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Comment by rjzzleep | Hacker News Reader

A bunch of European countries have this. Some for several decades. Germany has had it for 3 and while the law states that its punishment is up to one year of prison, states seem to have in general reduced the sentence to 500-1500 Euros. [1]

Not really arguing pro or against, but I do find there to be a bit of hypocrisy in the media coverage.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-mask_law

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In germany we have also a awesome law, that forbids "passive weapons" on demonstration. Yes, sounds good. Peaceful demonstrators should not have weapons.

Only that "passive weapons" means all kinds of protections, like helmets, thick gloves and gas masks. So when he police hits you, how dare you to try to protect your head or face.

It is a bit disheartening to see how history is about to set itself up for a repeat of its posture in pre-world war times. If you want to know how it is possible for humans to make the same mistakes throughout history, look no further than this.

Well, yeah. You choose to wear a helmet because you expect to get hit. If you didn't expect to get hit, you wouldn't feel the need to wear a helmet.

This is a de-escalation technique that functions well in advance of a potentially violent situation.

Edit: for people downvoting, I would love to read your opinions too! The down arrow isn’t a disagreement button. It’s supposed to indicate a person isn’t contributing to the conversation. Otherwise you’re just enforcing groupthink.

good point.

I wear my seatbelt everyday when I drive my car because I'm expecting a car accident. Strangely enough, it has yet to happen and I have yet to need my seatbelt. What a waste!

I think I'll just stop wearing it.

There’s an element of intent which your sarcastic response doesn’t really account for. But yes clearly everyone who wears a helmet to a protest does not intend to start a physical attack.

That doesn’t mean it’s not an effective preventative measure and de-escalating technique.

Police standards and the populace's standards of what constitutes legal gathering and protest are often quite different, as evidenced by the unnecessarily harsh deployments against protesters as seen in Hong Kong and less recently in the US. More often than not, police forces make the first move in otherwise legitimate protests either with direct oppression, false-flag tactics, or unnecessary displays of force (or potential force).

A helmet is entirely necessary in peaceful protests because the authorities resisting the demands of the protest do not play fair.

If you assume an all peaceful, restraint police who use violence only as a last mean, then yes.

But in reality, there have been plenty of peaceful protesters beaten to hospital or caught up in tear gas clouds, just because the police decided to dissolve the demonstration with force, because a handful of protestors were aggressive (sometimes not even that).

But and this is a big but! The german police in general is actually quite restraint and uses deescalation tactics. But sadly it is getting worse again.

This is interesting and I find myself on the other side now for the moment.

What about the love parade in Duisburg, and the use of kettling as a standard police tactic which resulted in deaths? I remember reading that this was intended to escalate so as to more quickly resolve issues. Time may have blurred my memory though so perhaps I’m remembering incorrectly.

Ok, well lets say the german police is restraint in comparison to other police forces. At least, thats what I heard lots of times. Also what I experienced so far. But I have also seen the BFEs in action ..

A simpler deescalation technique is to not misappropriate public funds to pay armed thugs to attack protests in the first place.

Absolutely. For all our taxes, it’s borderline criminal how underfunded Polizei education and training is.

Not only are you wrong on both counts, you're also breaking the site guidelines while doing it.

Paul Graham:

I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

News Guidelines:

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

While I applaud your reference to the guidelines, I find it hard to believe that asking people to write instead of clicking was the intent of that request. Nor do I particularly agree with PG on his sentiment about downvoting.

So please feel free to contribute to the conversation! Why do you disagree with my sentiment regarding thee banning of helmets at protests being a de-escalation technique?

How dare I wear my hard hat to work at a construction site! It must mean I'm an unsafe worker, cause I expect to get hit, right?

> "passive weapons" means all kinds of protections

Please provide some reference, that sounds absurd.

Well, it's true. Here [1] is the corresponding law, here [2] is wikipedia with some expamples what counts as passive weapons (plastic film, basecaps reinforced with plastic, gasmasks, knee pads, … ) and here [3] is a case where a paramedic was sentenced for wearing a helmet.

[1] https://dejure.org/gesetze/VersG/17a.html

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzwaffe

[3] www.labournet.de/interventionen/grundrechte/grundrechte-all/demonstrationsrecht/schutz-durch-selbstschutz-demonstrationssanitaeter-wurde-wegen-vermummung-und-passivbewaffnung-verurteilt/

To [3] it is worth to add, that the civil paramedics usualy come from and are part of the (leftwing) scene, where the demonstrants are coming from, so they are not exatly like the Red Cross. So are viewed by the police as enemies as well. And that the person was freed of all charges in the next instance.

(still, it is outrageous, that he was charged in the first place)

"that sounds absurd."

I know, thats why I prefer to read the news via The Onion or similar newspapers ...

Wow. I am curious, what is the German term for that? That phrase sounds so wrong that I am wonder whether it maybe simply does not translate all that well into English. Weapons are for offense not defense!

The phrase is a literal translation. I suspect they choose this wording to misslead, to be able to implement the law.

Just like they passed a new law in recent times, that increased the punishments, when firefighters and medics etc. gets attacked during work. Sounds good as well, I mean, what asshole would attack medics and firefighters?!?

