November 9th, in 18 years from freedom to mass surveillance
Eric | November 9, 2007
Today is November 9th, an important date for all the Germans – for two reasons. The first reason is a very happy one. 18 years ago, the borders of Eastern Germany were opened and for the first time since decades people were allowed to travel freely between both parts of Germany. I got a little nostalgic today and watched a few videos on youtube from back then. It’s just such a moving moment for me. I was only nine years old when it happened but I still remember the day because it changed so much in everybody’s life. From one day to another, millions of people regained their freedom, not only to travel but also to express themselves and their opinion without any fear of pursuit.
It seems fairly ironic that today, on the very same day, only 18 years later, the German government decided on a law that gives up one of the most basic constituent rights of all Germans: Every person needs to be treated as innocent unless proven otherwise. Today, the CDU/SPD led government decided to implement a country-wide data retention policy. Very soon, German internet providers have to store in advance every connection data (phone and internet) and email headers of any internet account hosted by that provider. This policy makes anybody a suspect – without any allegation whatsoever. Today, the government claims that they will only make use of the data for first class criminal offenses and felonies like a concrete threat of terrorism. The new law however says otherwise: In theory one could even get access to this data if the allegation is as insignificant as for instance insulting someboy over the phone.
How is all this possible? Well, of course there was September 11th, which was for Al Quaida an early success because it hit so many people but is now a much larger success more than ever because slowly all “free countries” are abandoning all the rules they were built on. Freedom used to be the most valuable good in Germany. Today total freedom has become impossible. For a large part of that one has to blame the European Union as well. Laws like the one filed today are actually strictly against the German constitution. However, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, whose job it would be to avoid such contradictions, has simply no power any more when it comes to “threat through terrorism”. This is all ruled by the European Federal Court nowadays, and apparently they don’t give a damn about Germany’s constitutional rights… Some years ago I really liked the idea of the European Union, mostly because it would allow the different cultures of European people to come together more easily. However what the politicians made out of it has been a total disaster so far. Sometimes I really wished one could just rewind…
Anyway, so that’s the new state of the art. If you think it can hardly get any worse, wait for the next months, when Schaeuble is going to push his new “Remote Forensic Software” through the parliament yet again – a trojan horse that may be deployed secretly on any computer residing in Germany, to search for and inspect files, but who says that it cannot also alter files? (In fact, it has to to be functional.) I still have the slight hope that at least some politicians will stand up against this but after today my hope is slowly falling apart… (btw, I still applaude the oppositional parties who all voted against the new law) I am just happy that he can still write this blog entry. Who knows for how much longer that’s going to be possible…
