German Police May Not Break Into a Suspect's PC

hweimer writes to tell us that a ruling in Germany's Supreme Court has made it illegal for the police to secretly hack into a suspect's computer. While some hailed this as a victory for civil rights, Germany's Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble is expected to push for changes in the legal framework to allow police hacking.

Comments

Re:Oh, Germany...

[Qbertino]

Yes. More free than in the US I'd actually say. There are some things that suck big time about germany, don't get me wrong. Bureaucracy is one of the things that come to mind. That's really bad over here. The weather is constantly so-so, meaning often rainy but without the british poetry associated with it. Another thing that is really depressing compared to other countries is the loads of post-WW2 architecture that is ugly and dominates lots of the cities. This goes on the Nazies account as they pissed everyone on the entire planet off which in turn had to bomb germany into chunky kibbles. Hence: Many a crappy architecture in many parts of town hereabouts. Another thing that really bugs me is the germans and their car crazyness. No matter how many children die in traffic each year, highway speed limit is of limits to everyone and any politician who suggests it automatically does a political harakiri. Germany spend 4,7 billion man-hours in traffic jams each year, but it doesn't stop them from clogging the streets in town with cars whatsoever.

On the upsides we still have above standard social wellfare - allthough that has gotten considerably worse with 'Hartz 4' it would be considered luxurious in the US and other countries. Contrary to popular opinion the germans can actually be very nice and well behaved folks and the general education leven is still pretty high which maintains a basic level of intelligence throughout the country. The 'show your teeth - keep smiling' attitude people know from the US is near to non-existant here and people in germany generally mean what they say. For most of the time anyway. A trait I've come to like. In social structures as in schools there is the ususal back-stabbing and such, but on a much more broader base of tolerance towards other opinions and ways of life. Even though poverty is increasing as we speak the level of wealth is still considerably high and life in germany can be very secure and pleasant. Germany in general respects and defends basic human rights - something like Guantanamo or Death Sentence would be unthinkable in todays germany - and deals relatively fair with it's citizens.

Autobahn != playground

[Moraelin]

I'll mostly aggree about the other points, but I'm not sure what the point about children dying and the highways is. We're not talking in the cities, we're not even talking fast roads as such, we're talking major highways surrounded by at least fences and usually walls (against noise) too in the urban areas. To actually get onto a highway, a kid would have to walk quite a bit from wherever their home is, and climb over / crawl under a fence. I'm not even aware of that ever happening. Even if I might have missed a case somewhere along the road, it's hardly reason to plan traffic around such an unlikely scenario.

Also, if we're talking car-crazy, I'd like to say that at least Germany is designed to at least _allow_ one to not have a car, pretty much anywhere they may live. Compare it to USA suburban areas where in most cases you can't even walk even if you wanted to. Not only there are sidewalks everywhere, there's also good public transportation everywhere, and most places have supermarkets every 1 km or less. (As opposed to concentrating everything in some mall outside the town that's not even practical or in some cases possible to reach without a car.) So if you want to walk or take a bus instead, at least you _can_. I actually have (well paid) co-workers who come by bus, and at least one refuses to have a car and supposedly burned his driver's license as a protest against something or another.

Also the suburbia craze hasn't hit here half as hard as in the USA, where the American dream seems to be that if you're white and even vaguely countable as middle class, you have to move somewhere away from other people in some place reachable only by car. I suppose that not having much of an inner-city crime problem also helps with that. Most of my co-workers (again, well-paid and including some managers) actually like living in a populated place, on account of being more a more social thing. Which again tends to create somewhat less reason for a car exodus daily. Not that there isn't one, but it could be worse, you know?

Traffic congestions are a problem in some places, but then that's a problem in most of the western world. Cars in the 40's were still a luxury, so noone assumed we'd end up having _this_ many when they planned the cities. Short of demolishing half the city again and rebuilding it with wider roads, there's not that horribly much one can do. People aren't going to just give up their cars in Germany, but then again they aren't going to give up their cars in the USA either. And I was just reading a few days ago about Turkey having a traffic problem too, and a proposal to forbid more than one car per family in Istanbul. The Turks weren't happy about that idea, either. So that problem pretty much isn't a Germany-only problem by any kind of reckoning.