Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

mcclatchydc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 134 posts

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

#71

Post by vacri »

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…

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.

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

#72

Post by ferdo »

Pinckney wrote: post #10
ferdo wrote: post #4

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.

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

#73

Post by vacri »

jlgreco wrote: post #49
agilebyte wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#74

Post by claudius »

oceanstone wrote: post #8

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".

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.

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

#75

Post by pessimizer »

vacri wrote: post #73
jlgreco wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#76

Post by pessimizer »

lispm wrote: post #41
ajross wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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, ... Eve…

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

We don't have universal health care.

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

#77

Post by krbbltr »

walshemj wrote: post #55
krbbltr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. :)

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

#78

Post by jlgreco »

vacri wrote: post #73
jlgreco wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

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

#79

Post by usrusr »

walshemj wrote: post #17
hiddenfeatures wrote: post #6

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.

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.

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

#80

Post by louthy »

sentenza wrote: post #62
louthy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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…

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!)

Post reply on HN