
Memories of Stasi color Germans’ view of U.S. surveillance programs - stesch
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/26/195045/memories-of-stasi-color-germans.html
======
feral
The EU, which Germany is a major part of, passed the Data Retention Directive
[0] in 2006.

That directive required every state in the EU to pass laws that all their
citizens telecommunications metadata would be stored for at least 6 months,
and often more, up to 2 years.

As I understand it, this means all 'metadata' is required to be stored,
including the source and destination for every phonecall and text message,
including cell location for cellphones, and information mapping IPs to users
for web+email (and perhaps also the source and destination of every e-mail;
but I'm not certain about that?). I believe that the data is stored by service
providers, and only passed to law enforcement in the context of a particular
investigation _in theory_ (in the Irish implementation, a court order is not
required to access an individual's records; a request from a high ranking law
enforcement officer or tax official is enough). But its all collected and
stored.

Maybe that's a sufficiently big difference that warrants the EU retention laws
not being mentioned in this article? But it seems to me that they should still
be part of this narrative.

There have been challenges to the EU directive, and countries dragging their
heels about implementing it. But, by and large, it is an established part of
EU law.

I don't know a lot about this area, but I feel that an understanding of
existing European data retention laws seems to be missing from the coverage of
the European reaction to the US data collection issues.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive)

~~~
blumentopf
In Germany, the data retention law was ruled unconstitutional by the German
Constitutional Court on March 2, 2010. Data retention was allowed _in general_
by the court, but only with significant restrictions. The German government
failed to pass a new law which fulfills both the EU data retention directive
and the court's restrictions. The EU Commission therefore is currently sueing
Germany to implement the EU data retention directive. If the EU Commission
prevails, Germany will have to pay 315.036,54 Euro per day as a penalty fee
until a proper law is enacted.

~~~
kamjam
That's really interesting. We (people in the UK) have long been complaining
that our Government stringently applies every single EU directive and human
rights law but other countries just seem to ignore them (rightfully so IMO,
sometimes logic should prevail). I know it's probably not strictly true, but
it's things like this which may eventually lead to the disbanding of the EU
and such integration of the law.

~~~
sentenza
But the UK opted out of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and is not even part
of Schengen.

I personally, as a German, am much less forgiving towards the UK than towards
the US for what has been revealed. The UK is a EU member, which is so much
more than just an ally. It is now clear that the UK spies on all continental
Europeans, gives that data to the US, and at the same time tries to opt out of
the EU cooperation on police and criminal justice. No matter how you turn it,
this cannot be interpreted as anything else than a "spit in your face" gesture
towards the rest or Europe. We now get the uneasy feeling that the current and
past governments of the UK more or less hate us.

~~~
louthy
I think that's a bit harsh. The UK went into Europe based on the ideals of the
common market, what came after isn't what anybody signed up for, so there's a
constant mistrust of the overarching nature of the EU bureaucracy from the
population at large, which the politicians who want votes reflect (and
obviously stir up too).

I think this clip from the classic comedy 'Yes, Minister' sums up Europe.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVrN-
gkzVYI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVrN-gkzVYI)

The UK doesn't _hate_ the rest of Europe, but clearly each nation will play
its hand for its own political reasons.

~~~
sentenza
You bring up an interesting point. I very often read that the UK joined for
the single market but then afterwards the EU started taking away national
sovereignty.

I don't quite understand how this view of things is possible.

From the very start, when the Coal and Steel Community was created in 1952,
loss of national sovereignty was, to a certain degree, built into the system.
The primary goal of European cooperation was to take away the ability of
European nations to go to war with one another. Also remember the "de fact
solidarity" that Robert Schuman spoke of in his famous declaration in 1950:
With all the horrors of WW2 fresh in mind, nobody could expect the people of
Europe to show solidarity for another, so the framework of Europe must be set
up to generate a "de facto solidarity". The whole system should be set up in
such a way that the people of Europe cannot _not_ show solidarity.

We learned this in school and it seems to be generally accepted by the general
populace, at least in the "old" continental Western Europe. If you ask older
Germans or French about European integration, they will talk about avoiding
war, not about the single market.

The only possible explanation I can come up with for the sentiment that the EU
was "all about the single market" is that UK voters were horribly misled by
their press and politicians at the time of EU accession. Is this plausible?

On a side note: I admit that what I wrote about hating Europe was harsh, but
we (i.e., me and many others I've spoken to) do feel genuinely betrayed.

