I do not live in Germany, but this seems pretty messed up. I grabbed this from the linux master race subreddit, and have never heard of this site before, so I hope it's trustworthy.
Would love to hear thoughts if any Germans read this, or just anyone for that matter.
Thanks for the article, it's a really interesting read (especially for someone who lives in Europe like me; I don't live in Germany fortunately).
It's like they want to make the orwellian idea of state and control of the citizens. I hope this law doesen't pass.
Time to leave this place...
...and shoot that incompetent asshole of a minister!
Maiziere has no idea what he is takling about half the time, the other half, he just produces bullshit.
I really hope the next election gets some younger politicians with at least some ideas of the gears of the world into the Bundestag. I can´t stand this shit show anylonger!
Some might not know this, but these proposed changes are actually to make TISA (some TTIP supplement) legal by German laws. Regarding TISA: That thing might flat out kill Open-Source.
I find it somewhat surprising that Germany has any politicians that support spying on its own citizens. Most of them are of an age to remember when half the country was spied on all the time, and nearly all of them will have parents or grand-parents who can remember what a certain German government did with the information it was able to collect on the wider population...
I kind of understand it in the UK, the recent memories are somewhat different - no foreign occupation, democratic governments and a need for emergency powers to deal with home-grown terrorism.
I disagree about the UK. We have although a different perspective similar memories, we were in the same war to stop the same person.
We knew that kind of spying was wrong we scrapped mandatory id after the war because of its implications.
I find the change in law that guy is planning strange. It's part of the data protection act.. even in the UK you have a right to know what's being held on you (with the obvious government exemptions currently). I still need to read the article, I gave a feeling there's more to it that bust a blanket ban on being allowed to know what data is collected on you.
Yes, I agree, but disagree. Britain's war-time and post-war experience was vastly different to that of Germany. The UK was on the winning side so wartime emergency powers, and later emergency powers connected to The Troubles means that many in the general population are easily swayed by the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" perspective. In Germany the prewar and war-time population were well-aware of people disappearing; unless you also wanted to be given a one-way ticket to a 'work-camp' you'd say nothing. Shortly following that experience half the country who lived in the GDR/DDR were then under the watchful eye of the Stasi - often quoted as being worse than the Gestapo, in-that they infiltrated everyday life so far.
Many of Germany's current leaders personally experienced life under the Stasi and some fought against it. For them to pass laws that make spying on peoples personal lives possible, is far more shocking that a British Secretary-of-State or PM doing the same thing. British politicians are ignorant of the fact that the status-quo can rapidly shift - for these reasons I tell my wife & children that they should ignore the boxes on government/council paper-work that asks you to list your race/ethnic/religious background.
EDITED for clarity.
The problem in Germany is that many institutions are most heavily infiltrated by foreign agencies and spies.
The German secret service is well-known for being little more than a CIA/NSA affiliate. Most German political parties are heavily infiltrated since WWII.
People always think of the Nazi regime when they think of the disappearance of freedom and human rights in Germany, but since then, there has been the DDR regime, and in West-Germany, there was the entire era of the "German Winter", where the police and secret service overstepped their legal capacities greatly because the US wanted to have a ruthless response in place to the like of Rote Armee Faktion, which obviously had direct support from Soviet Russia. It's well known that members of socialist revolutionary cells were tortured and even murdered in jail, what's less well-known is that Germany was a hefty police state until the 90's, and that for instance one of the founders of the Chaos Computer Club was murdered in that kind of spirit.
Since WWII, Germany has always had to concede political dependency to other nations. That is not different today. That is also why Germany hasn't been invaded or bombed yet since WWII.
Edit: also in Germany, people are accustomed to the idea that nothing ever is what it seems: people don't think they're safe when there is no law that permits mass spying... think of this: the German liberal party, FDP, which is the party that has always fought for free market implementation, was actually always run by Russian spies. Since the demise of Soviet Russia, that party has become almost irrelevant.
as a german citizen this bad news but also very old news. sadly in the last 20 years, it got worse every 4 years. I can't really say anything particular because I'm getting so fucking angry every time I think about this .... man.
Merkel is a cunt, de maiziere is a cunt, pretty much everybody in the SPD/CSU/CDU are barely holding it together. when you watch the livestream of the Bundestag its either the worst thing to watch while sober and/or 100% satiric comedy.
I don't really get mad over politics any more lol. Germany is still better than some other countries to live in, and politics are so over my head that I don't actually want to waste energy in trying to make a difference, because the big issues, the big politics, those are things that are completely scheduled out by the powers that be, those are things citizens will never ever be allowed to have any decisive power.
There is still something that we can all do to protect our rights to a certain extent, and that is to use open source software, to not use products and services that don't respect our rights.
It's my honest opinion that the citizens are not at fault for voting for the wrong people, because to be honest, politicians are always the wrong people. It is my opinion that people are however at fault for being suckered into using privacy reducing services and human rights violating software... that happened long before any law that abolished those rights, and to be honest... people complain about politics reducing some of their privacy rights, but at the same time they willingly concede much more privacy rights voluntarily to known crooked foreign corporations... yeah... pfffffff