The thirteen lies of Zensursula

The following text (by the famous german Internet expert Lutz Donnerhacke) was grabbed from
http://netzpolitik.org/2009/die-dreizehn-luegen-der-zensursula/ and translated (quickly and probably badly) by me. Comments and insertions in square brackets are mine. Text by the government is blue, text by Lutz is violet. Please inform me about translational errors.

Introduction [by somebody called "wetter" on netzpolitik.org]:

In the following contribution network activist Lutz Donnerhacke analyses, comments and responds to the claims of the german Ministry for families [Official name: Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth] about the necessity of censorship
measures against the documentation of child abuses. Therein Donnerhacke claims to have found 13 lies, which the ministry had published as text modules and other statements. But read for yourselves ...

(The) consequential course of action against the distribution of child pornography (is) a unconditional necessity, since the Internet must not be a Unregulated Area in this regard.

Lie #1: The Internet is not an Unregulated area.

The bulk of the child pornography in the area of the World Wide Web is meanwhile distributed over commecial web pages

Lie #2 and central problem among the leading politicians: There is no
mass market, there is no commercial distribution, there are no
turnovers in the million range. The perpetrators are single
perpetrators, and they exchange [the material] in Closed user groups,
mainly outside the Internet.

And the responsible persons as well as the perpetrators earn millions per month.

Repetition of lie #2.

Only a small portion of child pornography is distributed over german servers

Lie #3: The bulk of the Closed user groups is hosted in germany.

As soon as there is knowledge about representations of sexual child abuse, the police acts against the contentn provider, induces the deletion by the hosting provider and evaluates the connection data record.

Lie #4: If one uses the blacklists of other countries, wherein germany is on the 4th place concerning the hosting of blocked pages, and looks for really illegal material (which there is rare enough), then the hosting provider blocks immediately after notice. Those blacklists are known to the german investigation authorities, but the servers remained online for over a year.

When offers of child pornography are run by foreigners or in foreign countries, the responsible authorities and abuse adresses [original: Beschwerdestellen] are informed and asked for comparable measures of investigation and elimination of the violation.

Repetition of lie#4: the is obviously no mutual information.

The federal and state criminal police offices do outstanding domestic work.

On this place, i want really to praise the responsible investigators: please continue your good work and don't get entrapped by election-campaign related tactical confusion games to install a
paravent [original: spanische wand - does this idiom exist for this purpose in english?] in front of the crime; instead of catching the perpetrators and stopping the criminal action. Good luck.

The frequent press messages about uncovered [original: ausgehoben] child pornography rings confirm this.

All these successes confirm that the activities were not performed over the public web. they were always closed circles.

Despite all national and international efforts, many child pornography sites remain available in the net. in many countries it is not successful to make accountable the operators of child pornography offers (so-called content providers) or take away their platform (so-called hosting provider).

Repetition of lie#4: this claim would be read as "we are incompetent".

The current discussion about the complication [Original: Erschwerung] of the access to child pornographic material concerns offered web pages on which such contents are offered commercially.

Lie #5: no such sites are known. the do not occur in any of the blacklists of any countries. The investigators and lawyers working in this field do not know about such sites.

Is the whole discussion only about inexistent sites? Just hot air in the election campaign?

This is a matter of a form of grave and organized international criminality about which the Federal criminal police office [BKA] collects informations within the scope of it's duties as a central office. The informations available there concern ca. 1000 such web pages. Those web pages are not listed in special lists.

Repetition of lie#5: Does this mean that since years the BKA is informed about grave and organized international criminality and did not inform the other countries?

Since in about hald of all countries posession and distribution of child pornography is either not punishable or is insufficiently sanctioned, police actions are insufficient in many cases.

Fie #5: The part of countries, where the legal situation is insufficient and which come into question for hosting, is clearly below 1%.

Then the blocking of the only remaining course of action. An approach against the content providers, thus the main responsible person to be accessed, fails in this cases due to the fact that the responsible person is situated abroad.

