Danish Law Enforcement Would Like To Outlaw Anonymous Use Of The Internet
from the you-must-be-tracked dept
The Danish Ministry of Justice has put forth a proposal that would effectively make it much more difficult for anyone to use the internet anonymously. Specifically, if adopted, the plan would require that anyone offering open internet access to users would first have to confirm each user's identity, and then (of course!) record all sorts of info such as IP addresses, browser histories and records of who the user interacted with. That data then gets sent to the government... "to combat terrorism." Of course, what this means is that there's almost no way to be anonymous online. While it may be true that anonymity can (and at times, is) abused, it's going really far to suggest that there shouldn't be any anonymity. And giving the government that much info just screams out for it to be abused. We're definitely seeing more proposals like this... and, amusingly, any time we mention them, it seems that the "anonymous" commenters here are the ones who insist that such policies make sense...Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Anonymous
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Fixed your typo.
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Do I need to need to explain my joke?
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damnit, now my reputation is in tatters.
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Yes Mario Gonzalez, your reputation has been damaged beyond repair. Your employer has been contacted and you will be terminated shortly. Expect the deportation officials to contact you within 48 hours. Have a nice day.
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Posting as Anonymous Coward, your reputation is already in tatters.
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Heh, says one anonymous commenter to another. That's funny.
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Hell yeah, brah! I'm freaking AMPED for it. Are you....anonymous cowards?
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Speaking of which I own a double edged sword.
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Unintended effect: The Wild West is back. Now lets string up some trolls.
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Yeah - freenet and other similar service already exist - this will just catalyse more development and use of these systems.
Danish law enforcement are probably not in favour of this as it will just make their encrypted haystack bigger.
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Yep, paid cash for some burn phones with wireless access point software.
Of course, I could always hack my local MickeyD's public WiFi key too if I wanted. Or piggyback on someone else legit connection at MickeyD's. And I always connect with a spoofed MAC address anyways, so, yeah I'm getting ready.
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Ah, nimble hackers vs. beuracratic mess. Gee, I wonder who'll win?
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And I wouldn't even consider myself a nimble hacker, just a guy with 30 years of computer knowledge (really loved that cassette tape data storage on that TRS-80), a deep sense of curiosity and bit of common sense.
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But hey, it had a built in plotter. You just dont get that level of awesome any more.
And yeah, it will be even easier to get away with stuff if the authorities know for a fact that Mr. Smith was using the internet (since he signed in, identified himself etc). No need to look for Mr. 201.
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-TOR, check
-VPN, check
-I2P, check
-proxies, check
-linksys router with DD-WRT firmware (that I can OC to get a four-city-block radius of coverage), check
Bring it on, you butthurt, oppressive, delusional, ANONYMOUS (delicious irony, isn't it?) Coward.
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It isn't really difficult to see what is happening. Another little piece of freedom shut off. So it begins, are you ready for it?
There, fixed it for you. And ready to fight is what I'm ready for.
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Terrorism?
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Re: Terrorism?
I hear that the bathroom where he armed it was ruined, though...
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Re: Terrorism?
Or to put it another way: How many people a year have their basic freedoms and rights trampled on in America?
If you want to stop terrorism, go after the lunatic fringe of groups like PETA and 'pro'-lifers with even a fraction of the enthusiasm wasted on airlines and warrantless wiretapping.
I think you'll find that Denmark is a much safer place all around...
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Re: Re: Terrorism?
Honestly, for the most part PETA is doing mostly breaking and entering stupid stuff where they "free" a whole bunch of animals "in the wild." For the most part it is really incompetent stuff. I have a friend who does research on flies and one day when the PETA people couldn't find the monkeys to release, they released thousands upon thousands of flies in her lab. Threw away years of research so the flies could have a couple days of freedom before they died of natural causes. Calling them terrorists is a bit excessive. As for the pro-lifers, you are talking about a very small minority of them and again, they do about as much terrorism as Islamic terrorists. Not a lot.
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Information needed
protect the children from pedophiles and the rest of us from terrorists.
Put that camera phone down and step away from the police vehicle too.
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Simple Solution:
...Then see how far the bill gets in their system.
CBMHB
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IMO, it will be an ID theft nightmare, as there'll be user IDs being traded on the black market from day one. Not to mention that encrypted proxies will still completely defeat these measures, making them completely useless against organized groups and individuals.
Really, this is as pointless as it is retarded and I can assure you it will never catch a single terrorist.
