I disagree with your comparison to criminals. Gathering evidence for a case can be done at any place relevant to a case. It is sad to see that they confiscated materials owned by a witness, but within the bounds of "reason": they are a related party in said case.
Please note: I do still, from what I read here, find this excessive use of power. A normal warrant with a request for data could very well have been enough, but that's guessing what kind of evidence the police expected to find.
Witnesses can be raided under german law, there are some reasons for it, esp. when it's suspected the witness is hiding evidence.
However, the raid is still out of bounds in certain other aspects (though I suspect the "take everything" the police pulled is more related to the officers having no idea what a server is vs a desktop computer. It wouldn't be the first time police officers simply don't know so they take it all)
Search and seizure does seem like a bizarre way of being a 'witness'. I suppose this is a response to Zwiebelfreunde being expected to not reveal the information they seek.
Is there a link somewhere to a summary of what happened here? A lot of context is missing that is only coming from the comments in bits and pieces. For instance the only thing I was able to gather from the comments is that there was some potential police overreach where someone who collects donations was raided because the recipient is involved in some illegal/terroristic bomb related activity. Seems like a lot of nuance is missing here.
Zwiebelfreunde is an organization associated with the CCC that do Tor related stuff. They collect donations for RiseUp, an US based mail/web/… hoster. One site RiseUp hosts calls for action against a far right political party. Next to various info, it has instructions on how to build color bombs and other solely property damage stuff.
This was enough justification for the bavarian police to raid Zwiebelfreunde and various other hacker spaces and persons linked to them[1]. To illustrate how overreaching the police was: When the Zwiebelfreunde's hacker space was raided they found this 3d printed model of a bomb[0], which of course is just a plastic toy. However, they accused the people in hacker space of planning a bombing, so they could seize more stuff.
I tried that when I got raided and had all my stuff taken. The only thing that happened was the officer that suggested the warrant as his first measure got barred from promotions for a year, maybe, they weren't so clear about specifics.
Consider donating. Zwiebelfreunde needs to pay their lawyers. Note that if you donate via IBAN, your account data will likely be in the hands of the police. At least when the next raid happens.
Could you help me understand why it's a problem that your account data would be in the hands of the police?
I would have thought the reason for the raid was to collect physical evidence and that whatever the German equivalent to FinCEN[1] is could just pull anyone's financial records up anytime.
Is it simply fear of being targeted? It's not a crime to donate is it?
Payments with Monero use would have solved and prevented the donor data from being leaked.
I'm still a little distressed at how few web-anything providers accept Monero.
Privacy focused email services and cloud service providers should be using it
but what we really have is protonmail only accepting credit cards and nobody seems to see the irony in that.
occassionally in the past I have found email and cloud service providers accepting Bitcoin, and I shapeshifted Monero over TOR to pay for the invoice. Nobody knows who I am and they received the bitcoin they were looking for.
But that was YEARS ago, 2015? 2016? Seems the possibilities have gotten worse for now
As always with great (/s) solutions proposed on HN, it's neither simple, nor are there any great incentives for providers or is there consumer demand. The average protonmail user doesn't care and/or know why using a credit card could be a problem.
Not sure about monero specifically but it's not so easy to find a crypto payment provider for more 'critical' services. And hand rolling one is not exactly a option for anyone.
So, in an effort to fight off/investigate a “far right” political organization (it doesn’t matter whether they are or aren’t), the police are using some scary tactics that one might expect from an extreme political party in power. Great work there. Way to be the change you want to see in the world.
You mixed it up, the bavarian police isn't fighting off/investigating AfD. Zwiebelfreunde (Friends of Onion) forwarded donations (!) from Germany into the US based RiseUp. Latter hosts a website calling for protests against the far right AfD.
Merkel has been decent in the past, but she shouldn't have won again. It was getting obvious in her last years before the last election that she's also become too corrupt/power has gone to her head.
Germans won't learn from their past. Watching "the lives of others" doesn't mean anything to them. "Security" forces always want to shadow/spy on anyong and anything "just in case". This is how Democracies fail. This is how humanity reverts to the age of "securitat".
German has one of the most elaborate spying-on-its-own-citizens dragnet around the world. This sting operations are just to bully/frighten anyone who dares not to bow their heads.
This crosses into nationalistic flamewar. We don't want any of that here, and ban accounts that do it repeatedly, so please don't post like this again.
When a story is ongoing, moderators downweight follow-ups unless and until they contain significant new information. Otherwise the discussions tend to be repetitive, reacting only to the original event which has already been discussed, and more likely to attract unsubstantive and flamewar-style comments, as well as complaints from other users about the same story reappearing too many times.
This approach is something we figured out after the Great Snowden Avalanche of 2013, and it has turned out to be a good balance that serves HN well.
Tails is a Debian Live CD that automatically proxies everything through Tor.
AfD is a group that is essentially the Nazi Party 2.0.
The German police raided the host of Torservers.net in an effort to hunt down people protesting against AfD, and it seems to have been conducted as some sort of scare tactic (which would be unfortunate if Germany is actually helping a modern Nazi party).
