
Germany wants a German Internet as spying scandal rankles - r0h1n
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/25/us-usa-spying-germany-idUSBRE99O09S20131025
======
lignuist
Well, I read: Germany wants a German internet to be able to better spy on its
citizens.

Germanys government really did absolutely nothing to protect the privacy of
German people in the past and deserves the same amount of trust as the US
government.

The mentioned encrypted mail-service is actually legally backdoored. If they
were interested in enhancing privacy, they would support the development of
open standards like GPG. Instead they are trying to force people to install
closed source software for their tax declaration, which is probably spyware.

Sorry, nothing good to expect in Germany.

Edit: The german government seems to have supported GPG in 1999.

(second reference in
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnupg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnupg))

~~~
efdee
The German government financially supports the gnupg project, but I guess that
didn't fit into your agenda.

~~~
Udo
The US government also supports the Tor project, for instance. It's not as if
they're one single-minded entity.

But as a German I have to say overall _lignuist_ is right: there is no reason
to trust the German government (or the EU for that matter) any more than the
US government.

This "German internet" idea seems familiar somehow, because here in Germany
we're used to have a German or Germanized version of everything. You can
forget about normal Germans ever using an English website, it has to be at
least translated if not re-branded. German people by and large do not watch
English TV or movies, they expect everything to be translated and somewhat
culturally re-branded. Combine that with existing separatist and isolationist
movements, which by the way have always played a part in the inofficial German
mindset, I can see this exceedingly stupid idea seriously gaining ground.

On a meta level, I think you're overusing the word agenda here to create a
polemic atmosphere where none was warranted. Agenda implies that someone wants
to bring across a piece of propaganda, disregarding the facts if necessary.
What _lignuist_ is doing is called having an opinion. You may disagree with
it, but that does not make it an agenda.

------
drill_sarge
This is just snake oil marketing from the politicians and german ISPs. First
they did not care at all when 82 million people were spied on (they literally
said, that this debate was over and all question have been answered) and now
they make a huge deal of it because it affects them personally.

Also the whole proposal does not make sense, because it is known that our own
intelligence is sniffing traffic too and Telekom and others complied with
them. Not to mention that our intelligence service and the NSA working
together, hence the NSA even has spy equipment here which is tolerated by the
government. Also implying that "national routing" is any kind of defence
against spying. And all that wouldn't even affect people using Google,
Facebook etc. just lol

------
gioele
Ah, the irony.

It is funny to see these proposals coming out of Germany, the biggest
proponent, together with France, for a EU-wide data exchange and wiretapping
program codified in Schengen as article 40 [1] and SIS (Schengen Information
System, police access to all national DBs). The latest update to the Schengen
treaty (2005) allows the exchange of sensitive and biometric data such as DNA
and fingerprints. [1]

Germany and France are also the biggest pushers for data retention laws that
force ISPs and other business to retain and make available all the
communication metadata and some of the data of all the information exchanged
through them.

The governments of Germany, France and UK have also been the main shields
against the pressures from the EU parliament to avoid data-sharing initiatives
with the USA.

It must also be noted that there seems to be a schism in Germany between the
acts of the governments (pushing EU-wide anti-privacy measures) and the acts
of the parliament (pushing strict pro-privacy regulations inside the German
territory).

[1]
[http://www.hri.org/docs/Schengen90/body3.html](http://www.hri.org/docs/Schengen90/body3.html)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%BCm_Convention](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%BCm_Convention)

------
this_user
The amusing part about this is that Deutsche Telekom is partly responsible for
German Internet traffic taking routes that pass through other countries by
refusing to do peering. They instead leverage their large customer base and
demand other companies pay them for the privilege of a direct connection to
their network.

------
rowyourboat
Reuters has mucked this story up.

Germany does not want a German Internet, that's just plain silly. Deutsche
Telekom just wants to rearrange its peering with other German ISPs so that
requests that originate and end in Germany never leave Germany.

