

Police confiscate German Pirate Party’s servers - rmoriz
http://piratenblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/police-confiscate-german-pirate-party%E2%80%99s-servers-servergate/

======
rmoriz
News:

Websites of the German Police (<http://polizei.de>) and Federal Criminal
Police Office (<http://bka.de>) are currently unreachable. rumors: Anonymous
disabled the sites

~~~
stygianguest
I wonder why it is so easy to take down these sites, as I am under the
impression that Anonymous consists mostly of script kiddies. Are these attacks
DDoS? That shouldn't be too hard to arrange if you're with enough people +
perhaps some unemployed botnets.

~~~
tomjen3
It wouldn't be difficult for anyone here to make the sites much more difficult
to protect but these are government sites which means they likely have
incapable people working who are tied down by sixteen layers of bureaucracy.

------
rmoriz
News: German news magazine Spiegel Online says (Headline), the raid was caused
because some users used the hosted etherpad ("piratenpad") of the Pirat Party
to plan attacks on french power provider EdF (Électricité de France).

Source (German):
[http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,763939,00....](http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,763939,00.html)

------
martin_k
Anonymous allegedly took down two police websites in return.
<http://twitter.com/anon2060/statuses/71577232199524352>

~~~
joelthelion
That doesn't help much.

~~~
martin_k
Well, taking down Paypal and Visa after they stopped processing Wikileaks
donations didn't "help much" either. But it is some form of protest after all.

~~~
joelthelion
Note that they did not give WikiLeaks their money back nor lose a lot of
money.

I agree it's a form of protest, but not a very good one, because it paints
WikiLeaks / Pirate Party supporters in a bad light, and having public opinion
on our side is more important than taking down a few servers for a few hours.

~~~
martin_k
I agree that this could be bad PR for the Pirate Party. But then Anonymous is
not the Pirate Party and their goals don't necessarily line up. The way I see
it, Anonymous' actions are usually less demonstrations _for_ a particular
cause, but more _against_ certain violations of civil rights. In the Wikileaks
case e.g. I assume that not everyone who participated in the DDoS against
Visa, necessarily agrees with the way Assange leads the organization or cares
much about Wikileaks success. And that's probably similar with the current
case. You're sailing in the same ocean, but you're not all in the same ship.

------
piratenblog
the page listed here is mine, and i am quite surprised how many people were
looking at it. if you have any questions, just make a comment here or on my
blog and i will try to answer it.

the text on the page is NOT mine, it was written by the party. i am a member
of the party since early 2007 and we had similar problems in 2008 (the
spokesperson mentioned was me) [http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-official-
raided-after-u...](http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-official-raided-after-
uncovering-state-trojan-080917/)

~~~
piratenblog
some news here, the german pirate party has just made an official complaint at
the district court Darmstadt.

[http://twitter.com/#!/Piratenpartei/statuses/717265175871569...](http://twitter.com/#!/Piratenpartei/statuses/71726517587156993)

------
rmoriz
current rumors:

reason may be the public hosted etherpad ("piratenpad") and a direction by the
french public prosecutor's office

~~~
arecibodrake
I wonder what could have been on it that would be so interesting to the heat?

------
rmoriz
see also [http://vorstand.piratenpartei.de/2011/05/20/polizei-
beschlag...](http://vorstand.piratenpartei.de/2011/05/20/polizei-
beschlagnahmt-server-der-piratenpartei-deutschland/) (scroll down for english
version)

------
jk4930
German Pirate Party == leftist pot heads (mostly coming from the green and
socialist parties) with some affinity to computers. Most of them are obese.
And usually don't shower. And don't know how to dress. It's pathetic. :)

Now they try to extend their political agenda with typical leftist stuff:
basic income for all, anti-business, open borders for all a.s.o. and the few
women try to push some vegan ideology. The funny thing is that their agenda
was 100% predictable from their physical appearance.

The good thing is that they're almost history. They had their time of hype and
media attention and now they cripple around and nobody cares.

~~~
sorbus
You should probably read the guidelines again.
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

~~~
jk4930
Where's the problem? This is something I do tell people into their faces
(because it's true) and it's not the start of a flamewar but my educated
observation (being in politics for more than 16 years).

All my points mentioned are relevant to see where these fellas are coming from
and why they won't succeed. And these are only the obvious points. It gets
worse with the fact that most of them are politically naive. They are morons
because (political) hackers would consume the existing literature on the
social domain first before making stupid proposals that won't work. (Most of
their proposals won't work either because they get the incentives wrong or
they don't scale.)

Not everything you don't like reading is against the guidelines.

~~~
sorbus
> All my points mentioned are relevant to see where these fellas are coming
> from and why they won't succeed.

From your original comment:

> Most of them are obese. And usually don't shower. And don't know how to
> dress. It's pathetic.

> The funny thing is that their agenda was 100% predictable from their
> physical appearance.

Obesity, lack of showering, and bad fashion sense are entirely irrelevant,
unless presented as reason that popular opinion will not support them. You
also might want to provide citations for those three facts, as it comes off as
you being abusive. Being able to predict their agenda from their physical
appearance is entirely irrelevant.

> Not everything you don't like reading is against the guidelines.

Applicable guidelines:

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names.

You are primarily insulting them, rather than presenting a well thought out
criticism of them and their political views. You have exactly one sentence
which comes close to doing so.

> Be civil.

~~~
jk4930
> unless presented as reason that popular opinion will not support them.

That was implicitly part of my message, yes. They're certainly not hacking the
social perception...

> Being able to predict their agenda from their physical appearance is
> entirely irrelevant.

People are visually blocked before they could get to their message. If they
want support from more than the usual suspects, then they have to play
according to the rules of the social game.

If I won't change my "insulting" style, I get downvoted at HN. If they won't
change, they won't get upvoted in elections.

