owl - 14.10.2005 - 6.12.2006

Apparently 200,000 German-language bomb-making instructions on the net - by goats and gardeners. And how interest groups shamelessly cooperate with corporate interests when it suits them. That the demands ultimately mean a sell-out of our rights doesn't bother anyone.

Swivel Aims To Become The Internet Archive For Data - how many people will upload company-internal or research-internal data without thinking about data protection? Nobody thinks about asking the people whose faces are on the picture if they should be published at least when it comes to videos and images ...

EU may not transfer bank data to the USA - what do you want to bet they will find a loophole to pass the data on to the USA?

StudiVZ: 700 Stalker and Data Protection - something from practice. Nicely researched and prepared by Don Alphonso. For all those who always come up with "I have nothing to hide, it's not that bad" when you find a vulnerability in an online system.

Cracked it! - and what did they crack? The British RFID passport.

E-Mail account only with ID card? - ok, if this goes through, we can say goodbye to any form of reason on the Internet. And anyone who still offers services as a provider should think carefully about it ...

E-Voting - the PTB in a state of explanation. The PTB director comes across as quite helpless in that interview.

Merkel advocates for more surveillance despite high security - they can't get enough. Meanwhile, they don't even bother to come up with lies anymore ...

Data protection expert openly talks about the path to a surveillance state - don't worry, won't impress anyone, we'll continue as planned. Civil rights don't interest anyone anymore.

Judgment: T-Online may not store connection data - unfortunately only for one customer and for everyone else another lawsuit would be necessary. Such an absurd thing - the BGH finds that T-Online acts unlawfully, but simply ignores that they will continue to do so for a million (or however many) other users ... this is then called a rule of law ...

German government wants customer data for preventive crime fighting - on to the internet surveillance state! We've already slipped drastically in terms of press freedom, and we'll manage to do the same with internet freedom! Roll up your sleeves, monitor, and denounce! Every citizen is called upon! Or maybe it's time to think about using tor, JAP, and other tools for encrypting and, above all, anonymizing communication?

Category Consumer Protection: Association of German Insurers — BigBrotherAwards - exemplary picked out from the Big Brother Awards because it so nicely shows how little the economy cares about the rights of customers.

Grand coalition agrees on tightening anti-terrorism laws - well, that was obvious. All the surveillance measures so far have not brought any significant success, so they cheer each other on in Berlin and expand them right away. Fits the picture of Berlin's intellectual poverty.

Bank data extorted from SWIFT - Bank secrecy? Data protection? Pfft. Forget it. The question remains: which damage is greater: that caused by terrorism, or that caused by the alleged fight against terrorism.

Kauder warns against the publication of the BND report - due to alleged endangerment of the work of the BND. That this work of the BND endangers our constitutional rights, of course, does not matter at all ...

Virtual Big Brother

I agree with Ralle from Netzbuch - Riya and similar ideas are definitely very strange and the reaction to them, or rather the enthusiasm for them, shows a very unreflective use of these systems by users. I find it surprising how much information users voluntarily put about themselves into the various allegedly social software products - and thus give themselves and their environment to the advertising partners and potentially everyone else with access to the data (law enforcement agencies, burglars, data thieves). More and more networking and less and less privacy, that seems to be the motto of Web 2.0 for some.

Data greed is awesome?

One can almost see the drool dripping from the corners of the mouths of the police officials and the minister when reading the article about the Federal Constitutional Court ruling on the seizure of computers and emails. Funny, how the politicians only mention in passing that the seizure itself was absolutely not in order - instead, they immediately start screaming for legal extensions so that even more can be collected.

The restriction of the Federal Constitutional Court - that seizures must be proportional and appropriate - can certainly be forgotten, because no one will take that into account. And with the constant change in communication structures towards electronic means, one can then safely consider the secrecy of telecommunications as a done deal.

Tor GUI Competition

I didn't know about the GUI Competition for Tor - a good tool for securing the privacy of internet users. I've been using Tor for a while now - and at one point I even ran a Tor router - but the use, especially with dynamic network connections, is still a bit clunky for regular end users. Of course, I also hold the opinion that end users should learn more about their computer and therefore the installation and use of Tor should also be feasible for these people - but if we really want Tor to be a sign against state data espionage, then we definitely need graphical interfaces for activation, use, and configuration. Only then will regular users also think about whether they should use it after all.

