Archive 7. April 2011

BBC News - Net giants challenge French data law. Great idea from France, mandatory storage of plaintext passwords, so they can be handed over to any random authority. The Federal Interior Friedrich will probably like that, as he is so keen on all data ... (Discussions on reddit claim that bbc misrepresented the situation, it's only about storing account data even after closing the account for one year - if a service does not do this, it will be held liable for activities of non-identifiable users afterwards - so not quite what you could read in the BBC article)

Why the VISA warning file is a mess at Metronaut.de – Big Berlin Bullshit Blog. The VISA warning file affects me directly and personally. My fiancée is Russian, her family still lives in Russia, and we will continue to make and want to make visits. I can already say goodbye to any illusion of data protection for myself and Juliana. Of course, a state has the right to protect itself from abuse, but general suspicion solely based on the use of legal possibilities is always wrong. And the VISA warning file is nothing more than the general suspicion of citizens simply because they appear once in the context of a visa application. This has nothing to do with the rule of law anymore.