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.

Comments

Wait, what?

[Rick Schumann]

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?

Re:Wait, what?

[thegarbz]

They do. The summary left out key details. a) the encryption thing is still covered under the same warrants and rules that apply to any other police interaction and b) they are only fingerprinting asylum seekers, non Germans, and the change is that they are proposing to change this age from 14 years old to 6 years old.

Re:Wait, what?

[gweihir]

German interior ministers immediately lose their minds when coming into office and start to look up what the Nazis did to keep the population under control and then try to find ways to improve on that. It is not known what causes the effect, but the current office-holder is even more affected than usual, probably because he has no useful skills at all.

Re:So Hitler taught them nothing?

[fish_in_the_c]

hmm... when my son was born here in the united states the put his hand prints and foot prints in his birth records. Probably attached to his birth certificate. I guess I didn't think to ask if it was 'optional'. It certainly wasn't presented as such.

Wrong. Headline is complete bullshit.

[Qbertino]

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.

Re:So Hitler taught them nothing?

[Topwiz]

I was also born in 1960.
Those birth certificates with hand and foot prints are issued by the hospital. They are just a souvenir, not the official birth certificated file with the state.

Re:So Hitler taught them nothing?

[lactose99]

Its fingerprinting for asylum seekers as young as 6 (current minimum age is 14), not all residents.

Summary fails to note that point.