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Germany Plans To Fingerprint Children and Spy On Personal Messages (fortune.com)
From a report: Germany is planning a new law giving authorities the right to look at private messages and fingerprint children as young as 6, the interior minister said on Wednesday after the last government gathering before a national election in September. Ministers from central government and federal states said encrypted messaging services, such as WhatsApp and Signal, allow militants and criminals to evade traditional surveillance. "We can't allow there to be areas that are practically outside the law," interior minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters in the eastern town of Dresden.
Why am I not surprised?
I thought Germany was one of the countries that valued privacy, the 'right to be forgotten' on the Internet, etc? How come all of the sudden they sound like the UK?
I never thought I would see Nazi tactics return to Germany! Guess I was wrong...they have failed to learn from their own history.
""We can't allow there to be areas that are practically outside the law,"
And this in the country where if it weren't possible for many to be outside the law they would have been killed.
Isn't it better to shield citizens from the political apprentice and let criminals go free then to risk what may happen when the wrong group takes power? But the German's are a different culture. So trusting of government. The way my aunt who lived there for a while put it is ' The German people believe police officers never lie, which works pretty well so long as the police officers continue to believe they never lie too.'
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Worked well for them last time.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
This news appears to have originated from Reuters, if it is true it is a terrible turn of events. Does anyone have anything more concrete other than unnamed ministers and unnamed reports? (the one public speaker aside)
So because it would politically incorrect to you know not let the militants into the country in the first place they will just abolish basic freedoms instead.
Pathetic.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The only way to protect children and keep us safe from terrorists is eliminate all private thoughts and communication!
The fact that the idea of private communications can terrify these autocrats so much, is definite food for thought.
"We can't allow there to be areas that are practically outside the law," interior minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters in the eastern town of Dresden.
Or as Mussolini said "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State".
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
1) Import lots of Muslims
2) Wait for inevitable terrorist attacks
3) Use to justify further crackdowns on privacy and free speech
4) Goto 1
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
You Europeans complain about the US spying and how our government is out of control. Your governments are doing the same damned things and you're too busy whining about the US to notice or care that you have the same problems. Fix your own damn problems before pointing fingers at the big bad Americans. Yes, we have our own problems, but we don't need a bunch of hypocrites telling us how to run our government. Don't spy on private internet activity. Then complain at the US about spying. In that order.
From TFA:
Among the options Germany is considering is "source telecom surveillance", where authorities install software on phones to relay messages before they are encrypted. That is now illegal.
Wow, just wow. This is something you'd expect from China, not somewhere in the supposedly enlightened western civilization. It's things like this which make me think maybe those second amendment nuts really aren't so crazy. Give up one right, and pretty soon it's a slippery slope right to big brother being installed on your phone.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
What's next, outlawing whispering?
Between this and Merkel turning the EU into the fourth reich. It's like the one country is composed of Bond villains.
lose != loose
Under Roman law children under six are doli incapax and the Germans now want to fingerprint their kindergartens?
They may be little hellions yes, but terrorists requiring fingerprinting?
They are not spying, goodness me! -they are just tagged and collecting data to protect children from pedophiles.
This will never be abused for psychological profiling, target ads and manipulation of politics based on what's trending.
Hand over your data because you have nothing to hide OR the terrorists win.
thought police in 3..2..1
First they intentionally let the refugees make home in West EU specially Germany and now elites wants to fingerprint all & install backdoor where they can. elites will do anything to get total control. I just hope that people could wake up before its too late...
...because we are all fucked.
We, as in all people who live in Western Nations..
Extreme leftist ideology has probably doomed our societies.
And I am what would be considered a "classical liberal" (pro choice, pro gay marrage, etc.).
All this time fighting the extreme right......it never clicked to me that the left was just as dangerous.
ever since people discovered whispering we've found ways to discretely communicate with specific people and excluding other people from seeing it. I don't see these services as anything other than the evolution of whispering, Do they plan on setting a minimum decibel level for all verbal in person communications as well to ensure long range surveillance microphones will always be able to pick up the conversation?
Well, at least half the country should be used to this environment.
and murder them like those Germans so have often damn done in the past.
I want some OBESE, sweaty white male cop looking at my kid.
Yeah, good idea. FOR SECURITY!!!
thank you for the 'report' brietbart
When the Putinbots come to Slashdot, they're not sending their best.
German gouvernment is planning to pass a law that requires messaging services such as WhatsApp to be monitorable like phonecalls should a court order requested by the authorities give them the permission to do so in order to fight crime.
There, FTFY.
Like many politicians German politicians too have little clue about how the internet and computers work, but that's no reason to write headlines that are so sensationalist that they are flat out wrong.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Cracking down and keeping track..
Just "chip" everyone and be done with it (subdermal ID chip). Make a rule that everyone has to have their chip checked regularly. Heck, make the chip contain a digital ID that they use to encrypt/sign their communications, and make sure that the private encryption keys are all escrowed by the government.
...never falls far from the tree, it seems.
It seems that german history is going to repeat itself again and again.
People have been speaking in code and enciphering messages since beginning of civilization and will continue to do so as they please regardless of impediments erected by their governments.
From "lets get a pizza" = meet me at 5:00 PM at the square to exchange drugs, weapons and unstable ordinance.
