22 May 2011
German police seize political party servers
Yesterday police seized the servers of Germany's Pirate Party.
Apparently this is because the Pirate Party hosted a document collaboration tool (EtherPad, forerunner of the collaboration tools in Google Docs) - on one of their servers. Someone posted an SSL key in the (public) document, which was then used by the hacker group Anonymous to attack the website of the world's largest utility, French company EDF. EtherPad was only running on one of the servers but nevertheless police took all servers including their mail and other important infrastructure. This was in response to a request of the French police, and the German police were not legally required to comply. In fact Germany has some of the best privacy protections in the world, which makes it more shocking.Rick Falkvinge, head of the Swedish Pirate Party, wrote:Doing this to a democratic party — Germany’s sixth largest, actually — two days before an election is nothing short of a democratic sabotage. This shows why we must introduce understanding of information policy into the justice system all across Europe. A computer is not just something you can carry away; doing so has consequences. It is not a wrench, and yet the law (and police) treat it like any tool, just like a wrench.
Not terribly surprising that the website of the German police has been down since not long after the news was announced... The Pirate Party has distanced itself from the attacks.
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