Just seen on nytimes.com while checking the latest primary results –
Arizona Weighs Bill to Allow Guns on Campuses – Horrified by recent campus shootings, a state lawmaker proposes that allowing adults to carry concealed weapons might deter future incidents.
Via netzpolitik.org, I find a commentary by Rop Conggris about the new fundamental right to “privacy and integrity of information processing systems” which was defined last Wednesday by the German Constitutional Court – Today, we’re all Germans.
“It would of course have been even nicer if the Germans had actually managed to elect a government that didn’t attempt to trample their most basic rights to begin with. But then constitutions are there as a safety-net for precisely this eventuality. They are written because the framers realized that when it comes to governments, shit (such as in the form of oppressive laws) sometimes happens.
So the people of Germany seem to be successfully defending themselves against their government. What’s wrong with the rest of the world? There have been plenty efforts in many other countries to defend the notion of privacy, but the Germans have simply been provided with better and sharper tools for defending themselves. Their sharpest tool by far is this federal constitutional court. Without it, I fear Germany would have long been in the same sorry state as my own country. I hope all Germans realize that the judges and support staff that make up this court are the one single thing that stands between today’s Germany and a police state.”
Alright, quite frankly, ‘oddly enough’ doesn’t really describe my initial reaction to reading this on foreignpolicy.com. People are stoned for adultery in a country, where, according to foreignpolicy.com’s blog
“more sex-change surgeries are performed … than in any other country except Thailand.”
Sounds crazy? But it gets even better –
“Ayatollah Khomeini approved them for “diagnosed transsexuals” 25 years ago, and today the Iranian government will pay up to half the cost for those in financial need.”
For those of, my gentle readers, who are now slowly shaking their head in disbelief, here’s why –
“Former FP researcher David Francis wrote, “In a country that shuns homosexuality, this makes perverse sense, as
after a sex-change operation, one technically isn’t attracted to one’s own sex and therefore isn’t gay.”
I don’t want to quote all of their post, so head over to foreign policy to read more (and see some clips) about a recently released documentary about the lives of young Iranian men who undergo sex-change surgery. And yes, before you ask, they will have to wear a tchador afterwards…
And I never knew. Max Winde at Spreeblick had the funny idea to delve deep into the recently opened digital Spiegel archive and look for his birthweek’s Spiegel issue. For me, it was, apparently, actually a birthday issue. It was the Spiegel issue introducing the Red Army Faction trial – “Der Prozess“. Luckily, it sounds more kafkaesque than it was…
Striking down state (Land) legislation from Nordrhein-Westfalia that allowed the use of trojan software to spy on individual’s computers, the German constitutional court (Bundesvrfassungsgericht) has derived from the fundamental legal premises of the German constutiton a new basic right to “privacy and integrity of information processing systems” (my quick and dirty translation). As a basic right, it can only be infringed given very specific circumstances – in this case, the court explicitly mentioned “specific” threats to the life and liberty of individuals, or “concrete” threats to the state.
It will obviously depend on legislative interpretations of the court’s ruling to see whether it’s possible to speak of a “loophole” in the basic right, as Spiegel Online English does. My guess is not, as politicians will not want to get slapped in the face by the Constitutional Court again, and the court will rule on two more privacy related cases soon.
While the court’s ruling will have to be studied in detail to understand its intentions more clearly, this is clearly a landmark decision with respect to the question of how to balance the state’s desire to gather information to protect its citizens and ensure the rule of law with the citizens’ right to privacy.
The Chaos Computer Club’s Andreas Bogk’s, who serves as an expert at the court, likenes the verdict to the census ruling in 1983, which derived a basic right to informational self determination and paved the way for privacy protection legislation.
Netzpolitk.org (German) has everything and then another link and quote regarding the verdict and the unfolding media coverage.
Some more links in English – BBC, WSJ, Bloomberg.
I usually don’t remember things I read in a newspaper word by word. But I still remember the beginning of an article published in the Irish Times back in 1998. It dealt with the German act in that year’s Eurovision song contest, and my Irish friend thought I should read it.
Germans have a general, if somewhat unfair, reputation for humourlessness.
Unfair indeed… we can even lough about ourselves, and even if the jokes aren’t meant to be backhanded compliments like it’s the case in Citroen’s new C5 spot, produced by EuroRCSG for the British market, and currently available on the net and in cinemas across the British Isles. By the way, when I heard the “unmistakably German” voice over, I realised something else – the car reminded me of the Audi A4… I doubt that’s an association Citroen had in mind.
But back to the the jokes visible to everyone – here’s the youtubed version – enjoy your dose of Germanic clichés.
Of course, the afoe Satin Pajama will always remain the most prestigious award in all the internet, the voting procedure has begun for the 2008 Webware 100. So head over there to an idea of the state of art in exciting and possibly useful Web 2.0 goodness.
Angesichts des neuesten Ausfalls des französischen Präsidenten, der einem unliebsamen Passanten auf der Pariser Landwirtschaftsmesse eine unschöne Aufforderung zum Wechsel seines Aufenthaltsorts an Kopf warf, beschäftigt sich Andreas Schepers auf Spreeblick mit der wohl bedeutendsten Frage der politischen Kommunikation in der neuen medialen Realität:
Welche Konsequenzen wird es haben, wenn jede halböffentliche Bemerkung eines Politikers aufgezeichnet und per Internet verbreitet werden kann?
Niemand weiß es. Das Problem sind dabei vermutlich auch weniger Ausraster wie die Sarkozys – wenn dieser Auftritt nicht in ein zunehmend von den präsidentiellen Eskapaden genervtes (europäisches!) Umfeld gefallen wäre, wäre das Video nicht mal halb so interessant – sondern die Unmöglichkeit unterschiedliche Zielgruppen mit spezifischen Botschaften anzusprechen, ohne dabei komplett kryptisch zu werden. Bestes Beispiel hierfür ist doch die Tatsache, daß der amerikanische Präsident in Texas kein “texanisch” mehr reden kann, wenn er darauf achten muß, daß seine Äußerungen in Crawford keine Probleme in New York oder in Brüssel kreieren.
Vielleicht finden sich Hinweise darauf in der Forschung von Kommunikationswissenschaftlern wie Danah Boyd (papers, blog) aus Berkeley, deren Vortrag zum Privatsphäeren-Management von Teenagern ich vor einiger Zeit in Paris hören konnte.
Erklären Teenager auf facebook die Zukunft politischer Kommunikation? On verra…
Interessante Artikelsammlung der ZEIT über die zunehmend öffentlich geführte Debatte über die “neue Männlichkeit”. Via genderblog.
The internet is certainly bringing people closer together. But it’s really more – some people than all people. Digital Inspiration has a couple of interesting visualisations of the current (well, recent) global digital divide. It’s also quite interesting to see which parts of the world are using which social networking service (add. diagram by LeMonde)
