Man pleads guilty to racial threat using fake Facebook account
An African-American man has pleaded guilty after being accused of impersonating a white supremacist in a fictitious Facebook account to make death threats against an African-American university student.
A Mississippi man admitted creating a false Facebook profile in November.
Dyron L. Hart, 20, of Poplarville, Mississippi, pleaded guilty Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt to one count of communicating threats in interstate commerce, according to a Department of Justice statement.
Hart admitted creating the fictitious account in November, pretending to be a white supremacist outraged by the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first African-American president, the statement said.
He then transmitted a death threat via Facebook to an African-American student at Nicholls State University in Louisiana, saying he wanted to kill African-Americans because of Obama’s election, according to the statement.
A court document provided by the U.S. attorney’s office said Hart told an FBI interviewer that he intended the threat to be a prank “to get a reaction.”
The document said Hart admitted creating the Facebook profile under the name “Colten Brodoux” and used a photo of a Caucasian man that he found on a white supremacist Web site.
“This is an extremely odd case, a very unusual case,” said U.S. Attorney Jim Letten of the Eastern District of Louisiana. “The contents of the messages were extremely troubling and provocative and very threatening.”
Hart will face a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when sentenced November 18, the statement said
Chemical attack was hate crime against NW side couple, official says
By Shelley Shelton and Stephen Ceasar
Arizona Daily Star
Chemicals left near a home on the northwest side that created a noxious cloud were part of a hate crime attack, a sheriff’s official said Sunday evening.
The attack was racially motivated against a man and woman who live in the Casas del Oro Norte community in the 2800 block of West Magee Road, near North Shannon Road, said Deputy Dawn Barkman, a sheriff’s spokeswoman.
Several dead animals — birds, a rabbit and a cat — were found near the front door of the home, Barkman said. She said she didn’t know if the animals were killed by someone or died from exposure to the gas cloud.
The home’s front door and garage door had also been sealed shut from the outside with a spray foam sealer, she said. An incendiary device was also found near the garage door, she said.
The investigation will be handled by the sheriff’s department and the FBI, Barkman said.
The situation started about 4:50 a.m. Sunday when homeowners reported they smelled an unusual odor. Deputies found several inches of an unspecified chemical liquid in a yard nearby. They also found what appears to be chlorine tablets covered in liquid in the yard.
The homes directly beside the home that was the primary target were evacuated, said Barkman.
Other residents living in the area were asked to avoid going outside, she said.
The general area affected was mainly around Shannon and Magee roads.
A bomb squad was called to inspect for explosive devices, Barkman said, and a hazardous materials crew from Northwest Fire/Rescue District remained on the scene gathering evidence.
Though the hazardous materials crew was still working to identify the liquid, it was likely an oil-based substance, said Katy Heiden, spokeswoman for Northwest Fire.
Foam packing peanuts were also found at the scene, she said.
“(The material) was not found there naturally and was not the result of an accident,” Heiden said.
The chemicals had formed a large gas cloud that deputies said could be seen moving in a southwesterly direction, Barkman said. The Sheriff’s Department issued a warning to residents in the area at 6 a.m.
The cloud had dissipated by about mid-day Sunday. The cloud reached all the way to the Santa Cruz River, Barkman said.
People were asked to stay indoors, turn off their coolers and shut their windows, Heiden said.
The chemicals produced a “flammable vapor” that made a white cloud, which floated toward the southwest, mostly south toward Interstate 10, she said.
Northwest Fire treated one person who complained of not feeling well after breathing the cloud, “which was understandable,” Heiden said.
It was not clear whether the person lived in the home where the chemicals were found.
US Corruption Arrests Shock Jewish Community
By Victoria Cavaliere
24 July 2009
The arrests of more than 40 prominent politicians and Jewish leaders in New Jersey and New York on corruption and money laundering charges have sent shockwaves through the close-knit Syrian Jewish community there.
