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Comment by tcptomato | Hacker News Reader

> like Germany, with all due respect to the Germans who still care about their privacy

What are you talking about? The german speaking world cares (maybe a bit too much) about privacy. This is why google street view sucks in Germany. NOYB - European Center for Digital Rights is headquartered in Vienna.

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Germany has many anti-privacy laws like the Impressum system which forces website owners to essentially dox themselves on a public webpage. I’m not sure where the misconception that Germany had strong privacy laws came from.

I've long believed this, but surprisingly, very few Germans I've spoken to feel this way about it, admittedly my sample is Berlin-centric, so perhaps that isn't a very good litmus test for general German sentiment considering the demographics of Berlin consist of a lot of non-Germans who likely aren't that clued-up, and that perhaps skews sentiment as a whole.

Big cities are always a lot more progressive.

But a christian-conservative like Merkel wouldn't have come to power if it wasn't for the more rural masses. They must have enough votes to influence policy in such a big way. And those are the ones that are the most susceptible to 'for the children!!!' type privacy invasion. At least in my experience here in the Netherlands, this is usually the angle those measures are pushed from.

I've also been surprised at how bad Germany is for privacy. For example when I tried to sign up at Hetzner they demanded that I sent a photocopy of my ID. When I did so after arguing, I blacked out my social security number which is very susceptible to ID fraud and even the local police provide instructions to block it out on scans.

However they refused that. So I refused them. I didn't try other German providers but went to France instead (Scaleway) and had a much better experience without ID crap.

That's very interesting re Hetzner. When I signed up Hetzner about two weeks ago, I wasn't asked for any kind of ID, in fact I was quite surprised how little friction there was. Experience hasn't been good though, so you haven't missed out on much. Downtime and connectivity issues have meant hours of time wasted on an issue that wasn't even at our end. Will check out Scaleway!

Strange. This was at least 5 years ago so perhaps it changed.

I'm very happy with scaleway. They're a bit smaller and really easy to deal with IMO, you can ask them questions directly on slack and they don't look down on the small customer. I have 2 VPSes of the cheapest kind "Stardust" (1,80€ per month) and they're quick and friendly.

They used to have 8-core atom servers that were a bit unstable, mainly due to the nbd network based root filesystem. One network hiccup and it would go read only. They were really cheap though (12€ per month for dedicated metal is pretty amazing) but I did need support for that a couple of times.

But since I moved over to their VPS offering I've had no issues and I heard that they deprecated all the nbd based platforms due to these issues.

That's odd, I have never experienced downtime and connectivity issues there, with constant use for over ten years.

Merkel is not christian-conservative except for the label of the party itself. She hit most of the progressive boxes really, especially "no nations, no borders" and the climate sale of indulgence.

I also wanna add that Merkel was elected by big city voters as well and not just the (framed stupid and wrong) "rural masses".

> They must have enough votes to influence policy in such a big way. And those are the ones that are the most susceptible to 'for the children!!!' type privacy invasion.

Realistically speaking once a party is in charge the people have no saying in the politics and the only thing that matters is how it is framed in the media. If the media says that people like it, it's okay, otherwise they might rethink it, but even that is not a guarantee. Given that most media outlets are dependent on government money they are mostly mouthpieces of the same.

Admittedly I'm a bit disguntled by the conservatives in my own country which are mainly supported by the rural communities. I let that show too much in my comment which was not fair. I'm sorry.

Don't be. I'm sure most people here feel the same.

This sounds like you're coming from a very US viewpoint. By European standards she is firmly conservative.

I am German and her politics and talking points were progressive politics/talking points.

Personal privacy is different than commercial privacy I guess

Bingo. Impressum is mandatory for commercial sites (including anything ad-supported), but on the other hand WHOIS has been crippled by German privacy laws. The standard API will give you only the name servers, and the denic website will give you the owner-c email address (after solving a captcha) but no mailing address without a court order.

Vienna is in Austria, not Germany

Austria is considered a part of german speaking world

Yes, but its not in Germany.

On that point Austrian privacy laws are insane. CCTV is a nightmare to set up there.

https://edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2018/first-austria...

