first you have to get angry

Today was a special day for me. Personally, it was a very good day and I actually wanted to write a nice blog-entry about it. But after coming home, I made the mistake to read the news. And what I did read did stirr me quite alot! So that's how I got the name for this post. I had to remember the movie "Network", where the news-anchor got mad and started ranting on live television. And he said those words (free from my mind, probably not word by word): "first, you got to get angry! You got to get up and say "Goddamit! My life has value!"

Once more, there were bad news about the planned introduction of certain law in Germany, giving the executive autorities more and more power to conduct surveillance and undermine the freedom of the people. I could vomit when I read and hear about the arguments presented by the officials, seeing how ignorant and stupid those are! Do they really expect us to believe all this bullshit? I DON'T feel threatened by international terrorism! I'm not scared at all, especially not enough to let my personal rights and freedom be restricted! We didn't have a single fucking attempt of terrorism in our country! (and don't tell me about the one that was prevented! That's a complete scam and just comparing those guys to the "super-terrorists" you always want to protect us from is an insult to our intelligence). So what the hell are we supposed to be afraid of? So many many many more people die in this country every year from smoking, heart-attacks or car-accidents. Noone ever screams for more stricter laws then. So why terrorism? Because it's a fake brand you can put on everything you want to get passed?? Or how about this: Child pornography. Also used very frequently by politicians. It's convinient. If you are against laws to help prevent it, you are FOR it, right? Bullshit! The laws don't prevent it. They don't grab the problems by their sources, but only aim for the effects. All those activities would only help solve incidents AFTER those happened... if at all! Do you think those "criminals" are stupid enough to walk into your traps?? They are the ones with criminal energy, they will find a way around.

So solving the problem is not the goal, I suppose. How else you explain why politicians instead of helping remove the sources for international terrorism, they only want to take care of the possible results. More cameras will make it more likely you can identify terrorists after the bomb exploded but won't stop the bombs from exploding. Censoring websites will make it harder for interested people to get child porn, but won't stop the creation of it. The hypocratism makes me wanna puke!

No sirs, I do not feel unsafe! I am willing to take the 1:100000000 chance to be a victim of a terrorist attack, like I am willing to take the way higher risk to die whenever I enter a car or an airplane! I am NOT willing to have my personal rights and freedom restricted for a little bit more safety!

....

I live in a pretty save, secure country. Even in a save, secure region. And I am glad about that and happy. I have to admit I actually feel proud when I look at other countries in the world and I can really see the advantage of the institutions of our system. I understand we need those to live a comfortable life. But do we really need to temper with that system? Do the politicians honestly believe in the bullshit they are proposing to a level they actually wanna put them into laws? Or is their desire another, darker one. Those are the two options: Either they simply don't know about the usefulness and possible implications for the future of our democracy, or they do know very well and the results they tell us about are not the goals they are after. Those are the 2 reasons, and none of them is making me feel any better...

So, I am angry! Very much! And I wish more people in this country would be informed enough to get angry aswell... or to at least question the decisions of our elected leaders. NO, I don't feel represented by my leaders in this particular manner. I feel the opposite. I feel threatened, incriminated and my freedom endangered!

....

I can already feel how times start to change. When writing texts like this now, I already have to ask myself: Will I end up on a list because I wrote this? Will I be put under surveillance? Will my appartment be searched and my computer infected by a trojan to collect "evidence"?

I am not a terrorist or an opportunist. I love this country. I have nothing but the purest respect for other people's lives, privacy, dreams and desires. And I have nothing but disgust and disrespect for those amongst us who lust for power and control over others, and for that purpose don't mind using false propaganda to undermine the very foundations of our democracy (as much of it as is left) just to increase their influence and distract us from their own incompetence while at the same time preparing our infrastructure for the abuse by future totalitary regimes - something that might very likely happen.

At times like that, I do wish certain people could experience the pain while they bring onto others! Especially our elected leaders, I sometimes wish they would be target of their own flawed laws, or directly experience the results of the decisions they made by themselves... I believe then and only then will they actually be able to step over their own arrogance and realise the mistakes they made. The problem is, that will hardly happen. And if ever, then the results will hit others - most likely the poorest and weakest first, as always...

To finish this, I wanna end with 2 quotes by Benjamin Franklin. Though both of them have been said so long ago, they did not loose any of their truth, wisdom or relevance until today. If anything, those are even more true and important now than they have ever been:

"The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either."
"The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice."

Image taken from Wikipedia and © its respective owner(s)

Mass data storage - for the content industry after all?

I'm actually surprised this is my first post about this topic: freedom, security, data-mining, content-industry... summed up: privacy

I have my own opinion about all these things and I'm very liberal, if not even left concerning those. I do believe in the right for pricavy and informational self-determination of the individual. I think noone - not the government, the police and certainly not the content-industry should have the right to invade my privacy and spy on me without reasonable suspicion. I don't think the government or any affiliates should be allowed to preemtively collect sensible-information like fingerprints or DNA-data of innocent citizens. Not for the purposes of crime-prevention, nor anything else - and definitely not for "protection against terrorism".

That said, I guess my attitude towards things like mass-surveillance or fingerprints are more than clear. It's not surprising that I got furious when I read the following article (sorry, german only): http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/28/28146/1.html

Not too long ago, the german parliament passed a bill that now requires the ISPs to keep data about all internet-traffic stored and available for 6 months! The critics were silenced with the usual "this will help the police and the crime-rate will go down and ... it will help against terrorism!". Always a nice argumentation: make the ones being against the law responsible for murder, child-rape and terrorist-attacks. The doubts and worries of the people who also see the drawbacks of such mass-surveillance, like the commissioner for privacy protection, Peter Schaar, were dismissed with arguments like "the access to this data will be highly restricted and only possible with jurisdictional approval through a court-order, so the possibility for abuse will be minimal".

Why to have such mass data mining and storage of all internet-traffic anyway? Good question. I know the EU requires countries to have these methods in effect, and I honestly am not well-informed enough to really know why the EU wants that - I have my theories but I don't wanna sound too paranoid.

I know one big lobby though that has always had a big interest in that data: The content industry. They were the ones to cry out the loudest that it's so difficult to retrieve the connection information from the providers in order to identify and sue people illegally sharing copyright-protected material. Back then, the providers only had to keep the data for 24 hours - so the content industry had to be quick to address the ISP to hold the data longer, since it might be evidence. Now, they can look at it much more relaxed. But there's still one problem: In order to get insight into these data-files, they have to address the jurisdictional system and prove that there was indeed an illegal act. While proving that (or at least stating it in a way to make it sound believable enough for a court) is not that difficult, it certainly takes time and involves alot of additional effort from the prosecution... especially when you think about how many many mass-complaints are filed by the content-industry these days.

And that's where the article I linked to comes in... something noone could've thought of is actually happening now: the attorneys are completely overloaded. The jurisdiction simply can't handle all the cases. And so the attorney generals thought of a solution: "Why not simply give the content industry direct access to the data instead? That would take the work off the jurisdiction."

... so we actually arrived where the Content Industry wanted to be at all along. They will be able to approach the ISPs directly and simply start suing whoever they like, based on the information found in the data recorded by the ISPs. Without having to consult a court, without having an initial suspicion, without evidence.

And it might not end there. Who knows what's next? Maybe they can soon access the data without having to address the ISPs? Maybe other groups of interest might want to have similar access aswell? Why not? It's all about keeping us safe and secure, isn't it? And if you don't have anything to hide, then you have nothing to fear, right?

image taken from and © www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de