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Comment by luckylion | Hacker News Reader

> Germany strongly respects individual privacy

Citation needed. Germany is a mess on that topic. On the one hand, we have ridiculous things like "police stations can't have cameras monitoring the sidewalk next to them because of privacy concerns", on the other hand we're obligated by law to inform the government when we move (with heavy fines if you do not comply immediately), and the data will be shared with our state media so they can collect their its-not-a-tax-media-tax, and political parties so they can send you ads (at least you can reject this, but it's opt-out, not opt-in).

As with many things in Germany, many things about privacy are missing the forest for the trees. We'll enforce with furious diligence things that are irrelevant, while you can't buy SIM cards anonymously and they're pushing for laws that might outlaw VPN services, there are regular pushes for removing "anonymity" from the internet etc.

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I feel this is a big difference between the US and Europe in many cases with the difference being the US system is scared to actually face the questions. It's all conventions and traditions that has become culture and unchangeable, with some arcane bench of judges making modern interpretations on 1700's thoughts, sometimes for the better, sometimes separate but equal. Ridiculous to trust an institution like that to make progress in a society.

This leading to privacy by mostly convention, but then everyone builds systems to circumvent it in inefficient ways. I.e. SSN and similar.

Instead of simply acknowledging that the government is going to get that information no matter what, and it is a requirement to actually govern a modern society. Which then forces you to have to face the discussion regarding what it entails and limit it's uses.

> Ridiculous to trust an institution like that to make progress in a society.

Imho "making progress" is not the task of any court. Their job is to apply the laws to cases; want to make progress towards some goal? Change the laws, change the constitution.

> Which then forces you to have to face the discussion regarding what it entails and limit it's uses.

Which, of course, isn't happening. We have accepted (as if anybody ever asked us) that it's required to govern a "modern society", and now we have the police tapping whatever info source they can get away with. The courts will, in some cases at least, rule that they may not (but we don't have "fruit of the poisonous tree", so if they illegally search your house, they may still use whatever they find against you), but they're normalizing the overreach.

And it's not a political-side-thing either. The conservatives want to use it to fight islamic terrorists and the last three remaining communist revolutionaries, the progressives want to use it to fight racism, sexism and conservatives. Our main stream media (which is much more bundled up than in the US or UK) will generally urge for respecting privacy, but will also generally falter in any crisis and get in line. There are very few private NGOs that are holding the state's feet to the fire.

Setting things up so you can "govern a modern society" efficiently isn't all good. I'd take an inefficient administration that keeps its nose out of my business over an efficient administration any day.

Don't forget the copyright infringement honeypots whose operators have a streamlined access to ISPs to obtain identities of the alleged infringers.

Also the legal obligation to have every website specify the legal street address of the entity behind it as well as the full name of the "managing director" in charge.

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