Federal investigators in New Jersey announced Thursday they had arrested more than 40 people, including public officials charged with corruption. Charges against others included international money laundering, selling counterfeit goods, and the black-market sale of human organs.
Rabbis
Acting US Attorney Ralph Marra Jr. speaks at a news conference with Newark division special agent in charge Weysan Dun (R), 23 Jul 2009, Newark, N.J.
In addition to three mayors, officials arrested five influential rabbis from New Jersey and the New York borough of Brooklyn.
“They used purported charities, entities supposedly set up to do good works, as vehicles for laundering millions of dollars in illicit funds. The rings were international in scope, connected to the city of Deal, New Jersey, Brooklyn, New York, Israel and Switzerland,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph J. Marra about the money-laundering scheme.
The rabbis are accused of using their congregations’ charitable organizations to launder about $3 million by passing money from alleged illicit activity through their charities’ bank accounts. The FBI said the rabbis then kept about 10 percent for themselves.
All of the rabbis come from the close-knit and wealthy Sephardic Jewish communities of southern New Jersey and Brooklyn – and the arrests have put the spotlight on a usually quiet community.
Rabbi Saul Kassin (C) leaves federal court in Newark, N.J., 23 Jul 2009
One of the rabbis arrested, Saul Kassin, is considered the leading cleric of the U.S. Sephardic community, comprised of families that emigrated mostly from the Middle East, Syria in particular, following the formation of the state of Israel in 1948.
Rabbi Kassin leads the largest Sephardic synagogue in the United States, Shaare Zion in Brooklyn, and has written books on Jewish law.
Members of the community have expressed shock and disbelief over the allegations against Rabbi Kassin. Many have been reluctant to speak publicly. One member of Shaare Zion, Ezra Kassin, told reporters he did not believe the charges.
He’s just a very honorable person. I can’t believe it, I don’t believe it. Whatever they want to say, it’s hogwash,” he said.
Authorities said an FBI “cooperating witness” helped federal investigators gather evidence in the case. Media reports said he was arrested in 2006 for bank fraud.
FBI agent Weysan Dun said the probe seeks to root out corruption in New Jersey, wherever it is found.
“This case is not about politics. It is certainly not about religion. It is about crime, corruption, arrogance. It is about a shocking betrayal of the public trust,” he said.
The FBI said the two-year probe is part of a wider investigation into political corruption and money laundering that started 10 years ago.
4
Jul
Britain has longed for a home-grown Wimbledon men’s singles champion for decades – but what do we know of the last man to have held this title?
If Andy Murray reaches the Wimbledon final on Sunday, he’ll do so wearing the famous logo of his sponsor – one Fred Perry.
Some might say an albatross would be a more appropriate emblem than the laurel leaf logo, such is the level of desperation among British fans for the Scot to emulate the 1930s legend.
Few people who have been following Murray’s progress can fail to know the name Fred Perry, but few would recognise his face. And his colourful and controversial life off the court matched his achievements on it.
According to The Last Champion, the first and recently released biography of the star, Perry dated some of the world’s most beautiful women, including Marlene Dietrich and Jean Harlow.
Author Jon Henderson says: “He was an extremely good looking, red-blooded lad. The girls liked him and he liked the girls, it went from there.
“One US columnist said ‘women fell for him like ninepins and when he went to Hollywood, male film stars went and sulked in Nevada’.”
The pipe-smoking player’s close friends also included Bette Davis and Clark Gable’s former lover Loretta Young, and each of his four wives were part of the “glitterati”.
On one occasion in Boston, Perry and a US tennis player scrambled down the outside of a hotel on sheets they had tied together, in order to drop in on two female players.
The high life he enjoyed in later years seemed a long way from his origins. Born in 1909 in Stockport to a local cotton spinner, Perry moved to Ealing in London aged nine when his politically-minded father became the national secretary of the Co-operative Party.
It was a move that gave Perry his first taste of tennis, on the courts of his family’s housing estate.