To 6 year old children knowing how to encrypt and decrypt messages over ANY communication medium using a pencil, paper and codebook.
You can't stop it no matter what you do. The only thing anti-encryption and government spying legislation can ever achieve is erosion of legitimacy and corruption of law enforcement.
You would think, in the interests of thoroughness that they would also require the recording of all conversations at all times. I am sure that there are a lot of conversations happening that are 'outside of the law'.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
One cannot post images of public places in Germany for privacy reasons. Yet it's perfectly fine to collect fingerprints. Weird.
And anyone who thinks otherwise is a fascist. Because, Europe.
Soon they could start sending people around to German households collecting information such as race, religion, where they work and what their wages are, marital status as well as all the same info for others that live in the household. Imagine what could be done with such information?
...but where you draw the line is children?
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and furthermore
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Double Des code number 323521
Just another evidence pointing out we're right at the turning point for totalitarian regimes sprouting once again in response to a politics of fear and complacency from citizens. Time is a flat circle.
Better yet, forgo the encryption entirely and make it a crime to NOT lay out your entire life before anyone who asks. Or even better, change the law so that it's read: "Guilty Until Proven Innocent".
Once we get the hard AIs developed, we'll train them to be ruthless government agents that monitor you 24/7 and report EVERYTHING crime or no. Complete with pre-authorization to terminate you at anytime for any reason. Death is the only punishment.
Because nothing less will defeat terrorism / protect the children / get rid of communism / kill all the gays / defeat Hitler / etc.... but it won't do the one thing that needs to be done: Getting rid of tyrannical governments that terrorize their citizens in the name of power and greed.
Sheriffs are doing this around here in Florida at special events.... they say that they do it in case your child goes missing (which I don't think that it is the primary reason)... hospitals also ask for your consent to do it at birth.... At least it is not required yet, I guess.
Reeeerewwwwwww reeeeerewwwwwww
Did somebody ring? Thought police on the case, please state your emergency. Never mind we already know.
Once we get the hard AIs developed, we'll train them to be ruthless government agents
Version 2.0 will be named "Smith"
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Clever word crafting. They want to soften the blow of invasive privacy violations with the word "traditional". Traditional surveillance is a stake-out, or phone tapping with a warrant. Traditional surveillance is not monitoring all communication and movement of the entire citizenry.
Yeah.... seee the law breakers don't abide laws so no matter what they pass it will make zero difference.
Zero.
...das papieren, bitte.
Germany is now formally fucked. Thanks Merkel.
You'd think they'd fingerprint and spy on all the illegals there? Nah, they get a free pass. No need for the animals to follow any laws.
There are cultural difference between how children are raised in Germany vs America. In Germany, kids are viewed as more of a collective responsibility rather than just the concern of the nuclear family.
This is not about fingerprinting German kids, nor is it really about children at all.
On its face it's about surveilling people thought to be at risk of committing acts of terror. Primarily this would involve listening in on electronic communications and attempting to regulate encryption. As a (minor) part of this initiative, the age at which fingerprinting could be carried out would be lowered from 14 to 6, according to TFA "for asylum seekers" (and I imagine for non-citizen children generally). Now if anyone were going to be fingerprinted under this initiative, it would overwhelmingly be young (ca.16-35) islamic male asylum seekers.
This may look like a simple over-reaction to the recent >weekly Ramadan terror attacks in Europe ... think again. What is soon to take place in Germany?
Note especially where this announcement was made: Dresden. That is to say the birthplace of PEGIDA . Is that not pointed enough?
What this is, is the ruling conservative party, the CDU , gearing up to election mode and trying to stem the flow of a portion of their electoral base to the neo-nationalist AfD farther to their right. The centre, as always, is being defined by the extremes.
Electoral politics is what you get when the people are allowed to vote for a government of their choosing. What we are witnessing, though the naive might see it simply as a "lurch towards authoritarianism," is in fact democracy in action ... warts and all.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
They are in such denial about the Nazi time that they don't teach it in school.
Pig-ignorance or trolling? Hard to tell sometimes.
Germans going full batahit crazy poop throwing retard monkeys again. We know how it ended last two times.
This is what I never understand from [people who are more intelligent and educated that I happen to be] and other idiots who want to ban people from speaking their mind.
These restrictions were placed into the German Constitution at the insistence of the occupying powers after WWII as part of their programme of de-Nazification.
There are consequences to losing a war.
All because you don't like that I think a man who dresses as a woman is still a man.
Spoken like a true like far-left TERF! ;)
It's for their school cafeteria and I told my wife that I didn't want it done but apparently I was being "paranoid".
You already can't listen in on physically private conversations, like two people in a room you couldn't bug ahead of time, or any of the zillion ways spies and terrorists have passed messages in the past. It's hardly new that there are ways to communicate that can't be intercepted or monitored, it's just more convenient now. At least now security agencies can often tell if communication has occurred.
If you want people to stop associating you with the Nazis of your past, maybe you shouldn't repeat their actions...
If only Germany could come up with a right-thinking, conformist organization for youth, to help them to fit in and grow up straight and tall and blonde.
I know! We could call it the "Fourth Reich Youth" organization, and make uniforms made up of neat-o shorts and brown shirts, and they could have patches on the arms! Yeah!