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Comment by Xylakant | Hacker News Reader

We can watch a similar thing unfolding in Hamburg at the moment. Following a demonstration that ended up in street fights and an alleged attack on a police station, large parts of the central districts were declared a "Gefahrenzone" (danger zone) where the police has special rights to check persons and deny them entry into that area. This is a special provision in Hamburgs police law that allows the police itself to declare such a zone with very little judical oversight. AFAIK this is the first time this has happened on a large scale, it's interesting to watch events unfold.

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I grew up in the German town of Baden-Baden, which has the highest millionare percentage in all of Germany, and this is exactly what that town turned into:

> Street life in these places is reduced to a trance-world of consumerism, of conformity and atomisation in which nothing unpredictable or disconcerting happens, a world made safe for selling mountains of pointless junk to tranquillised shoppers.

No special laws needed (other than one to disallow gather in public to drink alcohol, just for B-B, to move the homeless out of sight). It has 5000 shops for jewelry and designer clothes, while the last place where you could buy a CD closed in the 90s.

Sorry, I don't have a point, but this whole article struck me as a description of the spirit of that town. It's carcass now, while steadily getting even prettier on the outside, and rotting even further from the inside. A race to the rock bottom of lameness and soullessness.

But hey, that's just Baden-Baden, it's always been lame... to see that spirit seep into cities like Hamburg or even (some parts of) Berlin, now that is creepy. Where-is-the-nest-and-can-we-please-burn-it creepy.

I'm not aware of anything of this nature in Berlin.

The city has changed in the past few years for sure, with Tacheles gone and the police evicting the last few remaining squats, and rents rising all around. But the local government of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg at least seems keen to protect its character as the most interesting part of the city.

People can always go to Charlottenburg if they want boring and clean.

> Tacheles gone and the police evicting the last few remaining squats, and rents rising all around

so it begins, IHMO. Bergmannstrasse and Mitte seem to change quite rapidly in that direction, for example.

This also happens occasionally in Copenhagen, Denmark, when the police decides to create 'search zones', where the police create zones, where they have the right to search anyone. They don't need political or judicial permission to do so, they already have it.

But at least, these zones are met with much public debate, and the police has refrained from using them lately.

They introduced something similar for the UK, as part of Terrorism powers - there was a big stink when it turned out that the Metropolitan (London) Police had continuously designated the entire of Greater London as such a zone continuously for years, as soon as the law was passed.

Woah. I should have noted, that the 'search zones' in Copenhagen were rather limited (usually to parts of Nørrebro). But they would often fall in busy areas.

I was stopped and searched in the City of London under terrorism laws for acting suspiciously and "doing a double take" when I saw a police car. I was simply looking twice before crossing the road, but there you go...

As it happens I was heading in to a meeting with a client who I was doing some web dev work for at the time. They published a porn magazine, and I had a big pile of their magazines in my bag. To her credit, the cop who was searching me didn't even raise an eyebrow when she saw them.

Sounds just like the UK:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/mar/23/police-terrorism-p...

"It is being misused because the police have the power to impose a blanket area, where any police officer can search anyone without reason for suspicion on the basis that a senior police officer has thought that there might be terrorist activity or terrorists operating in the area."

That article dates from 2009, but section 44 of the Terrorism Act, which allowed for stop-and-search without suspicion, was suspended following a 2010 ruling by the ECHR that it violated Article 8. In various developments since that suspension, it doesn't look like anything as sweeping as the previous powers will be coming back any time soon.

Well, not until the current government manages to abolish or abandon the ECHR, something they've consistently and publicly stated they want to do.

To be fair, the political leaders are damned whatever they do on this issue now.

On the one hand, we have the principled argument of H. L. Mencken, "The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

On the other hand, we have had a few very high profile cases recently where it's hard to see how even a generous interpretation of proper human rights safeguards should protect someone, yet that person has won legal battles time after time in court using technicalities and weasel words. In most cases, those victories are ultimately won in the European Court after failing in all national courts here in the UK. And these are the ones that make the headlines and force politicians to react.

What is easy to forget when looking at the latter cases is how often the European Court has also told a current UK administration it had gone too far, often in granting sweeping powers to police forces and security services in recent years. A majority of voters might have agreed with those decisions if they were pointed out, but the related stories aren't always front page material.

In short, I suspect a lot of the talk about getting rid of ECHR and the Human Rights Acts is populist politics. No political party is seriously proposing getting rid of those without at least introducing some other form of human rights legislation instead, but then at least they've done something. I'm guessing that being the politician who didn't do anything after stories about Abu Hamza not being deported have been on the front page of the Daily Mail for years is probably not a good way to win your next election.

The facts of some of those high profile cases were... not exactly as the press portrayed them. For example, there was one high profile case where a murderer couldn't be deported to, I think, Italy because of the Human Rights Act. What the press didn't mention is that he was pretty solidly English - he'd lived in the country since the age of 5, and didn't speak Italian or know anyone there - but even though morally he was firmly our responsibility and not Italy's, the Government tried to foist him on Italy through a legal technicality. The human rights laws just provided a way for the courts to ignore their legal weaseling and come to the only reasonable conclusion.

The facts of some of those high profile cases were... not exactly as the press portrayed them.

Indeed. Unfortunately, politicians are often compelled to respond to the portrayal of what is happening, as presented in the media, as well as to what is actually happening. When the press distorts these cases just for the print equivalent of linkbait titles, it does have undesirable consequences for the debate as a whole.

This sounds like NYC's stop and frisk, which, while still nominally requiring probable cause, became in practice blanket permission to stop any black or Hispanic person for any reason.

However, it might be different from a law allowing the police to turn people away from a part of town.

Interesting, I was in Hamburg in Dec for the CCC conference (Which was great btw) and stayed for new years eve. I was curious why so many police were around downtown but figured it was just due to the massive amounts of fireworks everyone was setting off. Do you have any good sources to get more information on this?

Sorry, I only have german sources:

http://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2014-01/gefahr... (recent developments)

http://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2013-12/Rote-F... (about the original demonstration)

The underlying situation is pretty complicated and dates back to developments in the 80s (Hafenstrasse Hamburg etc.), I doubt there's good english references.

No worries I read German as well, living in Austria so I had to learn, thanks for the sources!

There aren't many English language sources so I have to give you an obviously biased one: http://revolution-news.com/activists-hamburg-protest-danger-...

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