Memories of Stasi color Germans’ view of U.S. surveillance programs | Hacker News Reader

Memories of Stasi color Germans’ view of U.S. surveillance programs

mcclatchydc.com

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The EU, which Germany is a major part of, passed the Data Retention Directive [0] in 2006.

That directive required every state in the EU to pass laws that all their citizens telecommunications metadata would be stored for at least 6 months, and often more, up to 2 years.

As I understand it, this means all 'metadata' is required to be stored, including the source and destination for every phonecall and text message, including cell location for cellphones, and information mapping IPs to users for web+email (and perhaps also the source and destination of every e-mail; but I'm not certain about that?). I believe that the data is stored by service providers, and only passed to law enforcement in the context of a particular investigation in theory (in the Irish implementation, a court order is not required to access an individual's records; a request from a high ranking law enforcement officer or tax official is enough). But its all collected and stored.

Maybe that's a sufficiently big difference that warrants the EU retention laws not being mentioned in this article? But it seems to me that they should still be part of this narrative.

There have been challenges to the EU directive, and countries dragging their heels about implementing it. But, by and large, it is an established part of EU law.

I don't know a lot about this area, but I feel that an understanding of existing European data retention laws seems to be missing from the coverage of the European reaction to the US data collection issues.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

The German 'Verfassungsgericht' has said in 2010 that it is unconstitutional.

In Germany, the data retention law was ruled unconstitutional by the German Constitutional Court on March 2, 2010. Data retention was allowed in general by the court, but only with significant restrictions. The German government failed to pass a new law which fulfills both the EU data retention directive and the court's restrictions. The EU Commission therefore is currently sueing Germany to implement the EU data retention directive. If the EU Commission prevails, Germany will have to pay 315.036,54 Euro per day as a penalty fee until a proper law is enacted.

That's really interesting. We (people in the UK) have long been complaining that our Government stringently applies every single EU directive and human rights law but other countries just seem to ignore them (rightfully so IMO, sometimes logic should prevail). I know it's probably not strictly true, but it's things like this which may eventually lead to the disbanding of the EU and such integration of the law.

But the UK opted out of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and is not even part of Schengen.

I personally, as a German, am much less forgiving towards the UK than towards the US for what has been revealed. The UK is a EU member, which is so much more than just an ally. It is now clear that the UK spies on all continental Europeans, gives that data to the US, and at the same time tries to opt out of the EU cooperation on police and criminal justice. No matter how you turn it, this cannot be interpreted as anything else than a "spit in your face" gesture towards the rest or Europe. We now get the uneasy feeling that the current and past governments of the UK more or less hate us.

I think that's a bit harsh. The UK went into Europe based on the ideals of the common market, what came after isn't what anybody signed up for, so there's a constant mistrust of the overarching nature of the EU bureaucracy from the population at large, which the politicians who want votes reflect (and obviously stir up too).

I think this clip from the classic comedy 'Yes, Minister' sums up Europe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVrN-gkzVYI

The UK doesn't hate the rest of Europe, but clearly each nation will play its hand for its own political reasons.

You bring up an interesting point. I very often read that the UK joined for the single market but then afterwards the EU started taking away national sovereignty.

I don't quite understand how this view of things is possible.

From the very start, when the Coal and Steel Community was created in 1952, loss of national sovereignty was, to a certain degree, built into the system. The primary goal of European cooperation was to take away the ability of European nations to go to war with one another. Also remember the "de fact solidarity" that Robert Schuman spoke of in his famous declaration in 1950: With all the horrors of WW2 fresh in mind, nobody could expect the people of Europe to show solidarity for another, so the framework of Europe must be set up to generate a "de facto solidarity". The whole system should be set up in such a way that the people of Europe cannot _not_ show solidarity.

We learned this in school and it seems to be generally accepted by the general populace, at least in the "old" continental Western Europe. If you ask older Germans or French about European integration, they will talk about avoiding war, not about the single market.

The only possible explanation I can come up with for the sentiment that the EU was "all about the single market" is that UK voters were horribly misled by their press and politicians at the time of EU accession. Is this plausible?

On a side note: I admit that what I wrote about hating Europe was harsh, but we (i.e., me and many others I've spoken to) do feel genuinely betrayed.

"The only possible explanation I can come up with for the sentiment that the EU was "all about the single market" is that UK voters were horribly misled by their press and politicians at the time of EU accession. Is this plausible?"

This is the correct interpretation, at least as far as public polls over EU prove time and again in the UK.

If you actually combine the different responses to EU surveys, almost everyone in the UK across all factions of life, even today, mostly have interest in remaining in the EU solely for the common market, if that.

It is probably not helped by the fact that the most respected or even revered UK political leaders of the last 50 years, i.e. Churchhill and Thatcher, were extremely lukewarm about the EU project.

The difference compared to political attitudes of the public on the continent is very stark indeed.

Note. As for the European Convention on Human Rights opt-out, that is mostly a UK Conservative government/conservative media issue that they want to force through and they have had very little actual broader public debate or support. Of course, that does not mean that it will not go through eventually regardless, especially when "terrorism" is used to justify just about anything these days...

"the most respected or even revered UK political leaders of the last 50 years ... Thatcher"

Maybe in some quarters/communities. Definitely not revered or respected in some parts of the UK.

The problem is we're an ex-Imperialist island nation. That breeds a certain psyche of superiority and xenophobia that I think is very hard for us to shake off en-masse. I think there's a sense with the British that we brought 'civilisation' to a huge portion of the world, why do we need anybody else telling us what to do?

