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Berlin's Digital Exiles: Where Tech Activists Go To Escape the NSA
An anonymous reader writes with this story about how Berlin has become a haven for Laura Poitras and other journalists who want to limit the amount of NSA disruption in their lives. "It's the not knowing that's the hardest thing, Laura Poitras tells me. 'Not knowing whether I'm in a private place or not.' Not knowing if someone's watching or not. Though she's under surveillance, she knows that. It makes working as a journalist 'hard but not impossible'. It's on a personal level that it's harder to process. 'I try not to let it get inside my head, but I still am not sure that my home is private. And if I really want to make sure I'm having a private conversation or something, I'll go outside.'
.....We're having this conversation in Berlin, her adopted city, where she'd moved to make a film about surveillance before she'd ever even made contact with Snowden. Because, in 2006, after making two films about the US war on terror, she found herself on a 'watch list'. Every time she entered the US – 'and I travel a lot' – she would be questioned. 'It got to the point where my plane would land and they would do what's called a hard stand, where they dispatch agents to the plane and make everyone show their passport and then I would be escorted to a room where they would question me and oftentimes take all my electronics, my notes, my credit cards, my computer, my camera, all that stuff.' She needed somewhere else to go, somewhere she hoped would be a safe haven. And that somewhere was Berlin."
.....We're having this conversation in Berlin, her adopted city, where she'd moved to make a film about surveillance before she'd ever even made contact with Snowden. Because, in 2006, after making two films about the US war on terror, she found herself on a 'watch list'. Every time she entered the US – 'and I travel a lot' – she would be questioned. 'It got to the point where my plane would land and they would do what's called a hard stand, where they dispatch agents to the plane and make everyone show their passport and then I would be escorted to a room where they would question me and oftentimes take all my electronics, my notes, my credit cards, my computer, my camera, all that stuff.' She needed somewhere else to go, somewhere she hoped would be a safe haven. And that somewhere was Berlin."
Germany?
How times have changed...
Required reading for internet skeptics
"God save sacred Germany!"
--Claus von Stauffenberg, c. July 1944, while being shot by Nazis
Guess Germany has learned something about overbearing government.
that the USA's NSA would be the successor of East Germany's Stasi, 25 years after the Berlin wall fell.
I remember when the US was the country people would come to when they wanted to get away from oppressive regimes.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
You can't escape an intelligence agency especially in Berlin!
During the cold war Berlin(DE) like Viena(AT) was a central station for spies.
But she feels safer, that's a relief.
Germany has "strict" privacy laws, but they largely apply to organizations that don't pose a big threat to privacy in the first place. Police, courts, financial institutions, businesses, tax authorities, secret service, "state police", health insurers, and employers can have a field day with your private data in Germany. The government can easily use telecoms and online services to access private data. This is a country where you must declare your religious affiliation to the government and that spies on democratically elected members of parliament as a matter of course. To the degree that it provides a refuge for Americans on no-fly-lists and under special scrutiny, that's just because it is a separate country; I think you can be pretty certain that as an American activist in Germany, you are closely scrutinized.
We clearly have serious problems with a government that has become far too intrusive and invasive in the US. But Europe has no good ideas for how to fix these problems, least of all countries like Germany.
But, hey, if you disagree, name some specific German laws that we could adopt in the US that you think would help, and explain how they would make a difference.
...how much effort on her part has been put into finding out why she's been questioned at customs and so thoroughly searched. From what's been shown so far, those that don't fight against what they perceive as injustice against themselves are basically guaranteed to repeat that injustice, while at least some of those that have fought back against such injustices have had some success through he courts in ending it and in potentially helping to end it for others as well. Some of the recent rulings on the no-fly listings would dictate that legally fighting back seems to be more effective than just complaining.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
No you don't. You just don't realize that the people who fled here in the 17th century to avoid the oppressive regime in England created a whole new oppressive regime for the indigenous people. And it was so rampant into the 18th century that they wrote an entire constitution (that didn't apply to said indigenous people, or the slaves that were imported) to try and protect it. Then in the 19th century, half the country tried to repress the other half - destroying their entire way of life. By the 20 the century we were into your bedroom and your liquor cabinet trying to impose morality on the immoral. And we can't forget McCarthysim - oooh, that was a really good one, followed by the Hoover FBI.
Oppression is as much a part of humanity as humanity itself.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Sue.
