Chaos Computer Club congratulates Netzpolitik.org
ccc.de
ccc.de
Also, the story was discussed yesterday at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976043.
What I'm wondering is, this was voted to the top very quickly when it was submitted. Were these all german speaking upvoters, or was there some interest from people who did not understand the content without translation?
It just seems kind of weird to me that this would be allowed if it was submitted as a google translate link. You could make the case that the google translation sucks and OP should have translated it himself to a pastebin and then submitted or something. But I've actually started translating it myself and it's quite hard, jacquesm definitly did a better job than I could have done.
I really don't want HN to become spammed with german (or other non-english content for that matter), but I think there should be exceptions where there's obvious interest for the community.
I also can't fully follow the argument that this story was already discussed yesterday, because this is a statement from the CCC that includes stuff your linked story doesn't. For example how to get free 32c3 tickets.
It's impossible to say whether the upvoters of this story were mostly German speakers, but that's plausible. HN is fortunate to have many German-speaking users.
There are exceptions to every rule, but I wouldn't say this post was exceptional. Fine as it is in its genre, it adds no major information about the story. And HN generally eschews political tracts, not because we disagree with them politically, but because they're not what the site is for.
Not all articles on the same story are strict replicas of one another, but once HN has a major thread on a story, we treat subsequent posts as dupes unless and until one adds significant new information. We figured this out after the Snowden/NSA deluge of 2013, when the frontpage was inundated with both kinds of story: ones that contained major new info, and ones that were simply piling on. There were an order of magnitude more of the latter.
Teasing the one class apart from the other does require judgment calls, but not wild ones, and in my view HN has benefited greatly from the distinction. It optimizes for the diversity of the frontpage while still allowing for ongoing stories. An example is the recent events at Reddit. I think HN got that roughly right: a fresh thread for each major new development, while treating the more ephemeral stories as dupes.
The CCC is sarcastically congratulating them for receiving this "award" now as a badge of honor.
On an unrelated funny sidenote, netzpolitik.org has received the (real) national award "Land of Ideas" the same day they received their formal note of opening investigations.
Nein -> No
Ja -> YesAfter examining a complaint by the secret service the Attorney General is investigating the editors of netzpolitik.org.
The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) congratulates the editors for receiving this rare journalistic honor and promises support in both action and funds. We ask them to give Attorney General Harald Range more occasions for intimidation campaigns against journalists.
Only extensive mandatory data retention will allow the attorney general to keep track of:
- Which journalists report on anti-constitutional practices of secret services?
- Who has expressed themselves against surveillance fetishists?
- Who prevents the under-cover operatives/informers of the secret service from constructing and supporting extreme right-wing structures?
- Who removed the water taps from major construction sites?
"We have finally figured out how to dislodge mr. Range from his lethargy" says Dirk Engling, CCC spokesman. "For a long time we thought that the leaking of data about citizens and institutions did not bother the attorney general, but we realize now that we were mistaken. Let us make sure that he has plenty of work!"
Mr. Range has the chance to enter history. During the Spiegel affair in 1962 the sum total of arrest days for journalists was about 190. A nice chance to take the lowly two digit placement of the German Republic in the ranks of press-freedom to a solid three digit place.
The Chaos Computer wants to reward people, who have caused investigations by the attorney general against journalists and their sources in 2015 each with a free ticket for the next congress (32C3).
Participants are encouraged to contact journalists, the CC or a whistleblowing platform of your choice. We are looking forward to receive contributions in the following domains:
- Secret services and mass surveillance as well as their commercial partners
- Covert investigations and liaison officers,
- Reconstructions of shredded documents
- Aiding and abetting of right-wing terrorists
- Surveillance operations involving unpopular opposition parties.
A special prize will be awarded for any revelations that cause the attorney general to reactivate the since spring 2014 weakened prosecutions against foreign and domestic secret services as well as the German government.
To explain the joke with the "removed water taps". It happened that the water taps in the new building in Berlin for the secret service had been removed, which resulted in a large damage because of the flowing water. The curiosity is, that anything relating to this construction site is classified. and all the people having access to it are monitored. But they still have no glue who removed the water taps.
It essentially says 'you've been owned'.
- "GBA" -> Attorney General
- "exfiltration" is that a proper word? "leaking", "draining"?
- "reward initiatives" -> "reward the best investigations by attorney general against journalists"
I do believe exfiltration is a real word but I've changed it.
See for instance: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/data-exfiltration-da...
Verratsdatenspeicherung (translated as mandatory data retention in your text) is a pun.
Vorratsdatenspeicherung = data retention "in case we need it later" (Vorrat = stock, supply etc.)
Verratsdatenspeicherung = treason data retention
I'd translate this as: "The Chaos Computer Club therefore wants to reward the best investigations initiated in 2015 against journalists ..."
The meaning is a bit complicated.
The Chaos Computer wants to reward people, who have caused such investigations, with a free ticket for the next congress. Basically they want to reward whistleblowers and related.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9980741
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9981239
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976043
[edit]: added more links to other overlapping HN articles.
The key point is that state secrets can only be those pieces of information that must be kept secret in order to prevent a grave danger to the external security of the Federal Republic of Germany. Netzpolitik.org published information about the internal structure and plans of Germany's domestic intelligence service, which is highly unlikely to affect Germany's external security.
[0] [GER] http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/generalbundesanwalt-stopp...
I don't believe it either, just didn't have other sources ;)
I wouldn't call that a "stop of investigations". It's more like an attempt at backpedalling without completely loosing his face :)
Similar to what happened in 1962 after Spiegel Journalists where imprisoned [1]
There are really only some members of the CDU and the agencies, who are defending the prosecution.
I would not underestimate the press here. They love to talk about themselves and have nothing else to talk about in the summer break anyway.
We have bred a neoliberal monoculture, and we'll be fucked when that proves to be brittle and we have no alternative models being practiced. We were promised an End of History and we're determined to have it.
South Korea?
No? How about a less developed highly populous Asian country like Philippines? Surely they must be democratic and "have agency." Oh snap!
Shall we talk about how the term "banana republic" was coined?
Local politicians are usually not among them for the reasons you stated but instances of US military are not exactly admired these days and tolerated at best.
There is also a group of people that considers Germany not sovereign and still US-occupied territory. Googling for "Deutschland Souveräner Staat" brings up some 75k hits and the top 10 are all related to this very question. I doubt these people are in favor of "US occupation"
There is also no political party (worth mentioning) that has any interest in getting rid of them and there isn't any discussion of the topic in the media either.
I don't see at all how it matters that there are conspiracy theorists who believe Germany not to be a sovereign state.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-02-05/germany-s-...
In the netzpolitik.org case, so far we have merely an investigation that appears to be DOA.
She heard it on the radio and there were several articles in the local(!) newspaper -- in between the usual reports about global politics and coverage of small-scale local events (i.e. "cake competition at the local high school" level news) -- I think she's quite representative of the readership demographic.
So I guess it is making waves. Not sure many people actually care but it is getting significant news coverage.
Win a free ticket for the next 32C3, the legendary Chaos Communication Congress, in Hamburg/Germany. ;-) Meet 10k other hackers in December 2015 for four days in a parallel universe.
Notice also the slight difference between 'Verratsdatenspeicherung' vs. 'Vorratsdatenspeicherung'.
http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=htt...