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The German anonymization program An.On, developed by the University of Dresden and the regional data protection authority of Schleswig Holstein (ULD), is enabling its users to surf anonymously via a Java-webproxy. The program has been heavily criticized by the Minister of Justice of the German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein Uwe Döring, even though An.On is still being financially supported by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.

Considering that combating terrorism has become a much more important objective than respecting privacy and the right to anonymity on the Internet, Mr. Doring said that "The spending of taxpayers' money on a project that makes it possible for terrorists and criminals of all kinds to commit crimes without being caught, cannot be countenanced. In these days of the War on Terror it was essential that the authorities obtain information fast. Such programs are more or less designed to foil authorities' attempts to act swiftly" He then asked that limits should be set to the programme and said that the programme should not be available free of charge on the Internet.

After the 2003 legal action against An.On when a German district court confirmed the legality of such a service, this new statement came as a new attempt from the law enforcement authorities to stop this project although supported by an independent state agency.

The ULD has promptly reacted and dismissed the claims of Mr Doring, explaining that "The project was carried out in close cooperation with the prosecuting authorities of both the German federal states and the federal government. If there was reasonable suspicion of a crime and if the German Code of Criminal Procedure provided for such an approach in the case in question, it was quite possible to register the IP addresses of computers."

The Internet content was also the main target of another initiative of the German officials. The Federal Minister of the Interior and the German police trade union have recently announced their intention to closer monitor the Internet content in order to identify the terrorist activities and illegal propaganda on the web. To achieve that, they considered that they needed more experts "with appropriate language skills" in order "to intensify the monitoring of the Internet", but they didn't give details on the type of Internet monitoring taken into consideration.

ULD: "Hands off AN.ON" (only in German, 22.08.2006)
http://www.datenschutz.de/news/detail/?nid=1911

Minister of Justice criticizes anonymization service (23.08.2006)
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/77162

Federal minister and GdP call for more stringent monitoring of Web content (24.08.2006)
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/77200

An.On Service
http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/win/download_en.html

EDRI-gram : Police Raids German Anonymiser (10.10.2003)
http://archive.edri.org/cgi-bin/index?id=000100000109