Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties • Hacker News Board

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#201

Post by cbm10 » Fri, Apr 19, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

tremon wrote: post #193

gxwmg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the wrong words were chosen by the parent. For many decades politics in Europe were dominated by traditional globalist governments, which I would describe as "centrist". For many people those governments are failing and voters are moving to the left and the right, depending on the country of course. Centrist governments are trying to use "hate speech" laws as a way of curbing their loss of control of the medi…

those governments are failing and voters are moving to the left and the right, depending on the country of course. I think it's pretty universal across Europe that people are moving more to the extremes. But that doesn't make the original parties suddenly "centrist" -- they're just status-quo, "old school". Centrist governments are trying to use "hate speech" laws as a way of curbing their loss of control of the medi…

As if there is no third option other than a) a well fed huge centrist government + civil bland state TV or b) dictatorship.

How about Thatcher/Friedman/Chicago school/libertarian politics?

Has never been tried anywhere.

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#202

Post by Bombthecat » Fri, Apr 19, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #195

lazyjones wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Roaming costs are basically non-existant these days in the EU. Data plans can be limited for other countries, even within the EU (and frequently are), i.e. if your prepaid contract allows 5GB monthly data transfer for free, the provider might limit this to 500MB for roaming and beyond that limit, you can pay a hefty fee per MB. In general, prepaid cards aren't famous for having a generous data plan...

Giffgaff in the UK gives you 20GB for £20 on pay as you go, and it can be used up to that limit anywhere in the EU. And you don't need a passport to get a simcard either.

> giffgaff runs on the O2 network

Eh, no thanks

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#203

Post by the_mitsuhiko » Fri, Apr 19, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

readittwice wrote: post #167

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only enumerated things they put into law out they proposed or supported from the start. The things the FPOe did was getting rid of the smoking ban, raising the speed limits to 140, renaming the immigration centers to “departure centers”, proposals to cut the funding of the public broadcaster. Together they converted the country in record time into a dystopian place. Even putting childhood education back into former…

Well, the conservatives and the right are not going to implement left politics. Austria was certainly NOT converted into a "dystopian place". Like it or not: Some time ago, a left-leaning newspaper (Standard) wrote that the current government has the best polls recorded so far.

> Well, the conservatives and the right are not going to implement left politics. Austria was certainly NOT converted into a "dystopian place".

A country with that much power given to the government with so little oversight, no transparency is a problem. Austria is a country of immigration and the rules in place for immigrants are awful (from both access to citizenship and rights). What is currently being done has the chance to erode the social fabric more than any other government did before.

> Like it or not: Some time ago, a left-leaning newspaper (Standard) wrote that the current government has the best polls recorded so far.

Obviously I don't like it, and it worries me a lot. I'm not sure any if this is the country I want my children to grow up in.

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#204

Post by toufiqbarhamov » Fri, Apr 19, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #138

codedokode wrote: post #96

It is surprising. Even here, in Russia, we don't have such laws working yet. And I wonder, what Austrian authorities are going to do with foreign platforms like Telegram, which are unlikely to comply? Russian government has been trying to block Telegram using DPI for a year and didn't succeed. What about Twitter? Reddit? > In addition, web platforms would be required to appoint a liaison in Austria who would be respo…

> This will just put foreign platforms, who will ignore the law, into an advantageous position compared to local platforms. Users might switch to foreign platforms that don't require identification. Doesn't really matter, as those things move the Overton window. Tomorrow, when the US, China, and EU adopt similar laws, there wont be any "foreign services" to use.

It’s common, but disingenuous to talk about the Overton window as though it was some immutable, one-way thermodynamic process. The truth of course is that it goes both ways, that discussion and dissent do exist. History, American and otherwise, is full of examples of overreach that doesn’t lead to the desired result, but the opposite.

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#205

Post by sim_card_map » Fri, Apr 19, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

looeee wrote: post #45

crunchiebones wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it won't stop people getting multiple sim cards and registering those under different names

There's quite a few countries where you need to show a passport to register a sim card. Not sure if Austria is one.

I made a map with all European countries requiring an ID:

https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9ziqfi/european_cou...

