German Intelligence Agency Planning To Follow Big NSA Brother On Shoestring 80
An anonymous reader, tongue in cheek, writes"Facebook, Twitter, et al are tools for terrorists planning to do whatever terrorists do, Germany's BND has discovered. Inevitably, real-time monitoring of these sites is necessary and urgently required [original, in German], not least because that Snowden chap has shown we're running behind the U.S. and UK. And Spain. And Italy. In short, it's a national emergency — 300 million euros, presto please — and if we do this smartly, we could even get a sense of what the population outside Germany thinks. And while we're at it, why not throw in automated enemy face recognition too — and biometry and-and a program to deform the faces of our own spies' selfies, so the enemy cannot google them. Time to invest in national security startups."
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Is this the earliest recorded invocation of Godwin?
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why not just have him both submit the article and be the editor...he could finally stop using 'timothy' as a nom de plume.
Automated enemy face recognition? (Score:2)
And while we're at it, why not throw in automated enemy face recognition too
Is that a synonym for kufiya recognition these days? Because, you know, these things are roughly equal when it comes to accuracy these days. /s
Staatssicherheit (Score:2, Insightful)
German intelligence wants to know what people are thinking? It sounds like they are doing this for the security of the state, "Staatssicherheit".
Again.
Re:Staatssicherheit (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, Homeland Security... just that name is chilling.
Re:Staatssicherheit (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd have thought that in 2001-2002 someone would have pointed that out to them. The optics of it are so goddamn Commie you couldn't have used that name in a 1980s/Cold War dystopian sci-fi movie without it being obvious that anyone who uses language like that is a Really Bad Guy.
And yet they did. Right in front of us. While those of us who got the "joke" were called them on it. And it worked anyways.
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Well, Homeland Security... just that name is chilling.
Staatssicherheit meant "security of the state" where "state" refered to the government, so it really meant "security of the government". The main purpose was probably to make sure the East Germany stayed loyal to the Kremlin.
Who knew the end of capitalism... (Score:4, Funny)
... would result in technocratic tyranny where robots and automated identification run rampant as the clueless masses entertain themselves to death in a stupor after the hours of stress at work.
Re:Who knew the end of capitalism... (Score:5, Informative)
Terry Gilliam, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Karl Marx, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven?
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If I could make any of the above-mentioned laugh at any joke of mine I would be a happy necromancer.
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Considering that Terry Gilliam is still very much alive it might just be because your jokes suck.
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Germany has been hostile to capitalism for as long as capitalism has existed. Since Germany never had capitalism, it can't actually end there.
Widespread, heavy government control of citizens has been part of German culture for centuries. For Germany, this is nothing new.
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I recall reading "The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate The World" in 2011 and thinking how this can evolve and what about things Morozov did not write, because he maybe did not know (or did not dare to write, being afraid of tin foil hat label etc). I have also an impression tha
On the uselessness of spies (Score:2, Insightful)
It's urgent to spend more money on collecting more data than we can analyze. The KGB won the spy war hands down, yet USSR lost the cold war hands down. That's how important spies are to national security.
Re:On the uselessness of spies (Score:4, Insightful)
The KGB won the spy war hands down, yet USSR lost the cold war hands down.
Hmmm...I'm guessing you mean the KGB won the foreign espionage battle. Apparently they didn't do so good on the domestic espionage front or they would likely still be here. What it seems you don't understand is none of these programs have anything to do with foreign espionage or counter terrorism for that matter. They're all about domestic espionage, that is spying on and controlling dissent within your own population.
The difference with the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
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Of course the world revolves around the USA.
Re:The difference with the USA (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course the world revolves around the USA.
For now.
Ignorance feeds the thought that it's always been this way.
Stupidity feeds the thought that it's sustainable.
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Does the USA hold the standard we compare everything to ?
Mostly.
For the moment.
At the rate things are going, not much longer. Except maybe in the destruction of liberty.
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Like the last left-leaning government that did more damage to the nation's healthcare, social security, employee protection, financial market regulation and other sectors than the previous conservative government could've ever dreamed during its 16 years of majority?
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...is that Germany is much closer to being a true and functioning democracy. I don't see how this would come through the Bundestag, the German parliament, without being at least watered down, viz. being quietly forced into starvation as soon as a left-leaning government comes into power.
Nope, it will be as usual.
"Diplomacy" is absolutely necessary (all governments know that the others are spying, too, which is important for secret behind-the-scenes deals, so nobody can just STOP spying just because the masses are against it). The spying will go on, while the politicians - in public - will claim to be against it. So when the next Snowden shows up and publishes proof that spying indeed DOES happen, the politicians can claim to not have known about it, some heads will roll, the politicians
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...is that Germany is much closer to being a true and functioning democracy. [...] as soon as a left-leaning government comes into power.