Seeing as DT's current peering costs are the reason that some packets take a
round-about way in the first place, it's just a marketing move.

~~~
atmosx
That makes sense and most countries should do it. Some routers support this
feature, custom ones can be made though.

------
GFischer
Does Germany produce routers? Firmware? Would it be "airgapped" with the U.S.
internet?

Having Merkel's phone monitored must have been a blow.

That said, having a nationally routed Internet makes sense. (edit: article
says 90% is already routed nationally)

The article itself says it's not practical, and mostly posturing.

"The only way to change this would be for Germany to require local hosting of
websites, a drastic move according to experts that has not yet been pushed by
German leaders. Deutsche Telekom declined to say whether it would lobby for
such an approach.

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, angered by reports that the U.S. spied on
her and other Brazilians, is pushing legislation that would force Google,
Facebook and other internet companies to store locally gathered or user-
generated data inside the country."

~~~
lazyjones
> _That said, having a nationally routed Internet makes sense._

In general, it probably does. But in the case of Germany, it's just plain
ridiculous since they have US military and spy bases within their territory
(and the politicians who run around like headless chicken currently have been
defending those and limiting citizens' rights near them - the bases themselves
are US territory, but just showing up nearby gets you in trouble).

~~~
stannol
I've lived near a US base in Germany all my life (I can actually see the
"border" from my house) and I can't think of any way to "get in trouble" by
showing up nearby. The only way to get in trouble here is to actually enter
the base without permission.

~~~
lazyjones
> The only way to get in trouble here is to actually enter the base without
> permission.

Try filming, protesting or flying RC drones nearby ...

------
adventured
It's incredible to me that the country that made the Internet possible, has
changed so much in four or five decades that it is now in the process of
destroying the Internet.

~~~
ithkuil
Why incredible? Don't anthropomorphize countries, there is absolutely no
obligation for a country to behave in a way that's consistent with it's
behavior a few years back; countries are not individuals, please stop
attaching human values to countries.

~~~
workhere-io
Countries are run by humans, and in a democracy we can and should expect
politicians to do what's right for citizens and to behave ethically.

~~~
noarchy
How is it that this democratic ideal has failed to deliver on many of these
things, of late? To be sure, some are content with what government has brought
to their lives in some areas, yet the complaints remain. Are our democratic
systems failing to actually represent us, or are they delivering as-
expected...or both?

~~~
workhere-io
I'm not denying that the US democracy is broken; I'm countering ithkuil's
argument that since countries aren't human they shouldn't exhibit moral
behavior.

------
biafra
The german government is supporting the development of gnupg. Yes, with money.

~~~
lignuist
The only source I found for that is from 1999, which is a long time ago and
especially pre-9/11.

Second reference in:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnupg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnupg)

------
linux_devil
Concerned countries should work together to achieve same goal. Month ago,
similar signals came from Brazil.

------
harshpotatoes
I feel like this legislature would be a huge cost to startups wishing to do
business in Germany, and would likewise be a huge cost to already established
businesses.

Of course, I suppose there is the added benefit that many companies would now
be legally required to have a physical presence in Germany, requiring the
creation of many more local data centers. Presumably this would boost the
already high performing German economy.

I wonder how this would effect IRC servers. Would you have to forbid
connections from Germany if there already was a user connected from Germany?

In that same line of questioning, wow would a teleconference work? Two german
companies and two american companies are communicating in a group call via
skype or something. The server is located in the US. Does this mean that the
two German companies are communicating with each other and therefore the
server must be located in Germany? If the US had the same laws, does this mean
it is impossible for the group call to be made at all?

How much more difficult would it make telecommuting if multiple telecommuters
are located within Germany?

What if user A located in germany wants to send an email or instant message to
user B in germany, but is VPNed to a server in another country. Maybe User A
is on a business trip to germnay and is VPNed to their work, or something. How
could such a message be routed completely within the German borders? Would the
VPN have to detect the nature of the message and reject it?

Am I understanding everything correctly?

