71–80 of 203 posts
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Lol, what on earth makes you single out Poland as the single western country not in decay right now?
Its economy has been growing for 30 years non-stop, to the point that it is now compared to Singapore.
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Maybe, but the more problematic part is disallowing NGOs from submitting information requests. Multiple previous corruption scandals in Germany were exposed exactly because NGOs themselves were allowed to submit these information requests (and pay for them).
IMHO banning organisations from making requests will have no effect. People will just make requests in their own names, instead, then what?
Also also want to invoice you for all costs that your request causes. Previously it was capped at 500€. So your request could cost you thousands of euros. You are at the mercy of the government how many people are working on your request and how efficient they process it.
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I think the article just has poor wording. They went through a raft of different, unrelated reforms already, and this is part of the next set the CDUs want to get through.
DW is the only media outlet in Germany financed directly via taxes. They are unlikely to be impartial
As a German citizen let me tell you, the rate of decline this country is in is truly shocking. This is by far the worst government in my lifetime, and remarkably there is wide consensus about it across the population (above 85% dissatisfaction, if you think I am exaggerating here). Industry and trade associations aren't happy either, which raises the question who asks for this? Life is getting forcefully precarious f…
I guess we all can safely conclude that all governments of the word (world's government? shoot that tinfoilhat), at least those who have any meaningful means of destruction at hand, are the worst not only in our, but also our parents' lifetimes (assuming the mean age of HN commenters as 30-40).
TL;DR: The fascism is back.
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Not really. The main "purpose" for such information is to be published, and at that point it makes no difference who exactly requested it. Personal view: The current mainly governing party in Germany (CDU/CSU) is a bunch of incompetent, nepotistic gerontocrats, and this change is mainly intended to make it harder for independent press to air their dirty laundry. Just for reference: Approval rating for Merz (chancello…
I am wondering if a valid aspect of limiting this to people living in Germany could be to prevent Denial of Service attacks from abroad. Of course these could also be launched from Germans...
I don't think this would pass at all, the German parliament is now in summer break and once they're back there would be 3 federal state elections and depending on its outcome, the current government could collapse before the end of this year.
Lol, do you seriously think the 'alternative' would be any more progressive when it comes to freedom of information (or government transparency in general) once they'd be in power?
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This hasn't been voted on in the Bundesttag yet, let alone the Bundesrat or Bundespräsident.
Ok, so what did they actually approve? Is this just a "declaration of intent", and the actual laws will follow later?! The article clearly says "lawmakers approved a whole series of reforms" - I was also surprised that this worked so quickly, but what do I know...
What incidents are driving such a change?
FoIA requests humiliated half of the chancellor’s cabinet this year, including the chancellor himself.
The agricultural minister (CSU)(CDUs sister party) was especially proud of his nickname "the black butcher".
Someone sent a request inquiring about the hygiene protocols of his butchers shop via FoIA and he rather closed shop to deny access to the protocols than hand them out. This is now in front of a court and the media made fun of him for being the black butcher without a butchery.
Digital Minister (CDU) went on TV and proudly announced no more fax machines in his ministry.
Someone sent his undersecretary a fax the same day with the title "Jäger des verlorenen Faxes" which translates into "hunter of the lost fax" and is a Hommage to the German Indiana Jones raiders of the last ark movie title.
Two weeks later the minister sat in an interview and said he needed to correct himself. If he sees another fax machine in his ministry it’s going to get thrown out.
There was a huge conference that is run annually by a company the culture minister (CDU) is controlling that allowed access to major German political figures including private talks, including the minister of economy (CDU), for a fixed price.
It was only uncovered by a FoIA request. It was so bad the Bavarian prime minister had to pull any funding and recommendations to the conference and had to stay away from it after going there for years.
Just this week the mayor of Berlin (CDU) had to give up his spot as top candidate in the upcoming mayoral race because he lied to the press and even lied repeatedly about phoning with the chancellor during the major attack on the energy infrastructure in Berlin by allegedly left-wing extremists.
A FoIA request busted the lying mayor as well as the lying chancellor, whose ministry couldn’t provide any proof they telephoned at all at the time they both said they had phoned, when a court asked them to deliver proof to the court.
This is only on the federal level, in a single year.
IFG/FoIA busted tons of lying and cheating local politicians over the years. Of course, the party that is involved in most of the heavy cases does want this law to die or be completely ineffective.
It’s very annoying for the chancellor that normal people have the right to inform themselves by whom and how decisions were made as soon as public money is involved.
But he’s also calling every German citizen lazy and cheating with sick days, etc., so I’d say the German people have a huge reason to distrust this cabinet and use the IFG/FoIA as the small man’s nuclear bomb, and the cabinet really doesn’t like that the peasants can fight back with the most annoying weapon in their arsenal, counter-bureaucracy.
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Denmark? The Swiss? Norway? And I was in Serbia lately, and while it was not as developed as NW-EU, nobody there described it as decaying (and many said they experiences decay when living in western nations over the past 2 decades).
Denmark is the architect of Chat Control. Even the extreme version that requires all E2E communications be accessible to the government. Denmark is not just decayed, it is completely rotten.
The only country in Europe that is the exception is Norway which is not part of the EU.
As a German citizen let me tell you, the rate of decline this country is in is truly shocking. This is by far the worst government in my lifetime, and remarkably there is wide consensus about it across the population (above 85% dissatisfaction, if you think I am exaggerating here). Industry and trade associations aren't happy either, which raises the question who asks for this? Life is getting forcefully precarious f…
No political bullshit will help with objective reality, being it rightoids who promise "optimizing" social spendings(while leaching on corruption) or leftoids who want to tax the rich(which will just drive factories and businesses to Poland/China/etc).