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The German Problem with Tor

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Re: The German Problem with Tor

#61

Post by DuskStar »

chki wrote: post #49
chopin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rulings of the constitutional court have almost no real life consequences. If there is a negative ruling the parliament is given ample time before the unconstitutional law must be replaced. If there is any replacement within that time, the same law, formulated differently, is passed.

That's not true at all. The rulings of the German Constitutional Court are extremely important (at the very least compared to almost all other Constitutional Courts in the world) and have very real consequences. Just one example: The recent PSPP Judgement had the potential to end the Euro. It didn't but if the Court had ruled in a slightly different way (which would have been within it's Constitutional Powers) the Bu…

> The fact that the Court tries not to do something like that is because it is also a political actor searching for stability.

This sounds to me like someone saying that the Queen of England has the power to dissolve parliament - and just doesn't for political concerns. (Those political concerns being that if she ever exercises that power, it'll be removed)

At some point you have to recognize that if you can only use power in ways that don't interfere with another governmental body, that power might not really exist.

Re: The German Problem with Tor

#62

Post by rsync »

Havoc wrote: post #2

Why all the hate for Germany specifically? Pretty much no gov out there likes TOR nodes. The fact that there are ton in Germany any seems like something that should be applauded

"Why all the hate for Germany specifically? Pretty much no gov out there likes TOR nodes."

It could be argued that the United States does like TOR nodes ... it was originally a US Navy research and development project and, then, in later years the US state department specifically called out TOR as a useful tool (during the "Arab Spring" protests, IIRC.)

I see that even now, in 2020, the US State Department is a financial backer of TOR.[1]

If I were running TOR nodes in the United States (as I have in the past) I would rely on that current funding as a positive defense against any legal claims against me.

(I would also not do anything stupid like run TOR nodes from my home Internet)

[1] https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors/

Re: The German Problem with Tor

#63

Post by notRobot »

teh_klev wrote: post #13
notRobot wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The high number of high-speed relays and exits in Germany mean that it is not too uncommon to get both a German guard and exit. This gives the state an easier time if they want to target someone using traffic correlation attacks. > That also does not take in account the planned German law that will allow authorities to redirect traffic to state-owned servers, to infect users with viruses/Trojans. This is especially…

I think you could have phrased your question better: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

My bad. I chose the wording I used over "Did you even read the article?" to be more polite, but perhaps I should have phrased it in a completely different way altogether. I'll keep it in mind I'm the future.

Re: The German Problem with Tor

#64

Post by realityking »

gruez wrote: post #55
alborzb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so what you're saying is that the court... works?

It sounds different than something like the US, where if a law is unconstitutional it's struck down immediately (rather than giving time for the legislature to fix it), and the defendant acquitted (not sure what happens in germany).

It depends on the law. Often the law (usually just the specific provisions found unconstitutional) are immediately struck down. If there are wide decision to be made instead of the the status quo with the unconstitutional law, then the court will give parliament time to make the rules. This is currently the case with the election law where it's considered unconstitutional but there a multiple legal ways to design a legal one. The choice, how the law should look like, was passed back to parliament.

Re: The German Problem with Tor

#66

Post by odiroot »

elchin wrote: post #4

"In reality, the German government has a double standard when it comes to the right to privacy. They will fully support that right if it's company's violating your privacy (especially, if they are American because protectionism) but in contrast, the German will give itself as many powers as it can to spy on its own citizens and those abroad." This.

This is actually really ironic.

When the government wants to charge you for the "non-tax" obligatory TV fee they get your data automatically from your local citizens' office. You cannot protect your data from that.

But when you want to claim unemployment, suddenly you need to physically pass printed pages of paper between different offices because they cannot exchange data due to data protection rules.

These sort of idiosyncrasies are a commonplace in the Federal Republic.

Re: The German Problem with Tor

#67

Post by qayxc »

smart_jackal wrote: post #48
qayxc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, relocate to Russia - you know, a country that doesn't even have free internet anymore and just like China pushes for totally state-controlled national network... Yeah, right. To point a finger at Germany while recommending Switzerland or Russia of all places as alternatives is just beyond retarded. So there have been a few (two, apparently) raids/seizing of documents in past 15 years, so what? Why no mention of…

From what I've heard, the Nordic countries like Netherlands, Norway, Finland, etc. and some Eastern European countries like Romania are people friendly (at least for now).

I quickly checked for the Netherlands and it seems there's no big practical difference.

The 2017 Act on Intelligence and Security Services allows Dutch intelligence and security services to tap into internet traffic without giving clear reasons or oversight.

Doesn't sound all that "people friendly" to me.

There's a difference between privacy laws concerning companies and public institutions (where the countries you mentioned score indeed very high) and access to internet traffic by certain government agencies.

The latter is legally possible (often without requiring strict legitimisation) in all of them. Officially there might be differences when it comes to legal requirements, but in practise government intelligence and security services have full access to internet traffic anyway.

Re: The German Problem with Tor

#68

Post by odiroot »

randomaces wrote: post #28
nmalka wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we had enough evidence lately that the German government is corrupt and they all have their snouts in the trough, almost regardless of party. Talking about fleecing.

Please feel free to provide the evidence you are referring to, thank you

Wirecard, Gazprom, McKinsey scandals. Not gonna name names.

Re: The German Problem with Tor

#69

Post by asimovfan »

gmueckl wrote: post #19
LeanderK wrote: post #15

While I don't want to defend the german state, i think it should be mentioned that germany does have a pretty active pro-privacy movement. The chaos-computer club is big, with local chapters in nearly every city, very well connected and closely follows any movement from our government (and industry). While the german state itself may want as much control as possible, its attempts are always attacked by those groups.

These aren't attacks, just protests that are sometimes big enough to be mentioned in mainstream media to then be summarily dimissed by politicians, sometimes in very condescending tones or even derogatory language. The actual impact on the lawmaking process is negligible. Politicians have figured out that ignoring protests of privacy advocates is "safe", that is, it won't affect their reelection. Suing against the le…

If those attacks are completely negligable, was it the progressiveness and open mindedness of politicians that brought us to this point in history in terms of civil rights etc?

Re: The German Problem with Tor

#70

Post by afthonos »

gruez wrote: post #55
alborzb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so what you're saying is that the court... works?

It sounds different than something like the US, where if a law is unconstitutional it's struck down immediately (rather than giving time for the legislature to fix it), and the defendant acquitted (not sure what happens in germany).

> where if a law is unconstitutional it's struck down immediately

What? Cases take years or decades to make their way through the court system. You might be thinking of the fact that some laws get an injunction on their enforcement until they are ruled on, but that is not mandatory. More important, they are not struck down, only enjoined. And of course if the legislature changes the law, the case becomes moot by the time it reaches the court (this happens semi-regularly, where the court refuses to rule on the constitutionality of a law that is no longer on the books).

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