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There is a huge discrepancy between the described motivation and the actual proposed section 126a. The proposal from January that I have here[1] only applies to

There is a huge discrepancy between the described motivation and the actual proposed section 126a. The proposal from January that I have here[1] only applies to a couple of explicitly enumerated potential crimes like propagation of child pornography and money forgery. Plus, the prosecution would need to prove that you created the service with the purpose of furthering these crimes. Also, the service must have some kind of access control. I do not see how a Tor exit node would fall under these criteria. A site hiding behind an onion URL would be a completely different matter. [1] https://www.bundesrat.de/SharedDocs/drucksachen/2019/0001-0100/33-19.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=1 https://www.bundesrat.de/SharedDocs/drucksachen/2019/0001-01...

yorwba 8y ago
The motivation section of the proposal you linked to contains the very illuminating sentence Der Entwurf zielt darauf, das Betreiben von auf die Förderung illegaler Zwecke ausgerichteten Plattformen unabhängig von dem Nachweis der Beteiligung an einzelnen konkreten Handelsgeschäften unter Strafe zu stellen. My translation: The draft aims to penalize the operation of platforms directed at supporting illegal activities, independent of proof of participation in individual specific trades. I.e. the law is drafted to close a loophole where you can open a black market site, lovingly curate illegal goods into categories and offer your escrow services to potential customers, but you can only be prosecuted once the police can find someone who actually used your service. Instead, they'd prefer to be able to shut it down beforehand. All in all, I'm not too worried that the law will be passed in a form that outlaws operating Tor nodes.
- eleitl 8y ago
  > he law is drafted to close a loophole where you can open a black market site The point is that the law says any Tor onion service market is illegal, by definition. And it's obviously only a first step before outlawing anonymization for the general public, including a ban on encryption.
  - gmueckl 8y ago
    No, not any service. Read the actual proposed section 126a. The service must be related to one of the listed criminal activities to be illegal. In essence, this law is aimed at dark net sites like Silk Road.
    - fapjacks 8y ago
      Who gets to decide what "related" means?
      - derefr 8y ago
        Why are you trying to nit-pick the law based on the words the GP used in their gloss of it, rather than reading what the text of the law actually says? The whole point of legal jargon is to say things in an airtight way. You cannot summarize legal jargon without removing the airtight-ness—lawyers really do use as few words as they can manage to get a concept across (in a loophole-less manner), so removing any single word further usually reintroduces a loophole. This implies that there is no point whatsoever in trying to poke holes in a law you only understand through summary, since it is vanishingly unlikely that the holes that appear in the summary appear in the law. You have to read the actual text.
        gcb0 8y ago
        is anything related to obstruction on that section? if yes, simply running the guard or exit node from any criminal investigation gets you jail time.
        fapjacks 8y ago
        Yes, the body of text in law is usually nearly burdensome with all the flowery language that makes it seem like they're trying to cover edge cases (and sardonic comment aside, I'll grant your assumption legislators want to cover as many edge cases as possible to prevent loopholes). But at least in the United States, very many of the sentences in our laws end with weasel phrases like "or similar uses" and "or other software" and "or related activity", which is exactly where the problem arises, and where interested parties are inserting their own special loopholes. And sure, we hope that these loopholes get hammered out in the courts in our favor some years later -- that is, if there happens to be a good and willing samaritan that is more "invested" in taking the issue to court to try for an outcome which is favorable for the public versus one favorable to corporations or the police or the wealthy. But I'll just go ahead and continue supporting the option where the stupid law isn't created in the first place. Even if that means the police don't get their bogey man running a dark market.
thaumasiotes 8y ago
> explicitly enumerated potential crimes like propagation of child pornography and money forgery Clarification: "money forgery" would refer to counterfeiting, where I might print up a bunch of notes that look like $100 bills and spend them as if the government had printed them. "Money laundering" would refer to disguising the origins of some money, where I might report a pile of cash that came from illicit drug sales as cash receipts from the convenience store I conveniently (see) happen to own. It's hard for me to imagine how you'd use Tor to forge money, although I guess it might be involved in your scheme to hack into your bank and increase the value of your account(s) there. What kind of money-related acts are enumerated?
- gmueckl 8y ago
  The original draft lists counterfeiting (sorry, I used the wrong term originally) and "computer fraud" (loose translation) which means defrauding someone by technical means. Hacking a bank and altering account balances would be an example. I think the list covers trading in counterfeit money as well. This is something that you can totally do over the internet. But see the reply linking to the newer recommendation document. This one recommends to remove the restriction to a set list of crimes and is generally much looser.
kbwt 8y ago
There is also a huge discrepancy between the proposal from January and the proposal that is being voted on: https://www.internet-strafrecht.com/wp-content/plugins/download-attachments/includes/download.php?id=2691 https://www.internet-strafrecht.com/wp-content/plugins/downl... A few highlights: - Instead of "providing an internet-based service", the crime is now "facilitating access to an internet-based service". - It is no longer a requirement that access to the service be restricted. - The law now applies to all crimes, rather than just the specific crimes that were listed before.
- gmueckl 8y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out! Wow... this is something else. I'm confused by the fact that the document you linked to is labeled "recommendation". The recommended changes are indeed much, much broader than the original draft and have me worried. However, I must admit that I do not know if these recommendations are changes that will be applied unconditionally or not. I am not familiar enough with the procedures within the Bundesrat.
- yorwba 8y ago
  On the other hand, the amended draft adds a fourth paragraph that explicitly excludes cases where commiting crimes is of only secondary importance (I guess the Zwiebelfreunde lobbied for this addition to protect TOR) and also actions of authorized personnel (to keep police honeypots legal, I presume). So the law is broader in some ways, but more specific in others.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  > the crime is now "facilitating access to an internet-based service". Does that include cafes that provide internet access to customers?
  - cabalamat 8y ago
    Or, for that matter, manufacturing computers with ethernet or wifi connections?
- rurban 8y ago
mr_toad 8y ago
> only applies to a couple of explicitly enumerated potential crimes Yeah right. That’s what they always say these laws will be used for, but they always end up being used for much broader purposes.