But it was a long way from the clipped lawns of Wimbledon’s All England Club and a sport dominated by public school boys – one he struggled to gain acceptance into, despite becoming world table tennis champion at 19.
“The fact he was an outsider helped rather than crushed his spirit, he used it to motivate himself,” says Mr Henderson. “When he was told he couldn’t do something, it made him more determined.”
Sleeveless sweater
He was once barred from entering a tournament because he didn’t go to a public school, so he turned to a fellow player to ask where they went, and when they replied “Repton School”, he turned back and brazenly told the official: “All right, I went to Repton”.
When he beat Australian Jack Crawford in his first Wimbledon final – Perry won three in total – a club official gave his bottle of champagne to the loser. Lying in a bath, Perry overheard the official saying Crawford was a “better man”.
Fred Perry and Bjorn Borg
Later, when he turned professional, an official from the International Lawn Tennis Club of Great Britain wrote to him saying he should never wear the club sweater again. Perry sent him a sleeve “as a present” to make his feelings known.
Disillusioned by the establishment, Perry headed to the classless climes of the United States. He took US citizenship not long afterwards and started making money on the tennis circuit in his adopted country. He was called up in 1942 and served in the US air force during the war.
Perry was pushed forward by his own confidence and single-mindedness and usually with a twinkle in his eye, Mr Henderson notes. His mastery of table tennis had come about teaching himself at a local YMCA and practising for hours against a kitchen table up against the wall.
He also trained with Arsenal Football Club during his amateur tennis days to focus on his fitness, a highly unusual move at a time when few players bothered to train in that way.
Perry would go on to become one of the world’s first truly international sportsmen, the first player to win the four major tennis titles. In all, he was an eight-time Grand Slam champion.
Britain’s most successful player was also unafraid to inflict “psychological warfare” on his opponents, something he himself called “surreptitious gamesmanship” later in life.
When playing in his second Wimbledon final against the famously fastidious Gottfried Von Cramm, Perry took the lining of his trouser pocket out because he knew it would drive his German opponent mad.
On another occasion in Australia he had his racket painted bright white to distract his opponent, and he would regularly jump over the net at the end of a match to show he wasn’t tired.
Perry launched his famous polo shirt at Wimbledon in 1952 and it was an immediate success. The laurel logo was based on the old Wimbledon symbol and unlike other logos it was stitched into the shirt. It became fashionable in the 1970s and has been a big seller ever since.
His clothes have ensured Perry’s cultural importance is immeasurably bigger than his sporting importance, says Ellis Cashmore, author of Celebrity/Culture.
“This guy has been rehabilitated over the years and he’s more popular today than he was in his own day. In a sense this is similar to Muhammad Ali, whom we think of as the all-conquering hero of the 20th Century.
“But look more deeply into his background and you’ll see that when he got the world championships and changed his name he was widely despised for affiliating with Nation of Islam, a sectarian group.”
Fred Perry’s name has been revived in a similar way, says Mr Cashmore. Tennis was elitist and not a major sport until television took an interest, which meant that he was never a popular hero in the same way footballers were.
Plus there was the controversy of him turning professional and taking American citizenship, he says. That has now been forgotten, mainly due to the paucity of great male tennis players since, but also thanks to the adoption of the Fred Perry clothing brand in popular culture.
“Over the years the British ineptitude at tennis has really exaggerated his importance. Fred Perry polo shirts were very popular in the 1970s when skinheads took to them. They were even abbreviated to “Freds”.
“But the people that wore these probably never knew Fred Perry the tennis player. And if you showed 20 people a picture of him, just his head and shoulders, none of them would know who he was.”
In recent weeks, bands like Blur, The Specials and Gwen Stefani have ensured that the Fred Perry brand is back in the mainstream.
So whether or not Murray ever consigns Perry to history by emulating his Wimbledon achievement, the laurel leaf will ensure his name lives on.
