
Berlin’s digital exiles: where tech activists go to escape the NSA - Kabukks
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/09/berlins-digital-exiles-tech-activists-escape-nsa
======
bostik
I'm going to quote two paragraphs verbatim, because they distill the practical
extent of a universal, collect-it-all surveillance.

 _Anne Roth, a political scientist who’s now a researcher on the German NSA
inquiry, tells me perhaps the most chilling story. How she and her husband and
their two children – then aged two and four – were caught in a “data mesh”.
How an algorithm identified her husband, an academic sociologist who
specialises in issues such as gentrification, as a terrorist suspect on the
basis of seven words he’d used in various academic papers.

Seven words? “Identification was one. Framework was another. Marxist-Leninist
was another, but you know he’s a sociologist… ” It was enough for them to be
placed under surveillance for a year. And then, at dawn, one day in 2007,
armed police burst into their Berlin home and arrested him on suspicion of
carrying out terrorist attacks._

This is not tinfoilhattery or paranoia, not anymore. Get flagged once for any
reason at all, and EVERYTHING in your communication history gets reviewed, re-
interpreted, with the already established bias of guilt. This is not even a
perversion of justice, because the term implies that justice system was
actually involved.

And that was in 2007.

I once quipped that Orwell was an optimist. In the brave new world we live in,
that statement has finally lost its amusement value.

~~~
kirsebaer
Some more info about this case:
[https://www.eff.org/node/81889](https://www.eff.org/node/81889)

One of the seven words was “precarisation”, which had been used in a statement
by arsonists. Anne Roth was a former squatter and founded Indymedia Germany.

~~~
harry8
No matter how silly, there's always an apologist. Paid? Unpaid? Who cares,
just note nothing is so bad there won't be one and move on.

7 words trawled from all of your combined words of everything you published
and no doubt a bunch of stuff you thought was private. You just used that word
too, kirsebaer and you did it because you are guilty.

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rdl
Fwiw, there are parts of the German government who are really pro liberty, and
have been actively seeking security and privacy startups relocating to Berlin.

I predict pretty amazing things due to ccc, the general attractiveness of
Berlin as a place to live, cost (half of the Bay Area), less crappy
immigration policies, and the privacy/security brand due to people like
Poitras.

~~~
einrealist
There are a lot more nice places to live in Germany. Berlin is not that cheap
anymore (wages in IT are probably half of that in the Bay Area). As more
people move to Berlin, the costs of living will be more like those of London
in 10 years from now.

~~~
rdl
Berlin seems like a particularly easy part of Germany for people who don't yet
speak fluent German, which probably shouldn't be underestimated.

~~~
BillFranklin
I don't know. I live in Cologne and everyone here speaks English - so well
that I haven't picked up much German.

~~~
yitchelle
Maybe so if you live right in the middle of Cologne city. We live about 20mins
north of Cologne, and finds that the language barrier is very real, especially
when trying to form social bonds with the local population.

Having visited Berlin once, a couple of years ago. I felt that not being to
speak German is less of a obstacle than in other German cities.

~~~
jacquesm
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxUm-2x-2dM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxUm-2x-2dM)

------
igl
In what way is Germany more safe? Pretty ridiculous. But if you consider TAZ
to be radical ha ha humm...

See: Vorratsdatenspeicherung, TED Talk by Malte Spitz, George Maaßen. Laws
don't apply here to the intelligence apparatus either.

~~~
orbifold
At least the supreme court overturned Vorratsdatenspeicherung in its former
form. Hopefully the Pirateparty will manage to pull itself together and be a
good oppositional force in parliament one day.

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maaku
What a strange world we live in where people escaping surveillance move to
Berlin.

~~~
TillE
A lot of modern Germany is defined by backlash against past horrors. Germany's
close relationship with Israel, for example.

~~~
walshemj
But they still have id cards and registering with police when you move :-(

~~~
yusyusyus
there are similar mechanisms in the US . in many cities, a landlord is
required to register a tenant. similarly, purchase of real property is public
record...

~~~
maaku
Tenant could be an LLC registered in a jurisdiction that doesn't require
disclosure of ownership or directors.