So is data loss prevention or other forms of workplace monitoring

> The infringements refer to the following: the video surveillance system covers public streets as well as parking lots, both part of the public area in front of the entrance of the sports betting café. This is not adequate for the purposes of the processing and is not limited to a necessary extent. There are no logs of video surveillance processing operations. There is no deletion of the personal image data recorded by the video surveillance within 72 hours and no separate logs for processing in this regard and a justification for an extended storage period is missing (as determined in the Austrian Data Protection Act). In Addition to that, the filmed area does not have adequate signage about CCTV.

Why are those laws insane?

You set up a camera to cover your front garden and if you happen to cover a portion of the street leading up to your property you are breaking the law. That's genuinely absurd. Keep in mind these apply to residential systems also.

The rest of your quote is just as ridiculous.

> There are no logs of video surveillance processing operations.

It's a private system, why should there be.

> There is no deletion of the personal image data recorded by the video surveillance within 72 hours

Genuinely insane

if you happen to cover a portion of the street leading up to your property you are breaking the law

in germany too.

why is that absurd?

you can monitor your own property, but don't record me when i am walking along the street please.

don't go to pretty much any other country on planet earth then

Recording the street is the most important part of recording for crime detection.

If someone knocks off the side mirror of my car by driving too close, I shouldn't be able to record that? I shouldn't be able to capture the license plate so I know who it is?

You do get that you are publicly visible when walking down the street, right?

People are visible in their gardens too, but I can at least understand making it illegal to record other private property, but the pubic street is reading it too far.

Or go live in Africa where people case the street before they come to rob/murder you. It's a big deterrent to have CCTV covering property perimeter

it's a band-aid to a different, more serious problem. you both would have a point if the crime rate in germany or austria was higher due to not allowing surveillance in public spaces.

but thankfully they have other deterrents to crime that allow everyone to have more privacy in public spaces.

> germany or austria was higher due to not allowing surveillance in public spaces.

Have you seen how many stabbings have been happening in germany lately?

Germany is somewhat safer than France and 6 times safer than the US, and continues to have a downwards trend.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?end=2020...

How's that in any way relevant?

i saw the headlines. i haven't read about any ideas what would be the cause. but whatever it is, surveillance of public space is not going to solve it.

Regulation of CCTV generally takes the approach that there's a substantial difference between you standing there with a camera and CCTV because you standing there with a camera produces a substantially different level of signal that people are being observed.

Your right to take the footage is in competition with peoples right to a reasonable level of privacy even in public spaces, as there is a huge difference between being seen by someone, being filmed by someone when they happen to be there, and being constantly filmed by automated systems that may or may not be appropriately controlled to ensure images are not spread.

The approach taken tends to vary between outlawing it or allowing it with restrictions, including making you subject to retention and subject access policies.

E.g. in the UK, which is notorious for the amounts of CCTV, you can cover public areas if necessary, but you then need to be prepared to delete footage of people on request, respond to subject access requests, ensure the footage is kept securely, ensuring the footage is deleted regularly, and restrict access to the footage. You also need to be able to provide - in writing if requested - legitimate reasons for doing so. Here's the ICO's advice page on the subject[1]

[1] https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/domestic-cctv-systems-g...

> This is why google street view sucks in Germany.

Street view in Germany sucks because very rarely there will be a pixelated building front?

No, because GSV is at least a decade old in Germany, since the whole "pixelate my building" has understandably been too much of a hassle for Google to push any picture updates.

Street view in Germany sucks because Google didn't want to deal with so many pixelation requests, so they drastically reduced the coverage.

Those requests would neither have been possible nor come in by such numbers if Germans were not privacy-aware.

your house on the street is public landscape. privacy does not apply on what you see from the road.

without streetview or photos on a public website, only people who are actually passing by my house can see it.

otherwise it is visible to the whole world. that is a drastic difference for a privacy conscious person.

or consider for example me posting a picture of my house without giving any address. there is nothing identifying except the building. with streetview you could potentially find my address. why should you be able to do that?

sure, streetview is nice to use, but i think privacy concerns are real.

> your house on the street is public landscape. privacy does not apply on what you see from the road.

It would be difficult (impossible) for 8 billion people to come over to my street and stare at my house, in the physical world.

So it's very different to expose the view on the internet to all those 8 billion.

Incidentally, Apple just launched Apple Maps Look Around in Germany this summer. It has very good coverage, but you need an Apple device to access it (ugh).

Interestingly, I haven't seen any public discussion on it.

Apple also allows you to demand blurring of your house, but they do this globally.

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