A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Is that a fact? That's news to me. You might not hear as much "unloading" in Germany simply because it's not yet as polarized as it is in the US but certainly there wouldn't be any repercussions as far as I'm aware. What exactly are you talking about?
Furthermore speech that is essentially opinion or critique is a defense against defamation that can cause the case to be dismissed before trial. 1st Amendment protections from the US Constitution.
If you’re careful to word what you’re saying as a statement of your opinion rather than an assertion of fact, then a defendant has little chance at winning a defamation lawsuit from what I understand.
Lastly, if what you’re saying is factually true then that offers an absolute defense against a defamation lawsuit; you would need to be able to prove that however.
There are some country-wide precedents that SCOTUS has ruled on; otherwise laws are set by individual states from what I understand.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law
There will be limits of what you can say to police before you also run afoul of laws against public nuisance. Just as you would not want a random person to shout epithets and slurs at you and follow you down the sidewalk talking trash at you, which may be a misdemeanor crime in some jurisdictions (like disturbing the peace), the same is likely true for police if you were to interact with them in that way.
I cannot imagine anyone being prosecuted for publishing criticism about the performance/behavior of individual officers during a police encounter after the fact, or publishing criticism of the police department in their city generally.
While interacting with police, if you are being detained, beyond providing any information you are required to provide by law, which differs by state and circumstance (such as if driving a motor vehicle) - know your rights and obligations - it is wise to say “I invoke my fifth amendment right to remain silent” in response to any questions; as a suspect there are only downsides to having a conversation with police as anything you say can be used against you in court. During an interaction with police is not a wise time for criticism of police in general, the department in particular, or the specific officers at the scene.
Key word to look for is 'Beleidigung'.
The bigger cases are usually to be found here: https://www.rechtsindex.de/urteile/beleidigung
Keep in mind that the list above is not 100% relevant for these examples. You can also just find articles if you google 'beleidigung' and 'verurteilt'.
Ask any Strafrechtsanwalt in your area and they'll confirm this. This is not even a controversial thing at all.
Insults are a misdemeanor crime and you can and will be fined several thousand dollars for calling your local cop an asshole or whoreson, for instance. (Which is better than the US where you will likely get molested, possibly arrested, and might get shot for the unwritten crime of 'contempt of cop'.)
Yes, it is. Insults and defamation are pretty common law-problems in Germany, because of which most people are rather careful in what they say about specific people. Basically, if they have power or money, don't trigger them, because the one paying will likely be you at the end. Though, Online this again a bit different, as many people have not much awareness about legal situation there, and law enforcement was a bit lax. This changed with new laws recently.
The only reason why it's rarely a topic is because people just don't care enough to start talking about it.
Some non-german person posted a picture of Angela Merkel and highlighted how incredible she is and humble and all the good work she did and how she should be an example for their own (the posters) country and other politicians in the world.
The result: Lots of people agreed with the overall sentiment and applauded her achievements... well, besides German LinkedIn users, many went full "Reddit" (on LinkedIn)... Many "not nice words were written" by people using their professional profile - it was surreal to see.
Although this ruling was widely criticized, because there is some societal understanding that politicians are also humans who need some level of protection, and that unrestricted hate speech always has the potential to transform into physical violence sooner or later.
As I wrote somewhere else, if you think the first amendment gives you the possibility to say what you want to whom you want, without any consequences, go to the nearest policeman, start insulting him and his family. I am sure there will not be a problem, and he’ll sit through it for hours, if you just make clear you’re exercising your first amendment rights.
It happened because you allowed your politicians to pass laws that regulate allowable speech, as many other countries have done. I’m sure it was controversial, but most likely also had a considerable amount of support from people who didn’t like the kinds of speech they thought this would criminalize. A distinctive feature of this case is that it has created a public controversy, but if this has happened you can be sure many people have already fallen victim to this injustice without drawing any sympathy from the general public. Even if there is no prosecution, the police have already succeeded in intimidating the victim, their children, and disrupting their life. This type of speech criminalization will always lead to this type of outcome. It is not a mistake, or an outlier, it is an unavoidable consequence of these policies.
I’m sure the values of free speech are important to Germans, but much like in the UK or any number of other of places, those values haven’t been preserved in legislation, and you’ve let yourself slowly compromise them away over a number of decades.
This is 100% completely wrong. There's §185 and that applies to all citizens. That's the law, there's no such thing as Beamtenbeleidigung or other stuff that gets quotes often. We have to work on educating people that insulting the police is no different than insulting your neighbor. Such a law just doesn't exist and it never did.
It's an extreme case, but not an outlier. Especially since new laws and regulations for online-activity became active recently.
The police is not taking insults seriously, especially not being called "dick". On Twitter some semi-famous people stated that they routinely go to the police because people threaten their lives but the police won't do anything.
