Tag Archives: Police state

What's the Dog-Ear?

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Because my anglophone readers will wonder: The dog-ear in the upper-right corner is a protest against a new data-retention law our government passed on November 9th: Basically, they decided that all communication connection data must be retained for six months. This includes phones, mobiles, email, text messages, and so on. And in the case of mobile phones, they will also log the location. This is being done regardless of suspicions of crime. Germany is now a surveillance state.

A lot of people will say: **But I have nothing to hide!** However, this is incorrect. **Everybody** has **something** to hide. Obviously, most people do not commit crimes, but is that really all there is in one’s life? Maybe someone cheated on his husband or wife, or likes to smoke pot. What about watching porn movies – or calling phone sex lines? A lot of people do that, and few of them would admit to it in public. Using your company phone to make private calls? It’s all documented now. Maybe you like to appear as a rough-tough macho in public, but enjoy folk music in private. Maybe you got really drunk at your last birthday party and made a scene – something you may not wish to become publicly known.

And then there are all the possibilities of misunderstandings, when these huge databases will be searched and used.

Finally, we should have no illusions that this will be the last law of this kind. Banking confidentiality is already history. Our biometric data – photos, fingerprints – are being entered in government databases. The police has started to automatically ID cars. And our interior minister Schäuble has a whole bag full of other ideas. This must not happen.

It saddens me to no end that Germany, the one nation that you would think should know better than this, has implemented this horrible law. There are only two hopes now; our President may refuse to sign it, or the superior court could stop the law. And the dog-ear links to just that initiative.

I hope this clears things up.

We have not learned from history

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Dear World,

the German government has gone crazy. More specifically, the interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble has gone out of control. For months he has been making more and more demands for stricter and stricter laws to fight the “threat of terrorism”. Our government wants to:

* **Use [evidence obtained by torture](http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OID5045872_REF1,00.html)**: While he says that German law enforcement may not torture or encourage others to torture, it would “not be responsible” not to use information obtained by such means.
* **[Build databases about potential terrorists](http://www.sueddeutsche.de/deutschland/artikel/633/83550/)** which are to include such data as religion or professional training.
* **Expand video surveillance**: “At train stations, airports, big streets and places video surveillance is feasible and expedient”.
* Use the **army as a security force inside the country**. This was planned for the soccer world cup but not implemented until the G8 meeting at Heiligendamm.
* **[Shoot down hijacked airplanes](http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OID6256592_TYP6_THE_NAV_REF1_BAB,00.html)** – which was actually determined to be illegal by the constitutional court. This doesn’t stop them from saying “we’ll do it anyway”.
* **[Make conspiracy a crime](http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/92400)** and ban so-called “Gefährdern” (dangerous individuals) from using Internet and mobile phones. He also considers the **[killing of suspects](http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/92400)** to be in no violation with basic law: At most it would be a “legal problem”.
* **[Search private PCs via a government trojan horse](http://nrrd.de/dasbuch/hadez/1984_zeitgeist_german_chancellor_merkel_wants_push_tough_anti_terror_legislation_online_seize_)** – in secret, of course, without any oversight.
* **Retain all connection logs of personal communications** – telephone calls, text messages, email and so on – for six months, regardless of any suspicions of criminal activity. This law was passed on November 9th, 2007, but has yet to be ratified by the Bundesrat and signed by our president.
* Introduce **biometric passports and ID cards**, which include fingerprints saved on an RFID chips, and keep all the **biometric data in a central database**. Biometric passports have been implemented as of Niovember 2007; the central database and the biometric ID cards are still planned.

Germany is **the** country which should really know better than this. Of all the people in the world, we should be the ones who learned from history. Unfortunately, we haven’t: Not only do our politicians kick our fundamental laws with their feet, the reaction of the German people is to shrug their shoulders and to vote for them again. “I have nothing to hide”, they say and look the other way.

I now know what it must have felt like, back in the early 30s. Of course we won’t get another Nazi regime. Death camps are really bad for PR. Instead we’ll get something more similar to the East German regime: A surveillance and police state. But unlike East Germany, where the system was dictated by the Russians, we’re doing it to ourselves this time. And similar to the Nazi regime, I am pretty sure everybody will claim “we didn’t know anything” afterwards.

Normally, I’d hope for the free, western world to come to our aid. Failing that, I’d pack my things and move out of the country. But what free western world? Those who should be the shining beacon of freedom and democracy are doing even worse things to their own countries. It is a sad state of affairs when China is a shining ray of hope – while China is a dictatorship, conditions there are improving. Everybody else seems to be hell-bent on making things as bad as possible as quickly as feasible.