For this reason, I am also particularly pleased that the competition has now moved into the next phase - the actual programming of the GUIs. And as a stupid Mac mouse pusher, I of course also wish for an OS X interface for this.

By the way, there is a very practical - and in my opinion obvious - application of Tor: public WLAN hotspots. Communication usually takes place unencrypted on them. This makes all accesses directly visible to others - unusable for accessing sites for which you have a password, if these do not also offer SSL immediately. And particularly problematic with all the other unencrypted services with which one likes to play around on the Internet - IRC for example (a private chat is not all that private if you conduct it over a public WLAN hotspot ...). Tor can help here very easily - a local Tor installation on the computer and the client software configured accordingly and you already have a kind of super-VPN.

This is also a reason why I wish for a Tor port to the small Nokia 770 tablet.

I myself do not use Tor for all services - but I generally have a network configuration ready on the Mac, in which Tor and Privoxy are activated by selection (I would like to be able to toggle the socks-forward in Privoxy via a Privoxy-GUI - then I could keep the Privoxy environment generally active and only switch on Tor when needed). This way I can quickly and easily switch on Tor on the go. For Jabber I use Psi, for which I have the Tor service generally activated. For IRC I use XChat-Aqua, which can be easily equipped with various server configurations, so that I can activate or deactivate Tor (many IRC networks do not allow IRC use via Tor).

In my opinion, a GUI on the Mac should integrate into the network environments on the Mac, so that it makes corresponding changes when activated, just as the environment switch does. And you should be able to easily slip new configs under other programs, as was the case with the old Mac Locations, for programs for which the proxy must be entered manually.

Beautiful, New RFID World

RFID: Password cracking made easy

"A normal cell phone contains all the components needed to compromise all RFID tags in the immediate vicinity," explained Shamir. He did not examine all types of transponders, but only those of the most widespread brand, and they are completely unprotected. However, he attributes the vulnerabilities found less to this specific, unnamed manufacturer than to the need to reduce the production costs of RFID transponders at all costs. This forced developers to throw all security requirements overboard.

And when will they found the Stasi again?

The German Bundestag supports suspicionless surveillance of telecommunications:

With almost all the votes of the grand coalition, the Bundestag decided today, Thursday, after an intense debate, to apply for the storage of telephone and internet data for six months (PDF file). The federal government is thus called upon to implement the directive, approved by the European Parliament, for recording user traces "with moderation" and in the "minimum requirements". The directive must first be confirmed by the EU Council, which the ministers of justice and the interior have planned for the beginning of next week.

You have to let that sink in: the Bundestag is demanding the implementation of the EU directive - before the EU Council has even confirmed this directive itself. With such commitment, we can be sure that the federal government will massively push to destroy the last bit of data protection on the net.

The fact that the whole story in the EU was massively discussed among the states themselves and that the current approach is nothing more than a brazen collusion to push it through - that doesn't matter. We also only creatively interpret the Basic Law when we plan to murder innocent people, so why shouldn't we also serve the rights of citizens on a silver platter to the surveillance authorities.

All of this, of course, garnished with the squealing of "data protection is protection for criminals" and other smear slogans. Where are the great investigative successes through the already existing excessive surveillance possibilities? No presentable results - because it's all just stupid lies.

Disgusting, how under the guise of fighting terrorism, citizens are betrayed and sold out. With what persistence our elected representatives shit on our rights and only have a police state in mind - red or black, both just scum. They all outraged themselves about the GDR, and now they are all so keen on building the same surveillance state themselves.

Data Protection and Security Interests

A real gem from the Niedersachsen data protection dispute, which concerns the transfer of data protection functions to the Interior Ministry:

Critics fear that moving to the Interior Ministry could compromise the independence of oversight. Minister Schünemann dismissed this concern but acknowledged that security interests and data protection interests are not always aligned.

Wow, what a novel idea, who would have thought that conflicts with data protection interests might exist in the Interior Ministry? Could this perhaps be the reason why data protection officers should be independent of ministries?

I actually enjoy the job... - "Fiction" of a monitor and his comment on data retention.

