German high court throttles government net snooping Germany's highest court set tough new restrictions on the government's ability to intercept internet communications in a landmark ruling that said data stored on computers was covered under constitutional guarantees to personal privacy. "Collecting such data directly encroaches on a citizen's rights, given that fear of being …
... the Government would be justifying its breach of liberties by pointing to the bit (weasel clause) in the European Convention on Human Rights that says it's allowed to do so "to prevent crime" etc.
Still, we won the war, so we don't have to worry about that sort of thing in our history, eh...?
Indeed, I had to read it several times in extenso to fully grasp not only what has been decided by the German Supreme Court of Justice but also the implications of this court ruling.
If Germans hate something profoundly, this might be uncertainity. There must have been a lot of hate on the side of the judges, concerning many legal uncertainities pertaining to general IT, so they made a remarkably clear, direct, and comprehensive ruling. A few political commentators cannot recall a ruling this revolutionary since the post-war constitution has been adopted in Germany (1949).
Adhering to the aforementioned Constitution (or Grundgesetz), the judges defined a whole new class of citizens' rights. State institutions of every walk of bureaucratic life has been slammed with the necessity of implementation of these newly defined people's freedoms into their practice. A complete law (Gesetz) on the modus operandi of state police, barely two years old, has been declared unconstitutional and thus nullified by the supreme court.
It seems that the federal government will have to do a lot of homework reviewing the laws and regulations, and so will have each of the 16 province governments, too. The whole shebang is nothing short of revolutionary. It is even conceivable that spammers and crackers will be hit by it due to the fact that they seek to compromise the "informational integrity" of people's communication and data processing devices which is now verboten, and put under penalty.
Personally, I do not care that much about every minute detail of what exactly which state institution will - or won't - be allowed to do due to the new supreme court ruling. However, if the local Interweb spammers (bot hosts) will face jail, or at least compulsory cancellation of their broadband accounts, then the ruling's will undoubtedly have a strong positive effect on the general IT culture in Germany.
The security of data interchange is already up, and rising. The Germans are topped in the number of new, secure Linux installations probably only by the Polish. Due to the said court ruling the awareness of securely sound technologies could put the Germans into the top position in Europe, which is not bad at all.
However, I would abstain from speculating about other countries' experiences with their legislative bodies. That a court of justice defines citizens' freedoms, even broadens them considerably, is pretty much unique. Don't even try to understand it - this is a German specialty. You will have to move your MPs, congressmen, or members of whatever legislative body it might be to do the job. Parliamentary discussion might be a better tool to shape the future law then a court's ruling, which merely initiates the lawmaking procedure.
The initiative is ours. Let us get a strong support for security measures from the corresponding law, and augment our freedoms in a due course.
Strange that today is the 75th anniversary of the Reichstag fire, a fire the Nazis lit in the German Parliament building, the Reichstag. Hitler blamed it on communist terrorists who were intent on dismantling the state, and asked Hindenburg to pass the "Reichstag Fire Decrees", basically stating that due to the threat, citizens had no rights. Where the hell have I seen this before?
Of kourse ve don't need souper kom-pooh-turds! Ve liff in ze forest and cook our soup in big kettles. Ve need jus' beer an' pork.
Besides, our English and some American friends still like thinking of us as living in the 1940's, so we just keep builiding more Zuse Z4's to please them.
Man, how I wish some people would just start living in today's world.
AC: www.top500.org
Cheers (gotta go look after that kettle, and hug some local trees along the way)
A 'Proper' school is here assumed to be the same as the other boys and girls go to, to mix with a normal cross-section of others. Granted they're never perfect, and in some cases home-ed can improve the quality, but within the class of "normal" you can pay more and get more. Public examinations are another requirement, GCSE's in the basics, the baccalaureate etc.
what i object to on many grounds is home-indoctrination, there is no escape from the bonkers religious confines, no outside contact to determine if the child is being abused, or failing to "thrive", and basically the child, who must at some point be brought into society at large, knows only a very narrow viewpoint.
Sure there are those who say all state education is indoctrination, but fooling all of the people all of the time? - its a lower risk compared to this.
not sure about metaphysics as theories etc - look at the agreement between theory and measurement on for instance microwave background anisotropy, try the image search first, or the link:
http://www.answers.com/topic/cosmic-microwave-background-radiation?cat=technology
you tell me where on your scale towards fact this should go?
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