Press Release from SUMA-EV, 11.12.2013
MetaGer, Germany’s most popular meta search engine, launches English-language version at metager.net
Edward Snowden, a contract employee at the National Security Agency (NSA), made headlines after highlighting that the US Patriot Act is not just on paper somewhere, but is very actively used: It grants US authorities unrestricted access to US Internet servers. Although its existence has been publicly known since the adoption of the Patriot Act in 2001, the extent of its use had not fully been recognised until Snowden brought it to light and illustrated the implications of the US government’s extensive cyber surveillance program.
Following Snowden’s public release, a number of online search engines were quick to clarify that their systems do not store users’ IP addresses, in an attempt to highlight the safe and private user data protecting nature of their services. However, despite their statements being true, most of these Internet companies host at least part of their servers in the US, meaning that they are liable to the Patriot Act and US law, and so at the hands of US authorities.
Consequently, no such protected privacy can be offered.
All of this has driven SUMA-EV to implement an English-language version of the most popular German meta search engine MetaGer.de, which evolved from the Leibniz University of Hannover: http://metager.net
Others just talk – we act!
MetaGer is non-commercial, run by the German NGO ‘SUMA-EV – Association for Free Access to Knowledge’. It relies little on advertising as a source of income, instead being financed largely by donations and SUMA-EV membership fees.
In true MetaGer.de fashion, searches carried out at metager.net are treated as anonymous from an early stage; IP addresses are neither recorded nor stored, and user information is not passed on to other search engines. MetaGer has established Cooperations with most of the
global Internet search engines, news search provided by Internet news portal One News Page being the latest addition. MetaGer does not operate any servers outside of Germany and so falls exclusively under the privacy of the famously tough German data protection laws.
MetaGer is recommended as the first choice for a search engine by the German “Foundation for the Protection of Privacy”, which was founded by the Federal Republic of Germany.
Media contact:
MetaGer-Team
SUMA-EV Secretariat:
Roeselerstr. 3, 30159 Hannover
Germany
Tel: 0049-511-34000070
e-mail: office@suma-ev.de
Managing Director and member of the Board:
Dr. Wolfgang Sander-Beuermann
Roeselerstr. 3, 30159 Hannover
Germany
Tel: 0049-511-34000071
e-mail: wsb@suma-ev.de
About SUMA-EV:
SUMA is an abbreviation of the German word for search engine (SUchMAschine). SUMA-EV is a registered non-profit association and has been committed to the free access to knowledge since 2004: uncensored, unfiltered, and without commercial or government control. Among other services, SUMA-EV operates the most popular German meta search engine MetaGer and promotes alternatives to the global Internet corporations. Since 2007 SUMA-EV has hosted the SUMA Awards, at which projects that are judged to be outstanding for the future of digital knowledge are honoured.
Links:
http://metager.net
http://suma-ev.de
http://suma-awards.de
Sources:
DJV: http://bit.ly/1fhA3TJ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act
http://suma-ev.de/en/index.html
http://www.onenewspage.com/
http://stiftungdatenschutz.org/praxistipps/
More press releases from SUMA-EV (mostly in German):
https://suma-ev.de/presse/index.html