Even as children we're constantly fed war movies about the plucky Brits fighting against the evil Germans, so therefore most Brits hate Germans, and we've been at odds with the French forever. There are many English terms/phrases which are derogatory about the French. French kiss, French letter, French disease etc.

This is a very useful tool for the politician who wants to stir up a hornets nest of outrage or just shore up some votes by looking 'anti-Europe'. And it works.

Even myself -- someone who has friends in many European countries (Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Serbia, Romania, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Austria, Slovakia - just quickly off the top of my head!) -- get caught up in it.

It's pure xenophobia, and it's frankly disgusting. We don't have the English channel and the North Sea around us, we have a moat.

However.

There is always the argument for a greater say from the people of Europe. It certainly seems there is a huge bureaucracy with very little public oversight. And it seems incredibly inflexible. The impression many have is that they can't vote the bureaucrats out, and there's very little to stop them haemorrhaging money/rights/power.

In an era where we have the technology to bring democratic decision making closer to the individual, the EU definitely seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

(Then again, this could just be the years of 'conditioning' that make me think this!)

</waffle>

> we have a moat

I think this is a large part of why GB has a different relationship with Europe. In other European countries you can just jump in a car and drive almost anywhere else in Europe. For many people they can be in a couple of different countries in under an hour. Compare this to Gavin to book a flight or a ferry crossing, with the time and cost involved, and it's not too surprising that we're not as neighbourly as the other members of the EU.

There is a bullet train, the Eurostar, that puts London at 2h15 from Paris. It's quite expensive though, compared to a car ride. Anyway, I do not think that the Channel accounts for the peculiar relationship of the UK with Europe. Instead, it might have something to do with the relationship between the UK and the US, I believe. That is what is tinting the UK-Europe relation.

Which blows my mind, since I live in Texas where you can drive 10 hours in the same direction on the same road at freeway speeds, and still be an hour or two from reaching another state.

For whatever reason people have a very different relationship with travelling in their own car and via some other form of transport. The perceived cost of a trip seems to drop for a lot of people, both with regards to price and time. Perhaps less so in the millennial generation but in the preceeding generation there is a very strong association between owning a car and personal freedom.

Probably because owning a car means you can go anywhere your wallet ($ for gas) and time will allow you to go. Anywhere, any time, with very little hassle. Taxis come close to this, but only in and for (geographically) small areas/trips. Bicycles also come close. Other forms of transit are limited in terms of endpoints (*ports for planes/ferries, stations for trains/subways, stops for buses), time (dependent on the schedule), and may cost more.

Owning a car often gives you a lot of options you don't have without it.

Unless you live in NYC/similar.

In Europe 100 miles is a long distance, but in America 100 years is a long time.

Ireland, which is also an island, and even more cut off from the Continent, is less europhobic than UK.

Why do you think that is? I would have thought it's primarily because of the economic benefits that Ireland got after joining?

That's one aspect. There are lots of new motorways in Ireland (and many poor EU states) which are mostly financied by the EU. Ireland as a small country can't generate a big local market, free trade with the rest of Europe is good. Many liberal people support it because it's forced through a lot of liberal law changes. And, we're either align ourselves economically with Britain or Europe. Nothing like a bit of anti-British sentiment.

It's funny hearing the UK people complain about the "democratic deficit" in the EU. The UK voting system (of First Past the Post, single member constituencies and a party whip) is quite weird and appears undemocratic. I'm in Ireland with a party whip system, but Proportional Represetation and multiseat consultancies, so not being able to vote 1,2,3,… appears undemocratic to me.

"Unelected buerocrats"? You mean like the House of Lords which allows someone who wasn't elected to be a cabinet minister? (Lord Mandelson, Baroness Warsi, etc.)

"Haemorrhaging money"? Remember the UK MP expenses?

So ask yourself, is the UK Parliament more or less democratic than the EU?

Oh I totally agree with you. However I can vote for my MP, and I know who it is. I don't think anybody in the UK has any idea who represents them in Europe.

The problem with concentrating power is that you have fewer representatives representing more people, which breaks democracy outright. We should be looking to localise power where we can, give people responsibility and a say in their lot.

Europe should be a framework and an enabler, not a system for centralising as much power as possible. Do we really want a federal Europe? Absolute power corrupts.

Ah, but all of those are traditional! /s

Here in Germany we signed up exactly for that. A Europe with peace and democracy, without borders, countries with political integration, large enough to be heard outside of Europe, ...

The 'common market' was a tool to achieve that. We were also certain that France (and some other countries) also wanted that. Something which was/is very important for us.

Not sure what Britain was and is thinking... but if Britain says they did not know about these goals, then something else went wrong. But that sounds more like internal problems in Britain and has very little to do with the EU or Europe.

Interesting. It has to be remembered that the UK and in fact all the allies, with the partial exception of the Soviet Union, were applying their war efforts to avert precisely this aggregation of nations during the Second World War. That war broke the back of the UK's economy, and the Marshall plan and the post war support of Germany was always intended to be a reintegration of the largest nation in continental Europe into an Anglo Saxon idea of a global economy. It was to avoid a repeat of the decimation of Germany after the First World War, which provided so much impetus to the events leading to the second.

Far from being a mis sold notion to the British public, it was in fact a preferred popular view. The acquiescence of Chamberlain to notions of compromise were well remembered, and the effort and loss of treasure to overcome that mistake gave rise to caution and defensiveness.

Viewed from the German and French perspectives, it appears very differently. But England has a very long history in needing to attend to other nations ideas of supra nationalism as it relates to the British Isles, and its own inclinations to state power inform its decisions as well.