Sabrina and Twister - interesting "fictions" that unfortunately are not quite as fictional as one would like. Well-written stories about data protection, privacy, surveillance, etc.

Clear, I pack data to Google ...

Privacy advocates are not enthusiastic about Google Desktop Search 3:

On February 9, 2006, a beta version of Google Desktop Search was released, which allows you to find documents stored on different computers. This is achieved by storing the relevant files on the Google server, so you need to have and use a Google account to use this feature.

Great idea. Of course, I'll put data from my workplace on a Google server. Where it's readily available for anyone who gains access to the boxes. Very big idea. Google may have the motto "don't be evil" - but they should also think about the motto "don't be stupid" ...

People Sacrificed to the Markets

This is what Yahoo - which, according to Reporters Without Borders, has handed over data of dissidents to the Chinese police does:

The human rights organization Reporters Without Borders calls on the Internet service provider and portal operator Yahoo to publish a list of all "cyberdissidents" whose data the company has handed over to Chinese authorities, particularly. The organization claims to have uncovered that the dissident Li Zhi was sentenced to an eight-year prison term with the help of Yahoo in December 2003.

So people are sacrificed and betrayed just to reach the Chinese market, which is interesting for companies. What a great achievement. The arrogance of companies is sometimes really disgusting.

What can come out of such an "unholy alliance" should also be considered for Europe - because here too, the demands of law enforcement are becoming louder and louder, it is only a matter of time before authorities in Europe also ask for search queries and similar protocols from search engines. And such a demand could even be covered by the absurd laws. And whether search engine operators will really stand up against this is rather questionable in view of the recent activities of Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Traces on the Net

Older, but very interesting: Rogers Cadenhead demonstrates, what you can find out about a person just from comments on websites. He only uses the comments on Metafilter to create a profile of a regular Metafilter user.

One should indeed think about what data and information one voluntarily gives away - bloggers and frequent commentators are often quite generous with their information. Efficient search engines can certainly help create a profile of a person that can be far more detailed than what Rogers did on Metafilter.

Call me a pessimist ...

... but I feel uncomfortable with such ideas:

Companies should in the future acquire the electronic equivalent of a stamp if they want to be sure that their email reaches the recipients. For fees of up to one cent per message, the mails sent via the service provider Goodmail Systems will be forwarded without spam filtering and confirmed as received.

When will emails from private individuals no longer be delivered unless they go through one of the large providers participating in the payment system? When will citizens' networks or privately operated providers be excluded because they cannot belong to the club of payers?

The possibly upcoming argumentation is simple: only those who pay to a central authority for their website will be enabled for HTTP access in the mandatory proxy of the large providers - because otherwise they are suspected of being a phishing site. And soon, outside of email, some sites would simply no longer exist. It also fits perfectly with the efforts of telcos and cable providers in the USA, who also want to deliver paid content (i.e., content paid for by the telcos) on a priority basis.

Apart from the fact that I definitely trust my own filters more than filters operated for payment by some company on the net. When will there be the first scandal that a spammer has bought access? My statistical spam filter on my server is not corruptible - not perfect, but also not corruptible.

In the establishment of further central filters and control points, I see a real danger to the structure of the Internet - how quickly companies are bought, one could see in recent times. And even if a company like Yahoo today possibly - due to the necessary positioning against Google - is a bit on a cozy course with the user, who guarantees that a media giant does not take over the whole thing? Not everyone is as incompetent as Time Warner ...

Ösi-Pässe also vulnerable

Not that anyone thinks our Austrian neighbors have better chip passports than our Dutch neighbors:

When reading the passports on an official reading device, the data can be eavesdropped on by third parties from a short distance with relatively modest effort and then quite easily decrypted.

The electronic data that can be captured corresponds to the [name, date of birth, place of residence, etc.] noted in the passport in writing, but the passport photo is also included in the form of a JPEG.

Well, we will probably have a lot of fun with the idiotic tags in passports in Germany in the long run ...

The End of the Internet?