23
Jun
The rise of Hate 2.0
By Daniel Emery
Technology reporter, BBC News
The number of hate and terrorist websites has increased by a third in the past year, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
The Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights organisation put the figure at more than 8,000 in its 2008 report Hate 2.0. It said the presence of such sites "demeans and threatens African Americans, Jews, immigrants, gays and virtually every religious denomination".
And the number of so-called hate sites is growing fast, while the use of social networks to push controversial messages is also on the rise.
In May this year, Facebook became embroiled in a row after a number of Holocaust denial groups were set up on the site.
Critics said Facebook was propagating anti-Semitism, others said that free speech was a cornerstone of society and Facebook should keep its hands off.
At the time, Barry Schnitt, a spokesman for Facebook, said it should be "a place where controversial ideas can be discussed".
"The bottom line is that, of course, we abhor Nazi ideals and find Holocaust denial repulsive and ignorant," he said.
"However, we believe people have a right to discuss these ideas."
The Home Office says Don Black’s actions could “lead to inter-community violence in the UK”.
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A few days later, the site had closed two of the groups, Holocaust is a Holohoax and Based on the facts… there was no Holocaust. It said they had breached the firm’s terms of service.
But there are still plenty of other Holocaust denial groups on Facebook: Holocaust is a Myth, 6,000,000 for the TRUTH about the Holocaust, The problem of forged Holocaust photos, and Holocaust Deniers, to name just four.
Denial outlawed
In a visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp in June this year, President Barack Obama criticised Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had called the Holocaust a "great deception".
"To this day we know there are those who insist the Holocaust never happened, a denial of a fact or truth that is baseless, ignorant and hateful," Mr Obama said in a brief address.
Holocaust denial is illegal in 13 countries, including France, Germany and Israel. It was also a crime in Slovakia, although this law was repealed in May 2005.
The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom have all rejected Holocaust denial legislation.
In Europe, citizens are covered by the European Convention on Human Rights which states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression."
But it adds that governments can restrict free speech, among other reasons, in the interests of national security, to preserve public safety and for the prevention of disorder or crime.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the BBC that it was not a freedom of speech issue.
"Holocaust denial is a perfect example of how a hateful idea was incubated on the internet. It promotes hatred, it promotes violence and it’s a kind of precursor to genocide.
Some groups advocate direct action against Holocaust denial sites
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"It’s not the idea that needs to be scrubbed; it’s fact that the internet elevates crackpot theories to a level it doesn’t deserve.
"These sites aren’t about the discussion of ideas; they are about getting people to subscribe to the ideal of hate."
But speaking to the BBC, Douglas Murray, director of think tank The Centre for Social Cohesion, said that society should be able to accept any point of view, even if that view was proven to be false.
"You have to allow different opinions, even lies, as long as they don’t incite violence. Otherwise what is true becomes dogma and then becomes incapable of being defended," he said.
White power
In 1995 Don Black founded Stormfront – a white supremacist website seen by many as the internet’s first "major hate site", although it had existed as a bulletin board for a number of years prior to that.
In May he was one of 22 individuals excluded from the United Kingdom by the Home Office for "promoting serious criminal activity and fostering hatred that might lead to inter-community violence".
He told the BBC that – in America – people could say and think whatever they liked.
"We believe anyone has the right to discuss the issue [of Holocaust denial] without being censored and, in many cases in Europe, prosecuted and sent to jail.
"It goes beyond censorship on Facebook. We’re moving into a new dark age with an orthodoxy in which individuals hold the wrong opinion are prosecuted and in some cases, sent to jail.
"My getting banned from Britain – even though I haven’t even tried to visit Britain – is an example," he said.
While the views espoused by Mr Black and others may be offensive to many, in most countries they are perfectly legal.
Mr Murray holds a view that they should remain legal because "in a free society it isn’t hard to prove that their point of view is wrong".
Rabbi Cooper disagrees, saying that while you will never keep any idea off the internet, there was no obligation for private companies – such as Facebook, MySpace etc – to carry so-called hate groups; failing that the centre advocates more "direct action".
"We’ve gone from one problem group back in 1995, Stormfront, to over 10,000," he said.
