
Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties - superwayne
http://derstandard.at/2000101677286/Government-Seeks-to-Eliminate-Internet-Anonymity-With-Severe-Penalties
======
codedokode
It is surprising. Even here, in Russia, we don't have such laws working yet.
And I wonder, what Austrian authorities are going to do with foreign platforms
like Telegram, which are unlikely to comply? Russian government has been
trying to block Telegram using DPI for a year and didn't succeed.

What about Twitter? Reddit?

> In addition, web platforms would be required to appoint a liaison in Austria
> who would be responsible for making information about platform users
> available if it becomes necessary. If this person does not ensure that the
> regulation is followed, he or she could be punished with a fine of up to
> 100,000 euros.

This will just put foreign platforms, who will ignore the law, into an
advantageous position compared to local platforms. Users might switch to
foreign platforms that don't require identification.

~~~
coldtea
> _This will just put foreign platforms, who will ignore the law, into an
> advantageous position compared to local platforms. Users might switch to
> foreign platforms that don 't require identification._

Doesn't really matter, as those things move the Overton window.

Tomorrow, when the US, China, and EU adopt similar laws, there wont be any
"foreign services" to use.

~~~
kdme
What a scary idea. I want to say that its unlikely to happen but with the
political climate right not...

Anybody got an ideas, on what we are supposed to do when that happens

~~~
snaky
People are very adaptable and will consider all that things new normal. XIX
century Americans would consider an income tax in a peacetime grossly
inappropriate, creepy and a violation of their dignity after all.

~~~
gph
And the more or less permanent state of war we find ourselves in could also be
considered a new normal we've adapted to that XIX century Americans would find
creepy and grossly inappropriate.

~~~
ameister14
No, the US was at war for essentially the entirety of the 19th century.

~~~
mirimir
Pretty much, the US has always been at war. I mean, they used to have a War
Department, which got renamed Defense Department for PR.

~~~
walshemj
Not really that's OTT hyperbole

~~~
ameister14
No, it's pretty accurate.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States)

~~~
Forbo
We've only had 21 years where we haven't been at war.
[https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at-
war-93-of-...](https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-
the-time-222-out-of-239-years-since-1776/5565946)

------
Findus23
In case anyone wants to know how this should work, this is the explanation by
the minister:

There are "technical possibilities where software can run on the backend that
can immediately identify: Does the registered mobile phone number match the
name and address or not?" \- derstandard.at/2000101678440/Minister-Bluemels-
Ominous-De-Anonymization-Software (from
[https://derstandard.at/2000101678440/Minister-Bluemels-
Omino...](https://derstandard.at/2000101678440/Minister-Bluemels-Ominous-De-
Anonymization-Software))

Translating it as "backend" is very friendly as he literally said "a software
in the rear end".

~~~
crunchiebones
it won't stop people getting multiple sim cards and registering those under
different names

~~~
bkolobara
To get a sim card (even prepaid) in Austria you need to provide a valid
ID/passport. If it's not an Austrian/German/Swiss ID you will need to go in
person to activate your sim card. This would make it really difficult for
someone to manage a few accounts.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
You can buy sim cards on amazon from other EU countries.

~~~
lazyjones
So tell me how this will work. Will you swap SIM cards just to post
anonymously sometimes and let the telecom providers (among others) find out
what your other SIM cards are through your device ID? Or will you get a SIM
card from another country to use exclusively and pay roaming costs / live with
a worse data plan in Austria?

People apparently forget that telecoms providers cooperate with authorities,
new legislation is planned for this too.

~~~
tasubotadas
Roaming costs are basically non-existant these days in the EU.

For me it is cheaper to use internet through roaming than buying local plan.

~~~
lazyjones
> _Roaming costs are basically non-existant these days in the EU._

Data plans can be limited for other countries, even within the EU (and
frequently are), i.e. if your prepaid contract allows 5GB monthly data
transfer for free, the provider might limit this to 500MB for roaming and
beyond that limit, you can pay a hefty fee per MB.

