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Comment by emteycz | Hacker News Reader

So you think Zensursula is pushing surveillance state only so she can then buy surveillance products of US tech companies because ... what? Money going to her pocket?

I think that's much more of a conspiracy theory than the notion that politicians want control.

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You are putting things in a manner that is too concrete. Politicians do not always need money that is going directly to their pockets.

UvdL has been mentioned in connection with nepotism before (by the German state radio!):

https://www.dw.com/en/german-opposition-to-probe-defense-min...

After that scandal she failed upwards to Brussels. Politicians that are that unassailable should face extended scrutiny. Who protects her and why?

(Here is an unrelated mask procurement scandal that shows how things work in Germany:

https://www.dw.com/en/german-mask-scandal-unforgivable-viola...)

Why that surprises you?

As a German minister of defence, she is known as a person who paid half a billion euros to PwC consultants. Also, she renovated a sailing wooden training ship for more than 200 million euros.

And she is accused of removing proofs by deleting data from her phone and “not remembering” anything.

I would trust that person every evil and corrupt thing one can imagine.

Why is it so hard to believe she simply wants [Chat] Control, then?

She does, because she will benefit from it, even if only indirectly.

Of course, she wants Control, although not for control's sake, but because she will get more of what she really wants (money, power, more money, ...)

It's sad that our EU doesn't let any hope that they do something because they believe it's the right thing to do. It's always big business and foreign government interests before interests of Europeans.

Why is it so hard to believe that she truly thinks that McKinsey consultants will improve the German Army instead of guzzling money?

Sorry, I wrote PwC instead of McKinsey.

Now, if I only could make my previous comment disappear, like she made her messages disappear, so they couldn't be used as court evidence …

The biggest problem is Germany's and other Western European military is that they've been starved of money for decades.

Paying half a billion to consultants to tell you this is.... Kinda the problem.

Politicians want more than control, they want informational weapons.

It's clear now how these Israeli zero-day exploit software power politicians' informational armies against their political adversaries.

History is chock full of people in positions of power pissing away all sources of resources and closing the door to all sorts of prosperity for both themselves and for the people subject to their actions in order to further consolidate power.

She is riding the lobbying wave without giving much critical thinking to what happens. After all, she is just a humble public servant, she thinks. What harm can this possibly make?

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