While not my view, to many 'middle englanders', the Franco German alliance is a continuance of historical european politics. The French compromise, with some resistance, and the Germans see Europe as a larger political entity, having the characteristic of land locked imperialists. Even recent diplomats have expressed this view.

The decision to limit the European project to a trading agreement was in the first instance all that could be politically managed in the UK.

I would go so far as to say that no politician in Britain puts forward the case for Europe in these terms. Any pro European argues that it is in our economic interest, and mentions no other advantage. The reason for this is, they could not sell the idea that the European project is decreasing the chances of European war. Indeed, lately, as the popularity of the European project has been diminishing across Europe it looks increasingly as though the main beneficiary of the European project is Germany. Due to the Mediterranean countries keeping the Euro exchange rate low, Germany has benefited from selling it's cheap exports, for years and years. Now that the wheels have fallen off Greece and Spain and Ireland and Portugal those populations look to Germany with envy.

There is a British view, which I am unconvinced of, that the single currency, being done for political rather than economic reasons, has caused, and will continue to cause international European tension.

In short, Britain is not convinced of the economic case, it is not convinced of the moral case, it is not convinced of any benefit whatsoever.

If the Tories win power at the next election outright, which is possible, they have promised an in/out referendum on Europe. If that referendum takes place it is perfectly clear how Britain will vote, they will vote Out.

Then we will be living in interesting times.

The German view is that Britain manipulated the financial markets and they fell into their own traps. Instead of setting up a sound economy, Britain lived of North Sea oil, dubious financial 'services' and speculation. But they can't admit that, so they put the blame on somebody else.

Now Britain is desperately seeking for a vision. Is it the revived Commonwealth? Difficult. Though there could be improvements. Britain has a huge trade deficit with India. What else? Is it a form of self-isolation? Alternatively the US could be the best partner and Britain can have a free-trade agreement with the US.

In my view Britain takes itself much too important. From here in Berlin we have many more difficult problems. We just need to look a bit east. Poland is a country which enjoys some growth and it would be much more useful to help them getting into shape and getting them up to the level of Eestern Europe. Even East Germany needs a lot of attention.

As an European, I have to say the EU is a huge success. Much of what I read in the newspapers is bullshit anyway. How often has the British press written that the Euro is over in a few days, survival possibility of a few percent, Germany is already printing Deutsche Marks, and more. Fact is, the Euro is still there, looking stable and the Eurozone is committed to keep it.

Britain may get out of the EU. Scotland may even get out of Britain. The interesting times will be more interesting than some think.

I'm British and mildly pro European, I think for all the stuff that gets written about the EU, for the jokes the countries tell about each other, we have many more things that unite us than divide.

What I can't argue with though, is that there is definitely a perceived democratic deficit in the EU. I won't argue about whether it is real or not, it doesn't matter, what does is a lot of Europeans (not just the British) don't like EU bureaucracy.

Wow, this would be worth a Tory vote!

The UK went into Europe based on the ideals of the common market, what came after isn't what anybody signed up for

This is a common meme in British politics/public. The idea that "this isn't what we agreed". But I haven't actually seen any evidence for that.

It seems like backwards justification of the right wing british politics to explain why the Tories brought the UK into then EEC and to explain why the British public voted to stay in a few years later, and also to explain why many other countries (a) want to stay in it and (b) want to join.

It's pretty much the poor countries that want to join. The rich countries like Switzerland are out and want to stay out.

Yes and no. Yes, Switzerland (and Norway) are not in the EU and don't want to offically join. However they have special trade deals with the EU, customs union, they have to implement EU law, they have to allow free movement of EU citizens to live and work there, they are in the Council of Europe and have to abide by the European Court of Human Rights, they're in Schengen. Switzerland and Norway are basically in EU in everything but name.

I think hate is a very harsh word. But I agree with your sentiments about the UK spying on everyone - esp given EU specific privacy laws and recent cases of EU law against Google, Facebook etc. Pretty disgusting really given all the rhetoric they spew, but EVERYONE has that uneasy feeling now. We've always said the UK gov't were just lap dogs for the US, this just proves it somewhat more.

I'm actually surprised more hasn't been made of the UK involvement on this (but I'm currently not in Europe so difficult to gauge the reactions)

I think you are missing the scale of these data collection programmes. For instance, if you are in north Germany, some of your traffic will be routed through Sweden (because of Telia), Sweden has the FRA law[1] and the Titan Traffic Database[2] which means your traffic gets intercepted, stored and handed over to American authorities for analysis.

Why aren't you as angry about Sweden doing the same thing to your communications? It was not even a secret matter.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA-law [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_traffic_database

The situation isn't really better in Germany. The Constitutional Court (and current Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger) is our last, best and only line of defense against the security hardliners in the conservative party (CDU/CSU).

Since the ruling of the Constitutional Court, whenever there was some crime, there'd be the predictable knee-jerk reaction by Hans-Peter Uhl (CSU) that it wouldn't have happened if we had data retention. And equally predictable, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger from the liberal democrats (FDP) would say "Nein". There's even a website to look up whether Uhl has called for data retention (hatuhlschonvdsgefordert.de).

Federal elections are coming up on September 22 and it's likely that we'll get a grand coalition again (CDU/CSU + SPD). That would mark the end of Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger's tenure as Justice Minister and it would be a boon for the hardliners. Heaven forbid!

Good lord, could this actually happen?

> We (people in the UK) have long been complaining that our Government stringently applies every single EU directive and human rights law but other countries just seem to ignore them

Er, but this is completely imaginary. The UK has derogations from more of the optional stuff than nearly any other member state, and has a poor record for implementing the mandatory stuff.

