Category: General

Bundesgesetzblatt as Open Source

https://offenegesetze.de

Christian Endt: Aktivisten stellen alle Bundesgesetzblätter ins Netz, Süddeutsche Zeitung 10.12.2018

Each law contains a double fiction. Once it creates a conceivable state that is called linguistically, but must first be enforced by the threat and real enforcement of sanctions. On the other hand, the proclamation of the law contains the fiction that the law has already become known to the citizen. This fiction is called “irrefutable presumption” from a legal point of view, however, and instead of actual knowledge, the possibility of knowledge is sufficient. Otherwise law could not function at all as a self-referential system. It is the basis of the validity of the law to which the citizen has to adhere after the proclamation.
It is therefore all the more absurd to hide the promulgation gazettes behind a payment barrier – as happened with the Bundesgesetzblatt (German Federal Law Gazette) and also with some of the law and ordinance gazettes of the federal states of Germany. “Hiding” also means offering only a “read-only version” that cannot be printed out. One could even ask the question whether a proper proclamation has taken place.
The Act on Copyright and Related Rights (Copyright Act) (Gesetz über Urheberrecht und verwandte Schutzrechte (Urheberrechtsgesetz)) has taken this into account:
“§ 5 Official works: (1) Laws, ordinances, official decrees and announcements as well as decisions and officially drafted guidelines on decisions enjoy no copyright protection.”
However, the Bundesanzeiger-Verlag takes the view that its published laws, i.e. pdf files, whose contents are supplied by the state, enjoy database protection. However, this absurd assertion contains the threatening potential of a possible and uncertain court case, which many administrative lawyers would like to avoid in the interests of a smooth career.
The information specialist, however, has always been aware that a parliamentary or legal information system also includes free access to both promulgation bulletins and consolidated laws. The EU has therefore been making all public legal documents freely and electronically accessible for some time now. But the Parlamentsspiegel, a documentation system that wanted to make the parliamentary initiatives of the federal states – apart from the parliamentary databases there – available across the board, also scanned the Federal Law Gazette and the promulgation gazettes of the federal states and made them available online. However, this service was discontinued in 2014. It was not the information specialist, but the administrative lawyer as the objector who cut off the information for the citizen.
The company Makrolog has created a commercial product for Germany with its Recht für Deutschland service – also in accordance with the Copyright Act through its own digitalisation of the promulgation sheets.
The Open Knowledge Foundation Germany now offers all editions of the Federal Law Gazette freely accessible with OffeneGesetze.de. A full-text search complements the display by volumes and numbers. This grateful private initiative shows how miserable it still is in terms of digitisation with state initiative. Digitisation does not just start with artificial intelligence. Also in the matter of consolidated law, the private site www.buzer.de shows how conveniently, up-to-date and freely accessible one can present legal information: The text of the law, earlier versions with the possibility of creating synopses, reference to the official justification, citation in regulations, current changes, pending changes, search for regulations, law and full text, updating with web widget, feed, mail – it couldn’t be better. On the other hand, the Gesetze im Internet of the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, which are not the official version even there, and also dejure.org clearly fall off.
As far as the official version is concerned, the “Act supplementing Article 120 and amending Article 121 of the Constitution of the State of Hesse” : “The Journal of Laws and Decrees may be kept in electronic form in accordance with a law” adopted in the referendums on the amendment of the Constitution of Hesse on 28 October 2018 may be a step in the right direction.

Digitization: Colossus on clay feet?

At its core, digitization is based on the fact that documents are stored and processed digitally “document-proof”, i.e. 1:1, i.e. the original document is replaced “legally secure” by a digital copy.
1. Modification of the document by pattern matching
In 2013, computer scientist David Kriesel discovered that XEROX uses Pattern Matching & Substitution to change JBIG2 numbers in the original document (not by subsequent OCR, but by the compression process itself). This change was not detected over 8 years, so it could have affected hundreds of millions of documents (if they contained numerical data) from other companies using the same compression method. What happens to these documents is unclear.
The Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI) (German Federal Office for Information Security) has taken into account the BSI standard BSI TR-03138 Replacing Scanning (RESISCAN) – BSI Technical Guideline 03138 Replacing Scanning (BSI-Standard BSI TR-03138 Ersetzendes Scannen (RESISCAN) – BSI Technische Richtlinie 03138 Ersetzendes Scannen ) p. 23:
“Methods which use the so-called “Symbol Coding” for image compression SHOULD NOT be used”.
and footnote 29:
“If the “Symbol Coding” is inaccurate or incorrectly implemented, there is a danger that the scan result will be semantically different from the original (e.g. by swapping characters). Even with correct implementation, the necessary legal certainty cannot be guaranteed because the content and images cannot be determined with certainty”.
BSI Technical Guideline 03138 Annex V Exemplary procedural instruction p. 8 footnote 2 (BSI Technische Richtlinie 03138 Anlage V Exemplarische Verfahrensanweisung S. 8 Fussnote 2): “In particular, image compression methods based on “Pattern Matching & Substitution” or “Soft Pattern Matching”, as used for example in the JBIG2 format in accordance with ISO/IEC 14492, would be inadmissible.”
The problem lies in the wording “in particular”. The compression methods used in the various scanning procedures of the companies are black boxes, and an end user is overwhelmed with the control.
The procedures developed by the BSI guarantee the unchangeability of the document in the workflow. But what about the internal consistency?