That is, I am afraid, a very naive view. Our social democrats, the SPD, - I assume that is what you meant with left-leaning - have earned themselves the nickname "Verräterpartei" ("traitors' party") amongst those who care about civil rights for the strong discrepancy between their election pledges and their actual voting in parliament. The party's functionaries usually state afterwards that they agreed to rights-infringing laws "mit Bauchschmerzen" ("with bellyache"); that phrase has become a meme ov
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The same way that the government of Brandt that gave the NSA a carte blanche to spy in Germany.
If by "true and functioning democracy", you mean a mix of right wing populism, left wing demagoguery, technocracy, and corporate cr
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Democracy Index:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]
#1 Norway, 9.80/10.00
#4 Sweden, 9.50/10.00
#14 Germany, 8.34/10.00
#19 USA, 8.11/10.00
8-10 is condisered functioning democracy.
#119 Russia, 3.92/10.00
#141 China, 3.14/10.00
#167 North Korea, 1.08/10.00
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Better than nothing.
There's also http://www.freedomhouse.org/re... [freedomhouse.org]
Freedom in the world - 2013
Freedom rating 1-7
Sweden - 1.0, Germany - 1.0, USA - 1.0, Russia - 5.5
Civil liberties 1-7
Sweden - 1, Germany - 1, USA - 1, Russia - 5
Political rights 1-7
Sweden - 1, Germany - 1, USA - 1, Russia - 6
Freedom of the press - 2013
Press freedom score 0-100
Sweden - 10, Germany - 17, USA - 18, Russia - 81 / 100
Legal environment 0-30
Sweden - 2, USA - 3, Germany - 6 , Russia - 25 / 30
Political environment 0-40
Sweden - 4, Germa
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From Freedom House http://www.freedomhouse.org/co... [freedomhouse.org], hardly seems an impartial group and as such its output has been snatched up for US corporate propaganda. One obvious failure of logic is Russia. It is pretty bloody obvious that Putin has to work very hard at being popular with the Russian electorate, as such their democracy must be fairly intact. Perhaps Freedom House measure democracy as to how well the public can be fooled into to believing that a corporate owned government is democratic.
It seems a
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If only Erich Mielke could still be with us (Score:3)
25 years too late, his wet dream coming true.
Social protest today - terrorism tomorrow (Score:4, Informative)
Facebook, Twitter, et al are tools for terrorists planning to do whatever terrorists do
Sounds eerily like the same thing that dictators have been saying for years when citizens organise themselves on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Heck, it was just two short years ago that we were hailing the ability for the common folk in Arab countries to organise themselves on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, outside the watchful eye of state agencies, and plot the often violent overthrow of an unpopular government.
Surely if organising violent protest action on social networks was good for the Arab Spring, it should be good for the European Spring
So... what has changed... have the roosters come home to roost!?
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The German and French police experiences of the 1970's and 1980's via peace, workers, law reform groups and the use of early computer networks is been folded into everyday policing.
Facial recognition, computer learning/tracking of written web 2.0 content, voice and web cam collection are all part of keeping one step ahead of the formation of all protest groups.
After individuals have been identified they can be tracked, sorted and appropria
Pics or it didn't happen. (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm in a Facebook group against safari park hunting, pro-animal rescuing (think animal shelter and adoption) and freedom to all the animals in meat factories and fur farms.
Now I don't know whatever they are active but I'm sure at least the later count as "terrorism" by some.
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and freedom to all the animals in meat factories and fur farms.
Now I don't know whatever they are active but I'm sure at least the later count as "terrorism" by some.
It's like helping someone slaves escape. WTF! You bastard what have you done!?
This is old news (Score:2)
I live in Austria and for the past decade there has been a steady stream of news indicating that several European governments have on going programing which are similar and/or complementary to those the Americans are running.
Moreover, as is the case with reports dealing with American programs, when they say "will soon implement", "working on", or "future programs" it's most often the case that such programs are already in place and now what is being worked on is mechanism to use the data they produce in the
Not a surprise (Score:3)
From what has been shown, not a single big government didn't run with the U.S. down that path to where their govts can know everything about the general population - just like East Germany wanted.
This was one of the goals of Bin Laden, destroying the freedoms inherent in the west...he succeeded here. The sad thing is not a single government realized having a total surveillance state is incompatible with have a true Democracy (mid to longer term) where privacy and freedom are required. Europe has the best chance of turning over this garbage.
Well... (Score:2)
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... the rich and powerful elite behind todays governments and therefore also the secret services will learn hopefully soon enough, that their wealth and power is worth nothing, absolutely nothing if you face a large turnaround in society regarding civil rights and privacy rights. Good luck.
You seem to be under the impression the same laws apply to the rich elites as apply to the working class.
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Facebook, Twitter, et al are tools for terrorists (Score:3)
So is knowledge, so lets ban books. So are vocal cords and eyes...
I was ripped off (Score:1)