Direct action
One group that does carry out direct action on occasion is the Jewish Internet Defense Force, a group that claims it "leads the fight against anti-Semitism and terrorism on the web". It is said that the JIDF has seized control of and deleted Facebook groups deemed to be anti-Semetic or anti-Israel.
In an e-mail exchange with the group’s spokesman, "David", the BBC asked why they took such issue with Holocaust denial.
"Holocaust denial is hate speech. It is an attempt by anti-Semites to make Jews appear to be liars and manipulators, those who accept the historical truth of the Holocaust to be dupes, absolve Nazis and their active and passive accomplices of guilt, and so rehabilitate anti-Semitic ideologies," he wrote.
Critics say the internet has enabled alleged anti-Semites to reach an audience of millions.
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"Facebook staff themselves seem very torn about these issues and wish to consider a lot of hateful ideologies as ‘legitimate political discourse’.
"However, if they are going to take down KKK (Ku Klux Klan) pages and pages which promote Islamic terrorism, then they should also take down hateful Holocaust denial pages and stop pushing the myth that they are for ‘free speech’."
He added the group would "do everything in our power" to convince Facebook to "do the right thing".
But Mr Murray said that the grounds for freedom of speech were already laid out.
"If someone thinks they are better because of the colour of their skin, their religion or where they were born, well it’s irrational and deeply hateful, but unless they say you should do violence, then I’m afraid we have to accept there are people who have unpleasant opinions."
Ghostbusters Breaks New Ground In… Jewish References?
By Stephen Totilo on June 23, 2009 at 7:00 AM
Video games arguably have not had their Citizen Kane. Less debatable is the absence of a video game Seinfeld or Mel Brooks movie. Enter Ghostbusters, the rare game with a Jewish joke.
A writer from the online magazine of Jewish news and culture, Tablet, reports delight at playing enough of the new Ghostbusters game to unlock an Achievement (or Trophy, it seems) called “Kosher.”
The Achievement is won by having your Ghostbuster use his or her proton pack on a honey-glazed ham that has been set up for a bar mitzvah in the hotel where Slimer is running amuck.
Tablet’s Liel Leibovitz writes: I froze in my tracks. It was time, I realised, to make a major decision about my identity. Was I a Jew first and a Ghostbuster second? Or was it the other way around? Do I catch the ghost? Or do I take care of the treyf? My heart beat fast. Then, suddenly, I knew just what I needed to do.
Leibovitz blasted that Ham and then got the Kosher Achievement.
The official text for that feat reads: “Remedy a dubious food choice to make the bar mitzvah as orthodox as it can be.” Honey-glaze ham, it should be known, is not kosher and therefore doesn’t belong at a bar mitzvah.
A Jewish joke would be unremarkable in other forms of entertainment. But in games, Jewishness is perhaps even more absent than homosexuality or Eskimos. Jewish people are seldom even mentioned in World War II games. Why that is is fodder for another post.
For now, put Ghostbusters in the same category as The Shivah, one of the few games that even mentions Jewish people or culture.
Should Retailers Sell Racist Hate Music?
As Barack Obama prepares to become our first African-American president, SPIN’s David Marchese weighs in on white power musicians.
By David Marchese 01.12.09 8:33 AM
Should Retailers Sell Racist Hate Music?
As Barack Obama prepares to become our first African-American president, SPIN’s David Marchese weighs in on white power musicians.
By David Marchese 01.12.09 8:33 AM
On January 20, when Barack Obama is sworn in, millions of Americans will appreciate the event as proof of racial progress, and deservedly so.
But in the course of reporting “Ugly Hate Machine,” the story I wrote about the availability of white power music online for SPIN’s January issue, I learned that racist Obama haters aren’t a media invention. They’re real, they’re angry, and they play shitty hardcore.
I got my first clue of this when one white power musician responded to my interview request with the phrase, “Eat a dick.”