In general, prepaid cards aren't famous for having a generous data plan...

~~~
gambiting
Giffgaff in the UK gives you 20GB for £20 on pay as you go, and it can be used
up to that limit anywhere in the EU. And you don't need a passport to get a
simcard either.

~~~
Bombthecat
> giffgaff runs on the O2 network

Eh, no thanks

------
starbugs
Could anyone shed some light on which problem this is supposed to solve
exactly and what triggered it in the first place in Austria right now?

Have there been any issues caused by anonymous posts recently? Maybe I'm just
living under a rock, but my feeling was that the main issues we're currently
facing stem from political distortion caused by populism misusing platform
mechanisms to spread misinformation. I don't see how this is supposed to help.

~~~
rmu09
This was triggered by a defamation lawsuit where a former female MP was being
harrassed via facebook, made the harassement public via twitter, and
subsequently sued by the owner of the facebook account. She lost the lawsuit
and was ordered to pay damages. The court found that the owner of the facebook
account is not necessarily the harasser, so making the harassement public is
libel.

Of course this case was only a welcome trigger to implement some law to cause
FUD. Austrian government is completely illiterate in all things regarding
internet, but in this case (and the case of the copyright directive), I would
go as far and presume malicious intent (not just stupidity).

~~~
pjc50
That seems like an absolutely nonsensical outcome from the court. Does anyone
have the court transcript? (yes I'm aware of the risks of reading machine
translated legal German, but it would be interesting to know)

(I see that Facebook's ineffective harassment policy is at the root of this
again)

~~~
yorwba
The decision was apparently invalidated by a higher court and the trial has to
be repeated:
[https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2019-03/sigri...](https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2019-03/sigrid-
maurer-politikerin-gruene-gerichtsurteil-nachrede)

------
rsto
The article states a number of laws this proposition is most likely to
conflict with. I very much doubt it will hold in court, and certainly someone
will sue. I guess it won't even land at the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

But even if I'm right, it still damages the public discussion on privacy and
civil rights. It is one of many steps pulling public opinion in a frightening
direction.

------
lessname
It's not the only attempt of the current government of Austria to do something
against privacy on the internet.

\- There is the idea of a tax called "Digitalsteuer": A tax for internet
companies which didn't pay taxes for some reason. However, it is estimated
this would make only some million dollars (~25 to 30/year). At the same time,
it could lead to too much surveillance because somebody would have to save the
address and location data of Austrian users somewhere.
[https://derstandard.at/2000100880156/Kritiker-befuerchten-
du...](https://derstandard.at/2000100880156/Kritiker-befuerchten-durch-
DigitalsteuergesetzTotalueberwachung)

\- And the "Überwachungspaket":

-> you need to register prepaid sim cards

-> limitation of the secrecy of letters

-> data retention by ISPs etc [https://epicenter.works/thema/ueberwachungspaket](https://epicenter.works/thema/ueberwachungspaket)

------
jeena
"Results show that in the context of online firestorms, non-anonymous
individuals are more aggressive compared to anonymous individuals"

[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0155923)

~~~
lazyjones
This legislation is not about "aggressive behaviour", it's about criminal
conduct. While I can't comment professionally on the validity /
reproducibility of this research (looks bogus to me, they only examined
comments on an online petition platform, not FB and news sites where all the
crazy people are[1]), anyone who'd claim that criminals don't prefer to be
anonymous or that perceived anonymity has a negative effect on criminal
behaviour, would surely be laughed out of academia.

Besides, the anonymity vs. other users will not be changed, we're not talking
about a "visible real names" policy here. You can still use nicknames, just
the forum operator has to store your real name.

[1] _The final dataset includes 532,197 comments on 1,612 online petitions.
There were a total of 3,858,131 signatures over the 1,612 petitions between
2010 and 2013, with detailed information about the wording of the comment, the
commenters, the signers and the petition._

~~~
mjparrott
Putting 2 innocent people through systems designed to assume they are guilty
is worse than 1 guilty person being able to be anonymous. Look at what the TSA
has done. They’ve wasted so much time and created a massive invasion of
physical privacy (i.e. someone touching your private parts in public) and not
only did they never catch anything, they fail 90% of penetration tests. There
is some positive intent here but in the real world this is obvious to cause
more harm than good. I don’t know if it is hubris or ignorance to not see how
easily this will be manipulated and have negative externalities. You don’t
jail your whole population because of 1 bad apple.