One interesting fact that the politician is not mentioning is that he as a Senator des Innern (senator of interior of the state of Hamburg) can actually order the attorney general of their state to investigate something. This has been criticized by law experts multiple times in the past because it makes the judiciary branch not strictly independent from the legislative branch in Germany. No attorney general will deny a request of their boss and will instead push hard for a judge (who are independent) to sign a search warrant. Plus the Landgericht Hamburg (lowest court in Hamburg) has made some very, very questionable rulings in the past related to technology.
Everything here has written abuse of power all over it. It's a systemic failure that is being exploited and Andy Grote tries way too hard to deny it.
Source: https://www.heise.de/news/Du-bist-so-1-Pimmel-Hamburgs-Innen...
No it doesn't. There's absolutely nothing in there that even hints at the fact that the numbers are disputed.
> And the Police claiming something, doesn't mean it must be true. Especially if we are talking about someone from public relation, which are notorious for 'miscommunication happening' with such details.
Sure. If you have better data that disputes what she's saying you're free to share it.
>"These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons and in the right to personal honour."
This is reflected in the German criminal code Beleidigung(Insult), unchanged for about 150 years.
>"The penalty for insult is imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or a fine and, if the insult is committed by means of an assault, imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or a fine."
This extends to everyone, not just politicians. For example, flipping someone off is not legal, and you'll be fined if someone were to take legal action. The headline of the article and the general tone of is misleading.
Completely ridiculous from an American point of view, but I know we're in the minority here.
Yeah, but insulting your neighbor will not have the police raid your home at six in the morning.
This case is not business as usual, it is a widely disproportional response. Hence the outrage.
But the sad thing is that most if not all twitter users, have seen far worse go unpunished.
A different example: there were some "creative" protests by environmentalists against the new "greenwashed" automobile fair IAA which has moved from Frankfurt to Munich since this year - defacing freeway signs etc.. Nine of the activists involved will be kept in "preventive custody" until the end of the fair (for one week) - https://twitter.com/mic_tra/status/1435529384174227459.
1st amendment but militarized police and huge sentences and awful prison conditions
or ppl summoned for making jokes but justice system better in every other respect
Why should it be legal to publicly insult someone? You can't punch people in the USA. Does that make the country not particularly free?
Note that it is entirely play pretend anyway. I know for a fact that I can actually say and do far more here than the American society would tolerate in the USA.
For what it’s worth, having lived in both places Americans are less likely to insult you than the British, but more likely to take it seriously.
This, for instance, is clearly an insult; please report to the nearest detention center for your reeducation immediately. /s
But seriously, no; insults are subjective enough to be a terrible legal basis.
I fear that too. Freedom has always been paid for with blood, so if it's just meekly handed back, we are robbing our grandchildren and passing that cost on to them.
That said, what parts of the world are you talking about? If you look at the insults being freely hurled on twitter at politicians around the the English speaking western world, I'm not sure how bad it is here yet. Maybe it's only a problem there if you insult the wrong type of politician?
> Why should it be legal to publicly insult someone?
How do you define an insult? Would it be insulting to call someone a nazi, white supremacist, racist, misogynist, Russian agent, heartless, senile? What if those things were true or you believed them to be true or at least a valid comparison to some degree? What if you call a religion or ideology bad or point out bad things about its teachings? Even if what you say is true, it can still be taken as insults by followers. Should blasphemy be outlawed?
> You can't punch people in the USA. Does that make the country not particularly free?
It does not.
Only if you compare words with the most trivial of physical violence.
> Insults are unneeded. They are unnecessary to a discussion and they are a form of violence. Why should they be legal?
This is dismissive of my perspective and therefore insulting. I think you should be arrested. Maybe the cops and the judge will agree with me.
I'm sorry but that only applies if you are thoroughly infantile. I don't mean this as an offense but that behavior is proper of literal children.
If some random person says a word and that has serious consequences upon the mental health of an adult person that person needs therapy.
Well, exactly.
I consider an insult to be an expression of an opinion and thus protected by the 19th article of the universal declaration of human rights.
As far as I am concerned, ideally such blatant misuse of power in such an authoritarian way should land people in jail.
Murder: People lose the freedom to murder people, but gain the freedom to not be murdered. American society considers taking the first freedom away to result in better society overall. Germany does the same.
Insults: People lose the freedom to insult other people, but gain the freedom not to be insulted. German society considers taking away the first freedom to result in a better society overall. Americans take the opposite side here.
See, it's actually not at all a naive question of "who has more freedom", because each side can be argued to be more free than the other. Ultimately, it comes down to what choice results in a 'better', more livable society.
Germany and the US simply make different tradeoffs.