yorwba 8y ago

The motivation section of the proposal you linked to contains the very illuminating sentence Der Entwurf zielt darauf, das Betreiben von auf die Förderung illegaler Zwecke ausgerichteten Plattformen unabhängig von dem Nachweis der Beteiligung an einzelnen konkreten Handelsgeschäften unter Strafe zu stellen. My translation: The draft aims to penalize the operation of platforms directed at supporting illegal activities, independent of proof of participation in individual specific trades. I.e. the law is drafted to close a loophole where you can open a black market site, lovingly curate illegal goods into categories and offer your escrow services to potential customers, but you can only be prosecuted once the police can find someone who actually used your service. Instead, they'd prefer to be able to shut it down beforehand. All in all, I'm not too worried that the law will be passed in a form that outlaws operating Tor nodes.

eleitl 8y ago
> he law is drafted to close a loophole where you can open a black market site The point is that the law says any Tor onion service market is illegal, by definition. And it's obviously only a first step before outlawing anonymization for the general public, including a ban on encryption.
- gmueckl 8y ago
  No, not any service. Read the actual proposed section 126a. The service must be related to one of the listed criminal activities to be illegal. In essence, this law is aimed at dark net sites like Silk Road.
  - fapjacks 8y ago
    Who gets to decide what "related" means?
    - derefr 8y ago
      Why are you trying to nit-pick the law based on the words the GP used in their gloss of it, rather than reading what the text of the law actually says? The whole point of legal jargon is to say things in an airtight way. You cannot summarize legal jargon without removing the airtight-ness—lawyers really do use as few words as they can manage to get a concept across (in a loophole-less manner), so removing any single word further usually reintroduces a loophole. This implies that there is no point whatsoever in trying to poke holes in a law you only understand through summary, since it is vanishingly unlikely that the holes that appear in the summary appear in the law. You have to read the actual text.
      - gcb0 8y ago
        is anything related to obstruction on that section? if yes, simply running the guard or exit node from any criminal investigation gets you jail time.
      - fapjacks 8y ago
        Yes, the body of text in law is usually nearly burdensome with all the flowery language that makes it seem like they're trying to cover edge cases (and sardonic comment aside, I'll grant your assumption legislators want to cover as many edge cases as possible to prevent loopholes). But at least in the United States, very many of the sentences in our laws end with weasel phrases like "or similar uses" and "or other software" and "or related activity", which is exactly where the problem arises, and where interested parties are inserting their own special loopholes. And sure, we hope that these loopholes get hammered out in the courts in our favor some years later -- that is, if there happens to be a good and willing samaritan that is more "invested" in taking the issue to court to try for an outcome which is favorable for the public versus one favorable to corporations or the police or the wealthy. But I'll just go ahead and continue supporting the option where the stupid law isn't created in the first place. Even if that means the police don't get their bogey man running a dark market.

thaumasiotes 8y ago

> explicitly enumerated potential crimes like propagation of child pornography and money forgery Clarification: "money forgery" would refer to counterfeiting, where I might print up a bunch of notes that look like $100 bills and spend them as if the government had printed them. "Money laundering" would refer to disguising the origins of some money, where I might report a pile of cash that came from illicit drug sales as cash receipts from the convenience store I conveniently (see) happen to own. It's hard for me to imagine how you'd use Tor to forge money, although I guess it might be involved in your scheme to hack into your bank and increase the value of your account(s) there. What kind of money-related acts are enumerated?

gmueckl 8y ago
The original draft lists counterfeiting (sorry, I used the wrong term originally) and "computer fraud" (loose translation) which means defrauding someone by technical means. Hacking a bank and altering account balances would be an example. I think the list covers trading in counterfeit money as well. This is something that you can totally do over the internet. But see the reply linking to the newer recommendation document. This one recommends to remove the restriction to a set list of crimes and is generally much looser.

kbwt 8y ago

There is also a huge discrepancy between the proposal from January and the proposal that is being voted on: https://www.internet-strafrecht.com/wp-content/plugins/download-attachments/includes/download.php?id=2691 https://www.internet-strafrecht.com/wp-content/plugins/downl... A few highlights: - Instead of "providing an internet-based service", the crime is now "facilitating access to an internet-based service". - It is no longer a requirement that access to the service be restricted. - The law now applies to all crimes, rather than just the specific crimes that were listed before.

gmueckl 8y ago
Thanks for pointing this out! Wow... this is something else. I'm confused by the fact that the document you linked to is labeled "recommendation". The recommended changes are indeed much, much broader than the original draft and have me worried. However, I must admit that I do not know if these recommendations are changes that will be applied unconditionally or not. I am not familiar enough with the procedures within the Bundesrat.
yorwba 8y ago
On the other hand, the amended draft adds a fourth paragraph that explicitly excludes cases where commiting crimes is of only secondary importance (I guess the Zwiebelfreunde lobbied for this addition to protect TOR) and also actions of authorized personnel (to keep police honeypots legal, I presume). So the law is broader in some ways, but more specific in others.
craftyguy 8y ago
> the crime is now "facilitating access to an internet-based service". Does that include cafes that provide internet access to customers?
- cabalamat 8y ago
  Or, for that matter, manufacturing computers with ethernet or wifi connections?
rurban 8y ago

mr_toad 8y ago

> only applies to a couple of explicitly enumerated potential crimes Yeah right. That’s what they always say these laws will be used for, but they always end up being used for much broader purposes.