~~~
louthy
The problem is we're an ex-Imperialist island nation. That breeds a certain
psyche of superiority and xenophobia that I think is very hard for us to shake
off en-masse. I think there's a sense with the British that we brought
'civilisation' to a huge portion of the world, why do we need anybody else
telling us what to do?

Even as children we're constantly fed war movies about the plucky Brits
fighting against the evil Germans, so therefore most Brits hate Germans, and
we've been at odds with the French forever. There are many English
terms/phrases which are derogatory about the French. French kiss, French
letter, French disease etc.

This is a very useful tool for the politician who wants to stir up a hornets
nest of outrage or just shore up some votes by looking 'anti-Europe'. And it
works.

Even myself -- someone who has friends in many European countries (Norway,
Sweden, France, Germany, Serbia, Romania, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Austria,
Slovakia - just quickly off the top of my head!) -- get caught up in it.

It's pure xenophobia, and it's frankly disgusting. We don't have the English
channel and the North Sea around us, we have a moat.

However.

There is always the argument for a greater say from the people of Europe. It
certainly seems there is a huge bureaucracy with very little public oversight.
And it seems incredibly inflexible. The _impression_ many have is that they
can't vote the bureaucrats out, and there's very little to stop them
haemorrhaging money/rights/power.

In an era where we have the technology to bring democratic decision making
closer to the individual, the EU definitely seems to be moving in the opposite
direction.

(Then again, this could just be the years of 'conditioning' that make me think
this!)

</waffle>

~~~
ollysb
> we have a moat

I think this is a large part of why GB has a different relationship with
Europe. In other European countries you can just jump in a car and drive
almost anywhere else in Europe. For many people they can be in a couple of
different countries in under an hour. Compare this to Gavin to book a flight
or a ferry crossing, with the time and cost involved, and it's not too
surprising that we're not as neighbourly as the other members of the EU.

~~~
BrandonMarc
Which blows my mind, since I live in Texas where you can drive 10 hours in the
same direction on the same road at freeway speeds, and still be an hour or two
from reaching another state.

~~~
ollysb
For whatever reason people have a very different relationship with travelling
in their own car and via some other form of transport. The perceived cost of a
trip seems to drop for a lot of people, both with regards to price and time.
Perhaps less so in the millennial generation but in the preceeding generation
there is a very strong association between owning a car and personal freedom.

~~~
BrandonMarc
Probably because owning a car means you can go anywhere your wallet ($ for
gas) and time will allow you to go. Anywhere, any time, with very little
hassle. Taxis come close to this, but only in and for (geographically) small
areas/trips. Bicycles also come close. Other forms of transit are limited in
terms of endpoints (*ports for planes/ferries, stations for trains/subways,
stops for buses), time (dependent on the schedule), and may cost more.

Owning a car often gives you a lot of options you don't have without it.

Unless you live in NYC/similar.

------
griffordson
A choice quote:

Even Schmidt, 73, who headed one of the more infamous departments in the
infamous Stasi, called himself appalled. The dark side to gathering such a
broad, seemingly untargeted, amount of information is obvious, he said.

“It is the height of naivete to think that once collected this information
won’t be used,” he said. “This is the nature of secret government
organizations. The only way to protect the people’s privacy is not to allow
the government to collect their information in the first place.”

------
nekojima
"The Lives of Others" (Das Leben der Anderen) is an excellent German film that
dramatically shows the intrusiveness of the Stasi (secret police) into daily
life in the former East Germany.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others)

In the film you can see some of the techniques used by Wolfgang Schmidt and
his colleagues.

~~~
Historiopode
Ironically enough, the lead actor (Ulrich Mühe[1]) had _really_ been under
Stasi surveillance; a surveillance to which his then wife allegedly
collaborated.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_M%C3%BChe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_M%C3%BChe)

~~~
VladRussian2
this is the most destructive aspect of surveilance state - it is not that the
state, ie. its proper officers and facilities, are doing - after all one can
reasonably expect them to do all sort of nefarious things one can imagine and
thus one is considered reasonably warned, it is about anybody (even friends
and family) can happen to be a secret informant and collaborator. In case of
USA the secretly imposed gag orders is a big step toward it.

~~~
sneak
I signed up for Google Plus reluctantly, mostly just to use hangouts as Skype
doesn't work on the ARM Chromebook.

I don't use Facebook and I host my own email, mostly because I'd like to keep
my social graph private.

However, Google knows everyone I'd have added on Plus already - and offers to
add them for me. How? They've all uploaded their address books, and they all
use gmail.

80-90%+ of my social graph is already known to them, just because my friends
have already given them the data. My lack of participation in Google Plus is
insufficient.

