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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: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Thursday June 15 2017, @06:55PM (9 children)
Fascism is the new black. The US, UK, Germany, once considered bastions of freedom, are tossing their freedoms because of media and government spread fear. I would have thought these countries in particular would have a better memory about why this is so bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @07:02PM
I mean... FINGERPRINTS!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @07:03PM (2 children)
The reality is a little more complex than that. The native populations didn't support the wars that created the refugees that allowed Merkel to instigate mass migration of fighting age African males, many of whom are illiterate in their own languages. It really wouldn't matter what race the these migrants were or what culture they came from, you stick that many single adult males into a country and any reputable sociologist will tell you to expect violence.
We do, the EU and the UN do not. They are deliberately creating the conditions that will necessitate a totalitarian state. The people never voted for this shit and many of them are in denial about the reality of what is happening.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15 2017, @11:58PM (1 child)
What do you mean by "necessitate"? Totalitarianism is never justified or necessary, since you can always accept that freedom is more important than safety.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @12:53AM
Nope. Everybody's a pussy now. Safety is more important than freedom.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Thursday June 15 2017, @07:08PM (3 children)
Not seeing your argument. Having your borders under control, deciding who is allowed to cross those borders - that's a pretty fundamental feature of a sovereign country. It doesn't matter whether it's the US, allowing millions of illegal immigrants from Central and South America, or Europe, allowing millions of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa. Both are examples of governments failing one of their fundamental responsibilities.
Look, I'm not even against offering asylum. But the country offering asylum has to be in control of the process. Abdicating control, and letting random people decide that they are moving in, just because they want to? That's just nuts.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Thursday June 15 2017, @07:39PM
Welcome to the EU! No Brexit for you!!!
That's the problem, the EU has superceded sovereign states and mandated immigrant asylum and the states with the most compliance now have the most immigrant issues.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Thursday June 15 2017, @07:54PM (1 child)
Wanting access to all messages is not "controlling the borders", nor is fingerprinting people "in case they do something wrong".
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 16 2017, @06:36AM
Gaining access to messages requires the excuse of violent invasion which has been orchestrated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @06:44AM
Ruling class just wants its wet dream back. Who doesn't like him some Schutzstaffel? Oh wait.