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Germany is planning a new law giving authorities the right to look at private messages and fingerprint children as young as 6, the interior minister said on Wednesday after the last government gathering before a national election in September.
Ministers from central government and federal states said encrypted messaging services, such as WhatsApp and Signal, allow militants and criminals to evade traditional surveillance.
"We can't allow there to be areas that are practically outside the law," interior minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters in the eastern town of Dresden.
It's not even certain that messages will be obvious to be... anything like they don't want to. A quick look how this can be done is the movie "The Saint" from 1997 where the contractor gets jobs that way. The hard quote is "where authorities install software on phones to relay messages before they are encrypted". Suppose the phone contains nothing of value. Not even the destination for the message because another unit transmits this via a analog transmission junk voice modulated with the actual real bits.
This panopticon idea is incredibly stupid technology-wise and a dangerous setup of society. The last time themes like this were current, neighbors told people in Armani uniforms that so-and-so did bad things so they could snatch their belongings or houses for themselves. And the whole society went down the drain. Oh wait, actually it was repeated after the mustache times with the sickle times. Both failed. This also shows why bootloader locking computer phones is detrimental to real security for real users. Because without it, enforced and silent installation will be hard.
And as for the motivation behind these moves. For some mysterious reason Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech, Slovakia, and Hungary seem to have been spared the latest string of violent attacks. How can that be? Nobel prize awaits! ;)
(Score: 3, Informative) by KGIII on Thursday June 15 2017, @06:14PM (11 children)
This does NOT mean that I'm insinuating that this is acceptable, I just figure I should make this clear.
This fingerprinting, if the various articles are to be believed, is only applicable to those seeking asylum. For better or worse, this doesn't seem to apply to citizens.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @06:50PM (1 child)
What for? Anybody would think there has been a massive rise in crime or something.
Not the fingerprinting but the encryption controls will. It'll take some time for the stasi to have enough staff to fingerprint the entire population.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Thursday June 15 2017, @07:51PM
> What for?
You'll have to ask them. I swear, I had nothing to do with it. ;-)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Unixnut on Thursday June 15 2017, @07:50PM (7 children)
"this doesn't seem to apply to citizens. "
Not yet. Once they build out the system, and it is working, they can start with asylum seekers, then "why not criminals", then why not those "undesirables", then eventually "why are you not in the system? Do you have something to hide citizen?"
The whole "Getting the foot in the door", "thin edge of the wedge", "down the slippery slope" comes to mind.
It is part of a wider strategy to get people accustomed to being tagged, monitored, tracked and controlled. It is also working, most people carry phones with them, despite knowing they are basically devices to spy on them. They know their data can be compromised, the phone itself can be compromised, and then all the sensors from GPS to the camera and microphone are available.
Yet not only does 99% of people have such a phone (if not more than one), it is reaching the point where you can't be without one. My bank is shutting branches around where I live, and saying "Just use our app for all your banking needs!". Resturants are pushing for you to use their apps for ordering and payment (some really strongly as well, I am looking at you Wagamama). Even my local government has started rolling out apps and reducing headcount at the town hall to save costs (at least there they can't force you to use the app, as they have to cater to all and sundry, including those unable to use apps).
People are like "well, I am being monitored, tagged and tracked already, what difference does it make if they have my fingerprints as well".
then in future I suspect it will be a case of "I am being monitored, tagged, tracked and fingerprinted already, what difference does it make if they have my IRIS scan and DNA samples as well"
At some point, when it bites them in the ass, they will realise what fools they were, but it will be too late, as history has shown us countless times before (and I would have thought the Germans of all people, know about this kind of thing, and would try to walk the same path again).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by KGIII on Thursday June 15 2017, @07:55PM
> The whole "Getting the foot in the door", "thin edge of the wedge", "down the slippery slope" comes to mind.
Agreed. I sure as hell don't condone this, I just figured I'd add the clarification as it wasn't mentioned in the summary and nobody RTFA.
I'd speculate that this is a test to see how far people are willing to let the government monitor and track them. That it's Germany, given some of their history, makes it perplexing. I should add that I did see someone comment that this guy is a representative of the German equivalent of a right-winger. I haven't taken the time to verify that.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @08:45PM (1 child)
This, a hundred, nay, a thousand times this.
This continual erosion of your resistance against being tracked; the relentless assault wears people down.
And you are right, after a while they give in on being tracked by X, and then what you mentioned exactly, takes place...
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday June 16 2017, @12:03AM
The part that always makes me smile wryly is that the ones building out this system and enabling it always think that it doesn't apply to them, as if they are disembodied spirits with no physical form that cannot be tracked. They are few, and they can be tracked, and they rely on thousands of us every day to enable their little fantasy bubble-lands they exist in. And since they have also conditioned all of us to not react to the erosion of the rule of law, there is increasingly little left to dissuade us from ceasing to play along.
They are making this bed and will themselves have to lie in it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Lagg on Thursday June 15 2017, @09:10PM (2 children)
Unfortunately. I sincerely believe they know about this kind of thing. This is them sincerely trying to do something about it before it can repeat itself. But problem with this per dept line is that you just fall right into the historical mistakes again by wearing down freedom and privacy. That's the most sad/bullshit thing about it. There's clearly sincerity somewhere there.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday June 16 2017, @01:03AM (1 child)
That's the biggest disappointment. I'd hoped dearly for a future in which a fourth Rech would re-emerge with the goals of the third, except this time allied with America rather than against it.
Well, sorry Jungen, looks like we're gonna have to stomp your asses again. Not even your Islamic foreign legion of imported Untermensch will stop us.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 16 2017, @06:16AM
America was never really a Nazi enemy behind the curtains. Guess who financed it all to keep those Soviets away from Europe..
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday June 16 2017, @12:05AM
Hmmmm, what "PATH" is it you are referring to - Assuming you can even mention it without Godwin-ing the entire thread?
You seem to jump from a historical near fanatical penchant for documenting everything with great record keeping with something more sinister, but you fail to mention what. You seem to suggest that the British, Americans, Canadians, and Russians are somehow less involved in such documentation.
You further imply that it was the obsession for record keeping is viewed by the German citizens as some how wrong and dangerous. I'm sure many Germans would tell you its not viewed that way, nor do they consider their national documentation any more intensive than any other state.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @12:59AM
Is this due to the amount of rapes committed by people claiming to be refugees?