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Comment by quantumgarbage | Hacker News Reader

On this topic, I can't recommend enough the movie "The life of Others" (2006). Depicts surveillance in Eastern Germany and the state of sheer fear and paranoia its citizens had to live in.

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Stasiland by Anna Funder is also a great read on the topic. And then there’s Katja Hoyer’s “Beyond The Wall” which takes a comprehensive look at the DDR.

From wikipedia surveillance movie list, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_featuring_survei..., these might interest a tech audience:

  Antitrust (2001)
  Anon (2018)
  Closed Circuit (2013)
  Eagle Eye (2008)
  Equilibrium (2002)

Have you seen it available somewhere in Europe recently?

I've been looking for it for a while, with no success. I'd be happy with anything from DVD to archive.org/youtube upload or whatever.

It is available from Amazon.de on blu-ray (probably also on Prime Video depending on the country), under the original German title: Das Leben der Anderen.

You can find it on bittorrent: https://bt4g.org. That's a DHT search engine. Put in your query and sort by seeder count, then use the magnet link to load it onto a bittorrent client (e.g. qbittorrent).

You can check: https://www.justwatch.com/de/Film/Das-Leben-der-Anderen

Seems to be available in Germany and some other countries, but not here in Sweden at the moment (I think it used to be on Netflix here).

In some European countries, if you apply to rent an apartment, the landlord can see you failed to pay 1 month rent several years ago.

That's just a tiny example.

Is this control and surveillance or ... democracy and freedom ?

I have a tenant who has been living in my garden house for two years without paying rent. It is almost impossible to solve this situation. I am not even allowed to turn off the water or electricity. There are always two sides to every coin.

You wish to increase his rent 10% annually and after move out keep his deposit 6 months. Then confiscate 50% of the deposit for "damages". You wish!

In fact, I would first like to see rent being paid at all. And I don't have a deposit to keep.

My experience as a legit and regularly paying tenant are equally awful.

That sucks. What law protects your renter?

Squatting laws, sounds like.

In Germany you have to file an action for possession ("Räumungsklage"). But that takes years (I brought it on its the way immediately). You cannot act on your own, it has to be legally enforced. But the legal system in Germany takes ages and human rights are higher than tenancy rights (usually good!). This often leads to deadlocks where nothing happens because you cannot evict someone and put them on the street.

Another case where the ‘winning move’ is to either have enough money small issues like this are in the noise, or no money at all (on the books) so society goes out of it’s way to not do anything.

Also known as ‘on both ends of the economic spectrum exists a leisure class’.

Interesting, I hadn't heard of that, but it fits perfectly!

What country?

Germany, of course.

That’s just crazy. Were they ever a paying tenant and stopped paying. or just random stranger who broke in and decided they now lived there?

It was the neighbour whose house had burned down, and my mother let him move into our garden house (because winter was coming). They agreed to make a rental contract. But after he moved in, he refused to pay anything and since then it has been impossible to change that.

Thank you for explaining. It’s disheartening that this happened when trying to help that person.

In the US, the government is using everything you ever said on any social medial to deny you access to your job, the country, or benefits.

Just a tiny example.

Too scary and sad.

Comparing agents that will go into your home and move things around to drive you crazy and directly torturing you, with a debt registers is not a comparison I see as successful.

It is way more democracy and freedom than living in a state with an entity like the Stasi, a mixture between the NSA and the Gestapo, which is used to curb any opposition, at least.

It's not perfect, but this alternative is way worse.

And in the US, landlords can pull credit reports from private companies, and if the private company says you missed a credit card payment a year ago they'll reject you.

If the private credit score company returns a wrong score because someone else has the same name as you and they mixed up some records, well, it's a private company, you have no recourse.

Since it's not the government, but a for-profit private company, it can and will also sell your information.

If you opt out of this private company's system, landlords can and will reject you.

It is well known that the US is the most free country in the multiverse, so I would say no, having a government do it is not freedom (that's a social credit system like china has), but if instead it's a private company creating that credit score, that's freedom.

What law do you want to have to prevent this? Companies are people, and if your two previous land-lords are free to gossip about whether you paid rent (free speech), of course equifax should be able to sell that information (also free speech). People's right to privacy stops where free speech, and the ability of private entities to profit and raise GDP, starts.

This system absolutely sucks.

If you ever find yourself on the wrong end of it, read this article for advice but also explanations: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...

Understanding how the system works, which buttons work and which don’t is half the battle.

Free speech does not include slander or lies. Like when credit score company makes a mistake.

You can sue the credit bureaus for inaccurate information. I did using a contingency lawyer and it worked. Depending on your actual damages, you can win significant money. The FCRA and other laws can be very powerful.

That statement needs a fact check. Which countries exactly?

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