I know it's not strictly related to the matter at hand, but the notion of the EU churning out absurd and illogical directives is largely a construct of the tabloid press.

As someone who has had exposure to certain parts of EU human rights law, the coverage of the relevant issues in the British press is disgraceful. Unfortunately, respecting people's human rights is often difficult and costly, thus an easy target for sensationalist headlines.

The majority of the British press often lies and misleads about EU law and how much of it the UK implements. The UK actually opts out of various EU things (Schengen, Euro, 48 hr max working week), and often implements the bare minimum of EU law (e.g. Working Time Directive).

This idea, that EU-law-in-UK is somehow worse than EU-law-in-France (or -Germany, etc.) is used an excuse to explain why other countries don't want to leave. "Why don't Spain want to leave the EU if it's so bad?" "Oh! Well they don't implement all the laws!!". Unfortunately it's not true. France goes above and beyond the EU minimum (and beyond UK) in many EU-laws (e.g. Working Time Directive).

Separation of power and democracy at work. This is why, at least within the context of the EU, you cannot say “Germany did this” or “Germany is in favour of that“. When it comes to data retention German politicians don’t have a uniform view. You can’t even say that they are clearly opposed. Most probably want some kind of data retention (but it’s a complex issue that is passionately fought, so this is taking time).

On the EU level “Germany” was very much pushing for data retention and a big reason why it passed in the first place (while some other parts of “Germany” were very much against data retention and worked against it on the EU level).

It’s wrong and misleading to talk about the EU abstractly – as is frequently done, especially in the media. If decisions are made on the national level all different opposing views are shown in detail and points of contention are discussed at length – but the EU apparently hands down laws like god on Mount Sinai. But that’s very clearly not what happens.

The EU has many faults and is far from perfect, but one easy fix for many issues would be better and more thorough media coverage. To me this is also very much a failure of journalism. If no one portrays the conflicts and discussions in the decision making process then that’s very bad. The decision making process has to be scrutinised and the people have to be given a chance to protest. But if the media is unable to do it that just won’t happen.

Because the decision making process is on the EU level very much is long-winded and complicated, with dozens of different views on any given topic and many people who have a say. There would be lots to cover.

Well it looks like the EU is dead wrong in this case and wants to force Germany to spy on its own citizens.

There's more. There's technical standards, procedures and laws accross europe for the storage, retrieval and processing of metadata and other information.

it's called ETSI Lawful Interception see: * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception#Technical_d...

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception#Europe

* http://www.etsi.org/index.php/technologies-clusters/technolo...

* http://webapp.etsi.org/WorkProgram/Report_WorkItem.asp?WKI_I...

This has been in place much longer than the "data retention" directive.

Without judging this I see one positive thing - it is publicly known what information is collected, there is a debate about it and you can file a lawsuit against it. And as seen in Germany they courts are really taking the issue serious and don't just try to silence you. To me this seems orders of magnitude better than not even knowing what is going. Of course, as seen in the case of the UK, there is no guarantee that nothing else is going on but even after the events of last weeks I still have quite a bit of trust in Europe.

After reading a bit into it I think the situation is actually quite good. The EU passed the directive requiring all EU countries to adopt national laws for data retention but now there are lawsuits all over the place. The directive has been widely adopted by the member states - in some cases after being sued by the EU for not adopting the directive (but this court is not responsible for ensuring that the directive does not violate other laws) - but at least in Germany, Romania and the Czech Republic the laws have been canceled after they were ruled unconstitutional. There are pending lawsuits against national laws in other countries, more lawsuits against member states, for example Germany, by the EU for not adopting the directive and lawsuits against the directive. After being ruled unconstitutional and violating human rights in several countries I think it is only a matter of time until the whole thing gets buried. It will have cost an insane amount of time, money and dedication but the system still seems - more or less - to work.

A choice quote:

Even Schmidt, 73, who headed one of the more infamous departments in the infamous Stasi, called himself appalled. The dark side to gathering such a broad, seemingly untargeted, amount of information is obvious, he said.

“It is the height of naivete to think that once collected this information won’t be used,” he said. “This is the nature of secret government organizations. The only way to protect the people’s privacy is not to allow the government to collect their information in the first place.”

"The Lives of Others" (Das Leben der Anderen) is an excellent German film that dramatically shows the intrusiveness of the Stasi (secret police) into daily life in the former East Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others

In the film you can see some of the techniques used by Wolfgang Schmidt and his colleagues.

Ironically enough, the lead actor (Ulrich Mühe[1]) had really been under Stasi surveillance; a surveillance to which his then wife allegedly collaborated.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_M%C3%BChe

this is the most destructive aspect of surveilance state - it is not that the state, ie. its proper officers and facilities, are doing - after all one can reasonably expect them to do all sort of nefarious things one can imagine and thus one is considered reasonably warned, it is about anybody (even friends and family) can happen to be a secret informant and collaborator. In case of USA the secretly imposed gag orders is a big step toward it.

I signed up for Google Plus reluctantly, mostly just to use hangouts as Skype doesn't work on the ARM Chromebook.

I don't use Facebook and I host my own email, mostly because I'd like to keep my social graph private.

However, Google knows everyone I'd have added on Plus already - and offers to add them for me. How? They've all uploaded their address books, and they all use gmail.

80-90%+ of my social graph is already known to them, just because my friends have already given them the data. My lack of participation in Google Plus is insufficient.

It is the same with smart phones. Even if you don't install any apps or link any of your profiles (fb, g+, etc) all it takes is for one person you know to upload their address book to "find their friends" and suddenly there is linked: your phone #, email, fb (your picture included), g+, all in one spot, all without your permission or knowledge.