In a court decision, the administrative court in Wiesbaden (Verwaltungsgericht Wiesbaden) commented on the scanning process: VG Wiesbaden, judgement of 26.09.2014,
6 K 691/14.WI.A ,Scanning procedure for electronic file keeping
“Insofar as the Foreigners Authority refers to the BSI Technical Guideline 03138 – Replacing Scanning, it fails to recognise that documents in official files have a meaning and documentary character. In this respect, the Federal Police not only ensure that copies of identity documents are legible when they are made, but also certify them in such a way that an official certifies that the copy corresponds to the original. In this respect, as stipulated in the technical guideline of the BSI, in the case of a substitute scan, each scanned document must be checked for its quality and signed by the person scanning it with a qualified mark of conformity.”
This is important because the focus is shifted from the standard to be certified, which concentrates on the workflow of the work process, to the appearance of the result (visual inspection, “Augenschein”).
This may seem absurd at first, since this can remain only a legal fiction with the necessary detail accuracy going down to the number and the mass scan procedures. However, the appearance  (visual inspection, “Augenschein”)reappears in the court case – there as an individual case examination.

It would therefore be necessary to disclose and license the compression procedures. Each compression would have to provide automated procedures for consistency control.

2. Enrichment of the document
Color laser scanners/printers add a color printer mark (Machine Identification Code, tracking dots) to documents to identify the machine and ultimately the creator of the copy. Whether this also happens with black-and-white scanners with other patterns has not yet been proven, but it is probable.
However, this document is then no longer document authentic because information elements have been added: it no longer corresponds 1:1 to the original.
All enrichment elements would have to be disclosed. When documents are included in document management systems, they would have to be removed automatically.

3. Conversion
Now one could say that most documents are received digitally anyway, the problem would have been solved soon. But even in a simple conversion of a Word document into pfd, the modification and creation date, author, origin and structure of the document are lost, metadata that can be important and that you might have to be able to search for. Not to mention the archiving of e-mails with document attachments, which are converted and archived in isolation, but whose context is lost.
All conversion programs would have to disclose their parameters and ensure that metadata and formatting elements are searchably transferred into the new data format.

With the german law for the promotion of the electronic administration Gesetz zur Förderung der elektronischen Verwaltung (E-Government-Gesetz – EGovG) as well as the government program “Digital Administration 2020” a time window 2020 was set for the digitization.

Let’s summarise: There are still no clear rules governing the basic principles of the digitisation process.

“You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.”

Daniel Chapter 2, Verse 31

The Web: Does it suck us dry – or does it soak us up?

Maurizio Ferrari’s Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Turin approaches the questions “What is the Web” and “What is our task on the Web? Neue Zürcher Zeitung of July 1, 2018, “Das Web: Saugt es uns aus – oder saugt es uns auf?” Neue Zürcher Zeitung vom 1.7.2018 outlining six dilemmas. Dilemma “means a situation that offers two possibilities of decision, both of which lead to an undesirable result”.
1. virtual or real?
The web as virtualization of the world simultaneously creates social reality as a productive medium and thus real: “There is nothing more real than the web, and that is precisely where its power comes from.
2. communication or recording?
“The web is not a passive means of communication, but an active recording tool, an archive and a system capable of constructing social reality and mobilising individual and collective intentionality.”
3.construction or emergence?
The web is not intentionally constructed, nor is it a collective intelligence, but rather a result of the interplay of the most diverse elements, “obscure and unpredictable”.
4. knowledge or mobilization?
The web is not a collective intelligence, but a “mobilization medium” that constantly invites us to act. “It has nothing to do with any kind of freedom. On the contrary, it nourishes voluntary submission and generates a microphysics of power whose limits are not yet known.” The web shows that “we are mobilized and subservient animals, ready to act on command without understanding the reason for our actions”.
5 Alienation or Revelation?
The web does not alienate man, but shows his true nature: “Man reveals himself as animals in need of technology and always ready to exchange imagined freedom for real security and real consolation.
6) Submission or emancipation?
The web reveals our helplessness, but it can also be an instrument of practical reason, with which technology can be used for a new beginning of culture, for practical reason: “It describes what becomes possible through freedom – freedom, which in turn is a technique, the most difficult of all techniques”.

An interesting analysis especially regarding recording and submission problems. However, in the conclusion itself there is a dilemma: the new beginning is to arise from submission, the instrument of practical reason from helplessness.

Internet as object of knowledge

At the beginning, the question arises whether the object of knowledge, the communication technology context of the Internet, the analysis and the results are epistemologically influenced or even determined. Or even stronger: (more…)