~~~
Faark
I see two options going forward:

\- Filters, Article 13 style. Youtube, Facebook and Co have to ensure you can
only post legal content

\- Accountability. A justice system is able to drag you into a court when
you've done something illegal.

We tried safe harbor and it was a nice compromise, but youtube added ContentId
for a reason and it also certainly doesn't seem to help against hate speech. I
prefer we keep judges assessing what is allowed and what isn't, instead of
shifting this burden onto companies. If that requires Know Your Customer laws,
then this seems like an acceptable trade off to me.

~~~
Zak
What about doing nothing? Is the status quo intolerable? Will it become
intolerable if things continue on their current course? If you believe this,
why do you believe it?

The problems of upload filters have been discussed here in depth and the
consensus seems to be that they would have massive collateral damage. Removing
anonymity creates severe problems for freedom of expression. Consider, for
example the buffer anonymity provides from strategic lawsuits against public
participation.

What current problem is so bad that solving it is worth the costs of either of
those solutions?

------
scriptkiddy
Laws like this one and the recent anti-crypto law in Australia have me really
worried for the future of small, privately owned sites. If laws like these
continue to pass, it's going to become more and more difficult for small sites
to navigate the legal regulations around running a web application. This, in
turn, will discourage people from building their own web applications, which
will lead to a decrease in overall innovation in the online space.

The conspiracy theorist in me is starting to see these laws as some sort of
ploy by the big players(google, amazon, facebook, etc.) to create a sort of
monopoly on the internet by making it so difficult to enter the web
application space that only large companies with massive amounts of resources
can even play the game.

As someone who is currently working on a new art sharing platform that will
include discussion threads, I'm starting to get worried about needing to
comply with these types of laws. Not that I would comply, as I believe one's
internet experience should be as anonymous as one wants it to be.

It's a real shitty place to be. I hope this law gets shot down and all future
laws in the same vein don't gain traction.

------
stdclass
The funny thing is, they have a threshold of 100.000 users that must be
registered at the site.

So a site like unzensuriert.at (like breitbart in the US) which is a right
leaning / government favourable website will not fall under such a law and
won't get penalties.

~~~
ptaipale
So, will a site maintainer simply remove the older accounts that have not
accessed the site in a while, to keep number of accounts below 100 000?

~~~
stdclass
I wonder what will happen if somebody motivates a lot of people to register on
a site, to push them over the threshold.

It may also be possible to split your forums to different sites / domains if
you reach the thresold.

Anyhow I can't see how this will play out in real life and I hope our
president will step in and prevent it from happening at all.

~~~
jeena
So distributed social media communities like Mastodon will not have the
problem?

~~~
stdclass
I guess not, since there is no single entity/company which holds 100.000
users.

But I am 100% sure, our current government would never ever grasp the concept
of a federated social network and probably just try to ban it.

------
hestefisk
You wonder how long before this becomes the default law in most western
countries. We are slowly destroying the Internet and what it has given us.

------
wellpast
To preserve the anonymity of the source of my own ideas, I might write every
tweet/post like so:

“A friend of mine says, ‘Woke politics are getting absurd.’”

I wonder if this would be violation of the law...

~~~
ficklepickle
That reminds me of SWIM [0] from the drugs forums back in the day

[0] Someone Who Isn't Me. I believe it was an attempt to avoid admitting to
illegal things. It was mandatory to use SWIM instead of the first-person on
some forums.

------
fit2rule
Today I was driving around beautiful spring-time Vienna, and I happened to
stop at a traffic light as Chancellor Kurz, sitting in the passenger seat of
some 2019 rich-car convertible, also happened to stop in the lane next to me.

