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http://propaganda.lege.net/misperceptions/examples/rsf/germany/




Reporters Without Borders
Germany

Source:  http://rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=7138
Or:      http://rsf.fr/print.php3?id_article=7138

19.06.2003



The Internet For All programme launched in 2000 by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is a big reason for the broad success of the Internet, but this concerted effort is accompanied by strict laws.

A July 1996 law requires ISPs to give the secret services access to their Internet traffic and one in August 1997 makes them responsible for the content of the sites they host, although only if they are aware of it. The G-10 law, which limits protection of communications, was amended in 2001. ISPs were asked to give the secret services every facility to monitor or intercept national or international electronic or voice communications. The ISPs were also strongly advised to "police" the content of websites. The law includes a long and generalised list of crimes justifying Internet surveillance covering not only suspects but anyone who might have had contact with them.

The 11 September attacks led to an anti-terrorist law pushed through parliament by interior minister Otto Schily at the end of 2001. The Telecommunications Interception Order, which came into force in January 2002, allows intelligence officials and police to access traffic records stored in digital form, including details of services used by customers, e-mail exchanges, data enabling senders or users to be identified and the records of telecommunications firms.

Twenty or so civil rights, freedom of expression and personal data protection organisations formed a coalition to condemn such surveillance. They said the law would not stop terrorism and criticised the legal concept behind the measures.

The media revealed in June 2001 that the government had allowed the country to become a link in the US Echelon electronic spy network. The Bavarian daily paper Merkur, which published a US military intelligence report, said the US base at Bad Aibling (Bavaria) housed one of Echelon's biggest European electronic monitoring and interception centres, after the US base at Menwith Hill, in Britain. It enabled the US to spy on e-mails sent from much of Europe, including all the former Soviet bloc.

The disclosure caused an especially big stir in Germany because the country was not a signatory of the UKUSA agreement, which organises the sharing out of surveillance work between the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The North Westphalia provincial authorities began compiling a blacklist of websites in October 2001 and asked more than 80 local ISPs to block access to them using software developed by the firms Bocatel, Intranet and Webwasher. On 8 February 2002, for example, they asked for two US-based neo-Nazi websites to be blocked. The German Association to Protect Electronic Rights (FITUG) and many Internet users have protested at this censorship, which affects communication infrastructures themselves more than it does the authors of website material that violates the Constitution or human rights. Internet users fear the filtering will be extended to other parts of the Web. The blocks are easily got round by accessing the sites from another province in Germany.

LINKS :

  *   The federal government:  http://www.bundesregierung.de/

  *   The German Association to Protect Electronic Rights (FITUG) (in German):  http://www.fitug.de/


Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned journalists and press freedom throughout the world, as well as the right to inform the public and to be informed, in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Reporters Without borders has nine national sections (in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), representatives in Abidjan, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Montreal, Moscow, New York, Tokyo and Washington and more than a hundred correspondents worldwide.



© Reporters Without Borders 2002

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