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Police raid at Zwiebelfreunde: Donor data compromised

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Re: Police raid at Zwiebelfreunde: Donor data compromised

#51

Post by solotronics »

skrause wrote: post #26
HenryBemis wrote: post #11

Germans won't learn from their past. Watching "the lives of others" doesn't mean anything to them. "Security" forces always want to shadow/spy on anyong and anything "just in case". This is how Democracies fail. This is how humanity reverts to the age of "securitat". German has one of the most elaborate spying-on-its-own-citizens dragnet around the world. This sting operations are just to bully/frighten anyone who da…

> German has one of the most elaborate spying-on-its-own-citizens dragnet around the world. Citation needed. The amount of surveillance in Germany is much lower than e.g. the USA or UK.

they are definitely part of the Five Eyes and as culpable as any of the others

Re: Police raid at Zwiebelfreunde: Donor data compromised

#52

Post by xashor »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #49

Is there a link somewhere to a summary of what happened here? A lot of context is missing that is only coming from the comments in bits and pieces. For instance the only thing I was able to gather from the comments is that there was some potential police overreach where someone who collects donations was raided because the recipient is involved in some illegal/terroristic bomb related activity. Seems like a lot of nu…

Zwiebelfreunde is an organization associated with the CCC that do Tor related stuff. They collect donations for RiseUp, an US based mail/web/… hoster. One site RiseUp hosts calls for action against a far right political party. Next to various info, it has instructions on how to build color bombs and other solely property damage stuff.

This was enough justification for the bavarian police to raid Zwiebelfreunde and various other hacker spaces and persons linked to them[1]. To illustrate how overreaching the police was: When the Zwiebelfreunde's hacker space was raided they found this 3d printed model of a bomb[0], which of course is just a plastic toy. However, they accused the people in hacker space of planning a bombing, so they could seize more stuff.

[0] https://www.thueringen24.de/img/incoming/crop214771927/17338...

[1] https://blog.torservers.net/20180704/coordinated-raids-of-zw...

Re: Police raid at Zwiebelfreunde: Donor data compromised

#53

Post by tedunangst »

xashor wrote: post #52
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #49

Is there a link somewhere to a summary of what happened here? A lot of context is missing that is only coming from the comments in bits and pieces. For instance the only thing I was able to gather from the comments is that there was some potential police overreach where someone who collects donations was raided because the recipient is involved in some illegal/terroristic bomb related activity. Seems like a lot of nu…

Zwiebelfreunde is an organization associated with the CCC that do Tor related stuff. They collect donations for RiseUp, an US based mail/web/… hoster. One site RiseUp hosts calls for action against a far right political party. Next to various info, it has instructions on how to build color bombs and other solely property damage stuff. This was enough justification for the bavarian police to raid Zwiebelfreunde and va…

> To illustrate how overreaching the police was: When the Zwiebelfreunde's hacker space was raided they found this 3d printed model of a bomb[0], which of course is just a plastic toy. However, they accused the people in hacker space of planning a bombing, so they could seize more stuff.

Not saying they did have plans for a bombing, but if I were planning one, I would have a few toy bombs around to practice with. Definitely not going to try fitting a live bomb into a backpack to see if it fits...

Re: Police raid at Zwiebelfreunde: Donor data compromised

#54

Post by tedunangst »

skrause wrote: post #26
HenryBemis wrote: post #11

Germans won't learn from their past. Watching "the lives of others" doesn't mean anything to them. "Security" forces always want to shadow/spy on anyong and anything "just in case". This is how Democracies fail. This is how humanity reverts to the age of "securitat". German has one of the most elaborate spying-on-its-own-citizens dragnet around the world. This sting operations are just to bully/frighten anyone who da…

> German has one of the most elaborate spying-on-its-own-citizens dragnet around the world. Citation needed. The amount of surveillance in Germany is much lower than e.g. the USA or UK.

The story that comes to mind for me: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/german-police-ca...

Although that's more targeted, less dragnet.

Re: Police raid at Zwiebelfreunde: Donor data compromised

#55

Post by xashor »

tedunangst wrote: post #53
xashor wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zwiebelfreunde is an organization associated with the CCC that do Tor related stuff. They collect donations for RiseUp, an US based mail/web/… hoster. One site RiseUp hosts calls for action against a far right political party. Next to various info, it has instructions on how to build color bombs and other solely property damage stuff. This was enough justification for the bavarian police to raid Zwiebelfreunde and va…

> To illustrate how overreaching the police was: When the Zwiebelfreunde's hacker space was raided they found this 3d printed model of a bomb[0], which of course is just a plastic toy. However, they accused the people in hacker space of planning a bombing, so they could seize more stuff. Not saying they did have plans for a bombing, but if I were planning one, I would have a few toy bombs around to practice with. Def…

You don't need perfect looks to see if it fits. I can think of a better model, but I don't want to post instructions on how to build toy bombs. Could be dangerous around here. :-)

Re: Police raid at Zwiebelfreunde: Donor data compromised

#56

Post by herbst »

deltateam wrote: post #37

Payments with Monero use would have solved and prevented the donor data from being leaked. I'm still a little distressed at how few web-anything providers accept Monero. Privacy focused email services and cloud service providers should be using it but what we really have is protonmail only accepting credit cards and nobody seems to see the irony in that. occassionally in the past I have found email and cloud service…

Not sure about monero specifically but it's not so easy to find a crypto payment provider for more 'critical' services. And hand rolling one is not exactly a option for anyone.