Even if you try and secure your data and privacy, unless everyone you know does the same thing it is pointless.

Well the 'secret imposed gag order' is itself nothing new in the USA so if that's the only risk factor then that big step came decades ago.

> Mühe's response when asked how he prepared for his role in Das Leben der Anderen was, "I remembered."

...Wow. I find it hard to even fathom that.

It's interesting that the only defense the USG can muster in this debacle is their insistence that there are policies in place to prevent abuse.

Policies change when governments change, so every time there are US senate elections[1] or US presidential elections[2] then it'll be a chance that we irrevocably move further down the dark road of totalitarianism.

If there's anything to do to remedy this situation, it's talk to your congressional representative. Gerrymandering may have made that a pointless task, but it's just the first step towards freedom.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elec...

The "we have policies" defense is complete horse manure for the reason you stated and also because if those policies are secret, as is the case with regards to wholesale surveillance state policies, there is no way to verify they're being followed or hold anyone accountable for violating those policies.

Additionally even when governments don't change the policies have an uncanny habit of not being followed whenever it's convenient to ignore them. That has happened time and time again.

Assuming this level of unconstitutional surveillance continues, what can we do?

Here are some of my ideas: Send encrypted emails, to communicate long distances. Use the internet way less. Use cell phones only to arrange real life meetups. Hang out & talk to people in real life. Never have a meaningful discussion "over the air".

PGP/GPG adoption needs to go way up, but I am concerned by the rise of "non-owned" devices. I would put way less trust in running PGP/GPG from a client-side mail client on a smartphone with OTA updates, apparent carrier spyware, etc than I would in PGP/GPG running on OSX, for instance.

Maybe one way to partially mitigate these concerns is to push for only storing/using private keys on these devices on a TPM.

In general, I am using the internet and electronic communications less and lees. Often I am now asking myself if what I am going to do is necessary or does it have to be electronic.

As well as altering my choice to use, I am adding more and more security options. Mainly silly small things like the add-on that chooses HTTPS, ad blockers, or using Iron in stead of chrome, and so on. So, where I have an easy or ultimately seamless choice, Im choosing to encrypt and block. Nothing major, I know I am not secure, but more of my traffic is encrypted. Lastly, while I have used Linux servers for years, Im now trying to make Linux work for me as a Windows replacement. Partly because of the awful Windows 8 which I will down grade to from Vista (!!!), but more so because of these security issues.

So, nothing big, but a general move. But one key thing is that is people are anything like me, what we will see is more and more internet traffic become encrypted. Not sure what that with do to spy paranoia. Probably makes us default guilty.

The other plan is to use NO defenses what so ever. Open one's self up, but never ever do anything other then the tedious benign on the internet. Show the world how open and nonthreatening you are. Keep all the evil stuff like joint smoking, porn watching, political opinion, medical questions, employment details, etc off the electronic spy.

In general, plaintext protocols of any form should be met with the same derision as something like telnet would today. Encrypt all the things. We need the very idea of sending something like plain ASCII beyond your computer to be offensive at its core.

Considering passwords are often stored in plaintext and companies think this is no big deal, I'm not sure how well that will work.

Without proper trust models in place, this won't solve all the problems, but I feel like that's what the culture of communication on the Internet has to look like. It has to be done by the engineers at the protocol level, and application developers have to adopt it. Servers and other peer-to-peer clients should refuse to speak plaintext.

Focusing on things like getting people to use PGP, OTR, etc, is hopeless and will only work with other privacy geeks.

Since much of the information is used to find out who you hang out with, your strategy doesn't help as much as you think. Guilt by association, you know.

"Much of the information"? Given that the metadata (a.k.a. "CDR" or Call Data Record) is getting hoovered up in all this, about the only thing such a mass of data can be used for is guilt by association. The telco's don't match up CDR with a captured audio stream, so that's done by the NSA (or whoever). They're not going to be able to do that matching, or the semantic analysis of what's said, very often. Therefore, the ONLY thing the metadata can do is determine guilt by association.

This actually made me think about what kinds of analog communication equipment could we use and encrypt transmissions with? I know Motorola makes some two way radios that have encryption, just not sure how good it is.

It would be interesting if people started to revert back to less and less digital communication and went back to doing what you're talking about. It's almost like another counter revolution taking shape.

A scrambler can be used in audio band, although I'm not sure how well it will mate with a GSM codec. Still it's an inferior solution to purely digital P2P VoIP systems (like e.g. Skype before the supernodes).

How about sending all that meaningless bullsht emails with an additional notice, like we have for confidentially along the lines of, and then suing the US government if your stuff ever turns up (yes, I know, it's difficult).

This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the intended recipient(s), are confidential, and may be privileged... If you are the NSA then please note I am a US citizen and under 4th Amendment rights you are not lawfully allowed to store records of this message

(I am not a US citizen, so fix as required)

Wouldn't matter, I'm afraid.

Even if the NSA put free text detection algorithms to look for such a disclaimer (since they claim messages themselves are not examined without a warrant), they'd ignore the disclaimer anyways as anyone could easily claim they were a US citizen.

Those are all passive responses. Not meaning to be critical but they are the best case response that the government could hope for.

How about picketing outside the office of your Congressman/woman? We're invisible with passive responses. I think as a people we need to get over the sense of embarrassment we feel when we gather as group for a political cause.

That depends on who does the surveillance. Stopping to use American services is a simple start, and it is much easier to act against surveillance in your own country than it is to act against surveillance by the US.

Of course, this only helps if your ‘home area’, i.e. the area you trust to not intercept your messages and where you can act meaningfully to ban such interception, is sufficiently large – given the size of the EU (for example) even after Britain is out, that shouldn’t be too much a problem.