That guy aside, I was surprised by how eagerly people like Jeff Schoep (head of the National Socialist Movement and its affiliated record label) would denounce Rage Against the Machine as “communists.” Or how calmly veteran English white power musician Ken McLellan explained that his call for a second Holocaust (e.g., “It’s our turn / They’ll burn”) was simply the equivalent of “pro-Black” rap lyrics.
Less surprising was how easy it is for these guys to sell their music. Basically, for a band like Grinded Nig to be prevented from selling an album called Freezer Full of Nigger Heads, its songs would have to feature explicit and specific exhortations to cause harm. So a lyric like this from Final War’s “Defenders of the Reich” — “Skinheads / Standing proud and true / Skinheads / We fight the Jew” — would be legal; “Let’s kill a Jew at 7:30 p.m. this Saturday night at Ray’s Bar” would not.
The general consensus among online retailers who stock white power bands like Brutal Attack and Skrewdriver is that they shouldn’t be in the position of making moral decisions about what consumers can and can’t buy. The argument goes that if they banned Final War’s “Land of the White,” then they’d also have to do the same for Ice T’s “Cop Killer.” And a common refrain among the white power advocates I spoke with was that it would be “un-American” censorship for retailers to refuse to stock their music.
But that’s not true. Freedom of speech guarantees the right to disseminate ideas. It doesn’t mean other people are obligated to help you. Wal-Mart, for example, has in the past chosen not to sell albums it deemed offensive. Retailers are copping out when they wash their hands of the moral implications behind the sale of their products.
I had an easier time with an idea offered up by CD Baby President Brian Felsen, who explained that it helps to think of the music industry as an economy of ideas as well one of goods and services. The thinking goes that in an economy of ideas, the best ones win out.
If that’s true, and I think it is (see: Obama), hateful music will lose. And it won’t be because of Jews, communists, or censorship. It will be because their ideas, and their music, are no good.
22
Jun
Racist Music Goes Digital
Where can one find the latest white-power band? iTunes, Amazon, and other online retailers.
By David Marchese 12.23.08 10:15 AM
Like any musician, Brutal Attack’s Ken McLellan wants to be heard. Only, what he wants people to hear are self-described “white power” anthems with lines like “This is the Final Solution / Our turn / They’ll burn.”
Unsurprisingly, McLellan, whose group has been labeled by the Anti-Defamation League as “one of the oldest hate bands in continuous existence,” has run into some obstacles. Most record stores don’t sell his music. Ones that do risk protest by activist groups like Turn It Down and the ARA (Anti-Racist Action), both of which target retailers that distribute white-power music. “Because stores wouldn’t carry us, selling records used to be laborious,” says McLellan, 44. “We relied on mail order. We relied on concerts.” Not anymore.
For $9.99, you can download Brutal Attack’s anti-immigrant, pro-white Tales of Glory from iTunes. It’s a buck cheaper on Amazon. A physical copy is yours for $16 on CD Baby. For McLellan and others like him, white-power music’s availability through mainstream online retailers holds the promise of a success immeasurable in money. “We’re far more interested in spreading our point of view,” explains Jeff Schoep, manager of NSM88 Records, which sells music online by bands like Grinded Nig and Inborn Hate. (Schoep is also the leader of the National Socialist Movement.) “If people can hear communist sympathizers like Rage Against the Machine on iTunes, then they should have the right to hear music that celebrates white culture. The Beastie Boys and other Jewish artists might support banning ideas, but we don’t. We support the American way.”
According to University of Dayton sociologist Paul Becker, who’s written about white-power music, the presence of bands like Brutal Attack, Skrewdriver, and Final War on high-profile music sites is no surprise. “White power follows societal trends,” he says. The real concern is accessibility. “In the past, someone interested in the music may not have wanted to go into a store looking for it.” Now it’s a click away.
A legal click. “The United States isn’t as strict about censoring hate speech as some other countries,” explains New York University law professor Amy Adler. “Unless a song says, ‘We are going to hurt these people, at this time, on this day,’ it’s probably going to be okay.”