He gave me such an evil glare, it was astonishing. So I glared back at him.

In real life, I found him to be as loathsome a creature as in media. Perhaps,
fatter than I thought he was.

I hope I can continue to report such things on the Internet in the future.

------
contingencies
_If you try to ban the future, it will just happen elsewhere._ \- Paul Graham
(2017)

... via
[http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

------
superwayne
There is also an interview (unfortunately in German, but automatically
translated subtitles are available) with the minister who is responsible for
the bill:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sm7Q1bjW5o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sm7Q1bjW5o)

~~~
Findus23
Asked by the interviewer if this isn't the same as asking bar owners to check
the ID of every visitor just in case a bar fight breaks out, the minister
answered:

"Das ist ja ein Blödsinn, was sie da reden" (This is total nonsense you are
talking about)

~~~
coldcode
Blödsinn is pretty much what this law is about.

------
amiune
More information asymmetry. The government can know about you but you can't
know about the government. To ask this the government must be perfectly
transparent and by that contradict the definition of government

------
caddytodaddy
There was a point made where an opposing lawmaker said that foreign companies
like Facebook would not bother to comply. Ha! They will all love to have your
real name and address confirmed, they will be more than happy to oblige. It
would make many things easier, and allow them to monetize you much better.

So strange, this seems to be the exact opposite of the trend in the USA where
the public desire is moving towards requesting these companies to allow us to
be anonymous. Just like...Europe? What’s going on in Austria?

~~~
int_19h
Europe is big on protecting your privacy against private entities. But the
government is another matter - it's almost as if the presumption is that it's
valid for it to _hold_ such data on the flimsiest of reasons, and it only
becomes abusive if used for some sinister purpose. The possibility of such
abuse in the future is not considered a valid justification to prevent data
collection.

Conversely, in US, we place a lot of emphasis on preventing the government
from collecting data that it _could_ abuse, but then largely ignore the same
issue with private entities.

(Note, I'm not saying that it's universally true in either place, only that it
seems to be the majority consensus. There's certainly plenty people vocally
dissenting from it.)

------
neokantian
> service providers on the web only have to obey the laws of the country in
> which they are situated ...

What does it mean for an internet site to be situated somewhere? What country
is that?

For example, [http://dreadditevelidot.onion](http://dreadditevelidot.onion).
Where is it situated? It does have an interesting discussion forum. It
certainly has rules. Is it now supposed to appoint a liaison officer in
Austria (and 200+ other jurisdictions)?

------
stakhanov
The fact that they're calling it "digitales vermummungsverbot" already tells
you everything you need to know: There is no real rationale here, besides a
political stunt of the right-wing government to curry favour with the right-
leaning parts of the populus.

The original "vermummungsverbot" is a law to prohibit people from wearing a
veil in public. The pretense was that people hiding their identity were by
definition a security threat to the law abiding general public. The political
effect was that xenophobs liked the idea of a law that was opposed to certain
aspects of islam. The reality is that the law has no effect, since there are
almost no people in Austria would would want to wear a veil in public in the
first place apart from maybe the odd female tourist visiting from Saudi
Arabia.

The idea now is that the same should apply to the digital sphere.

My guess would be that they know full well that it's never going to pass into
law and make it past Brussels. But to them it's a win-win. Either they get a
law that appeases the right-wing populus. Or Brussels stops them, playing into
their anti-European narrative, which would also gain them political capital.

------
cutler
So Austria is to become Internet Annex No. 2, second to China. Three cheers
for democracy!

------
Fnoord
Related: UK and NL secret services no longer share data with Austria b/c
Russia ties [1]

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701958](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701958)

------
freshm087
Such law exists in Belarus, and mr.Kurz (Austrian chancellor) recently visited
it.

------
kerng
The comparison to the real world is rather flawed, especially in countries
like Austria. For instance your not required to show an ID when buying
groceries, buying alcohol or entering a bar.

Identification is on demand, not mandatory.

------
fractallyte
There's already the Handy Signatur ([https://www.handy-
signatur.at/hs2/](https://www.handy-signatur.at/hs2/)) - a way to digitally
sign official documents using your smartphone ('handy'). The only way to
obtain this is to have your ID and phone number registered with the
authorities. It's convenient, but it's also a system that removes any
possibility of anonymity.

I imagine this kind of digital signature will be mandatory when signing up for
the internet services described in the article...

------
thedailymail
If anonymity is made criminal, only criminals will have anonymity.

------
phkahler
On reading the headline my first thought was "That's fine just as long as it
applies to everyone" and then I see that it's just a measure to control
people.

Eliminating anonymity should be done through measures that amount to enforcing
traceability at fundamental technical levels - that will affect everything
from spam to fraud. But simplistic things like this just require people to
identify themselves, which is just a form of social control.

------
TamDenholm
If there was ever a time to be in the VPN business, its now.