For everything going outside this green zone, encrypted communication is the go-to-response, be that PGP, OTR or at the very least HTTPS.

I'm going to have to go with "no". Or perhaps "yes and". We should not be forced to curtail our use of one of mankind's greatest triumphs because a few cold-war troglodytes think that they are somehow entitled to read all of our mail and arrest us for word-crimes.

These people don't deserve the power given to them in trust. We should remove it from them. Nothing less than that will do.

Encrypting your emails won't help at all, because what's being snooped is the header information. Who sent to whom, when and from where and where to.

You can't hide that information.

Don't send email and don't use the phone is the only alternative. Snail mail may be safe.

I assume snail mail metadata (from, to, date, weight, form factor) can and is collected, with modern USPS equipment.

I think the phrase you're looking for is "Historical literacy informs Germans' view of U.S. surveillance programs".

The Stasi has been around in some form or another until about 1990. A lot of us really have "been there".

"In our case, we thought we were being paranoid until we saw what they’d gathered and realized we’d been naive..."

My father, a man of 75 years old in the last couple of months had been mentioning that all our calls were being recorded. I dismissed him as just paranoid. After all, I'm the software developer, I'm the techie in our house. I know best, I would tell myself. Now I feel quite stupid. How could I have been so naive in believing that our government would never do this. This is the land of the free after all right? I've learned to never trust our government. At least that is a good thing that came out of this.

edit: The funny thing is that right now he is having a small problem with somebody because they had a verbal agreement over the phone about how much a repair would cost. Both their memories seem to remember different things. It is only a couple hundred dollars but my father said that if were in the order of $50,000 or more he would get a lawyer so that the conversation he had with the man could be retrieved to prove my father was right. I told him that that would never happen because, mmm..., because the government would not want to give it to anybody else. At that point I remembered that I had already been wrong once so I could easily be wrong again.

> I dismissed him as just paranoid.

ALWAYS listen to the crazy old guy, especially if he's been correct about past events.

You don't have to believe him, but at least listen to him.

regards,

A Crazy Old Guy

Most of all, because one day, if we are lucky, we will be that crazy old guy.

One of the best things you could do as a country is stop with the 'land of the free' parareligion. You're not particularly freer than your contemporaries. In some things you are, in others you're not. You have a great level of freedom, but due to the parareligion, there is a sentiment (obviously not shared by all) that other countries must somehow 'not be free'. It creates a distorted sense of self.

USA is demonstrably less free than anywhere else if you define free merely as "not being in prison".

In my experience over the last few weeks, younger Germans (my age, 30 years & younger) are blissfully ignorant ("I don't have anything to hide" - sounds familiar ?) to the impact of the government spying on its citizen.

24 years are a long time & that part of history is not as well-ingrained in the collective memory as the Holocaust. :-(

Its always struck me as odd that Germans seem to be so hot on privacy but seem fine with having mandatory ID cards and with the police being able to demand you show it.

germans generally like order very, very much. :)

Coming from another country that has mandatory ID cards it does not seem odd to me. How do you confirm someone's identity otherwise?

Maybe you are thinking that criminals can always have fake IDs so having an ID is pointless?

The idea that you could be required to identify yourself is probably what seems strange to them. In (at least) several US states the police can require you to identify yourself, but telling them your name is all that is required. Americans have an aversion to "papers please", because for decades that is one of the things that we felt distinguished ourselves from certain other countries.

Quite that is why the UK drooped ID cards after WW2 rather surprised that other countries which had much more bad experience with "papers please" in WW2 did not do the same.

Visiting the US for a while, I recall being yelled at by an inland border patrol guard in Texas for having the temerity to keep my passport in my trunk. Saying my name was definitely not all that was required.

The border is a different story. No one has any rights at the US border.

Land near the borders (particularly the southern border) is treated differently (very poorly, as you unfortunately learned). Texas is not even the worse in that regard, as hard as that may be to believe. Arizona takes that shameful crown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_SB_1070

As far as I'm aware (correct me if I'm wrong), there is an ID card or a functional equivalent thereof in most if not all countries, as the ability to verify someone's identity is pretty much a requirement for a modern society. Whether it's an actual "ID card" or a passport, birth certificate, driver's license, social security number, whatever doesn't really matter IMO.

As for having to reveal/prove my identity to the police: I could do without that, but I consider it mostly a non-issue. In practice it happens rarely, and if it does the police officers tend to be pretty friendly and reasonable. Case in point, one of the two or three times this has happend to me in my life, my ID was invalid as it had expired several months before. They were basically like "Well you better get a new one soon, m'kay?" and then sent me on my way. YMMV of course.

The big difference though between the ID card thing and privacy violations by spying is that the spying happens behind people's backs, and they may never know how broadly their rights are violated until one day the gathered information is used against them. There can be no effective oversight and that's why it must not be allowed to happen in the first place.

If on the other hand the police started abusing their authority – acting like dicks, grabbing people en masse to check their IDs on every street corner, it would be immediately obvious to everyone and could presumably be corrected (by vote, protest, civil disobedience, etc).

Yes but in the UK having a passport is not required. And a short while ago on on here some one living in Germany commented that it was funny how it was the Non Ethnic Germans that got stopped a lot more.

> [...] it was the Non Ethnic Germans that got stopped a lot more.

That's probably true to some extent. I imagine though that the situation is similar in other countries, and the problem is racism in itself. It's sad, but it has nothing to with the ID requirement.

