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

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

#3

Post by griffordson »

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.”

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

#6

Post by hiddenfeatures »

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. :-(

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

#7

Post by ewrwerwerw »

shill wrote: post #2

"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.

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

#8

Post by oceanstone »

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".

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

#9

Post by ferdo »

ewrwerwerw wrote: post #7
shill wrote: post #2

"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 l…

> 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

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