~~~
HunOL
I wish geeks realize that VPN is not the solution for stupid/doubtful laws.
They should not exist in first place.

~~~
int_19h
If the majority genuinely want such laws, what's your solution?

~~~
adventured
If the majority has become tyrannical in their thinking toward the minority
when it comes to human rights, then get the hell out of the country or
jurisdiction in question if you can. Especially if it has moved beyond the
initial typically mostly benign stages.

Authoritarianism and aggressive statism broadly, generally prompt
opportunistic brain drain for exactly that reason.

The US poached enormous amounts of talent from backwards, regressive European
nations for more than a century previously.

~~~
int_19h
Problem is, eventually you run out of places to run away to.

------
sunnysnews
Anyone outside austria who needs a developer (C#, Java, full stack webdev...)?
I think i don't want to live here any more..

------
founderling

        Users of online forums in Austria will have to provide
        operators with their true identities or risk fines that
        could run into the millions.
    

How trustworthy is a publication where the very first sentence of an article
is nonsense?

Users do not risk being fined millions. The webmasters will.

~~~
masswerk
The original German version has it somewhat right by just associating
potential consequences after an indent. This is just a case of lost in
translation.

------
dalbasal
In practice (particularly in europe and particularly the current regulatory
MO) regulating the internet will often be deeply linked to de-anonymizing it.
It isn't necessarily that way, but it is where the ball rolls by default, atm.

A lot of the financial regulations of the past decade have been heavily
identity oriented. Companies/banks need to ID customersID the
origin/destination of funds, etc.

Gambling has recently become more regulated in a lot of european countries.
Similar story. ID customers (mostly for age, but also aml). ID where the money
is coming from. Take all reasonable steps to find out if a customer is has
more money than they should have, is a thief, gambling addict, etc.. In
practice, this they request customers' passports, bank statements, payment
slips... while at the same time pay for services that estimate customers
income, review social media profiles, and such.

Even GDPR, which I think did some to improve data security and a lot to reduce
data selling, requires (in practice) most websites to keep of track of users'
consent, which means keeping track of user identity, to some extent.

I have a bad feeling about the current political drive to "regulate" more.
There are certainly problems that need solutions, which are likely regulation.
But, the details matter a _lot_. We don't want the default regulations.

------
maxheadroom
Non-Banner-Happy Version: [https://www.thelocal.at/20190410/austria-mulls-
user-registra...](https://www.thelocal.at/20190410/austria-mulls-user-
registration-for-online-platforms)

------
vraivroo
Just assert that it is unfairly harmful to some minority group, problem
solved.

------
Causality1
In the US we have a little freak-out every time a private entity like the
Blizzard gaming forums or Google+ does this. I cannot imagine the shitstorm if
it was attempted on a national level.

~~~
lazyjones
We have to blame the clickbaity headline for this, but you too misunderstood
that this isn't about de-anonymizing users' profiles for the general public.
Nicknames are still allowed, but the forum operator has to verify your ID at
registration. Just like Blizzard knows your real name from your subscription
details.

------
therealmarv
Not North Korea, China or Turkey ... Austria. What a shame.