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It doesn't worry me personally if some (any) country wants to outlaw anonymity: I will work around it easily enough.
It is the direction these oppressive laws are taking the world at large that scares the piss out of me.
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Try saying that with a signature and address attached.
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Sorry to see this.
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Re: Sorry to see this.
The Nazi's didn't really go away, they just fanned out to other countries.
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This gives new emphasis on the L in ASL in chat rooms/IRC. If that L comes back as Denmark, and to be safe, any neighboring country (Sweden, Norway, Germany...) then I will refuse to talk to you, unless maybe you're on the Swedish Bikini Team. I might make that an exception.
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Well, it'll definitely cut down on terror attacks. Why bother, when every government on the planet is doing your work for you?
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Starting? Welcome to the World (intro)
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Denmark's pols seem to be losing their collective minds.
Because of my letter, some annoyed and diligent individual(s) hunted me down by my former name (the situation eventually became so bad that my husband and I had to legally change our names, get a court order to delete our e-mail accounts [our former internet provider was quite adamant that we keep them], and finally move to stop the vandalism, threatening telephone calls, e-mails, and despite the post office's best efforts, snail mail threats [can anyone say "fedeal offense to send threats via mail."? I KNEW this crowd probably could], before it finally ended.
I'm willing to bet my life this wasn't the work of the so-called "Mormon Mafia" - read "Unarmed Mall Cops who request certain people or groups get off church-owned property", just one dedicated fanatic and their friends/followers. We aren't the only people who've had, shall I say "people of dissenting opinions"? Spend time, gasoline, stamps, and other resourrces (in one far more disturbing case, ammo) to express their anger at someone's opnion. As the Trib will not publish letters that are obviously "hate speech" or use racist, sexist, or other forms of abuse, I'm prety sure my suggestion that anyone or any group with "extra money" to donate for a cause start by looking at UTAH's needs first wasn't some semicoherent anti-LDS rant.
Yet my inablity to save a lot of time and money on a new front window, replacing rosebushes, fruit trees, and re-seeding the lawn from someone doing donuts on it in a maroon mini van simply because anyone can call the local papers and find out who submitted the "Name Withheld by Request" letter that's stirred their ire.
I believe Denmark's proposal could lead to anything from random digruntled maniacs like we had, to someone finding a former lover and killing them for leaving, to the worst-case-scenario of political dissenters suddenly either disappearing or having fatal accidnts. The press could be severely curailed in their reportage of any facts that don't "toe the company line" that they're being allowed to report...
For some reason I cannot find, my mind keeps flashing bsck to a horrific event caught on a cell phone and sent out of Iran, quick before all outside internet and cellular communications were shut off by a government grown too powerful via measures slowly taken that eventually landed the people under the rule of a megalomaniac and his "religious leader" friend.
She was a music student, participating in a peaceful protest against her country's rigged election. Her name was Neda Agha-Soltan, and the surprised look on her face as she died is haunting. I don't want to see Denmark's citizens allow themselves to be pursuaded by fear that they end up living out a similar nightmare.
A chilling reminder of how even the smallest things, lost for whatever reason, can come back and bite you in the ass.
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Re: Iran
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? Looked around the net, couldn't find any such proof - unless you take the iranian authorities word at face value...
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What? You would question authority? You're just the kind of person this law would target. Bad anonymous!
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Re: Denmark's pols seem to be losing their collective minds.
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Whose propaganda is the best
"unless you take the iranian authorities word at face value..."
No, I don't, but IMO, Western media and politicians and their propaganda rate much, much lower on a scale of trustworthiness. I can't do the research for you, but here are some places to start from:
http://blogghete.blog.dada.net/post/1207099806/NEDA%3A+UN+FALSO+PACCHIANO
(deconstruction, note that it's in Italian)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shp7HE2YA_c&skipcontrinter=1
http://edition.cnn.co m/2009/WORLD/meast/06/25/iran.ambassador/
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-5121532-503543.h tml
as well as: http://www.voltairenet.org/The-CIA-and-the-Iranian-experiment
I have reason to suspect, and the Western media's targeted hype will not lead me to believe anything different, that the episode hardly distinguishes itself from the incubator babies murdered in Kuwait, Amina Abdallah aka. Tom MacMaster, the preposterous stories currently propagated about Libya and Syria, or even those statements by Iran's president that (according to those who understand farsi) were falsely translated by Reuters but have never stopped circulating ever since. To name just a few.
But, if I may repeat myself, I don't think this is the proper venue to discuss the Neda episode.
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LULZ
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