~~~
memracom
I don't think that you are understanding it correctly. First it helps to
understand some history. In the ancient voice telecoms networks of the 20th
century there was the principle that "he who dials the number pays the bill".
Therefore, when a telecom provider (like DT) tried to connect a call with
another telecom provider (such as BT in the UK), both telecoms companies knew
that there was money flowing into DT's pockets. So the recipient's provider
(in this case BT) wanted some of that money. This became a principle worldwide
that interconnects between two networks had to be bought and paid for. Of
course, calls went both directions over the interconnect so the concept of
peering was born. What it meant was that the two companies would count up the
calls at the end of the month, and the one with the most calls would pay the
other company.

Then came US telecom deregulation, CLECS, the growth of the American-centric
Internet, and a new way of making connections. On the Internet, one party
opens a socket and superficially that seems to be similar to dialling a phone
call. But the big difference is the the party opening a socket is not paying
anyone a fee to do this. And they aren't paying a per-minute fee for using the
socket. In fact, the party opening the socket is paying money for the use of
the whole network, and the party whose socket is being opened is also paying a
fee for the whole socket. Thust the concept was born that interconnects should
be free because they are a cost of doing business as an ISP.

And then began much confusion and strange business dealings as telecom
management wrestled with how to reconcile these two worlds. The result was
that deregulated US providers charged a lot less for interconnects, and the
international telephone calls of the world started to take a detour through
the USA. And internet connections did the same thing.

So basically, there should be no extra cost if Germany implements this. Some
companies might get into arm-twisting battles if significant traffic flows
shift from one circuit to another because they will likely need to upgrade
some interconnects, but that is just a one time hit. It should not increase
fees at all.

------
VMG
I think it's just a ploy for Telekom and some large companies make a buck.

Any sane person shouldn't trust the German government and Telcos more than
foreign ones. I certainly don't.

~~~
mtrimpe
So you're saying German citizens should trust their own government less than
the US government? ;)

~~~
hwh
"Not more" doesn't mean "less", it means "less or equal".

~~~
mtrimpe
I realized that after I posted but given that trust is hardly a discrete
variable I'd say 'equal' is somewhat unlikely in this case.

------
memracom
Deutsche Telekom is complicit in this spying. It is because of DT's policies
on peering that Internet companies in Germany send traffice destined to
another German company, via other countries. Germany could fix this by
requiring all German ISPs to supply free bilateral peering to any other German
ISP with more than X Mbps of traffic.

This is not actually free, but it means that no ISP can use peering as a
profit centre. In fact, both parties to the bilateral peering have to pay for
their own routers for the interconnect, and pay half the cost of the
interconnect circuit if it is not done in the same building.

This would be an improvement in speed too because within the borders of
Germany you should be able to get 10 ms round trip times to any other point.
In fact, companies who want their VPN traffic to stay in Germany will often
specify 10 ms RTT in their RFPs as a euphemism for "keep our traffic in
Germany". I used to work for GTS, a competitor of DT and we had an extensive
enough presence in Germany to meet that RTT which rather surprised DT because
I think they invented the requirement hoping that it would mean "only DT can
win this bid".

It would be better if all countries had laws/regulations about exchanging
local traffic locally, because this would improve Internet performance for
everyone.

------
matthiasl
It seems that they have an internet in mind where you consider packets that
left the country to be less secure than ones which stayed in the country.

One way to implement that would be something like RFC 3514, except that the E
bit gets set whenever a packet crosses a border, and never cleared.

------
venomsnake
Whenever I hear a country calling for "national" internet I got a feeling that
the policy makers have no idea what net stands for in internet.

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znowi
I wish it was a sincere initiative to protect users, however, I suspect it's a
political campaign in order to get some preferences out of the US.

------
Sprint
Wouldn't educating and deploying proper end-to-end encryption be a much better
way of protection?