~~~
canvia
It is the same with smart phones. Even if you don't install any apps or link
any of your profiles (fb, g+, etc) all it takes is for one person you know to
upload their address book to "find their friends" and suddenly there is
linked: your phone #, email, fb (your picture included), g+, all in one spot,
all without your permission or knowledge.

Even if you try and secure your data and privacy, unless everyone you know
does the same thing it is pointless.

------
ihsw
It's interesting that the only defense the USG can muster in this debacle is
their insistence that there are policies in place to prevent abuse.

Policies change when governments change, so every time there are US senate
elections[1] or US presidential elections[2] then it'll be a chance that we
irrevocably move further down the dark road of totalitarianism.

If there's anything to do to remedy this situation, it's talk to your
congressional representative. Gerrymandering may have made that a pointless
task, but it's just the first step towards freedom.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_2014)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016)

~~~
gorbachev
The "we have policies" defense is complete horse manure for the reason you
stated and also because if those policies are secret, as is the case with
regards to wholesale surveillance state policies, there is no way to verify
they're being followed or hold anyone accountable for violating those
policies.

Additionally even when governments don't change the policies have an uncanny
habit of not being followed whenever it's convenient to ignore them. That has
happened time and time again.

------
ChrisAntaki
Assuming this level of unconstitutional surveillance continues, what can we
do?

Here are some of my ideas: Send encrypted emails, to communicate long
distances. Use the internet way less. Use cell phones only to arrange real
life meetups. Hang out & talk to people in real life. Never have a meaningful
discussion "over the air".

~~~
mark-r
Since much of the information is used to find out who you hang out with, your
strategy doesn't help as much as you think. Guilt by association, you know.

~~~
bediger4000
"Much of the information"? Given that the metadata (a.k.a. "CDR" or Call Data
Record) is getting hoovered up in all this, about the only thing such a mass
of data can be used for is guilt by association. The telco's don't match up
CDR with a captured audio stream, so that's done by the NSA (or whoever).
They're not going to be able to do that matching, or the semantic analysis of
what's said, very often. Therefore, the ONLY thing the metadata can do is
determine guilt by association.

------
Eliezer
I think the phrase you're looking for is "Historical literacy informs Germans'
view of U.S. surveillance programs".

~~~
skore
The Stasi has been around in some form or another until about 1990. A lot of
us really have "been there".

------
shill
"In our case, we thought we were being paranoid until we saw what they’d
gathered and realized we’d been naive..."

~~~
ewrwerwerw
My father, a man of 75 years old in the last couple of months had been
mentioning that all our calls were being recorded. I dismissed him as just
paranoid. After all, I'm the software developer, I'm the techie in our house.
I know best, I would tell myself. Now I feel quite stupid. How could I have
been so naive in believing that our government would never do this. This is
the land of the free after all right? I've learned to never trust our
government. At least that is a good thing that came out of this.

edit: The funny thing is that right now he is having a small problem with
somebody because they had a verbal agreement over the phone about how much a
repair would cost. Both their memories seem to remember different things. It
is only a couple hundred dollars but my father said that if were in the order
of $50,000 or more he would get a lawyer so that the conversation he had with
the man could be retrieved to prove my father was right. I told him that that
would never happen because, mmm..., because the government would not want to
give it to anybody else. At that point I remembered that I had already been
wrong once so I could easily be wrong again.

