[hiddenfeatures]

In my experience over the last few weeks, younger Germans (my age, 30 years & younger) are blissfully ignorant ("I don't have anything to hide" - sounds familiar ?) to the impact of the government spying on its citizen.

24 years are a long time & that part of history is not as well-ingrained in the collective memory as the Holocaust. :-(

[walshemj]

Its always struck me as odd that Germans seem to be so hot on privacy but seem fine with having mandatory ID cards and with the police being able to demand you show it.

[raphman]

One might argue that ID cards actually preserve privacy. In order to give some company or person proof of my identity, I just have to show them my ID card. This transfers less personal information to them than a driver's license, birth certificate, etc. State-issued ID cards are usually much harder to falsify than those, too. Therfore, rarely something else beside them is needed for identification. Therefore, identity theft is more or less a non-issue in Germany.

[walshemj]

So there should be no problems with the NSA GCHQ storing all that data then by your argument.

Are there any oversight committees that check that the police of European country aren't abusing the power to demand ID I Think Not.

[gtirloni]

I would be interested to hear how his statements support your claim bout NSA/GCHQ because I see only a very thin connection.

[walshemj]

He seems to be happy with the police having access to everyones id card data and appearing to have no oversite to see if the Police are abusing the power of asking people to present your id card or "papers please".

[krbbltr]

As far as I'm aware (correct me if I'm wrong), there is an ID card or a functional equivalent thereof in most if not all countries, as the ability to verify someone's identity is pretty much a requirement for a modern society. Whether it's an actual "ID card" or a passport, birth certificate, driver's license, social security number, whatever doesn't really matter IMO.

As for having to reveal/prove my identity to the police: I could do without that, but I consider it mostly a non-issue. In practice it happens rarely, and if it does the police officers tend to be pretty friendly and reasonable. Case in point, one of the two or three times this has happend to me in my life, my ID was invalid as it had expired several months before. They were basically like "Well you better get a new one soon, m'kay?" and then sent me on my way. YMMV of course.

The big difference though between the ID card thing and privacy violations by spying is that the spying happens behind people's backs, and they may never know how broadly their rights are violated until one day the gathered information is used against them. There can be no effective oversight and that's why it must not be allowed to happen in the first place.

If on the other hand the police started abusing their authority – acting like dicks, grabbing people en masse to check their IDs on every street corner, it would be immediately obvious to everyone and could presumably be corrected (by vote, protest, civil disobedience, etc).

[mpyne]

> In practice it happens rarely, and if it does the police officers tend to be pretty friendly and reasonable. Case in point, one of the two or three times this has happend to me in my life, my ID was invalid as it had expired several months before. They were basically like "Well you better get a new one soon, m'kay?" and then sent me on my way. YMMV of course.

Well remember, when we discuss government programs the only valid point of discussion is what could possibly go wrong in the hands of a despot, not how the program is applied in practice. ;)

> The big difference though between the ID card thing and privacy violations by spying is that the spying happens behind people's backs, and they may never know how broadly their rights are violated until one day the gathered information is used against them.

That has always been true in the U.S. though. Just look at the NFL tight end Aaron Hernandez, who was arrested on murder charges yesterday. During his arraignment the prosecution managed to produce a horrifying assortment of evidence against Hernandez, after only a week's worth of police work (all fully legal and with proper oversight).

The only effective difference was that in this case the government did not retain the records by themselves, but subpoena'd them from the companies as needed.

The government could still theoretically switch to doing this too. PRISM is a good example, but there's no technical reason why the NSA couldn't just require the phone and Internet companies to store all the data that the NSA would anyways, and access it on demand.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the things "spying on us behind are backs" are the things we've built onto the Internet. The Internet Never Forgets and that works to the government's advantage as much as it does ours.

[walshemj]

Yes but in the UK having a passport is not required. And a short while ago on on here some one living in Germany commented that it was funny how it was the Non Ethnic Germans that got stopped a lot more.

[krbbltr]

> [...] it was the Non Ethnic Germans that got stopped a lot more.

That's probably true to some extent. I imagine though that the situation is similar in other countries, and the problem is racism in itself. It's sad, but it has nothing to with the ID requirement.

Just look at the US; they may not require an ID, but it sure does not seem to stop their police from physically abusing anyone who looks at them the wrong way. Or in rare cases, literally beating up or even murdering someone just because they're black/mexican/whatever.

(Disclaimer: I've never been to the US. American pop culture may have distorted my view on the American police. :)

[usrusr]

That one's easy: wiretapping is painted as an evil commie thing (in fact it's widely seen as the second key reason why the eastern system was bad, lead closely by shooting people at the wall and followed at great distance by smaller cars), while IDs were as real in the west as they were in the east. Also, while people in the east had real problems with a wiretapping organization completely out of control, them not having IDs would have hardly made any difference. One could easily argue that making a difference between those two things is based on some solid experience and therefore isn't odd at all.

Both german states were running like virtualized OS instances hosted by occupation. Under those conditions one would probably give an ID-less system about as little consideration as a liberal reimplementation of the second amendment. When that changed nobody felt much like messing with the proven western system envied so much by those in the east.

[agilebyte]

Coming from another country that has mandatory ID cards it does not seem odd to me. How do you confirm someone's identity otherwise?

Maybe you are thinking that criminals can always have fake IDs so having an ID is pointless?

[jlgreco]

The idea that you could be required to identify yourself is probably what seems strange to them. In (at least) several US states the police can require you to identify yourself, but telling them your name is all that is required. Americans have an aversion to "papers please", because for decades that is one of the things that we felt distinguished ourselves from certain other countries.

[walshemj]

Quite that is why the UK drooped ID cards after WW2 rather surprised that other countries which had much more bad experience with "papers please" in WW2 did not do the same.

[vacri]

Visiting the US for a while, I recall being yelled at by an inland border patrol guard in Texas for having the temerity to keep my passport in my trunk. Saying my name was definitely not all that was required.

[jlgreco]

Land near the borders (particularly the southern border) is treated differently (very poorly, as you unfortunately learned). Texas is not even the worse in that regard, as hard as that may be to believe. Arizona takes that shameful crown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_SB_1070

[pessimizer]

The border is a different story. No one has any rights at the US border.

[philipp-de]

germans generally like order very, very much. :)