> I have found Germans to be particulary strong advocates of the decentralized web and general FOSS things.
With apologies to Mr. Godwin, I think it's simply that Germans have (in general) learned what is possible when data is centralized and administered in one place, easily accessible.
Additionally, I find an strange sense of pride (seeing as, again, I'm not German) that there are still some people who still live to fight all this data-collection and privacy invasion. I always look forward to, e.g. every year's C3 talks.
I'm German and would like to confirm this. How both fascism and communism (in East Germany) relate to (among others) data collection is in the mind of rather many people here, including young people. Sadly tho our leading politicians forgot history already.
[Disclosure: I'm president of a CCC local chapter and regularly advocate for the CCC's positions on privacy and IT security concerns in public and towards the press.]
I frequently and publicly complain about crazy surveillance policy as much as the next guy. But I find it important to understand that the politicians in the interior and justice branches are not pushing mass surveillance because they're evil. It's because of perverse incentives: They know full well that, when the next terrorist attack happens, everyone who didn't push hard enough for law and order will be portrayed as an enabler. Or at least they think that this will happen. It can be argued if it really would, but them thinking that this is how the world is is my best explanation for their behavior. I don't think they want to build the next Stasi or Gestapo.
To your last point: no, surely not. I think it's a failing of our current public view (daily news cycle perhaps?) of politics where politicians always have to be seen 'doing things' about all this evil lurking about, and if they aren't, then should anything happen, the blame lies squarely in their lap.
This, I'd argue, leads to it always being essentially career-wise risk-free to be more tough/stringent/et c. on <evil thing du jour>. And why not? There's hardly any downside. It's all unfortunately about optics.
EDIT: re-reading your comment, I realize I'm just stating in more words your salient point. It is, however, a particularly difficult hole to dig ourselves up from though.
With apologies to Mr. Godwin, I think it's simply that Germans have (in general) learned what is possible when data is centralized and administered in one place, easily accessible.
Additionally, I find an strange sense of pride (seeing as, again, I'm not German) that there are still some people who still live to fight all this data-collection and privacy invasion. I always look forward to, e.g. every year's C3 talks.