If they have no reason to believe you're breaking the law, sue. If you are being harassed and detained by government officials for exercising your constitutional rights, that is exactly what the federal courts are for.
Through force or feet :) Given that the soap box and ballot box aren't working, you should consider the foot boxes, or the soapbox turned racer and roll right on out of the country!
Seriously though American isn't going to change until the people have to deal with the full consequences of their own actions, and those of us who've been telling them why those actions are a bad idea really have no reason to still be here when the 'sky falls down' as it were.
Find a place or make a place. If you can't trust those around you, make yourself a group or society where you can.
Captcha: lifeboat
What does Germany not have computers? Phones?
I think if you wanted to be 'safe' from the NSA you'd need to be in some African 3rd word country like Sierra Leone or Niger....
NSA is far worse than Stasi.
Stasi at least had break into house to plant BUG. NSA just has to press button at computer and listen to anyone in WORLD for no reason.
USA is LEASE FREE country in world. MUCH less than GERMANY.
to anyone in the world.
Germany RESPECT RIGHTS of peoples.
Nobody needs to be promoting Nazis or the Holocust.
USA is so backward this way -- Nazi == Good, Gay == Evil.
Enjoy your republicans.
von Stauffenberg's complaint was that Hitler was losing the war for them. He had no problems with the Nazi party while they were winning wars...
Colonel Morris Davis, the whistleblower, tells a story of how he and one of his children were home one night when they were scheduled to be out of town (apparently, they missed a flight). They were sitting upstairs when they heard people breaking in downstairs. Col Davis came down and found the door unlocked (he had locked it) and his personal files gone through.
They came into his house when he and his kid were at home. We have monsters working for our government.
It might have been Thomas Drake that told the story. One of those guys, though. Both heroes, in my book, for exposing the illegal surveillance of our government on American citizens who have not committed any crimes.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Watch American TV sometime - not from youtube, but actual airtime TV.
Every other commercial is for diabetes catheters or for a drug with a silly name (presumably to secure a unique domain name), or for a lawyer suing the maker of the previously advertised silly-named drug. Ad nausum, rinse and repeat.
^ This is what the USA is producing now. You guys are sooooooo fucked.
Ciao from Europe.
You said Niger.
I am sure everyone has seen the recent news that using EEG computers can decipher internal speech. Well, that can be done remotely too using radio waves and its a very old technology. Modern versions use transmitters on satellites and exploit properties of standing waves to penetrate shielding and deep underground. A modern system can track and decode neural signals even 50 meters underground in a moving train, or at 30000 feet in an aircraft. There is no such thing as privacy and if the NSA/CIA wish to listen, there is nothing you or anyone else can do about it.
Stop the cloak-and-dagger, hiding on street corners, that is privacy 1960's style. Welcome to a brave new world.
Whaddup dawg???
I am German and I once worked on contract for Deutsche Bahn in their data center there. I did make some political remarks in an online discussion with my real name. It pertained nuclear war and the details of this.
This resulted in a Nasty Trap being set up for me by the landlord of the hotel and quite a few co-conspirators in Mahlsdorf, Berlin. They had a smoke-bellowing fire and a large attack dog. The hotel landlord claimed "there are lots of dogs out there now" and other nasty stuff.
So, folks, Berlin IS UNDER NSA-CIA control like any other part of Germany. If you fall out of line, they will try to drive you into suicide.
But the New York Banksters do not know the fighting spirit, intelligence and tenacity of REAL Germans (as opposed to Collaborateurs Sucking Up To America. We once kicked out the French and so we will do with the Anglosaxons.
The sooner you leave us alone, the earlier we will stop messing with your economy. It is YOUR choice, my dear Americans.
The tour guides at Hitler's mountaintop chalet, the Eagle's Nest, are certainly upfront about it.
(Actually only foreigners call it the Eagle's Nest; that name was hung on it by the international media in 1938. Germans call it the Kehlsteinhaus.)
Yeah, If I was a terrorist I would keep my plans on my computer, my pictures on my camera and let them have it. Has the NSA gone nuts?
Guys it's 2014v Terrorists use encryption, remote servers, proprietary protocols, things that even NSA hasn't heard of.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
Interesting. I had the opposite experience...the Americans I meet now days - at least the educated ones - seem to be apologetic about America, its foreign policy, lifestyle choices, oil addiction, consumerism and all that.