Repetition of lie#4: Such mutual information which might lead toapprehension of the perpetrators os obvously omitted.

Indeed the freedom of information is a value held in high esteem with constutional status. But here the matter is the complication of access of web pages with child pornographic content. Following the criminal code, distribution, obtaining and posession of child pornography is punishable.

Lie #7: The equalization of child abuse with sexual background and distribution delicts (up to seeming youth pornography [Original: Jugendanscheinspornographie] is an inacceptable mixing of elements of crime of different gravity, which in no case justifies such an incursion into basic law. The allegedly justifying criminal act is not only not avoided or impaired by the incursion, but even protected against criminal prosecution. On the other hand, the incursion serves to protect against investigations the non-publicly performed, less grave acts of distribution delicts.

Since many years, blockings are successfully performed in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Great Britain, Switzerland, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada and Taiwan, mostly on the base of voluntary negotiated agreements.

Lie #8: The fact that a country blocks would be a valid argument only in the case that the blocking in this country were a success in the case at hand. But it is not. None of the countries mentioned the blockings as success, on the contrary, it harms the investigations and does not at all impede the criminal acts.

The long time [Original: jahrelangen] experiences of the countries which already installed access blocks demonstrate that the system works ...

Repetition of lie#8

... and every day tens of thousands of accesses to child pornographic offers could be blocked

Lie #9: As is known the blacklists in other countries contain less than 1% of the pages mentioned here, the remainder are legal pages, which have nothing to do with pornography in any form, but distribute critical political contents. Thus the total number of blocked accesses is not the number of accesses to criminal material.

Here, fantastic numbers [Original: Fantasiezahlen] are generated, which shall impress. They have nothing to do with reality. One could rather calculate this way: The government wants to block 400000 accesses to politically critical contents, thus perform censorship on a grand scale.

It is not relevant that technically versed internet users will always find ways to obviate the blocks.

Lie #10: Obviation of the dilettantish blocks is easily found by searching for "block abviate instruction" [Original:"Sperre umgehen Anleitung" ] and realized in seconds.

Rather, it is decisive that by access blocks the access for the majority of averagely versed internet users is blocked and the hard cases are forced to use side ways. Instead of resignating in front of the possibilities in the World Wide Web, all means against the distribution of child pornography are used.

Repetition of lie#5: Those pages don't exist. It is therefore impossible to stumble upon them by accident. The exchange channels are outside the web.

The position of the Federal Government, that the blocks are an appropriate action to restrict the outreach of known child pornographic pages if other methods fail, is therefore confirmed by the experiences of those countries.

Repetition of lie#8: The other countries made the experience that it is just a completely inappropriate action.

Thereby blocks should be part of a overall strategy against the sexual abuse of children and it's depiction on the internet. The investigation of the perpetrators and the protection of the victims
should hereby not be replaced, but effectively amended.

Lie#11: Since years, the Federal Government cuts the funds for prevention, criminal investigation and victim support. Instead it performs ineffectual symbolic politics. Thus teachers who assault children are simply moved to other schools instead of being
investigated and punished if applicaple.

The Federal Government strives for cooperation with these countries in order to come to maximally efficient actions against the sexual exploitation of children in the internet and to come to an exchange the blocked pages by international cooperation. [The probably mean "list of blocked pages"]

Lie #12: The exploitation and abuse of children takes place in the own family, not in the Internet. The Ministry Of Families should know this.

In the context of a summit talk on Jan. 13, 2009 of Minister Schäuble, Minister von der Leyen and Minister Glos with the representants of the major internet providers agreed upon a two-level action.

Lie #13: The providers were strongly against this action. These objections have been ignored on the part of the ministers.

Concluding remark: The struggle against grave child abuse is not an international contest where one is praised for biggest case counts or highest click rates or whatever other perverse indicator comes to their mind. The decisive indicator is the number of acts which still happens. Even if nobody looks.