Those whacky Germans are at it again

Last year a number of critical German governmental Web sites were struck down by Denial of Service attacks, and since then the Interior Minister, Otto Schily, has had a bright idea. Ding, goes Otto's light bulb, ding! If script kiddies can strike at

Last year a number of critical German governmental Web sites were struck down by Denial of Service attacks, and since then the Interior Minister, Otto Schily, has had a bright idea. Ding, goes Otto's light bulb, ding! If script kiddies can strike at government sites, than those same methods can be used to take down sites that the government finds questionable - like offshore Nazi propaganda.

Such sites are not only tolerated, but actually protected in countries like the United States of America. Countries such as Germany, which has declared illegal such content within its own borders, are more or less powerless; nazis simply take their hate speech offshore and continue to market it to impressionable German youth. Cue Otto's bright idea, and suddenly a government department set up last year to defend government sites finds itself being re-tasked as an online strike force designed to take down foreign hosted Web sites.

Of course, such hacking is still illegal in Germany at the moment, but considering that the German Supreme Court ruled rather nebulously about a week ago that German laws still affect people publishing Nazi material regardless of their geographic location, things might be changing very soon.
The German Federal Government