A frightening observation of telecom activities in the USA. Those who think this doesn't concern us: many carriers in Europe are US subsidiaries. And those that are purely EU companies are often telcos themselves - and therefore similarly "susceptible" to megalomania. The efforts of telcos and cable providers are therefore definitely critical - especially in the discussion of Quality-of-Service configurations on the Internet, there are indeed technical means to restrict or prevent citizen communication. Only registered network blocks and registered protocols would get the corresponding bandwidths, P2P protocols would be restricted - the entertainment industry would immediately be on board, after all, this would factually slow down data exchange. And how quickly the bandwidths for citizen networks, private internet projects, weblogs operated outside large providers, etc. would be restricted, everyone can imagine for themselves.

Not a nice vision of the future. Especially because we are dependent on the reason of a state and a government that starts wars with fabricated motives and forged evidence, whose government is even more driven by lobbying than the one in Germany, which spies on its own citizens under the guise of "fight against terrorism" and grinds away their freedoms and whose current president allegedly receives his inspirations from God ...

The Lie of Information Freedom

What the Federal Foreign Office understands by freedom of information:

The applicant requested a decree of the Federal Foreign Office to the visa offices dated November 22 of the previous year with the file reference 508-1-516.20. Such decrees are the daily tools of consular officers in the more than 150 visa offices worldwide, attaching the document to an email should take such an officer a few minutes of work.

And what was the bill for this request? 107.20 euros. For a copy of a standard document. So much for the proportionality of the prices for information access. Exactly what I already expected is happening - the Freedom of Information Act is becoming an absolute farce.

Betrayed, Monitored, and Sold

Government wants to sell data to the economy - Name, address and date of birth from the identity cards. They must have a screw loose?

Biometric passport insecure

Biometric passport hacked - ok, first only the Dutch one, but:

The new German ePass, which has been issued since November of last year, is also equipped with RFID technology. It is encrypted with 56 bits, which experts also consider to be too little.

56-bit encryption is definitely not enough today - and if some components of the key are then also determined algorithmically from the data of the passport, the disaster is perfect. The result is exactly the opposite of the desired result: the whole technology becomes less secure in the end, because a chain is only as secure as its weakest link.

So far, the weakest link is the human being - a human being has to judge whether a passport belongs to a user. With higher automation and electronic queries, this will shift - the human being will shift responsibility to the machine. People are like that - they trust the computer more than their own eyes. But if the biometric passport is weak, the overall result will be weaker than manual control and human control.

T-Online is not allowed to store usage data

Let's see how long the ruling against T-Online's data storage will last:

The effect of the Darmstadt ruling may be short-lived. Because the EU Parliament decided in December to log all internet and telephone connections in advance, there will also be a corresponding law in Germany. However, it is questionable whether the so-called data retention is compatible with the Basic Law.

Basic Law? What Basic Law? Does that still matter to any politician? We don't have a constitutionally compliant budget, the customs authority's surveillance activities have been extended despite a contrary ruling, and what else has undermined the Basic Law recently. What is a little data retention in comparison?

US Justice Department wants Google data

The US Department of Justice wants to access user search queries from Google (and other search engines). Of course, initially only to combat child pornography (how often will this be used as an excuse to dismantle privacy?). Those who think they have to agree with this: afterwards, research on child pornography (and, for example, the search for source material for the research - I mean reports about child pornography, not images or films) will also be suspicious. Because with search engine queries, you have the same problem as with email connections and IP connection data: there are gigantic amounts of data, and the search can only take place automatically, making the probability of hits more than questionable.

Those who have ever watched their spam filter struggle to distinguish spam from ham can roughly imagine how promising any search and qualification algorithms can be that only have these mutilated data from the search queries at their disposal ...

RFID-Zapper - 22C3 - the DIY project for the summer?

In Schily's Footsteps

Following Schily's footsteps is the Interior Minister of Schleswig-Holstein. And once again, he resorts to polemics because the arguments are lacking.

The way in which the Interior Minister reacts to criticism from data protection authorities is increasingly disregarding a factual assessment and is limited to granting absolute priority to the police and law enforcement or general security. Data protection is thus equated with hindering law enforcement, and there is no interest in balancing the two. The maxim "Germany should become safe and free" is followed in such a way that there is no doubt which characteristic prevails here. Even if this security can only ever represent a false sense of security.

And this does not only affect Schleswig-Holstein; it can be felt throughout the federal territory - and in the idiotic attempts at the European level. It is not about accusing individual police officers of being scoundrels who only want to spy on their fellow citizens. It is not about accusing the police of not responsibly handling their means.

