look for an intact, social, non fatalistic and as educated as possible society. Scandinavian countries might fit the bill, but with respect to Internet censorship they IMHO wouldn't be an improvement.

Fighting child pornography is just the marketing slogan.

In the US for instance one would instead use something like "preventing terrorist from finding construction plans for dirty bombs" or something similar. Look for something that terrifies people, for something that gets them emotional and looks like a no brainer. Thats all you need.

I think there was some US/UK person some decades ago who urged us to be alerted when politicians motivate something with women or children. Unfortunately I can't remember the quote - if someone knows it, please let me know. Thanks!

What this is about is putting censorship infrastructure in place and there are some politicians who already have acknowledged that.

Well I think it's not "either or", but "and". So lets suppose I live in country A and there is something bad (according to my moral compass) going on in country B. Then for sure my first goal should be to avoid it in my country A, but I also should speak out against what is happening in country B. Especially because often it doesn't happen yet at home, but abroad. So by fighting the thing happening abroad I also send a signal to not start the stuff at home. IMHO the problem is to differentiate between cultural different ways of handling things and global "standards". But even with the later ones - for instance Human Rights - who is defining them based? They are man made, so there is no absolute correct version that one man can impose to another man. Especially the West (US and Europe - politicians and people) are "good" in judging over conditions in the rest of the world. Regarding the snotty of Europe vs. America I think one of the problems might be that US sees itself as the beacon in the otherwise dark world. So naturally people hold the US up to the highest standards - something hard to be measure up against. But lets face it, the US is indeed still the leader (as in first mover) of the western world. So repressive stuff going on there tends to find it's way to Europe (often over UK). Given that I would tend to say that there are hardly any entirely US internal affairs.

Thinking about my initial reply, I think a better answer to your question is that it is the wrong question to start with. We Americans and Europeans are in this together. We are loosing bits and pieces of our liberties every day. So it's not about who is looking worse today, but about how to stop this erosion and get elected politicians back into acting in our interest.

Patriot Act, Waterboarding, Wiretapping etc. - Europe is following, but US is still in the lead :-(

The problem is that is a "[western|free] world" problem. If we extrapolate the way US and Europe are going, then in a few years down the road you have to migrate to China to have some civil liberties again. Unfortunately this tells more about US/Europe than it does about China. Strangely the media is big about censorship in China. Still if the home country is doing the same they don't care...

The "elect someone else" option unfortunately doesn't work. Basically there are two big parties (CDU and SPD) and both want the same in most of the cases. So you can be sure that one of them will lead the next government and nothing really changes.

It's like if in the US there is an important issue where Democrats and Republicans agree on. If you are against their plan, what do you do? What chance is there that a third party is going to take the house or bring up the next president? Guess why Ron Paul ran for the Republicans? Because he knew that as a third party/independent he wouldn't even get on the ballets / into the big TV debates.

As some people tend to say "oh but police should do something against crime" or "just use OpenDNS" I would like to add some points here.

First we have to understand that this is one out of many laws over the last years (e.g. adding of biometric data and RFID chips to passports, logging all telephone/email etc. sessions for 1/2 year, allowance for shooting down hijacked plains etc.) which converted Germany into a police state again. Not so obvious or visual as in times past, but still as dangerous.

Fighting child porn is of course only a cheap argument as one can be sure that opponents can easily be labeled "child molester". Basically the same as we saw with "terrorism" in the recent past (see "patriot act" in US). Given Germany didn't have a terror attack so far, "terrorism" is not a strong enough fear factor / selling point, but "child porn" is great for building consent in order to have people enslave themselfs.

These days I often think about the famous Martin Niemoeller quote:

        "In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;
        And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;
        And then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;
        And then... they came for me... And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

So at the end we are always affected - even if the first shots don't hit us directly.

Once the censorship infrastructure is in place, it is clear that it will also be used to serve the content media. Actually first politicians already acknowledge that - even before the "we do it only to protect the children" law is signed! But it will not stop there and on Wikileaks you can find filter lists of Norway for instance where you can see what stuff they censor. With the current events in Iran we also get a sense of where this can end.

The Internet is too vital for our societies to have politicians or the state mess with it!

PS: Sure OpenDNS might do the trick for the current law. But that's the wrong answer, because it basically is retreating - leaving the big pool of "non IT folks" behind. Also those loopholes will be closed over time or at least it will become suspicious / illegal. Actually that's also a "funny" part of the original version of the censorship law. The idea was that once you visit a web page which is on their list, that you will be forwarded to the state run "stop page". Hits at this "stop page" were planned to be logged and turned over to law enforcement. So in extreme cases you could think about adding a crontab entry to someone's computer ensuring the police to have him visit. Given that the only way to be safe would be to use something like OpenDNS in order to ensure to not hit the stop page. So actually you have to act like one who still wants to access the "child porn" pages in order to be sure to not be suspected of "child porn". Wired isn't it?

Actually this is the reason why I disabled swap all together on my box. I have 2 GB of RAM in my machine which is totally sufficient. Once I disabled swap the system became really snappy. Before when I Alt+Tab'ed between applications, I always got some time lack before the application appeared. If you don't use more memory than your physical RAM then disable swap! Thats the biggest boost in performance you will get on your desktop - sad but true.