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Google Analytics May Be Illegal In Germany
sopssa sends in a TechCrunch story that begins "Several federal and regional government officials in Germany are trying to put a ban on Google Analytics, the search giant's free software product that allows website owners and publishers to get detailed statistics about the number, whereabouts, and search behavior of their visitors (and much more)." Here's Google's translation of the article from Zeit Online (original in German). A German lawyer cited there says that penalties for websites that uses Google Analytics could amount to €50,000 (about $75,000). Reader sopssa adds, "The amount of data Google collects from everywhere on the Internet is indeed huge, and website owners should be using a local open source alternative to keep visitor data private."
I'm actually an American on vacation in Frankfurt at this very moment, and it is, indeed, a much more regulated environment. Seeing three guys walking through the aiport, one of them holding an automatic weapon at the ready, and getting the feeling that they're just waiting for a reason to jump you is very sobering. As far as everything being against the law, after talking candidly with some of my friends that live in Germany that is a far less humorous statement than it should be.
I think you're just an idiot. If you find any police presence in Germany (Europe) more threatening than *anything* in the US, you're out of your mind. Period! End of discussion! I don't even want to think about the difference in the probability of having a gun pointed at you (police or criminals). I think you cite the *only* example where indeed there is more (open) presence of guns in Europe than in the US. But then go back and check how many people got killed innocently in airports that way in Europe over the past decades, probably zero or close to that.