It is about the state having a position of power vis-à-vis the citizen, which is controlled and limited for very conscious reasons - and the legislative initiatives within the framework of the expansion of police powers lift this control and limitation. The police are not just any service provider - they are the executive arm of the executive - one of the three powers in our system. We already have far too close a connection between the legislature and the executive - every time the government arrogates itself the legislative power, I feel sick. The Bundestag is the legislature, not just the government (not even just the government coalition).

The control of the possibilities of the powers and the limitation of their power is a very essential aspect of a healthy state. A state in which the executive gains too much power moves away from this ideal line, develops sooner or later into a police state, into a surveillance state. It is not just about banal claims like "data protection = perpetrator protection" - that is ridiculous and polemical. It is about the rights of the individual citizen, about the possibility of shaping one's own life without a big brother constantly looking over one's shoulder. But exactly that is being done more and more in recent times - the installation of the big brother.

Data protection advocates and warning voices are not just world-remote cranks who don't want to see the problem - they are simply those who can already see today what is coming our way tomorrow. And it is frightening that we are only inadequately protected by the highest constitutional court - inadequately because even their decisions are attacked and ignored by politicians.

The warning against the all-powerful state is not paranoia, it is realism. We have had the all-powerful state quite often - and we have recently incorporated an incarnation of it. None of these all-powerful states really worked, all of them collapsed. But the people in these states had to suffer under them.

European Backslapping at the Expense of Citizens' Rights

EU Parliamentarians Justify Massive Telecommunications Surveillance - and they can hardly see their feet due to their pride in their own great achievement. It's just funny that critics keep saying things like this:

Patrick Breyer, a jurist from Elmshorn and one of the heads of the civil rights movement against data retention, is not satisfied with the justifications. He describes the restrictions achieved by the Parliament as "worthless". According to him, the stored information could indeed be released for other purposes such as espionage by intelligence agencies, untargeted search for crimes, or marketing, by referring to another data protection directive. There is no evidence that the crime rate has decreased by referring to partly already stored traffic data. Overall, the directive represents a "serious deterioration compared to the current legal situation".

But of course, we are certainly all wrong, because after all:

Reul, meanwhile, considers all concerns of citizens about a long and non-transparent storage of their personal data to be "dispelled" with the approved draft law.

So if they see that as dispelled, then we are not allowed to object at all. Why do we elect these people if they then stab us in the back? Also amusing are the really informed comparisons:

Gebhardt justifies his approval of blanket surveillance with two comparisons: Thus, anyone who sends a letter today also discloses the associated "traffic data" in the form of sender and recipient, for example, to the postman. Every driver must also be aware that his vehicle owner data has always been stored and, for example, determined when flashing at a red light and used for an investigation. These are "exclusively legal practices" that the authorities would also use in the case of data retention.

Well. If I were to bring that to a realistic comparison: every movement of the vehicle is registered and stored at the starting point and destination. Every conversation in the pub is noted regarding the people involved. Every letter is centrally stored in a database regarding sender and recipient. And the accesses can - provided a somewhat targeted argumentation of the authorities - be used for almost any purpose. Without a court order. And the data must be retained for two years - without any suspicion.

Strangely enough, this is not even the case with letters in reality. Yes, the postal secrecy can be lifted by court order - but nevertheless, there is no two-year history there that is only recorded on suspicion. With vehicles, the owner is indeed recorded - and noted accordingly in case of violations - but not necessarily stored for two years and accessible to almost every authority. And only the violations are stored - but not every movement.

The Internet connection data goes far beyond what is associated with normal wiretapping permissions. Filesharing clients may establish connections to any computers - with which the owner may have nothing to do. Email communications, which are based only on sender and recipient, cannot always be distinguished from spam - viruses and spam, however, falsify addresses, which is why there will be endless garbage in these data swamps.

By the way, in none of the previous data collection cases are such gigantic amounts of junk data collected as in the now decided attack on privacy.

And above all: who protects the citizen from the misinterpretation of these data swamps?

Erectile Dysfunction Diagnosable by Radio

Soon, it will be possible to determine from a distance of 10 meters without the owner's knowledge that he has erectile dysfunction - or thinks he does. Great idea, let's make all diseases remotely diagnosable via RFID, set up a few doctors in street cafes and they will be helped.

