In the latest installment of Portnoy’s Stammtisch, our column about life in Germany,
Portnoy slams the government’s attempt to block child pornography online as a ham-fisted assault on civil liberties.
Kiddie porn is bad, okay?
But authorising a spooky government agency to create a secret framework for blocking internet sites that politicians deem distasteful is a recipe for a dark future and a distraction for those that were actually fighting the good fight against child abuse.
Nonetheless, the German parliament on Thursday is expected to approve legislation that will allow the
Bundeskriminalamt, or the country’s federal criminal police, to index and block alleged child pornography sites.
This legislation is the brainchild of Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s conservative family minister and previously my favourite member of Chancellor Angie’s otherwise bumbling cabinet. She’s been rebranded Censorsula –
Zensursula in German – by the web community despite her protestation she merely wants to protect the children.
But then you have to wonder why she’s pushing legislation that sends Germany’s G-Men after websites rather than criminals.
Which serves as a handy transition to the first problem with this loopy legislation – the index will serve as a handy warning to kiddie porn peddlers that the government is on to them. It’s like a postcard informing them that their time is up. Only, it’s not – just their website’s time is up.
And to anyone who’s delved beyond the e-mail and HTML levels of the web, it’s apparent that the block will do little. Ever heard of newsgroups? IRC filesharing? How about USB sticks? Friends tell me these are the places you can get your favourite English-language TV shows, Lily Allen albums and viruses that attack bytes, not pigs and people.
But these superficial loopholes just show how little thought went into the thing.
The reason I and 134,000 German internet users signed a digital government petition are against this thing is the door it opens: Once the architecture is in place – and the country’s internet service providers are complying – it won’t take much to expand the block.
The concept of censoring the internet is nothing new – American corporations have floated the idea for years using the logic that if they provide it to you, they should have some say in what’s on it. And other countries are already doing it, all of them bastions of democracy such as China and North Korea.
So, you know, Germany will be in good company. Thanks a bunch, Censorsula.