~~~
NikkiA
Austria's politics is presently dominated by (far) right wing populism. This
isn't really all that surprising in the context of a right wing authoritarian
state.

------
leo_song
Certainly comes with massive privacy leakage

------
0_gravitas
Has cracking down on internet freedoms ever lead to anything other than brain
drain?

------
davidmott_
That is going to be very hard to implement; arguably impossible.

------
speeq
I don't understand why there's so much racism in that tiny nation. Almost
every time I cross the border into Austria, the police flags me down and asks
for my passport. I'm Austrian citizen, born and raised but a person of colour.
Even though I speak German fluently, authorities always speak in English to
me. It gave me so much anxiety that I moved to the UK and noticed that I'm
treated with much more respect and opportunities.

Austria is a beautiful country and most people are nice but man..some people
can be very small-minded there. The news would make you believe that the UK is
this backwards right-wing nation because of Brexit but you'll never see a
muslim of Pakistani descent as mayor in Vienna or people of colour in the
Austrian parliament and that's honestly very depressing.

~~~
gbajson
How is it related to the topic?

------
beilabs
Be still my beating heart.

I misread this as for Australia and while I wouldn't put this past the current
right-wing government they are coming into an election.

But it's for Austria.....so....while I'm not affected I'm still annoyed.

~~~
plasma
I misread as Australia too.

------
vorticalbox
How can you fine someone who is anonymous?

------
agumonkey
so what will be the next 'internet' ?

~~~
kkarakk
Peer to peer connections are increasingly looking like a solution to me,
google,apple all have research ongoing on how to have private intranets
between mobiles in an area.ipfs could be extended for such usecases too.

couple that with self hosted(or maybe companies do it for you for a fee)
mobile base stations to extend the range of that intranet for coverage that is
actually free of government snooping/supervision while simulataneously being
truly local and a signboard of things happening in your area.

of course they could try and ban that but unless you actually train cops to
roam around with wifi packet sniffers i doubt it would be very enforceable.

~~~
vectorEQ
peer to peer connections flow over infrastructure provided by companies who
provide you, the internet. good luck to have that up and running as 'next
internet'. ... it's something you do on the current internet :S

~~~
agumonkey
HTTP over SARCASM RFC 443

------
gsich
It will fail.

------
selimonder
like people can actually breath while being spied by multiple big brothers.

------
vixen99
Doubtless the Chinese Authorities could offer useful advice on implementation.

------
mjparrott
Is this Austria or North Korea? I’m appalled by this idea.

------
carnagii
Laws like this are long past due. This particular law may not be the best
implementation but governments do need to take action to provide their
citizens with a real public square online.

Excluding fake and paid users (without a declaration of who is paying them)
from that space and protecting free speech in that space is essential to
having a public policy discussion.

Private corporations have not done this, and probably never will, so
government is the only option left.

~~~
rhn_mk1
The government may and should provide their citizens with a public square
online, but neither do they need to take away anonymity on existing squares,
nor does the public square need to be non-anonymous. The concept of being able
to go out on the streets, make mistakes, and have them be forgotten is old and
integral to public spaces IMO.

~~~
carnagii
Yes, I agree with this.

I think that governments should provide a verifiable digital ID the same way
they provide physical IDs and that they should provide communications
platforms that allow people to communicate with these digital IDs in a way
that protects their rights the same way that they provide mail service.

I do not think that governments should be regulating/banning activity on
private platforms but should be offering an alternative where private
platforms fall short. This is really nothing more than bringing existing
government services (ID, mail, voting, parliaments) fully up to date with
digital technology.

There is a big gap right now where governments don't understand what they
should be doing or are incapable of doing it. They recognize the need for
action because they see that things are going wrong but are not proposing or
implementing the correct solutions yet.

~~~
dahauns
WTH has this to do with mail service - which inherently allows anonymity for
the sender? If anything, analogous to this law, no one would be allowed to
send a letter without ID (which also means goodbye post boxes, I guess).

Oh, and if we want to extend the analogy - with current and pending
legislation, the mail service would be liable if anyone breaks the law via
mail...

