Once again I found some valuable stuff on youtube. This doesn’t happen that often. This video is absolutely off topic but in my opinion is sums up the most important rules one should keep in mind.

This video of Amory Lovings at TED gives hope about the future use of oil. The speech is targeted at the US oil politics and the automotive industry and contains several innovative thoughts worth listening.

If found this video is remake of the widely known “shift happens” video. The data visualization is better and it’s slower and better to follow.

It’s impressive every time I watch it. Earth and global politics in 10 years will be quite different from what we know today. The question is, what will be yours and mine part in the change?

Today some German politics for all the English speaking readers out there who can’t read our newspapers.

On 9. Nov. 2008 the great German coalition parties CDU and SPD have decided that all digital communication in Germany has to be wiretapped. The action will begin in early 2008. Yes, you got it – this is their latest idea to fight terrorism and organized crime.

All mobile communication, emails, internet traffic will be logged and stored for the duration of 6 months. No judge is necessary to order the attack on your privacy – everyone is suspicious to the government by default. In my opinion this is a very dangerous move and a substantial paradigm shift. Usually I’m not very paranoid, but this scares me off. The logged information will be who’s talking to whom, when the communication took place and your locatation if you’re using a cellphone. The content of the communication will not be logged.

At first, the information should only be available for our intelligence service, the police prosecution and foreign intelligence services. The law was an idea of the European parliament, but the German version of the law is reaching much farer than necessary. I’m sure there are better and more efficient ways to fight terrorism.

This week, the Federal Council of Germany came up with their latest wish: Their latest proposal is that the copyright holders should have access to the data to identify illegal file sharers more easily! As an IT professional I see all the ‘wonderful things’ that can be done with data of that quality.

I have a problem with that. There’s a reason, why only the police has the possibility to raid your house and not any passer-by when he thinks my radio is too loud. And scanning though my communication logs is quite the same as breaking in my door and looking into my bookshelfs.

Don’t get me wrong – online piracy is a crime and it has to be punished. But in my opinion is it definitely wrong to share this very sensitive information with the industry.

Here are some links (only in German):

• http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,515865,00.html
• http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/99505
• http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
• http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/88449