According to US media, Pfizer's RFID application does not even allow the distribution path of the pills from the manufacturer to the pharmacies and wholesalers to be tracked correctly.

Oh, well that's good. If total surveillance has not yet occurred, then it's not so bad. With some sentences from professional journalists, one wonders if they even think about what they are reporting on ...

Does such an RFID pass have a warranty?

After reading about the RFID Zapper on Bruce Schneier's blog - what actually happens if the chip is defective? Do you get a free replacement? Do you have to pay for the passport again? Do passports have to be accepted even without a functioning chip - since they are still identification documents?

Chips can also break down without any problems in normal ways - even without the application of EMP or microwave.

Bundestag extends customs powers

How the Bundestag continues to trample on the decisions from Karlsruhe:

Sharp protests also come from the Humanist Union (HU): "The majority of the Bundestag has once again duped the Federal Constitutional Court," indignant is their deputy federal chairman Fredrik Roggan. The argumentation of the Black-Red coalition is an affront: "First, parliament and government let an entire year pass idly by, in which they could have created a constitutionally compliant regulation, only to then refer to time constraints just before the deadline." It is scandalous that Karlsruhe increasingly has to stop the lawmaker who has gotten out of control. The HU announced that it will file a constitutional complaint against the law and apply for interim legal protection to prevent the regulations on customs powers from taking effect.

It is already highly absurd how meanwhile even the clearly understandable judgments from Karlsruhe apparently do not find their way into the minds of the proletarians. As a result, the restriction of the large-scale eavesdropping has now been reduced to absurdity - one can simply have the customs listen in, instead of the somewhat restricted police ...

Data Retention is a Scandal

I can only agree with Petra Tursky-Hartmann - the way this nonsense was pushed through is terrible. Really terrible. Pure activism without any real meaning - but you feel so terribly safe when everything is properly recorded and archived. The whole data waste doesn't provide any information - on the contrary, it will cause trouble. But who cares if citizens soon get into trouble because viruses or spam with forged sender addresses are sent to random addresses, and then a citizen of Arab origin is considered a terrorism suspect. It doesn't matter, it doesn't affect good German citizens.

And we are still allowed to drive faster than 130 on the highway. We are free.

Addendum: At XS4ALL there is a nice Lifecounter, which counts how many CDs are necessary for storing the email log data since September 2005 ...

Off with the barriers

To those involved in the investigations by federal authorities:

As Schäuble explained, currently, for example, the Federal Criminal Police Office can only intervene if there is a "criminal procedural initial suspicion." This condition is to be abolished. Schäuble justified this by saying that the path from the intelligence service's findings via the state police to the BKA is too cumbersome.

And what do you think, will these special rights be used only for combating terrorism? Or are the control functions that still exist in the executive gradually being lost?

It's nice how the Union and the SPD agree on the curtailment of civil rights and the curtailment of control functions ...

Data Non-Protection Declarations in Insurance

Because I'm currently interested in dental supplementary insurance (and my health insurance is trying to sell me a private insurance), I've read through the hints and explanations. In doing so, I came across the following nice paragraph under the title "Release from confidentiality clause":

I am aware that the insurer verifies information about my state of health before concluding the contract, to the extent that this is necessary for assessing the risks to be insured in the case of the contract conclusion I am applying for and my statements give cause for it. For this purpose, I release doctors, dentists, members of other healing professions as well as employees in hospitals and health authorities from their confidentiality, to the extent that I have been examined, advised and treated in the last 10 years prior to the application. This declaration is valid beyond my death.

It gets even worse - but I'll spare you the details. Great - the legislator is cutting back on the benefits of the statutory health insurance. Ultimately, the insured person is forced to take out supplementary insurance, at least if they cannot afford the treatments on their own and need to plan ahead. For this, however, they must then simply waive any confidentiality obligations towards the private insurance company - and even permanently, as death does not apply. Now, let's put all this into perspective - I pay a multiple of the measly 6.42 euros that the supplementary insurance would cost me to the statutory insurance. But there, I don't need to waive my confidentiality so drastically and unrestrictedly for dental services (in the above paragraph, the type of request is not even limited to the medical field of the insurance!) - but for the private insurance, I have to give up all rights to my data.