Just look at the US; they may not require an ID, but it sure does not seem to stop their police from physically abusing anyone who looks at them the wrong way. Or in rare cases, literally beating up or even murdering someone just because they're black/mexican/whatever.

(Disclaimer: I've never been to the US. American pop culture may have distorted my view on the American police. :)

> In practice it happens rarely, and if it does the police officers tend to be pretty friendly and reasonable. Case in point, one of the two or three times this has happend to me in my life, my ID was invalid as it had expired several months before. They were basically like "Well you better get a new one soon, m'kay?" and then sent me on my way. YMMV of course.

Well remember, when we discuss government programs the only valid point of discussion is what could possibly go wrong in the hands of a despot, not how the program is applied in practice. ;)

> The big difference though between the ID card thing and privacy violations by spying is that the spying happens behind people's backs, and they may never know how broadly their rights are violated until one day the gathered information is used against them.

That has always been true in the U.S. though. Just look at the NFL tight end Aaron Hernandez, who was arrested on murder charges yesterday. During his arraignment the prosecution managed to produce a horrifying assortment of evidence against Hernandez, after only a week's worth of police work (all fully legal and with proper oversight).

The only effective difference was that in this case the government did not retain the records by themselves, but subpoena'd them from the companies as needed.

The government could still theoretically switch to doing this too. PRISM is a good example, but there's no technical reason why the NSA couldn't just require the phone and Internet companies to store all the data that the NSA would anyways, and access it on demand.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the things "spying on us behind are backs" are the things we've built onto the Internet. The Internet Never Forgets and that works to the government's advantage as much as it does ours.

That one's easy: wiretapping is painted as an evil commie thing (in fact it's widely seen as the second key reason why the eastern system was bad, lead closely by shooting people at the wall and followed at great distance by smaller cars), while IDs were as real in the west as they were in the east. Also, while people in the east had real problems with a wiretapping organization completely out of control, them not having IDs would have hardly made any difference. One could easily argue that making a difference between those two things is based on some solid experience and therefore isn't odd at all.

Both german states were running like virtualized OS instances hosted by occupation. Under those conditions one would probably give an ID-less system about as little consideration as a liberal reimplementation of the second amendment. When that changed nobody felt much like messing with the proven western system envied so much by those in the east.

One might argue that ID cards actually preserve privacy. In order to give some company or person proof of my identity, I just have to show them my ID card. This transfers less personal information to them than a driver's license, birth certificate, etc. State-issued ID cards are usually much harder to falsify than those, too. Therfore, rarely something else beside them is needed for identification. Therefore, identity theft is more or less a non-issue in Germany.

So there should be no problems with the NSA GCHQ storing all that data then by your argument.

Are there any oversight committees that check that the police of European country aren't abusing the power to demand ID I Think Not.

I would be interested to hear how his statements support your claim bout NSA/GCHQ because I see only a very thin connection.

He seems to be happy with the police having access to everyones id card data and appearing to have no oversite to see if the Police are abusing the power of asking people to present your id card or "papers please".

"Memories of Stasi color Germans’ view of U.S. surveillance programs"

Might as well have written: "Memories of segregation and lynching color African American's view of modern day bigots".

I mean the "color" part tries to make it as something strange (or even bad, some kind of "distortion") is happening, when it's the most natural thing in the world: actual historical experience with the issue, makes German's more informed on what it can result to and more sensitive to how bad it is.

I'm always amazed to what BS spin columnists put on their stories. And not always innocently.

But this guy was a colonel in the Stasi.

If a similar interview with someone who did participate in lynchings were conducted, I don't think your second title would be all that far off. But racial bigotry isn't the hot issue right now. I think it's helpful to draw parallels to the past - and a title like that might help encourage people to actually read.

> But racial bigotry isn't the hot issue right now.

It seems to be in a limited extent, though not for news items that are relevant on HN.

    Dagmar Hovestaedt is the spokeswoman for the German  
    Stasi Records Agency, which showed 88,000 people last 
    year what the Stasi had gathered on them. She said the 
    U.S. should consider doing the same.

The Stasi Records Agency is known in Germany as "Gauck Behörde"[1], because for ten years its head was the anti-communist civil rights activist Joachim Gauck.

Gauck is now President of Germany and when Barack Obama was in Berlin they met and according to the schedule talked for one hour.

I was curious which topics they discussed, but unfortunately it was not covered in the press.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Commissioner_for_the_St...

The US is in need for a full operating system upgrade. Like going from Mac OS 9 to OS X. Not a .1 upgrade. Obama delivered a Microsoft-style upgrade. You were promised 'hope' and 'change'. What you got is a worse version of Microsoft Windows with lots of spyware and a built-in 'security' system.

We need to re-write the damn kernel

Let's call it HURD!

All the government agencies will run as seperate enterprieses in userland, with clearly defined responsibilities and strong seperation of powers. Until the new constitution is done, the government will just run as a single cohesive unit, ignoring the entire history of political science.

Not really. The US Constitution is fine. What we need is compliance on the part of the government.

It's broken. You need a rewrite.

Right. Also a federal guarantee of accessible health coverage, the end to two wars (and the notable lack of any new ones), two supreme court justices with quite acceptable records on civil liberties, and currently a reasonable shot at bringing federal immigration law into line with the size of the actual immigrant workforce.

I wasn't able to fit all that into your OS metaphor, sorry.

Less rhetoric, more policy debate please.

The US is struggling with basics. Universal health care is still controversial and the next conservative government will get rid of it as fast as they can. It's 'socialism'. Let's see when the justices will bring back civil liberties. Even they won't care about my liberties as a German and full scale spying will go on on my communication. Guantanamo is still open. The US is military active in Syria, Pakistan, ... Everyday.