I can't see anything other than laws like that being abused by politicians and government officials to quell speech and create a chilling effect amongst the populace.
This will only result in those not living paycheck to paycheck being willing to speak out.
If only politicians were protected from insult, I don't think that would be compatible with democracy at all.
But everyone else called him a "pimmel" with no consequences at all.
Judging by immigration numbers, the US.
That metric is hilariously wrong. Consider a country with universal healthcare, but where only a single political party is allowed. You're much more likely to face medical issues in your life, than wanting to start your own party and being prevented.
Does that make the one-party-state more free than every country without universal healthcare?
In other words, by phrasing it as "freedom to live in comfort and safety", you are conflating comfort and safety with freedom.
They typically do so to affect change.
Change that may well be required, for example, to address problems in said one-party healthcare system.
In my case, the US where I am for sure.
(A dickhead manager lying and trying to fire me was the most stressful experience of my life even when I knew I was in the right and got a decent payout eventually; I can't imagine going through that with no legal protection)
Like what? Drugs are becoming decriminalized the world over, but this is an extremely recent phenomenon.
Source: good friend was a public defender.
I’ll need to see worldwide numbers, American numbers, and an exemplar list of laws before I accept such a broad conclusion.
It does help that traveling by public transport here is a lot less likely to be a problem, to be fair.
You may be right that this is a world wide problem, and I’m only imagining places that don’t punish the poor so harshly. That said, I saw an article recently that gives me hope. It was a jurisdiction in the US where police handed out gift cards to some auto parts store instead of citations when pulling over vehicles for faulty equipment. While the cynic in me thinks this is just a play by the auto parts store to grow it’s market, I like to think it’ll provide good data to drive policy.
This is greatly exaggerated. Not that the bad things you see in the news don’t happen. Just that most interactions with the police aren’t in fact any more adversarial than in other countries.
I am not white, and I have been stopped by police multiple times in the US, Europe, and Asia, as well as selected for additional screening in airports in the US, London, and the Netherlands.
Whether the police were adversarial or not was not a function of whether they were in the US. Indeed the one time the police actually behaved in a threatening way was in the UK.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/young-black-adults-less-... https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/press-re... https://www.statista.com/chart/21872/map-of-police-violence-...
Given that your links are not cross cultural comparisons, your response doesn’t seem to be in good faith.
It looks like you just used my comment as a chance to post some anti-US policing links that aren’t actually relevant to what I said.
Bear in mind that racism and racist policing are present in Europe, and Asia too.
I assume you have no experience of police in different countries yourself.
That’s such an odd thing to say on a article about someone getting their home raided bec they called someone a dick in Europe…
I suppose Stalin was right, to paraphrase. One person is a tragedy, hundreds of thousands is a statistic.
How are we meant to make sense of your comment, if you don't state which country your from/in?
I see this often, commenters presuming we know which country they are in.
How about letting your kids go to school or to a playground without perpetual parental surveillance, without you being persecuted?
How about the right to sit at a beach in whatever (non)clothing you want? How about just changing into your swimming shorts just there on the beach?
How about only being prosecuted for DUI if you were actually under the influence, and not because a passenger had a bottle of beer in their hand?
How about sitting with your friends in any city square in summer, listening to street musicians and drink a beer, and then walk to the next bar while drinking your beer?
How about just playing music on the radio without censoring ‘bad words’, and even having censored CDs in the stores?
How about someone cursing on national television without this becoming a scandal, or someone showing a breast on television as a singer on stage without it ending your career?
How about driving as fast as you want?
And to your example: how about having actual choice of leaving a job because health insurance is not tied to a job? (Yeah I know, with COBRA you can simply pay a couple thousand a month and just keep your insurance)
How about being able to actually retire in old age and not having to work at Waffle House and Walmart with 80?
How about yelling at some asshole in the parking lot without being legally shot dead because of stand-your-ground?
How about the freedom to study at a college of your choosing, without admission scandals and bribery, and without ruining your future with 6 digit debt?
How about freedom from religion, and still being electable for high office as atheist?
How about never having to worry whether you are in a good enough area of town to just drive through?
How about freely choosing your health insurance rather than being forced to pick one of the two your employer has contracts with?
How about freely choosing internet / power / gas, with the dramatic drops in price that go along with competition in a free market?
In one case last year, a person was even visited by officers for simply saying a politician’s rhetoric was “underwhelming”.
To say nothing of the peaceful protestors who have been detained, in some cases without charges or even access to lawyers.
We may like to think we’re still the bastion of freedom we want to see, but the trend certainly doesn’t point that way.
On the side, looking up the culprit, he seems to be a political activist, from the left spectrum which has many bad blood in the city where this happened. So my guess is, this case has a political background, and the insult was just a pretext to justify the means.
