Privacy and terrorism

The terrorism threat in Germany has been being hyped recently, through warnings from the Interior Minister and a false alarm over a bomb on a plane in Namibia.

German politicians have been impressively willing to call bullshit on this, in some cases openly suggesting that it’s fearmongering as a political tactic.

In particular, the idea is already widespread that it’s an attempt to build public support for increased surveillance and for weakening of privacy laws.

This wikileaks cable from February gives more fuel to that view. It shows that the US

links German support for privacy with the lack of terrorist attacks

in Germany: “

the German public and political class largely

tends to view terrorism abstractly given that it has been

decades since any successful terrorist attack has occurred on

German soil

Also, a little schadenfreude at the US saying that “

We need to also

demonstrate that the U.S. has strong data privacy measures in

place so that robust data sharing comes with robust data

protections

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