Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

derstandard.at

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 292 posts

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

#241

Post by dahauns »

carnagii wrote: post #145
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government may and should provide their citizens with a public square online, but neither do they need to take away anonymity on existing squares, nor does the public square need to be non-anonymous. The concept of being able to go out on the streets, make mistakes, and have them be forgotten is old and integral to public spaces IMO.

Yes, I agree with this. I think that governments should provide a verifiable digital ID the same way they provide physical IDs and that they should provide communications platforms that allow people to communicate with these digital IDs in a way that protects their rights the same way that they provide mail service. I do not think that governments should be regulating/banning activity on private platforms but should…

WTH has this to do with mail service - which inherently allows anonymity for the sender? If anything, analogous to this law, no one would be allowed to send a letter without ID (which also means goodbye post boxes, I guess).

Oh, and if we want to extend the analogy - with current and pending legislation, the mail service would be liable if anyone breaks the law via mail...

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

#242

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

readittwice wrote: post #227
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "restricts skilled immigration": Funny, since they have also been criticized for allowing more immigration. Ironically from left-leaning people. Who criticised them for that? The only thing they did was introduce low skilled immigration (eg: fruit pickers, cooks and other people in the tourism industry). > "reduce social support systems": Well, they mostly retargeted social support. All polls showed that a large ma…

> None of your examples demostrate how this party would be in the center. I was merely arguing that party is center-right. I think I brought some examples, but obviously I am biased as well. Makes me curious how you categorize other parties in Europe if the Austrian conservatives are already right-wings to you (think Orban, FPO, Le Pen, Golden Dawn, NPD,...) > I for instance worry a lot because the policies set in pl…

> Makes me curious how you categorize other parties in Europe if the Austrian conservatives are already right-wings to you (think Orban, FPO, Le Pen, Golden Dawn, NPD,...)

Right wing to right wing extremism. In particular NPD is very far to the right. Some of these parties are not just about being on the right but also outright racist without hiding it.

> This is where I really disagree, so many of these accusations are so blown out of proportion to me.

You’re likely not directly affected by their policies. I am. I’m married to a foreigner and employ non EU foreigners and I got to experience the changes directly.

As an example to the new policies that silently became a thing is that my wife as a non EU foreigner is no longer allowed to carry a pepper spray. We now need to proof every year that our children are going to the doctor or Kindergarten and that my wife’s permit did not lapse to continue receiving tax credits and Familienbeihilfe. It’s a joke as the kids are Austrian citizens and entitled regardless of her status.

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

#243

Post by NikkiA »

therealmarv wrote: post #104

Not North Korea, China or Turkey ... Austria. What a shame.

Austria's politics is presently dominated by (far) right wing populism. This isn't really all that surprising in the context of a right wing authoritarian state.

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

#244

Post by masswerk »

masswerk wrote: post #210
xnyan wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In other words: If there's only an ever-shifting relative spectrum, plain conservatives were the fascists du jour at the opposing end, most of the time. This is certainly not what you want. It may be worth treating political opinions fairly for what they are.

Notably, this was about "left-leaning" as a qualifier for hate speech, which may be subject to prosecution (compare the original comment).

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

#245

Post by BenjiWiebe »

mirimir wrote: post #225
lazyjones wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So tell me how this will work. Will you swap SIM cards just to post anonymously sometimes and let the telecom providers (among others) find out what your other SIM cards are through your device ID? Or will you get a SIM card from another country to use exclusively and pay roaming costs / live with a worse data plan in Austria? People apparently forget that telecoms providers cooperate with authorities, new legislatio…

You use remote services that host your SIM card(s) for you. So you basically make VoIP calls that get routed to cellular networks.

How does your phone communicate with the "VoIP" provider?

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

#246

Post by api »

coldtea wrote: post #182
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.

> Anonymity is extremely protected by the Supreme Court And yet the US has all kinds of surveillance apparatus to de-anonymize internet users...

There's a big legal difference between the government working to unmask anonymous users and making it illegal to try to be anonymous in the first place. The latter is probably brazenly unconstitutional while the former is at least a constitutional grey area.

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

#247

Post by mirimir »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #245
mirimir wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You use remote services that host your SIM card(s) for you. So you basically make VoIP calls that get routed to cellular networks.

How does your phone communicate with the "VoIP" provider?

You gotta use WiFi.

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

#249

Post by CompanionCuuube »

citeguised wrote: post #46
looeee wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In Austria and Germany you can't get any SIM without ID as of now.

Do they also make it illegal to sell SIMs between private parties?

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

#250

Post by anticensor »

sim_card_map wrote: post #205
looeee wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Turkey goes further and requires registration of phones, too.
Post reply on HN