The thing is just, that the law also applied to policemen. So when you are in a demonstration, peaceful and are about to get hit by the police who decided to end the demonstration with force, and your reflexes push back - then you can get prosecuted with a law that was advertised to protect firefighters.

I see. Yeah, we also have a lot of laws / government terminology for things that are named in similar ways / for similar reasons unfortunately.

> what is the German term for that?

"Schutzwaffen", i.e. protective weapons

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzwaffe

This includes the thing boxers put in their mouth to protect their teeth... let that sink in. Carrying something like that to a protest already is a crime, maximum sentence is 1 year.

edit: just saw an earlier comment with more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21158544

> This includes the thing boxers put in their mouth to protect their teeth

FYI, the English word is "Mouthguard"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouthguard

My idea for partially circumventing this is to carry a motorcycle helmet in my hands and to only put it on if the situation escalates. For other body parts, I would use protective motorcycle clothing. A gas mask is small enough for carrying in a backpack and if you find yourself in a situation where you need to put it on, I think worrying about the legalities of wearing a gas mask will be of a pretty low priority.

fun fact: it's illegal to wear a ski mask if a demonstration is planned that day. Otherwise it is of no concern.

It goes so well with "how dare you defend yourself" against legally-sanctioned assault and kidnapping, aka obstruction of justice or interference with police business.

Another anecdote:

Greta Thunberg visited the Hambacher Forst in germany, which is occupied by activist to prevent it from being chopped down for the coal underneath. And some of the activists were masked.. so that provoked a shitstorm by media and politicians, because "nobody in our awesome country has to hide their face, unless they have to hide something". Which is somewhat hypocrite and telling, as the same politicians and journalists have no problem, posing with heavily armed and masked police forces

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w2DUmtmMax8/XVPmlWjt4yI/AAAAAAAA0...

(from satire magazin Postillon:

https://www.der-postillon.com/2019/08/hambacher-horst.html)

It would be schizophrenic though for the state to sanction physical force, but on the other hand allow defense against it?

From the theory of the monopoly of violence a clash with the police (or Army) shouldn’t be a fair fight.

The thing is, there are often protests, where a majority wants to protest peaceful, but a handful of radicals want to escalate which they sometimes manage.

Now when you only wanted to demonstrate, but are now in the middle of a clash with various things flying around, it should not be illegal, to protect your head.

I was also surprised that Europe didn't feature more prominently in the article. I believe Denmark has had anti masks law for something like 2 decades now.

It's hard to sit on our high horse in Europe on this one.

Interesting that laws against masks started popping up after governments got their hands on automated face tracking software.

You mean... cameras

With a fully automated system it’s much easier to track someone’s movements than it is if you had people watching cameras. The spread of facial recognition software is a differentiator worth pointing out.

It seems most of these weren't passed until after 2010, whereas CCTV was widespread since at least the 80's.

Isn't CCTV bad at identifying faces though?

CCTV just means the video feed is not broadcast publicly. Cameras can be as good as you're willing to pay.

Off the shelf CCTV is beyond terrible for most purposes concordant with this conspiracy theory.

In a jurisdiction I know police always come to unrest etc with a van equipped with HR cameras. Those are then manually sifted post event to identify persons

The German law has existed at least as long as whatever face tracking software was state-of-the-art on AMIGA 500.

There's no hypocrisy, but this article is skimming on the most important piece of information. This ban is enacted as a law using emergency powers (which grants the CE almost dictatorial powers), meaning it bypassed the deliberations of the legislature, and worse, enacted, nay, decreed at a time when the government in HK has next to zero support except the police force. This is not only unjust and immoral, but just plain stupid, since this will only serve to further escalate the situation. It's simply amazing that 4 months since the first reading of the extradition bill, no one has died as a direct result of confrontation yet. But this decree may change everything.

In most if not all of these countries, the police have proper, clearly marked identification on them. Not so in Hong Kong.

...identification that they remove or lose before knocking some protesters over the head. Obviously China and HK are pathological cases, but police correctness in Europe also seems to be overrated.

There was a bloodbath in Italy at the G8 summit. UK, France and Germany are better, but there's still cases of police brutality.

Look, did the police in Italy go right next to your house and tear gassed the whole residential area?

That's my personal experience last night.

I was just outside my home, not at a protest. And now I can't even put on respirators to protect myself.

The police in Philadelphia bombed an entire neighborhood.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing

In most, if not all, of these countries' security forces have plain clothes police officers.

Do the plain clothes wear face masks?

the plain clothes is the mask!

Germany does not have clearly marked identification for police officers at protests. It's an issue that is being discussed, and I believe they should have, but you're mistaken in believing that it is a thing.

Yes they have. The question is just if it has to be their real name, or if a number (which can be tracked back to the person by authorities) is enough.

Some states in Germany have (very!) recently started to implement it, but it's not a general thing.

Here's a good overview: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennzeichnungspflicht_f%C3%BCr...

The Uk police have had numbers for a very long time not sure if it doesn't go back to the peel days.

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