Re: Police raid at Zwiebelfreunde: Donor data compromised

#57

Post by paws »

xashor wrote: post #40
paws wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you help me understand why it's a problem that your account data would be in the hands of the police? I would have thought the reason for the raid was to collect physical evidence and that whatever the German equivalent to FinCEN[1] is could just pull anyone's financial records up anytime. Is it simply fear of being targeted? It's not a crime to donate is it? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Crimes_E…

>whatever the German equivalent to FinCEN[1] is could just pull anyone's financial records up anytime. In Germany it is not so easy. Even though the requirement for the state to get info about somebody's bank account is lowered, they still need some justification. >I would have thought the reason for the raid was to collect physical evidence For that reason alone the police wouldn't have to seize this 3d printed mode…

I'm not familiar with the history of police misconduct in post-unification Germany, but of course whenever a judge is sympathetic to the police first it's not good for the accused.

In the US prosecutorial immunity[0][1] is one of the most mind boggling aspects of the legal system there. I'm curious does Germany have a similar rule?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutorial_immunity

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity

Re: Police raid at Zwiebelfreunde: Donor data compromised

#58

Post by paws »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #38
paws wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you help me understand why it's a problem that your account data would be in the hands of the police? I would have thought the reason for the raid was to collect physical evidence and that whatever the German equivalent to FinCEN[1] is could just pull anyone's financial records up anytime. Is it simply fear of being targeted? It's not a crime to donate is it? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Crimes_E…

> Could you help me understand why it's a problem that your account data would be in the hands of the police? I would be pretty pissed off if the NYPD compiled a database of my political donations without probable cause. > whatever the German equivalent to FinCEN FinCEN doesn’t have a comprehensive database of transactions. Banks, collectively, do. But for smaller non-suspicious transactions, FinCEN must reach out to…

> compiled a database of my political donations without probable cause.

I share your sentiment, I wouldn't appreciate that either of course.

I find it hard to feel optimistic about privacy in America, and in a similar way, probable cause. Three short vignettes:

1) Living in Brooklyn a couple years back I was surprised one day to see a white van with ALPR cameras slowly cruising residential streets, followed by a squad car. There was clearly some arrangement where this private company was teaming up with NYPD to boot offenders' vehicles. Ostensibly the private company had access to some NYPD database [0]. The slippery slope there makes me exceedingly uncomfortable. If a referendum happened on that one, I missed it.

2) Fast forward to Jan 2017 - shortly before Obama left office, the NSA was given significantly increased authority to share the dragnet surveillance it hoovers up [1] [2].

3) In May 2018, as you may have heard, major US carriers were caught selling real-time customer location data to private companies [3] who resold it.

Meanwhile what you might hope would be prosecutors' fear of, well, prosecution for attempting to subvert the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine for e.g. parallel construction [4] seems quite undermined by prosecutorial immunity [5].

I don't claim to be a legal expert but I do find it truly scary to think about.

What else is going on we don't know?

[0] https://paylock.com/who-we-serve/

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more...

[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveill...

[3] https://www.wired.com/story/locationsmart-securus-location-d...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutorial_immunity

Re: Police raid at Zwiebelfreunde: Donor data compromised

#59

Post by mkl »

solotronics wrote: post #51
skrause wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> German has one of the most elaborate spying-on-its-own-citizens dragnet around the world. Citation needed. The amount of surveillance in Germany is much lower than e.g. the USA or UK.

they are definitely part of the Five Eyes and as culpable as any of the others

Five Eyes "is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

Re: Police raid at Zwiebelfreunde: Donor data compromised

#60

Post by xashor »

paws wrote: post #57
xashor wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>whatever the German equivalent to FinCEN[1] is could just pull anyone's financial records up anytime. In Germany it is not so easy. Even though the requirement for the state to get info about somebody's bank account is lowered, they still need some justification. >I would have thought the reason for the raid was to collect physical evidence For that reason alone the police wouldn't have to seize this 3d printed mode…

I'm not familiar with the history of police misconduct in post-unification Germany, but of course whenever a judge is sympathetic to the police first it's not good for the accused. In the US prosecutorial immunity[0][1] is one of the most mind boggling aspects of the legal system there. I'm curious does Germany have a similar rule? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutorial_immunity [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/…

As far as I know, only parliamentarians enjoy immunity in Germany, though the parliament can detract this right from its members. But just because police/judges/… can be prosecuted, does not mean they will; in reality, only a handful of police officers and judges get convicted (mostly only when they do illegal stuff outside their job). And if they get convicted, there is hardly any penalty. People keep their jobs, maybe pay some fine. That's no surprise, the police investigates itself, and of course nobody likes to speak against their comrades. Also, law enforcement, law maker and the court system tend to be friendly to each other.

I heard the Netherlands and Britain have a better system, where an independent party investigates accusations against police officers.

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