The twitter user did, in fact, not raid the house of the politician.
Also, don't politicians know about the Streisand effect? If they hadn't raided this guy, nobody would know about the Tweet, and nobody would care one bit. Ethics and law aside, this was just a very dumb move.
> A Twitter user insulted a German politician. Police then raided his house.
I wonder what kind of evidence they were looking for?
1) The insult used was "pimmel", german for "dick".
2) According to netzpolitik.org, the offender was summoned by the police before that, did show up, and did confirm there that it was his account. https://netzpolitik.org/2021/andy-grote-was-fuer-eine-pimmel... [german]
Great read, thanks for linking it.
Somebody needs to - the title on Hacker News says the opposite of what the article title says.
HN: A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then raided his house.
Reality: A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then had his house raided by the police.
That said, they’re probably right that the title should be fixed. It’s just getting a bit... well. I just wish we would all be a little more grateful for how much effort a site like HN takes to run. It’s also not so easy to get good moderators with tasteful editing abilities; imagine what a disaster it would be if Reddit let a subset of mods control most titles on /r/all.
I suspect the title is broken in this case because the title gardeners are taking a well-deserved break, hopefully enjoying the evening with their families.
> "My house was searched at 6:00 this morning. Six officers in the apartment," wrote the suspect
But we can refer to it as his strawberry cake for all I care, as long as it's understood that he doesn't actually live there anymore[2]. This wasn't as widely reported as the original story, and along with the fact that the guy had already talked to the authorities and admitted to the foul deed, I found it made the whole thing even more outrageous.
[1] this is the original tweet https://nitter.net/pauli_zoo/status/1435494328894431233#m
[2] https://www.heise.de/news/Du-bist-so-1-Pimmel-Hamburgs-Innen...
https://taz.de/Hausdurchsuchung-wegen-eines-Tweets/!5799732/
Kids these days…
Looks like lots of democratic countries are looking at us with envy and for inspiration these days.
For example, in the US in Jan 2021, there was a riot that some call a coup, and some do not.
Brazil might also count. I am not aware of the details.
People already part of the government could be involved in triggering an insurrection, such as with the Jacobins involved in the Insurrection of 1792, but it still counts as an insurrection and not a coup because it is carried out by the population, not by forces working for the government, such as assassins or the military.
No, an "attempted coup" means an attempt at a coup d'état. Probability of success doesn't matter for an attempt to be classified as an attempt, only intentions.
- UK surveillance state powers, anti-porn laws
- Australian laws to detain you, break encryption
- This German incident
I sure am glad to live in a country where freedoms are explicitly guaranteed by a constitutional decree.
I can only assume you're referring to the US's Constitution.
Rights that are apparently guaranteed by the US Constitution are routinely ignored by all levels of US Government.
You may get your day in court, you may even have the court rule in your favour. That does not mean you're made whole, or that the government will back down and stop doing things that infringe upon your rights.
Legal rights? Extremely mutable.
Does the name Edward Snowden ring a bell, and the total surveillance state programs in the US, against US citizens, he revealed?
-the perpetual drive of FBI etc to have e.g. phones decrypted, or have companies install back doors? (e.g. Bernardino)?
- the last administrations systematic programs against ‘unpleasant’ journalists?
- black sites and places like Guantanamo that you could just disappear to?
- civil forfeiture laws that allow the police, without any process, to take your personal property, without any wrongdoing on your part?
- how many people are killed by police in those other countries (at all), and also, how many times does this lead to a prosecution of the officer in question?
Etc.
I have to think that officials are hesitant to engage in many of the petty tyranny we see in other western countries, however, at a rate proportional to the degree to which their constituents are armed. If a police raid has a non trivial chance of turning into a shootout, it's a tool frequently withheld, and probably never used over a tweet.
The wrongful death process in civil courts would also destroy the life of any official who provoked a deadly raid over social media.
No she hasn't.
She was a stupid kid and did stupid kid things, millennial style. She went through the legal system for crossing the line, but by the time she held the job for Florida state government - a decade later - she seems to have married, had children, found a respectable job, and was otherwise a normal human being. And she is probably mortified over the student/professor bad soap, stalker drama she inflicted on the world.
At worst she was a psycho college girlfriend cliché. At best she's a redemption story, and good for her if that's the case.
She never finished her degree, but still found a job as a data scientist, then blew it up because Florida officials wanted to lie.
Have empathy and practice forgiveness, especially on people who did nothing to you. It costs you nothing to withhold what amounts to snide gossip.
No reason to assume we are able to simply relax.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EARN_IT_Act_of_2020 (despite the year in the name, it's still an ongoing potential bill)
1. https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/06/there%E2%80%99s-n...