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For context, Bundesnetzagentur (literally “federal network agency”) is a German agency that regulates five kinds of networks – electricity, gas, telecommunicati
by erlehmann_ 10y ago
For context, Bundesnetzagentur (literally “federal network agency”) is a German agency that regulates five kinds of networks – electricity, gas, telecommunications, post, railways. The telecommunications part of their work is supervised by the Bundesministerium für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur (literally “federal ministry for transport and digital infrastructure” i.e. highways and data highways).
One of its tasks is to ensure non-discriminatory access to infrastructure markets for all market participants: Former state monopolies have to share their infrastructure at a reasonable price to competitors, for example. Another task is consumer protection: In february 2017 they decided that an internet-enabled child's doll containing a microphone accessible remotely without any indication to the people using that doll should be “verboten” since they classified it as a hidden wiretapping device.
The federal network agency claims that XMPP clients have to be registered according to a German law that says that one has to be registered with (but does not need permission from) the agency if providing public communication services commercially.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Network_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Network_Agency
Edit: As other hackernews have pointed out, only the telecommunications stuff is supervised by the BMVI.
- catdog 10y ago> It belongs to the Bundesministerium für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur (literally “federal ministry for transport and digital infrastructure” i.e. highways and data highways). That's blatantly wrong. It's the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie). You even mentioned the Wikipedia article which states it right.
- germanier 10y agoThe departments of the agency working on telecommunication law are exclusively supervised by the Bundesministerium für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur. Only the other areas plus all administrative supervision is done by the Bundesministeriums für Wirtschaft und Energie. ("Belongs to" is probably too strong either way. They are not part of a ministry.)
- catdog 10y agoAh you are right they introduced that change late 2013. //edit: But how it is stated in the parent post is still wrong ;)
- erlehmann_ 10y agoI edited my post to clarify that.
- brudgers 10y agoA good point, but could be made differently.
- macspoofing 10y agoThey identified a real problem but their solution is stupid. It's like China requiring any http server listening on Port 80 to be registered.
- orless 10y agoWhat is the real problem?
- stephengillie 10y agoThe Internet of Insecure Things.
- ominous 10y agoPeople talking, apparently.
- userbinator 10y agoThe federal network agency claims that XMPP clients have to be registered according to a German law that says that one has to be registered with (but does not need permission from) the agency if providing public communication services commercially. It's a rather slippery slope from XMPP towards software which uses any of the other networking protocols, even TCP/IP and Ethernet, since they could all be considered telecommunications.
- tgragnato 10y agoGermany has always been a very procedure-oriented country. This instills a "conscientious thoroughness" in their psyche. Which mostly pays off (for them). There are options : - they got this wrong because they don't understand how the net works - they effectively want to control the communication by setting rules and discouraging decentralisation [https://www.rt.com/news/373706-russia-influence-europe-german-intelligence/ https://www.rt.com/news/373706-russia-influence-europe-germa...] - ???