moria.de
Michael's home page
Random thoughts
German gouvernment policy - "1984" is reality
Somehow, it's surprising, how "1984" really looks like, now that fiction has come true. Seen superficially, it's like the mostly free country Germany once used to be: Mow the lawn, talk to the neighbours, go to the supermarket, and you wouldn't recognize the difference. If you expected the colours of the world to turn grey, you were wrong.
Yet, this is no longer a free country. Use the highway and cameras collect images of your car every few dozen miles - violating the data protection act that requires not to collect data without reason. Building this expensive system was never justified by the purpose of collecting highway fees for trucks, as shown by effective and way cheaper systems employed in other countries. It's as expensive, because national surveillance is.
You wouldn't know if your privacy was violated. You have to be under suspicion for the gouvernment to break the banker's discretion and check your account, but that's no restriction really. Lawful investigation of phone calls and e-mails requires a suspicion qualified by a catalog, and this catalog is being extended all the time; reasons far from being as serious as the all-reasoning national security. Officially, you have to be informed afterward, but there is no mechanism to verify that really happens - for neither violation of your privacy right.
Viewed as important progress in the eighties, by now it is obvious that the German data protection act (BDSG) is a joke. If the previous examples were too radical, here is something from daily life: Our constitution asks for freedom of religion and separation of church and gouvernment. Yet, when registering your place of residence, you have to tell your religion for no reason, as this data is not related to church taxes. You have the right to object against the data collected by this authority being passed to various third parties, but even if you do: The data will be passed to the central register for TV and radio fees (GEZ) anyway, an organisation periodically criticised by various data protection officials, and ignoring the criticism.
The principle of presumed innocence was fundamental to the German constitution - emphasis on the past tense: Leading German politicians claimed that "it can't be that crime has to happen first until criminals can be pursued". Such claims were not followed by legal action, despite violating the constitution, and worse suggestions of introducing laws that allow to create special jails for suspects without ever seeing a court, or even killing them, weren't either. Do you assume that your privacy is protected until you are under suspicion? Right, and you are: By the end of 2008, connection data of all e-mails and phone calls routed through the large systems of telephone and internet providers will be archived for Gouvernment access.
In the eighties, the gouvernment tried to count all German citizens and collect various data on them, effectively building a central register and assigning each citizen a unique identification, presumbly for statistical purposes. It failed miserably, reasoned by the German constitution. Decades later, after merging with the very non-democratic part of eastern Germany, the same reason no longer holds and in 2008, you are reduced to an 11-digit number, presumbly for tax purposes this time, but the process of introducing this number let it slip to other authorities already, violating instantly what was claimed. I expect the same reasons to be used within short time to merge other data than tax affairs, building the very same central registry other totalitarian gouvernments employed, too.
The news on TV changed into an instrument of propaganda. Just one random example: Check the official facts on the latest castor transports of nuclear waste. You will find three things: A few hundred people demonstrating within the small town Dannenberg, peacefully. A few dozen people climbing on the trains and blocking the rails. And a few hundred police officers trying to keep them from doing so. You don't see a few ten thousand police officers controlling the entire county like an area of war, yet they are there. Given rails of 40 km, there was enough police to secure the rails every few meters. An impressive picture, yet you don't see that, because it did not happen. Political demonstrations located far away from the rails were forbidden on a global basis and fought with strong violence, keeping political prisoners in cages to avoid them appearing on TV. Obviously, this is not related to securing the transport. Forbidding the demonstrations was periodically claimed illegal by courts afterward, of course too late.
You may be used to Russia being accused to disobey human rights. Better stay silent from now on, or get used to Germany being accused for just the same, and correctly so, as has happened e.g. due to the incidents of the G-8 meeting in 2007 that showed the gouvernment is no longer afraid of having political prisoners, forbidding them to consult a lawyer and mistreating them - again in cages.
When I was a child, it used to be so easy to think people should have done something against Hitler acting the way he did, and everybody not fighting in the underground must had been a Nazi, at least in some way, too. There could not have been answers to children asking "what did you do in 1933".
Once, we thought corruption was a mostly foreign problem, but Transparency International can not be ignored. Once, we thought exhibiting the political principles of the nazi regime including the omnipresent surveillance, as repeated in the GDR (former eastern Germany), could never again happen in Germany, but I am afraid the border has already been crossed, with help from all major political parties.
Imagine 30 years from now, what would you answer a child that asks "what did you do in 2008"? History tells that violence never led to peace, and you can not defend a good constitution by violating it. Leaving the country? Many Germans do, more than ever before, although until now mostly for economical reasons, and I am sure they will miss the country and the culture eventually. If you can't let go of that, you will never feel at home. That leaves what most people did in 1933: Nothing, and silently hope for better times. Nothing else, really? In fact, there is something. Support education. Support independent thinking. Make sure the next generation asks at all.
Am I depressive, is it all bad? No, not at all. I am proud of the country, the people, the culture, and not ashamed to say that. I like the classical German values, like honesty, appreciating good and hard work, thoroughness and precision, but the current state of the country is a damned shame, and the gouvernments and their policies since the nineties are frightening and threatening - certainly doubleplusungood.