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#206

Post by 0xffff2 » Fri, Apr 19, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

kerng wrote: post #200

ameister14 wrote: post #177

Earlier 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.

This is not generally the case in most parts of the US I've lived in either.

More importantly, it's purely a private business asking for your ID in this case, and only as an age check. In the vast majority of cases they don't record or really care about anything except your date of birth. No bar I've ever been to kept any kind of record that would have enabled them to tell the government that I had visited the establishment.

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#207

Post by ficklepickle » Fri, Apr 19, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

wellpast wrote: post #156

To preserve the anonymity of the source of my own ideas, I might write every tweet/post like so: “A friend of mine says, ‘Woke politics are getting absurd.’” I wonder if this would be violation of the law...

That reminds me of SWIM [0] from the drugs forums back in the day

[0] Someone Who Isn't Me. I believe it was an attempt to avoid admitting to illegal things. It was mandatory to use SWIM instead of the first-person on some forums.

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#208

Post by speeq » Fri, Apr 19, 2019, 2:58 PM UTC

I don't understand why there's so much racism in that tiny nation. Almost every time I cross the border into Austria, the police flags me down and asks for my passport. I'm Austrian citizen, born and raised but a person of colour. Even though I speak German fluently, authorities always speak in English to me. It gave me so much anxiety that I moved to the UK and noticed that I'm treated with much more respect and opportunities.

Austria is a beautiful country and most people are nice but man..some people can be very small-minded there. The news would make you believe that the UK is this backwards right-wing nation because of Brexit but you'll never see a muslim of Pakistani descent as mayor in Vienna or people of colour in the Austrian parliament and that's honestly very depressing.

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#209

Post by groestl » Fri, Apr 19, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #84

Findus23 wrote: post #25

In case anyone wants to know how this should work, this is the explanation by the minister: There are "technical possibilities where software can run on the backend that can immediately identify: Does the registered mobile phone number match the name and address or not?" - derstandard.at/2000101678440/Minister-Bluemels-Ominous-De-Anonymization-Software (from https://derstandard.at/2000101678440/Minister-Bluemels-Omin…

I think the important part is that they have mobile number stored, and later police can verify whether it matches the name or not, and if it doesn't, I assume, there will be additional penalty for providing false identification information.

The important part is that they want the online communities to store name and address of individuals, already verified, by authenticating the user against a third party service like Mobile Connect. The authorities wouldn't have to match name and telephone number. They just have to audit that the account registration is correctly connected to that external service (and not doing so would result in penalties).

Re: Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

#210

Post by masswerk » Fri, Apr 19, 2019, 3:09 PM UTC

xnyan wrote: post #172

masswerk wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are there any "left-leaning" public posts of notice in Austria? This isn't the 1970s anymore, when there were actual Maoists… "Left-leaning" is now somewhat of a contested concept and there is no common consent on its meaning – which is what I was trying to point out.

All political terms and discriptors are in constant flux. That is normal. Generally speaking when you refer to left-leaning in a specific country, you mean the leftests of your contemporary time. I’m not sure what Austro-Maoists in the 1970s have to do with today’s leftists in Austria

Personally, I do prefer to keep a more general perspective in view, regarding the history of political ideas. If we just focus on the accidental socio-historical situation, we may miss the general spectrum. E.g., in the 1970s and '80s, there was actual left-wing terrorism or individuals who played with the idea of a substantial change. However, it has been decades since we did see such things even sparsely in public discourse. (But still, we may reminded ourselves of what a real "left" or leftist action may imply. Social-democrats are still centrists, after all. On the other hand, nowadays even the former vice chancellor and leader of the conservative party is considered "left" by some. If we would subscribe to such an idea, we may lose orientation.)

Yet another historical marker, at the end of WW1 about 15% of the Viennese population was anarchists, some of them living in illegal settlements. (These anarchist settlements were mostly converted to allotment associations, some of them still carrying auspicious names like "Future". The reintegration of those who had already left the common political ground into a more traditional spectrum is a special and generally overlooked treat of the political history of Austria and probably the cause, why communists were rather rare in Austria as compared to the neighboring countries.)