But for Turn It Down’s Nora Flanagan, morality, not legality, is the issue. “Companies could choose not to sell this stuff ,” she says. “Instead, they hide behind the First Amendment. Refusing to make money from racism isn’t censorship; it’s the right thing.” Flanagan points to MySpace, which removes racially off ensive pages from the site, as an example of commendable behavior.
While CD Baby has donated to charities and nonprofits portions of its proceeds from albums it calls “troubling,” neither the company nor Amazon plans to limit its sales of possibly offensive music. (iTunes, which often stocks this music via third-party digital distribution, declined comment.) According to spokesperson Patti Smyth, Amazon “doesn’t feel it should be deciding what’s right for consumers. That’s a slippery slope that we don’t want to be on.” Similarly, CD Baby president Brian Felsen cautions against overreaction: “This is still a micro-niche we’re talking about. It’s competing against a huge diversity of voices.”
McLellan, though, thinks his music’s subculture status is due to change. “Being sold in mainstream places shows that white power isn’t so taboo anymore,” he says. “Attitudes are changing.” Of course, recent election results suggest being taboo isn’t nearly as much a problem for McLellan as is being, well, wrong.
I think all National Socialists in Germany know where this new law will lead. I think it’s a great idea to block out the child pornography websites, but this technology will surely be applied to our website content eventually. Not only will this law not make a dent in the child porn underground, it will give people a false sense of protection. Instead of these knee-jerk reactions, they should increase the penalties for anyone convicted of the crimes!
The bill, due to be voted on later Thursday, will give the government the right to censor internet sites that distribute child pornography. Internet service providers will be required to restrict access to such sites and surfers trying to call up web pages on the government’s watch list will encounter an online stop sign warning them of the consequences of going further.
The proposed law championed by Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who belongs to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democrats, has proven controversial because it empowers the federal criminal police (BKA) to decide which sites are dangerous and which aren’t. The list of sites would also remain secret.
Critics of the plan say it gives the government too much power and won’t really address the problem of child pornography. Von der Leyen dismissed those accusations in a speech before parliament Thursday.
“It’s cynical to speak to censorship in relation to this case, then the rape of children will be accessible in the mass media,” she said in her speech. Restricting access to the sites is simply a measure that only has a “preventative character,” she said, that won’t affect ordinary internet users.
But some in the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the centre-left junior coalition partner of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), are uncomfortable with the proposed law. Hessian SPD head Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel said the bill will do nothing to stop the circulation of child porn and will “make the party unelectable for the digital generation,” in a letter he wrote to the SPD’s leadership.
Obtained by the website of Der Spiegel magazine, the letter lambasted the proposal.
“The citizens’ fears that this mechanism will be misused, is, in light of the many demands to expand the number of sites to close, highly justifiable. Independent of the intentions of the lawmakers is the danger that courts will apply an already-completed censorship structure to other crimes,” continued Schäfer-Gümbel.
Peter Schaar, the government’s privacy commissioner who would oversee the BKA’s efforts to close child porn sites, was also critical of the measure.
“It has nothing to do with my responsibilities to ensure the freedom of information and electronic privacy,” Schaar said in an interview with the daily Berliner Zeitung.
The opposition parties in parliament have all expressed their resistance to the plan, meaning that the CDU needs the support of the SPD and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union for the measure to pass.
Passing the legislation late Thursday evening as part of a marathon session, the lower house the Bundestag made gun owners subject to random checks not requiring any specific suspicion of wrongdoing.
They will also face heavier penalties should it be found they are not keeping their firearms according to regulations. Those owning guns illegally have until the end of the year to surrender them without consequence under a limited amnesty.
The new law also aims to have a national firearm registry by 2012.
The changes were sparked by the Winnenden school massacre in March, when 17-year-old Tim Kretschmar murdered 15 people with a gun taken from his father’s bedroom.
The tighter gun controls are widely supported in Germany and the opposition criticized the new law for not going far enough.