[anigbrowl]

I'm waiting for one of these legal actions to cause a company like Facebook to just shut down their service in the local area, and leave a landing page with the email addresses of all the politicians who provoked the outage.

People in the EU (and Germany in particular) don't care for massive privately held databases that can be used to target individuals. They have had enough bad experiences with secret police forces, and that's why there are strict limits on data gathering and retention.

[anamax]

> People in the EU (and Germany in particular) ... have had enough bad experiences with secret police forces,

How many of these secret police forces were private? How many were govt police forces?

Politicians grandstand about the evils of companies, but the actual killing and torturing people is done by semi-popular govts.

[archgoon]

> but the actual killing and torturing people is done by semi-popular govts.

Like the Mafia and Church of Scientology. And Blackwater. The East India Trading Company, or Coca Cola assassinating Labor Leaders in Columbia. IBM helped the Nazi's build the accounting machinery used by the concentration camps, requiring IBM to be well aware what was going on.

In some cases Corporations pay governments to do their dirty work. Sometimes the Government pays the corporation. Other times the corporation becomes the government. Sometimes the corporation just doesn't care. Regardless, can we please put aside this fiction that all the serious evils of the world are perpetrated by governments despite the best efforts of angelic businessmen? Pretending that as long as we keep the government in check all will be fine is idiocy and ignorance of the highest order. Excess power in any concentrated location is potentially problematic, regardless if it's held by 'private' or 'public' sectors. Those are labels for groups of people, nothing more.

[anamax]

"A Single Death is a Tragedy; a Million Deaths is a Statistic"

> Regardless, can we please put aside this fiction that all the serious evils of the world are perpetrated by governments despite the best efforts of angelic businessmen?

No one is suggesting that business is angelic.

However, whenever someone points out that govts kill lots of people, govt apologists leap up to say "corps have killed too", ignoring the differenc in orders of magnitude.

Mote, beam and all that.

> Those are labels for groups of people, nothing more.

Not so fast. Those groups have very different behaviors and motivations.

The worst that you can say about a company is that it will try to make money from you and might take some action to stop you from interfering with its attempts to make money.

Govts regularly commit mass murder for basically no reason.

[tluyben2]

> Govts regularly commit mass murder for basically no reason.

Govts have reasons, one of the most common is to protect or improve the status quo for the leaders. Not very different from companies.

[anamax]

> Not very different from companies.

You're ignoring the orders of magnitude.

Scale is a difference that you have to ignore to apologize for govts.

[tluyben2]

I agree and worse is that most a lot of them actually believe 'the people' actually have a say in this while they don't. Well, at least not with voting. That was not the point though; governments are not doing the stuff they do without reason; there is a reason. It's just not what you would expect and hope from something as massive as a government.

[forgottenpaswrd]

"Politicians grandstand about the evils of companies, but the actual killing and torturing people is done by semi-popular govts."

Well, that's true, and is the reason you can't trust facebook, as the patriot act gives the US government all the data that private American companies have, without you being notified.

[mcpie]

The distinction you're making between private and public is hardly relevant. The gestapo, stasi and FBI are, for all intents and purposes, not very different from private companies trying to perpetuate their own success and maximize their power/profits. The only major difference is that governments own a monopoly on the use of force, making them slightly more dangerous in a physical sense - but not more dangerous in a general 'can cause us a lot of harm' sense (especially since governments are easier to topple than private companies).

[CrLf]

What does "private" mean in this scenario? In most dictatorships, secret police forces may be run by the state, but they serve the private interests that run the state.

[anamax]

> they serve the private interests that run the state.

Oh really? What private interests ran the USSR? China under Mao? The killing fields of Cambodia.

10s of millions of people killed....

[arrrg]

I think you are very wrong about that.

Populist politicians, confused old people and outraged nerds don’t care for massive, privately held databases. The rest do.

[einhverfr]

If the politicians are both populist and successful that suggests their platform is supported by a wide swath of the population.

It is quite possible that everyone in Germany is either a confused old person, an outraged nerd, or a populist politician trying to cash in on their senses. But I doubt that's exactly what you meant. ;-)

[Daniel_Newby]

> They have had enough bad experiences with secret police forces, and that's why there are strict limits on data gathering and retention.

Ha ha. The successors to the Stasi are meant to ignore these laws. The purpose is to keep the technologies out of the hands of the Hans Q. Public.

Remember, the Stasi were first and foremost a populist movement, just like the Nazis before them. You don't get an informer in every family by tyrrany, you get it by willing collaboration, and the Germans have an authority worshipping streak a mile wide.

[thinkingisfun]

Remember, the Stasi were first and foremost a populist movement, just like the Nazis before them. You don't get an informer in every family by tyrrany, you get it by willing collaboration

what? you're talking about eastern germany, with the wall that kept people from running away.

the Germans have an authority worshipping streak a mile wide.

what about the americans who move to berlin because they can hardly breathe in the USA anymore? you're operating under obsolete assumptions.

[freehunter]

You're coming from the assumption that Germany got better rather than the US got worse. There are still many freer countries than Germany.

[thinkingisfun]

"You're coming from the assumption that Germany got better"

No, I live in it. And it did. Just think the green or now the pirate party - unthinkable decades ago.

But where did I claim Germany is super free and the best, ever? I was simply responding the claim that Germans are authoritarian/obedient by nature - which, ironically, strikes me as racist - and was taking a wild jab, hoping the poster I replied to might come from the US, and simply said Germany is way more free (and dare I say, laid back) in some respects than the US currently is.

That's all, you can dispute that if you want; but how do "all other countries" come into play here?

[freehunter]

What I was inferring from your comment was

What about the americans who move to berlin because they can hardly breathe in the USA anymore? Since this happens, it shows that Berlin is a haven for people who feel oppressed.

That was my interpretation. You also said that the assumption of German strictness was outdated, implying that Germans have become more relaxed. Working with that interpretation, my point was that maybe Germany didn't get better, but the US got worse which by default makes Germany look better. I then implied that using Berlin as the capital of the free doesn't work, since there are more free places even in the EU. Basically: maybe Germany hasn't become more relaxed, but other places have become more strict. If I was looking to escape the tyranny of the US, I wouldn't think of going back home to Germany. The authoritarian nature of the US vs Germany reside on two entirely different and almost incomparable planes.

[Daniel_Newby]

> The authoritarian nature of the US vs Germany reside on two entirely different and almost incomparable planes.

The US is not authoritarian, we are governed by a coalition of tyrants that have coopted the lawful government. The pendulum will swing back any year now when the shiny wears off Washington, D.C.

As for the other commenter's claim about Berlin, imagine this thought experiment: the self-proclaimed Messiah moves to Berlin, marries a gaggle of 16 year old brides, gets them all pregnant, and homeschools the offspring in riflery and Scientology. Would German officials have a violent allergic reaction? Yes! Because it goes outside the privileges they have deigned to grant their flocks. In the US that would be considered bizarre but not a proper matter for state intervention.