When I was in Berlin last month, I stopped into the offices of Netzpolitik (previously), the outstanding German digital rights activist group, where I recorded an interview for their podcast (MP3), talking about science fiction, utopianism, dystopianism, how we can change the world, and why my kid has so many names.
Netzpolitik is an amazing German activist/journalist organization; in 2015, they braved a treason investigation by publishing Snowden docs that showed that the German intelligence services were conducting illegal surveillance and illegally collaborating with the NSA; now they've done it again, publishing a new leaked oversight report on spying at the Bad Aibling surveillance station.
Harald Range was due to retire this year, but he was fired first when he refused to end his ridiculous treason witch hunt against Netzpolitik, who published revelations from the Snowden docs.
Reporters and press freedom advocates from around the world have signed on to support Netzpolitik and condemn the German government's outrageous investigation.
In a stunning rejection of the will five million online petitioners, and over 100,000 protestors this weekend, the European Parliament has abandoned common-sense and the advice of academics, technologists, and UN human rights experts, and approved the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive in its entirety.
Today marksed the largest street protests ever in the history of internet freedom struggles, with more than 100,000 Europeans participating in mass demonstrations across the region — more than 50 cities participated in Germany alone! From Netpolitik's early summary (English robotranslation): "In Berlin, the demonstration was about half an hour, if you waited along the way from the beginning to the end. — Read the rest
This week started with a terrifying bang, when German and French negotiators announced a deal to revive the worst parts of the new EU Copyright Directive though a compromise on "Article 13," which requires copyright filters for any online service that allows the public to communicate. — Read the rest
The Alternative For Germany (AfD) is a xenophobic far-right party whose ranks include neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers; in a new tell-all book by "AfD dropout" Franziska Schreiber (once the head of the AfD's youth wing), we learn that party leader Frauke Petry worked closely with Hans-Georg Maaßen, the president of Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (a domestic surveillance agency with 3,100 employees and an annual budget of €350m).
Estimating displacement rates
of copyrighted content in the EU is a 360,000€ study commissioned by the European Commission from the Dutch consulting firm Ecorys, whose mandate was to "research the effect piracy had on sales of copyrighted content" — the report was completed in 2015, but never made public.
When the USA PATRIOT Act was signed into law on October 26, 2001, it erased many of the vital checks and balances that stood between the American people and their government. As Bush supporters cheered the unprecedented power that their people in Washington now held, the civil liberties world warned them: "Your president has just fashioned a weapon that will be wielded by all who come after him."
The German prosecutors who dropped all action against the US and UK spy-agencies who trampled German law and put the whole nation, up to and including Chancellor Angela Merkel, under surveillance, have decided instead to open an investigation into the bloggers at Netzpolitik, who revealed the wrongdoing.
Our field requires ethical frameworks we accept, instead of rules that remain technically unbroken while we hackers violate their spirit with as much ingenuity as we can muster.
The German Chancellor — whose party is closely aligned with the telcoms sector — says she wants a two-tier Internet; on the "fast" Internet, carriers will be allowed to slow down access to services that haven't paid bribes for "premium" carriage; on the "regular" Internet, ISPs will just give you the data you ask for.
Ot sez, "Bits of Freedom is organizing its annual donation campaign today. Why? Because privacy and freedom on the internet are under threat and we need to defend our rights online. We can only do so with your help. If you want to help, you can write a blog, use one of our banners on your own site or become a supporter. — Read the rest
Der Spiegel reporter Holger Stark tweets that an old cache of unreleased Wikileaks leak documents is "gone forever." Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who left Wikileaks after a heated dispute with founder Julian Assange, told Stark today "that he has destroyed it."
After quitting (or, depending on whose account you're reading, being forced to leave) from Wikileaks, Domscheit-Berg created a project called OpenLeaks and wrote a tell-all book: "Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website
Markus sez, "300 people gathered today in Berlin to demonstrate against the German net censorship law. The Deutsche Bunestag (German parliament) will vote on that law today. Lots of banners with slogans like 'New Berlin Wall?', 'IT-Courses for politicians' and 'Don't worry, we're from the internets' showed a colourful protest in front of the Brandenburger Gate close to the Reichstag." — Read the rest
Ramon sez, "In Germany internet censorship will be introduced. The bill did not pass yet, but the ruling parties have agreed to do so. Over 130.000 people in Germany have signed a petition to protect the freedom of speech and information, but we have not been heard. — Read the rest
My second novel Eastern Standard Tribe has been published in German by Heyne, under the title Upload. As with the German edition of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (published as Download), they've released the German text under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. — Read the rest
Markus sez, "'Big Brother State' is a nice animation about surveillance society with examples of trusted computing and CCTV. It is released under a Creative Commons sampling licence by David Scharf and you can download the short film in several formats." — Read the rest
Markus sez, "After Lessigs stunning talk at 23c3 in Berlin there was an interesting debate between Lawrence Lessig and John Perry Barlow about strategies in the copyfight. We did an interview with Barlow right after the debate about massive civil disobience to crash the system:"
— Read the rest
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