They are trying to stop the AfD party convention, the blog describes which Autobahns members are likely to take and threatening Hotels if they allow AfD-Members. This kind of stuff had happened at every prior party convention of the AfD. The city actually organized a peaceful protest.
> They are the new Nazi Party
Some of their leaders have trivialized Nazi Crimes in the past.
Imo stating "AfD is Nazi party 2.0" is very oversimplified. I agree there are some Nazi supporters there but most are people with anti illegal immigration views which doesn't mean they are Nazis.
[+] [-] leke|7 years ago|reply
Wow, so the witnesses are treated like criminals now.
[+] [-] mattashii|7 years ago|reply
Please note: I do still, from what I read here, find this excessive use of power. A normal warrant with a request for data could very well have been enough, but that's guessing what kind of evidence the police expected to find.
[+] [-] tscs37|7 years ago|reply
However, the raid is still out of bounds in certain other aspects (though I suspect the "take everything" the police pulled is more related to the officers having no idea what a server is vs a desktop computer. It wouldn't be the first time police officers simply don't know so they take it all)
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] thomasfedb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SOLAR_FIELDS|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xashor|7 years ago|reply
This was enough justification for the bavarian police to raid Zwiebelfreunde and various other hacker spaces and persons linked to them[1]. To illustrate how overreaching the police was: When the Zwiebelfreunde's hacker space was raided they found this 3d printed model of a bomb[0], which of course is just a plastic toy. However, they accused the people in hacker space of planning a bombing, so they could seize more stuff.
[0] https://www.thueringen24.de/img/incoming/crop214771927/17338...
[1] https://blog.torservers.net/20180704/coordinated-raids-of-zw...
[+] [-] Chickenosaurus|7 years ago|reply
Treating witnesses in such a manner is reprehensible and abusive.
[+] [-] gant|7 years ago|reply
I tried that when I got raided and had all my stuff taken. The only thing that happened was the officer that suggested the warrant as his first measure got barred from promotions for a year, maybe, they weren't so clear about specifics.
[+] [-] xashor|7 years ago|reply
Zwiebelfreunde: https://www.torservers.net/donate.html
[+] [-] paws|7 years ago|reply
I would have thought the reason for the raid was to collect physical evidence and that whatever the German equivalent to FinCEN[1] is could just pull anyone's financial records up anytime.
Is it simply fear of being targeted? It's not a crime to donate is it?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Crimes_Enforcement_N...
[+] [-] dannyw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deltateam|7 years ago|reply
I'm still a little distressed at how few web-anything providers accept Monero.
Privacy focused email services and cloud service providers should be using it
but what we really have is protonmail only accepting credit cards and nobody seems to see the irony in that.
occassionally in the past I have found email and cloud service providers accepting Bitcoin, and I shapeshifted Monero over TOR to pay for the invoice. Nobody knows who I am and they received the bitcoin they were looking for.
But that was YEARS ago, 2015? 2016? Seems the possibilities have gotten worse for now
[+] [-] gant|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] herbst|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thehnguy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xashor|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HenryBemis|7 years ago|reply
German has one of the most elaborate spying-on-its-own-citizens dragnet around the world. This sting operations are just to bully/frighten anyone who dares not to bow their heads.
[+] [-] dang|7 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] skrause|7 years ago|reply
Citation needed. The amount of surveillance in Germany is much lower than e.g. the USA or UK.
[+] [-] musage|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] claydavisss|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] plattegrond|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rasengan|7 years ago|reply
It has more upvotes in less time than any other post on the front page. The top post has 35 upvotes in 2 hours.
This post is falling off the front page with 81 upvotes in less than an hour.
This is completely sketch.
[+] [-] dang|7 years ago|reply
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Zwiebelfreunde%20points%3E30&s...
When a story is ongoing, moderators downweight follow-ups unless and until they contain significant new information. Otherwise the discussions tend to be repetitive, reacting only to the original event which has already been discussed, and more likely to attract unsubstantive and flamewar-style comments, as well as complaints from other users about the same story reappearing too many times.
This approach is something we figured out after the Great Snowden Avalanche of 2013, and it has turned out to be a good balance that serves HN well.
[+] [-] rasengan|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DiabloD3|7 years ago|reply
AfD is a group that is essentially the Nazi Party 2.0.
The German police raided the host of Torservers.net in an effort to hunt down people protesting against AfD, and it seems to have been conducted as some sort of scare tactic (which would be unfortunate if Germany is actually helping a modern Nazi party).
More information here: https://blog.torservers.net/20180704/coordinated-raids-of-zw...
[+] [-] DalasNoin|7 years ago|reply
https://augsburgfuerkrawalltouristen.noblogs.org/
> They are hunting down people protesting AfD
They are trying to stop the AfD party convention, the blog describes which Autobahns members are likely to take and threatening Hotels if they allow AfD-Members. This kind of stuff had happened at every prior party convention of the AfD. The city actually organized a peaceful protest.
> They are the new Nazi Party
Some of their leaders have trivialized Nazi Crimes in the past.
[+] [-] Daemon6|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onetimemanytime|7 years ago|reply
Need to define "protest". Maybe they called for Neo-Nazis to be killed or hurt. In that case, the state has the monopoly of violence.