We Germans have quite an expertise in building walls. Today our parliament enacted a law to establish mandatory infrastructure to filter the internet. The law is targeted at child pornography, but industry and politicians already announced intentions to use the infrastructure to regulate access to online gambling, filesharing and more. Even if the law currently excludes these scenarios, it is doubtful if use in civil lawsuits can be excluded at all, not to mention that Germany has a history of expanding these kind of laws, like e.g. with traffic monitoring data collected for highway tolls.

Once again, our future and our digital rights are in the hands of a supreme court. A worrying development that this happens so often in so many countries, lately. What happens if this last bastion of civil rights fails this time, or the next time?

If it happens this time, Germany will join the ranks of countries controlling internet access this summer or autumn. This development marks a whole generation being alienated by the polictial establishment. It marks the utter disrespect for a petition against this law that gathered 135.000 supporters in just a few weeks. It marks a debate that discrimnated citizens that care about and understand the internet, as supporters of child porn or belittled them as “community”. Therefore I’m sad, disappointed and angry.

So, what’s next?

There’s no escape, this is a global development. Protests are being organized for next Saturday. But in the end I fear this is going to be our 10 foot high wall and we need to get used to bringing 11 foot ladders everywhere we want to go.

If you need to catch up with the developments in Germany, netzpolitik.org has a good summary.