>the next conservative government will get rid of it as fast as they can.

We don't have universal health care.

> Guantanamo is still open. The US is military active in Syria, Pakistan, ... Everyday.

Eh, have to pin Guantanamo on Congress, not Obama. Contrary to what might be popular opinion in the EU, but he is our President, not our King, and therefore doesn't get to unilaterally do whatever he wants on all things.

Oh, and the military is active in Jordan, not Syria. The rebels are active in Syria. Of course the U.S. is screwed either way here. If we get involved then we're warmongers, if we don't get involved then we're just letting 100,000 people and counting kill themselves and stoke up sectarian violence amongst the world's most populous faith, which is apparently obviously the far more ethical alternative.

> Eh, have to pin Guantanamo on Congress, not Obama.

Obama in 2008 -- "I will close Guantanamo". Don't fucking care what and who and other excuses. He promised, but didn't deliver. That makes him a liar. It is very simple. Now you can dissect that and ask, was he stupid and didn't know that he didn't have the power? Maybe. Well then he is a stupid liar. Was he aware that it wasn't really in his power to do that, well then he is an just a simple run of the mill liar.

People are also simple-minded and are easily manipulated. But that is exactly what the hope was about. The hope was that he wouldn't be like others. He wouldn't lie. He would say stuff like "I can't make that promise" if he really couldn't.

> if we don't get involved then we're just letting 100,000 people and counting kill themselves and stoke up sectarian violence

Apart from PR articles and lobbying campaigns, I can't remember the last time I heard the world in an uproar about US _not_ intervening and invading a country.

I knew exactly what he was by his voting record as a senator. He voted to give retroactive immunity to telecom companies spying on American citizens. It was plain and simple, a single action told me more about who he was than a thousand of his warm and sweet promises and hopes.

> Obama in 2008 -- "I will close Guantanamo"

You could as well have said that he's a politician. I'll bet you believed Google when they said you'd be able to access your email whenever you wanted to as well. Such grandiose claims always have to be evaluated in the context of reality, otherwise we would have to add asterisks to practically each and every thing we say to cover all the possible pedantry.

> I can't remember the last time I heard the world in an uproar about US _not_ intervening and invading a country.

I didn't say "invade". I said "involved". Libya is merely the most recent of many examples.

Meh, the hypervisor(s) have all the power, and they aren't even afraid to hide it these days.

Clarification: Merkel said "Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland", not “the Internet is new to all of us.”.

Now Neuland does not just mean "new", but "new land". Similar as America or Africa was new land after 1500. So it means, the internet is ripe to conquer it.

Merkel herself was a former Stasi member, known as IM-Erika (Informal Member Erika). Germany is currently tapping more phones, then DDR ever had. We do not have a PRISM scandal, but a law called Vorratsdatenspeicherung.

What you write is misleading.

Merkel was not a Stasi member and she was not known as 'IM Erika'. There are some rumors, but that's it mostly.

The law 'Vorratsdatenspeicherung' is ruled unconstitutional by the 'Verfassungsgericht'.

That the Internet is 'Neuland' is trivially true. I have been using the Internet since the mid 80s. But what we currently have is completely different, of a different quality and unprecedented.

http://www.imagebanana.com/view/r8cwnbcl/satire_01_april_201...

plz call it conspiracy, but mr.gauck was the one holding his thunbs on their secret files,...

My favorite stasi joke: After the wall came down all the former stasi agents got jobs as taxi drivers - you get in the cab, tell the driver your name, and they already knew the address to take you home.

This story always disturbed me about the Stasi: http://theresagameinthat.blogspot.de/2011/06/stasi-scent-lib...

My son just asked why the English are so bad "spying on Europeans". I reassured him by saying that most western governments are almost cetainly corrupt (inc dear old Australia). And he who controls the databases controls the politicians, police, lawyers, judges ... You get the idea. And even better, just because you've got nothing to hide, it's easy for these databases to be changed by someone in the know. These systems are extremely dangerous, and should not be underestimated.

Good! I'm glad some people still remember history. Sadly, it looks like we're going to be doomed to repeat it rather we remember it or not.

What I find suspiciously absent from the relevations so far is the DNA angle. If the STASI had had todays technology, they would have tapped all phones, stored all data, and collected DNA samples wherever they can. Assuming that all spy agencies think more or less alike on the issue of data gathering, why haven't we heard of the NSA collecting DNA samples?

Not that it could go wrong there....

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/How-innocent-man-s-DNA-w...

The US government's acquisition of people's biometric information, including DNA, has already been outed by WikiLeaks in their release of the Embassy cables a few years ago. Did you see this story? http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/...

The text of the original cable: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/...

Not surprising. DHS hired an old Stasi hand and an old KGB hand as advisors under Dubya:

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan05/Whitney0121.htm

Bullshit. Even your own source acknowledges that they can't confirm these reports.

Thank you. Sorry for posting bad info. It's a good reminder to doublecheck what I think I know.

Let's keep some perspective. The fear of the Stasi wasn't just 'are they tapping our phones?' If it was, they wouldn't have been so feared - just be careful on the phones. It was having a network of informants, such that you couldn't trust anyone, anywhere, that really caused the oppressive atmosphere. Americans are not living under the fear that if they mention something anti-government to a neighbour, they have a realistic chance of being carted off in the night.

love the framing in the title.

knowledge of death and disease colours doctors' views on healthy living

"Access to the Brandenburg Gate, the backdrop for his speech, was severely limited"

The irony is palpable.

Germans are referring to the States as Stasi 2.0.

The new and improved updated version of tyranny.

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