Tat Tvam Asi
Over the years, I have said quite a few things critical of America and its surveillance state, and of its gun culture, on this site.
Because of this, I think there is a pretty good chance that if I ever went to the US that I would discover that Im on some watchlist, and that travelling there would be quite scary and difficult.
Thankfully there is no reason for me to ever travel there.
Now I can see what they mean by "chilling effect". This is some pretty scary stuff.
The moral of the story?
Dont say anything critical of the US on any digital device. It will come back to haunt you.
Laura, watch out for that leather wearing, pale haired homosexual, standing at the street corner seemingly innocent, and smoking and chewing an apple at the same time!
Granted from 2005: http://www.rense.com/general65... ...
"I had been stationed in Germany for two years while in the military, so I lit up, and commented about how beautiful the country was, and inquired if he was going back because he missed it.
"No," he answered me. "I'm going back because I've seen this before." He then commenced to explain that when he was a kid, he watched with his family in fear as Hitler's government committed atrocity after atrocity, and no one was willing to say anything. He said the news refused to question the government, and the ones who did were not in the newspaper business much longer. He said good neighbors, people he had known all his life, turned against his family and other Jews, grabbing on to the hate and superiority "as if they were starved for it" (his words).
He said he was too old to see it happen right in front of his eyes again, and too old to do anything about it, so he was taking his family back to Europe on Thursday where they would be safe from George W. Bush and his neocons. He seemed resolute, but troubled, nonetheless, as if being too young on one end and too old on the other to fight what he saw happening was wearing on him.
I have related this event to you in the hopes it will serve as a cautionary anecdote about the state of our Union, and to illustrate the path we Americans are being led down by a group of fanatics bent on global economic and military dominion. When a man who survived the fruits of fascism decides its time to leave THIS country because he's seeing the same patterns that led to the Holocaust and other Nazi horrors beginning to form here, it is time for us to recognize the underlying evil inherent in the actions of those who claim they work for all Americans, and for all mankind. And it is incumbent upon all Americans, Red and Blue, Republican and Democrat, to stop them."
What has really changed from the Bush years of great significance in that regard?
See also:
"They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45"
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/...
""What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter."
Jews who moved to Israel seem to me overall to have interpreted "never again" in terms of who has the most guns. But there is another perspective on that, which is to think that "never again" should be about militaristic bureaucracy getting out of control. A culture like the USA (or Israel for that matter) can be full of guns and people who know how to use them, but still infested with militarist bureaucracy infesting every aspect of life (including via perpetual full-surveillance "schooling"). Like bureaucracy, humans have had a long association with fire, and fire is useful to warm our homes and cook our meals, but it is a terrible thing when it rages out of control.
That said, how should we behave when we are essentially t
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I went and saw this film last Friday. It was pretty good up until the scenes where they interviewed Snowden. It was interesting seeing him speak about what he did, why he did it, etc; He is obviously very intelligent and eloquent. However, it starts to get boring, and I felt that the film makers need to do some editing towards the end.
However, with that being said, the concepts behind the film, the point they tried to make, was made very well.
There was a great article in the NYT recently, that I can't find the link to now, that showed how surveillance, and the knowledge of being watched are inherently detrimental to a functioning democracy and actually cause people to be less creative. The self censoring that is now going on(unless of course you want to expose your sex life, drug use or any number of ordinary vices, as long as they don't question state or corporate power) is a direct result of what Americans now know.
We are being monitored on a 24/7 basis, and have been since the Patriot Act was passed.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Laura Poitras has made some 'feel bad' documentary films that have won awards but obviously not much revenue. Yet she spends her life traveling the world and pursuing do-good noble causes in support of people supposedly suffering under the yoke of US oppression. Who is funding her travels, hotel bills, restaurant tabs, etc.? Most of the attention that she gets from the US Government is likely related to the source of her funds. If there is one thing that the 'War on Terror' has shown us, it is that the money trail is more important than just about anything else. No matter if it is Al Qaida, ISIS, IRA, Fatah, Hamas, or whoever...following the money always leads to the main stem.
There, you see, those who have done nothing wrong have nothing to fear!
Now, can we just table all this NSA nonsense? We have to have it to protect American citizens!
sarcasm /OFF
"And if I really want to make sure I'm having a private conversation or something, I'll go outside." Apparently, she has never heard of the mockingjay.