HN Reader

What is it about German culture that makes authoritarianism so popular?

The explanation is deceptively unclear, IMO. What's being authorized is court-ordered searches of a type that were previously prohibited, even for courts to authorize, by strict privacy laws. The US has always had the power to conduct these searches [0]; the "inviolability of the home" human dignity concept doesn't exist in the US. (I'll defer to German people to explain this concept).

As explained in heise.de[1] (in German) about a parallel law being enacted in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,

> "For the online search, the deputies now also grant the law enforcement the right to secretly enter and search apartments with judicial permission."

[0] e.g. https://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/138916011/home-visits-and-oth... ("Home Visits And Other 'Secrets Of The FBI'")

[1] https://www.heise.de/news/Mecklenburg-Vorpommern-Durchsuchun...

After decades of a liberal and left senate, Berliners reelected CDU who bankrupted Berlin 25 years ago.

Fighting extremist terrorism requires tough measures. This one is a bit extra though:

> If the software cannot be deployed remotely, the law authorizes officers to secretly enter a person’s home to gain access.

Clear Das Leben der Anderen vibes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others)

However: As usual, the devil is in the details. How much suspicion is required, what's the process, etc. (I assume that a judge needs to sign off.)

Totalitarism slowly advancing in Europe. Recently I read an article about leftist groups and orgs being debanked. One of them is Huseyin Dogru, a Turkish/German journalist. German government acknowledges it, but can‘t see any problem with it as they hold the opinion that private banks can do whatever they want.

You are labelled „Putin versteher“ (someone who sides with Putin) or criticise Israel (in which case you are labelled antisemitic), and once you are labelled that way, you have fallen out of grace. And can be targeted or beaten on a demonstration brutally by police forces, or, debanked.

Spit balling now ... I just feel like the years have rolled on by so quickly now, that we've aged out of all of the lessons we had to learn before. And now we're going to have to learn them all over again.

I wonder why so many governments have such high anxiety right now. They're all acting like the sky is falling. Don't they know what happens to most of the chickens in Chicken Little?

Yet another step towards Turnkey Totalitarianism

https://creativetimereports.org/2013/06/25/surveillance-and-...