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spindritf
Only Snowden really needed to escape the NSA and he didn't go to Germany. By
the looks of it, they would turn him over in a heartbeat.

~~~
pasbesoin
While I haven't read it, yet, I see film maker and journalist Laura Poitras at
the top of the article. One reason she's described in interviews for moving,
is that she could not pass through U.S. border control and customs without
enduring an extensive search and the likely confiscation of all her digital
equipment.

Perhaps that's not directly the NSA. But it's a legitimate reason to have a
home somewhere that does not constantly put you through such. And she's not
the only one in such a position.

I agree with your opinion that the German government and agencies may not be
the most sympathetic. A significant portion of the German public, on the other
hand...

The Stasi are still a fairly fresh memory, for many.

~~~
brightsize
>The Stasi are still a fairly fresh memory, for many.

Including, no doubt, for the chancellor, Angela Merkel.

"She is ... the first German Chancellor to be born after World War II, and the
first post-reunification Chancellor to be raised in the former East Germany"
[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel)]

~~~
pasbesoin
My impression is that she was upset about her own phone, but not too much
about the rest.

Also, as I recall, rumor is that behind the scenes, the German government was
already clued in on much of what was going on.

And... various aspects of the German governments (Federal as well as the
states, etc.) continue to be pretty aggressive about pushing spyware and
otherwise insisting a unilateral "right" to do whatever they damn well please.

However, they are part of the EU. And border control is thereby not so easy to
just zip up. Nor, perhaps, would the population stand for something so overt,
as opposed to covert.

~~~
Amezarak
It's not rumors, Germany has their own full-fledged NSA-equivalent (the BND)
spying on the populace cooperating with the NSA as a Tier 2 nation.

The German government was not just complicit, they were actively pushing for
wider surveillance on their own citizens. Likely this is part of the
motivation for the rumblings about European-based Internet services: the BND
would have more negotiating leverage and power if they could directly access
e.g. Facebook servers rather than having to go through the NSA.

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doctorstupid
I'm sure the NSA has a free-reign there. Even if the BND cannot spy
internally, they could just ask the NSA for what they need.

~~~
BillFranklin
You've got a point: Recently found that NSA has full access to my Internet
provider [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/14/nsa-
stellar/](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/14/nsa-stellar/)

------
cyphunk
What the article misses are two important points.

1\. Berlin politics is less hyper-media based

One of the benefit of Berlin isn't added liberty but a less hyper-media based
political environment. One can see this in how the various political
"Stiftung" funded and continue to fund open discourse around the issue of the
surveillance. This environment may also be part to blame for the lack of
strong response, but it may also be partially responsible for Appelbaum and
Laura still being able to get their visa's renewed.

2\. It's just the better ghetto

The truth is there is nowhere safe for digital activists right now. That is to
say there is nowhere that any of the people interviewed could live to reduce
their need to worry if their house is being monitored. There is no country, of
sufficient weight, that has proven they would not bend their will to that of a
greater power. With there being no safe place, peace of mind can be found more
easily in a ghetto with like minded individuals. And berlin, definitely when
it comes to digital rights and privacy, has a very lively ghetto. You may not
be safer in Berlin, but at least you are not alone

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lsiebert
A random thought occurred to me while reading this. As soon as we are out in
space, surveillance becomes very hard.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Yeah, but who is "we"? If power structures on Earth keep growing and working
hard to sink their fangs deeper into anything that could challenge their
power, I'm not really sure people, or even machines, just moving off to live
as they please elsewhere will actually be a thing, not if it can be avoided.
That's just not in the spirit of things as they are currently going.
Oppressive empires aren't keen on letting people escape and regroup elsewhere.
On the other hand, sometimes they can't help it, so here's hoping.

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rurban
Very interesting to me that the author heard nothing of Assange hints that
Anke Domscheit-Berg is probably a US spy. Guardian, still angry at Julian?

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shitehawk
Do these digital exiles go and register with the German police as they are
required to by law?

~~~
pgeorgi
They likely register with their county's office (if being a resident for more
than 6 weeks), as required by law.