That's complete nonsense.

Additionally, of course, it also bothers me that the insurance company advertises in a leaflet about dental supplementary insurance that it has been tested with "very good" by Finanz Test, for example - but not for dental supplementary insurance, but for "single room rates". Which is really very informative for the assessment of the dental supplementary insurance ...

Stockpiling of telecommunications data: The major factions give in

EU Parliamentarians cave in:

During a meeting between the leadership of the Christian Democratic European People's Party (EPP), the Social Democrats, and the Liberals with British Interior Minister Charles Clarke, the representatives of the two major political blocs significantly accommodated the wishes of the London negotiator on Tuesday. For example, they agreed to a planned obligation for telecommunications providers to store telephone data for up to two years.

An absolute catastrophe for data protection - the national governments will then retreat to "we have to do it, it's EU law" and data protection and the informational self-determination of citizens will continue to go down the drain. And the providers can stack terabytes of data waste, just because some overzealous data snoops have prevailed in their absurd data collection frenzy.

Off to total surveillance

Matching the US military's satellite-communicating RFID chips, there's also some brainless news to report from Europe: EU committee approves compromise on telecommunications data retention:

Data protection advocates have rejected the agreements as a "disastrous breach" in telecommunications surveillance and a "massive restriction of fundamental rights." In their opinion, the question of the constitutionality of the bill would also arise in its revised form here in the country.

But the politicians involved in the compromise are celebrating the whole thing as a great success. Well, the constitution doesn't interest anyone here in Germany, especially not the current government - as can be seen from their budget for 2006, which is not in compliance with the constitution ...

Oh, and since we're on the topic of brainless ideas: the music industry demands the same access rights to citizens' dial-up data as those provided for combating terrorism. Another parallel to the brainless consequences of the fight against one's own population in the USA.

EU Advocate General against Data Sharing

Transfer of air passenger data is unlawful says the EU Advocate General:

The Advocate General at the European Court of Justice (ECJ), Philippe Léger, recommends that the agreement between the EU and the USA on the transfer of air passenger data should be annulled.

It's strange when data protection has to be saved by the ECJ because it is simply thrown overboard in Germany out of overzealous obedience ...

Disgusting ...

... the fearmongering of the agitators against data protection and privacy, when the secrecy of telecommunications threatens to be taken seriously.

Off to the Police State Germany!

Coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats to review data protection:

Under the title "Germany – a safe and free country," the fight against terrorism is described in the paper available to heise online as "a very important task for all German security authorities." In addition, a "claim" of citizens is postulated "to be protected from crime." According to the interior experts of the grand coalition, other constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties must be subordinated to this. It is necessary to examine, as stated in the eight-page contract document, "to what extent legal regulations, for example in data protection, stand in the way of effective combating of terrorism and crime" and whether the "proven security architecture" needs to be further developed.

Speechless.

Sony BMG's Copy Protection with Rootkit Functions

At Heise, there is a report about the problems with Sony BMG's copy protection:

This software emulates rootkit functions - rootkits also hide their (illegal) activities from the computer user. The copy protection installs filter drivers for CD-ROM drives and IDE drivers, through which it controls access to media.

Ultimately, this is another breach of user data integrity. And considering the idiotic copy protection laws in Germany, you're not even allowed to do anything about it. And so, the individual's right to their property (this is not just about Sony's silly CD, the entire computer is affected!) is once again sacrificed on the altar of the music industry's arrogance.

By the way, this copy protection also includes monitoring functions for media other than its own protected content - and in my opinion, this massively violates data protection regulations, because regardless of what Sony wants to protect, what else is going on on the computer is none of their business.

Another reason not to buy CDs from Sony BMG.

Spyware in World of Warcraft?

According to Bruce Schneier, Blizzard Entertainment uses spyware to check compliance with their EULA - and it's one that looks at much more than just the data from their own program, but also additional data from other applications ...

Concerning because it doesn't just read the data from its own program - but even then it would still be concerning if it were limited to Blizzard Entertainment's software. Or did any of the users of the software agree to this monitoring? To the loading of code onto their own computer? To searching system lists for information? To sending this information over the Internet?

It is also questionable how such practices can be in compliance with data protection regulations, for example in Germany.