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from the those-who-do-not-learn-from-the-past... dept.
On 27 March 1943, a cell of the Dutch resistance committed an attack on the municipal register of Amsterdam. The German occupier had found this register to be extremely convenient: it contained the details of 70.000 Jews in Amsterdam. Also, it proved useful as a means of cross-checking information on identity cards.
Gerrit van der Veen, Willem Arondéus, Johan Brouwer, Rudi Bloemgarten and a number of others had thoroughly prepared the assault and decided there could be no casualties. They entered the building disguised as policemen. Guards were overpowered, given a sedative and taken out the back to be parked in the Artis zoo for safekeeping. The filing cabinets containing public records were turned upside down. After soaking the files in benzene, the group set the largest possible fire.
That night, the fire department played a crucial part. A few resistance sympathizers among the firefighters had been notified of the attack. When the alarm sounded they intentionally delayed the deployment of trucks in order to give the fire time to do maximum damage. Water was used extra generously during and after the extinguishing, in order to add water damage to the havoc of the flames.
In the end, the attack turned out less successful than planned. Due to the tight stacking of the identity cards, a lot of information was saved. Approximately 15 percent of the documents was destroyed by the fire, a few thousand were rendered illegible by the water and of course the overall disarray was enormous.
There are modern lessons to be had from the "big data" collection in states that turned authoritarian during Word War II.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Monday November 14 2016, @12:34PM
the Dutch have refused to file personal information like religion
LOL, according to Mastercard and Amazon and the dutch IRS, here's the complete cross compiled list of names and addresses of anyone who's purchased menorah candle holders, any cookbook on the topic of ethnic Jewish home cooking, anyone taking a tax credit payable to a Jewish charity, anyone who's ever bought kosher food matzo balls or geflite fish.
One or two hits means nothing, my public library owns every cookbook ever printed, or so it seems, and nobody lives there but some literally insane homeless bums. And there's foodies that will buy and eat anything, at least one time anyway. But technically, sure, nobody never listed "Jew" on a list, technically.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Monday November 14 2016, @01:49PM
That's what I said, those examples are all voluntary (more or less). But the Dutch government still doesn't register religion in its databases as far as I know, because registration went so horribly wrong in the war.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday November 14 2016, @09:49PM
Yet. Abolishing cash will make use of traceable payment methods mandatory.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Monday November 14 2016, @06:27PM
See that brand-new smart meter? It will tell me whether your electricity usage drops on Saturdays, or climbs on Christmas Eve. Heck, I'm pretty sure you can find when Ramadan is just by using usage trends in enough random anonymous utility bills.
Almost all of Europe avoids officially tracking religions or ethnicity of citizens for obvious reasons, but tech has caught up with that thin layer of protection.