~~~
vacri
One of the best things you could do as a country is stop with the 'land of the
free' parareligion. You're not particularly freer than your contemporaries. In
some things you are, in others you're not. You have a great level of freedom,
but due to the parareligion, there is a sentiment (obviously not shared by
all) that _other countries_ must somehow 'not be free'. It creates a distorted
sense of self.

~~~
cliffu
USA is demonstrably less free than anywhere else if you define free merely as
"not being in prison".

------
hiddenfeatures
In my experience over the last few weeks, younger Germans (my age, 30 years &
younger) are blissfully ignorant ("I don't have anything to hide" \- sounds
familiar ?) to the impact of the government spying on its citizen.

24 years are a long time & that part of history is not as well-ingrained in
the collective memory as the Holocaust. :-(

~~~
walshemj
Its always struck me as odd that Germans seem to be so hot on privacy but seem
fine with having mandatory ID cards and with the police being able to demand
you show it.

~~~
krbbltr
As far as I'm aware (correct me if I'm wrong), there is an ID card or a
functional equivalent thereof in most if not all countries, as the ability to
verify someone's identity is pretty much a requirement for a modern society.
Whether it's an actual "ID card" or a passport, birth certificate, driver's
license, social security number, whatever doesn't really matter IMO.

As for having to reveal/prove my identity to the police: I could do without
that, but I consider it mostly a non-issue. In practice it happens rarely, and
if it does the police officers tend to be pretty friendly and reasonable. Case
in point, one of the two or three times this has happend to me in my life, my
ID was invalid as it had expired several months before. They were basically
like "Well you better get a new one soon, m'kay?" and then sent me on my way.
YMMV of course.

The big difference though between the ID card thing and privacy violations by
spying is that the spying happens behind people's backs, and they may never
know how broadly their rights are violated until one day the gathered
information is used against them. There can be no effective oversight and
that's why it must not be allowed to happen in the first place.

If on the other hand the police started abusing their authority – acting like
dicks, grabbing people en masse to check their IDs on every street corner, it
would be immediately obvious to everyone and could presumably be corrected (by
vote, protest, civil disobedience, etc).

~~~
walshemj
Yes but in the UK having a passport is not required. And a short while ago on
on here some one living in Germany commented that it was funny how it was the
Non Ethnic Germans that got stopped a lot more.

~~~
krbbltr
> [...] it was the Non Ethnic Germans that got stopped a lot more.

That's probably true to some extent. I imagine though that the situation is
similar in other countries, and the problem is racism in itself. It's sad, but
it has nothing to with the ID requirement.

Just look at the US; they may not require an ID, but it sure does not seem to
stop their police from physically abusing anyone who looks at them the wrong
way. Or in rare cases, literally beating up or even murdering someone just
because they're black/mexican/whatever.

(Disclaimer: I've never been to the US. American pop culture may have
distorted my view on the American police. :)

------
coldtea
"Memories of Stasi color Germans’ view of U.S. surveillance programs"

Might as well have written: "Memories of segregation and lynching color
African American's view of modern day bigots".

I mean the "color" part tries to make it as something strange (or even bad,
some kind of "distortion") is happening, when it's the most natural thing in
the world: actual historical experience with the issue, makes German's more
informed on what it can result to and more sensitive to how bad it is.

I'm always amazed to what BS spin columnists put on their stories. And not
always innocently.

~~~
grannyg00se
But this guy was a colonel in the Stasi.

If a similar interview with someone who did participate in lynchings were
conducted, I don't think your second title would be all that far off. But
racial bigotry isn't the hot issue right now. I think it's helpful to draw
parallels to the past - and a title like that might help encourage people to
actually _read_.

~~~
jlgreco
> _But racial bigotry isn 't the hot issue right now._

It seems to be in a limited extent, though not for news items that are
relevant on HN.

------
weinzierl

        Dagmar Hovestaedt is the spokeswoman for the German  
        Stasi Records Agency, which showed 88,000 people last 
        year what the Stasi had gathered on them. She said the 
        U.S. should consider doing the same.
    

The Stasi Records Agency is known in Germany as "Gauck Behörde"[1], because
for ten years its head was the anti-communist civil rights activist Joachim
Gauck.

Gauck is now President of Germany and when Barack Obama was in Berlin they met
and according to the schedule talked for one hour.

I was curious which topics they discussed, but unfortunately it was not
covered in the press.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Commissioner_for_the_St...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Commissioner_for_the_Stasi_Archive)

------
lispm
The US is in need for a full operating system upgrade. Like going from Mac OS
9 to OS X. Not a .1 upgrade. Obama delivered a Microsoft-style upgrade. You
were promised 'hope' and 'change'. What you got is a worse version of
Microsoft Windows with lots of spyware and a built-in 'security' system.

