Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty much, the US has always been at war. I mean, they used to have a War Department, which got renamed Defense Department for PR.
Not really that's OTT hyperbole
Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties
261–270 of 292 posts
Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties
#262Could anyone shed some light on which problem this is supposed to solve exactly and what triggered it in the first place in Austria right now? Have there been any issues caused by anonymous posts recently? Maybe I'm just living under a rock, but my feeling was that the main issues we're currently facing stem from political distortion caused by populism misusing platform mechanisms to spread misinformation. I don't se…
This was triggered by a defamation lawsuit where a former female MP was being harrassed via facebook, made the harassement public via twitter, and subsequently sued by the owner of the facebook account. She lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay damages. The court found that the owner of the facebook account is not necessarily the harasser, so making the harassement public is libel. Of course this case was only a we…
This would be surprising. If I remember correctly the MP was from the Green party (= centre left & environmental) while the current government is pretty much the opposite (centre right party & we're-not-nazis-but-pretty-close party).
This is just the far right interior minister enforcing his ideology of control.
Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, the US will never adopt a law like that. Anonymity is extremely protected by the Supreme Court, because the founders wrote and distributed pamphlets anonymously in support of the Revolution.
In the US you have to show your ID much more often compared to other parts of the world. Every bar you enter, or alcohol or drink you buy people ask for identification. This is not the case elsewhere. So, it wouldn't surprise me, if the current administration would at least attempt such ideas.
ID verification of age when buying alcohol is practiced by many countries, not just US.
Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it is like in Spain then the non-registered sim cards from other EU countries will simply not work if I remember correctly. However I have heard that in Spain you could anyway buy unregistered sim cards from certain stores if you asked around and paid a bit more.
Sounds unlikely. I know quite many in Sweden who have unregistered SIM cards and I think I would have heard of if they did not work in Spain.
Alright then I am mistaken. But I do know for sure that you are required to show ID to get a sim card inside the country and there are no unregistered prepaid cards.
Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties
#265Could anyone shed some light on which problem this is supposed to solve exactly and what triggered it in the first place in Austria right now? Have there been any issues caused by anonymous posts recently? Maybe I'm just living under a rock, but my feeling was that the main issues we're currently facing stem from political distortion caused by populism misusing platform mechanisms to spread misinformation. I don't se…
“Populists” lol. It’s not like anyone on the political spectrum has any shame. All political entities will abuse every mechanism that is at their disposal that won’t get them in trouble. Maybe the “populists” were the first to take advantage because they are smarter?
Populist/technocrat is really more a function of who your key supporters are, and what kinds of appeals are more efficient with them.
Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty much, the US has always been at war. I mean, they used to have a War Department, which got renamed Defense Department for PR.
Not really that's OTT hyperbole
No, it's pretty accurate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...
Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t recall doing that with a Hofer SIM card. However major other networks go a longer way recording who you are.
Then you probably bought your SIM before 2019-01-01. Old SIM cards will have to be registered until September or they must be deactivated.
I bought a burner phone in February (cash, no ID) and there was a HoT-SIM with it. I didn't try using it though.
Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
This comes from a government in which the junior coalition partner is the far-right FPÖ, an openly pro-Putin and authoritarian party. This law is part of their campaign to browbeat the press and public sphere into submission and it is following attempts to rein the austrian public broadcaster (orf) in. The proposed law is useless for any legitimate purpose, as anonymity was never a problem with hate speech or other t…
I wonder why people think that Putin controls all right wing parties on this planet (including Trump). No one talks about Gazprom Schroeder (center-left SPD) who destroyed the welfare state in Germany and then joined Gazprom.
I don't think he controls them. What it reminds me of is how USSR supported pretty much any political movement anywhere in the world, so long as it was in opposition to the capitalist West. The important part was that last one, but most such movements were left-wing.
But that was there and then. We don't have any strong hard left movements of that kind in Western countries today. We do, however, have far right / "third position" movements of that kind. And ideologically, they align pretty well with Russia's own internal politics, so they're more reliable allies, as well. So, while there is some support for left-wing anti-establishment movements, most of it goes to the right. And hence we're mostly talking about that.
Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Anonymity is extremely protected by the Supreme Court And yet the US has all kinds of surveillance apparatus to de-anonymize internet users...
And if that apparatus was used to prosecute US citizens for non-major crimes with any frequency it would come under scrutiny very quickly and you'd have politicians jockeying to legislate it out of existence and take credit. Even if you take the parallel construction angle, no politician except maybe a dinosaur that is super-secure in their position (on the federal level that would be people like Pelosi, Fienstien, e…
Too late, it's already happening:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intel...
Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
Putting 2 innocent people through systems designed to assume they are guilty is worse than 1 guilty person being able to be anonymous. Look at what the TSA has done. They’ve wasted so much time and created a massive invasion of physical privacy (i.e. someone touching your private parts in public) and not only did they never catch anything, they fail 90% of penetration tests. There is some positive intent here but in…
I see two options going forward: - Filters, Article 13 style. Youtube, Facebook and Co have to ensure you can only post legal content - Accountability. A justice system is able to drag you into a court when you've done something illegal. We tried safe harbor and it was a nice compromise, but youtube added ContentId for a reason and it also certainly doesn't seem to help against hate speech. I prefer we keep judges as…
I'd rather that we learn to acknowledge that laws and their enforcement isn't free, either economically, or in terms of its effect on personal freedoms, and that there is a line past which it's a net negative even if it targets some activity that is illegal for a good reason, and has some meaningful effect on that.