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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
that the USA's NSA would be the successor of East Germany's Stasi, 25 years after the Berlin wall fell.
You must be getting up there in years. At 35, I am not sure I am old enough to remember it.
I am old enough to remember "ra ra tear down this wall" and other propaganda bullshit from the 80s, but I was too young to understand this was just grandstanding. I can remember the "if you don't support bombing countries you are unamerican" from both the Republicans and Democrats in the 90s. And I remember the day the USA became a police state. It was after the turn of the century on a day in September.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
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 US has strict privacy laws too (more specifically the Bill of Rights), and those laws apply to everyone. The problem in the US isn't the absence of such laws, it's the absence of oversight and enforcement of those laws.
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?
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
It's interesting to contrast the German/European concept of freedom with the one out outline in your post about the US.
In Europe people see the government as their instrument to protect themselves from marauding corporations, poor health and extreme poverty. In the US those things are welcomed in exchange for the slim chance of getting rich, or at least no interference from government. In one view the government is a tool that society uses collectively, in the other it is a necessary evil that is inflicted on you. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The US is still a country that isn't oppressive...not measured against a global average. It's just headed the wrong direction, and taking "not currently oppressive" steps that will make the slide into an oppressive state difficult to stop.
E.g., a database identifying everyone by photo and voiceprint isn't, in and of itself, oppressive. It's only when you mix it with authoritarian legislation that it becomes so. Alternatively it could be a database for ensuring that sick or injured people could be treated with due care to avoid medications that they were allergic to.
The problem is that the government is untrustworthy. You can't trust them to have good intentions, so when they do something that has multiple possible uses, you need to expect that they will abuse it. They may also use it beneficially, but here a kind of inequality rears its head: Any one act can do a lot more damage than good. So if you think something will be used for both good and bad, you need to expect that the bad will to a lot more damage than the good heals.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.