~~~
dwaltrip
We need to re-write the damn kernel

~~~
D9u
Not really. The US Constitution is fine. What we need is compliance on the
part of the government.

~~~
lispm
It's broken. You need a rewrite.

------
kephra
Clarification: Merkel said "Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland", not “the
Internet is new to all of us.”.

Now Neuland does not just mean "new", but "new land". Similar as America or
Africa was new land after 1500. So it means, the internet is ripe to conquer
it.

Merkel herself was a former Stasi member, known as IM-Erika (Informal Member
Erika). Germany is currently tapping more phones, then DDR ever had. We do not
have a PRISM scandal, but a law called Vorratsdatenspeicherung.

~~~
lispm
What you write is misleading.

Merkel was not a Stasi member and she was not known as 'IM Erika'. There are
some rumors, but that's it mostly.

The law 'Vorratsdatenspeicherung' is ruled unconstitutional by the
'Verfassungsgericht'.

That the Internet is 'Neuland' is trivially true. I have been using the
Internet since the mid 80s. But what we currently have is completely
different, of a different quality and unprecedented.

~~~
ytodo
[http://www.imagebanana.com/view/r8cwnbcl/satire_01_april_201...](http://www.imagebanana.com/view/r8cwnbcl/satire_01_april_2012_mail3.jpg)

plz call it conspiracy, but mr.gauck was the one holding his thunbs on their
secret files,...

------
Amadou
My favorite stasi joke: After the wall came down all the former stasi agents
got jobs as taxi drivers - you get in the cab, tell the driver your name, and
they already knew the address to take you home.

------
junto
This story always disturbed me about the Stasi:
[http://theresagameinthat.blogspot.de/2011/06/stasi-scent-
lib...](http://theresagameinthat.blogspot.de/2011/06/stasi-scent-library.html)

------
rustynails
My son just asked why the English are so bad "spying on Europeans". I
reassured him by saying that most western governments are almost cetainly
corrupt (inc dear old Australia). And he who controls the databases controls
the politicians, police, lawyers, judges ... You get the idea. And even
better, just because you've got nothing to hide, it's easy for these databases
to be changed by someone in the know. These systems are extremely dangerous,
and should not be underestimated.

------
TheCraiggers
Good! I'm glad some people still remember history. Sadly, it looks like we're
going to be doomed to repeat it rather we remember it or not.

------
sentenza
What I find suspiciously absent from the relevations so far is the DNA angle.
If the STASI had had todays technology, they would have tapped all phones,
stored all data, and collected DNA samples wherever they can. Assuming that
all spy agencies think more or less alike on the issue of data gathering, why
haven't we heard of the NSA collecting DNA samples?

~~~
Asparagirl
The US government's acquisition of people's biometric information, including
DNA, has already been outed by WikiLeaks in their release of the Embassy
cables a few years ago. Did you see this story?
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-
documents/...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-
documents/202678)

The text of the original cable: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-
cables-documents/...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-
documents/202678)

------
ferdo
Not surprising. DHS hired an old Stasi hand and an old KGB hand as advisors
under Dubya:

[http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan05/Whitney0121.htm](http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan05/Whitney0121.htm)

~~~
Pinckney
Bullshit. Even your own source acknowledges that they can't confirm these
reports.

~~~
ferdo
Thank you. Sorry for posting bad info. It's a good reminder to doublecheck
what I think I know.

------
vacri
Let's keep some perspective. The fear of the Stasi wasn't just 'are they
tapping our phones?' If it was, they wouldn't have been so feared - just be
careful on the phones. It was having a network of informants, such that you
couldn't trust anyone, anywhere, that really caused the oppressive atmosphere.
Americans are not living under the fear that if they mention something anti-
government to a neighbour, they have a realistic chance of being carted off in
the night.

------
andrewcooke
love the framing in the title.

 _knowledge of death and disease colours doctors ' views on healthy living_

------
RyanMcGreal
"Access to the Brandenburg Gate, the backdrop for his speech, was severely
limited"

The irony is palpable.

------
qwertzlcoatl
Germans are referring to the States as Stasi 2.0.

The new and improved updated version of tyranny.

