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Relevant: > According to a 2008 decision by the German Constitutional Court, remote access to a citizen's computer is permissible only if there is life-threate

Relevant: > According to a 2008 decision by the German Constitutional Court, remote access to a citizen's computer is permissible only if there is life-threatening danger or suspicion of criminal activity against the state.

creshal 11y ago
That's their usual shtick. The same was used to legitimize blanket license plate scanning (now used for speeding tickets) and data retention laws (mainly used for drug trafficking). "Life-threatening danger" my ass.
- TheCoreh 11y ago
  > The same was used to legitimize blanket license plate scanning Was that ever illegal? The license plates are publicly displayed and visible, and you could already put people on the field watching and manually noting the license plates down, or even put cameras and look at the footage later. The only thing that changes is the economics of making it automated, no?
  - germanier 11y ago
    German courts routinely differentiate between things done automatically at high-speed and the same action performed manually. While the former is theoretically equivalent to the latter, in practice it's impossible to do large-scale data evaluation by hand so it's not reasonable to judge them by the same criteria. Additionally, in Germany the state and the people are barred from using certain kinds of information in mass even if they had been publicly displayed. Just as a more concrete example, I'm not allowed to point a camera out of my window and film the things happening at the lively public street below me 24/7. A single short clip of the general area on the other hand is completely fine.
  - Xylakant 11y ago
    In Germany any kind of data collection must be backed by a cause. So automated license plate scanning was illegal since it allows creation of movement profiles by the state, something that is very much frowned upon. Putting fixed cameras up and filming the public is not legal either in Germany - you can't have a surveillance camera pointed to public space, for example filming the boardwalk in front of your house. Whether dashcams are legal is still contested [1]. Whether large=scale manual collection would be legal is an interesting question which has - to the best of my limited knowledge - never been put to the test :) [1] a fairly ok high level summary in german: https://www.adac.de/infotestrat/ratgeber-verkehr/verkehrsrecht/Dashcam/Situation%20in%20Deutschland.aspx?ComponentId=219667&SourcePageId=202144 https://www.adac.de/infotestrat/ratgeber-verkehr/verkehrsrec...
    - gist 11y ago
      > you can't have a surveillance camera pointed to public space Interesting so a business for example can't have a camera monitoring outside (or inside) the place of business for security purposes? Can they apply for an exemption and is it normally granted?
      - germanier 11y ago
        They can monitor their inside place (if there is a clear sign there) and and also their door from the outside (as long as the public street isn't filmed). Videos have to be deleted quickly and can only be used for theft prevention purposes. Exemptions can't be granted by the government and courts will usually decide against business owners that violate those rules.
      - detaro 11y ago
        You can monitor your own property if you inform properly (post notices, renters have to agree, ...) > Can they apply for an exemption and is it normally granted? No. If your camera monitors public space (streets, sidewalk, ...) it either has to be so far in the distance that it can't identify people or cars, or you have to block these parts of the image (either physically, or by blanking those parts of the signal before they are recorded. Many cameras allow to put black boxes over parts of the image in firmware)
        germanier 11y ago
        > You can monitor your own property if you inform properly Even that is restricted. For example it is not allowed to video monitor your employees in almost all cases. To use video surveillance you have to have a legitimate reason and even then the rights of you and the ones being filmed need to be carefully balanced.
        detaro 11y ago
        true, i was maybe generalizing a bit to much.
      - 11y ago
  - barrkel 11y ago
    Pervasive automated license plate scanning is a qualitative change. It's one thing to have a chap by the side of the road writing numbers into a piece of paper; it's another thing entirely to track most of the routes of all vehicles in a city. You can't trivially extend the principle of one to permitting the other, since it's not feasible to flood an entire city with spotters with notepads.
  - 50CNT 11y ago
    But then the process of something becoming automated can be a pretty deciding factor. Say a policeman overheard you talking about something that is illegal in public, and decides to investigate. Fine and dandy. Say the government mounts microphones in all public places, and does sophisticated speech recognition on it to find people talking about illegal things. In principle, that is very similar to a policeman overhearing a conversation, in scope, it isn't. That capability opens up terrifying possibilities.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >Was that ever illegal? The license plates are publicly displayed and visible Well, you are also publicly visible when you walk around the town, but police following you around all the time without a reason/warrant is illegal (at least that's the case in my country, it should be in yours too if it's not). Second, something being "publicly displayed" and "allowed to be scanned automatically by government (or another party), catalogued and stored for millions of people" is not the same thing. >The only thing that changes is the economics of making it automated, no? No, it's the "mass surveillance of citizens whereabouts" that's the illegal part that is/should be illegal. Even if it was to be performed manually by people. Now, one could say that it's just the "economics" that changes, but beyond that, the economics are also an enabler. If it wasn't for automated scanning it would impractical to even do it, so what changes is the very possibility of this happening. One didn't need to make non-automated license plate scanning illegal because it wasn't practical to perform it in the first place. Sure, it could happen at low scale, with "spies" manually writing e.g. all the plates parked in an area, or whenever a particular car passes from a particular street. But it wasn't practical or widespread enough to make sense to single out and ban as a practice. The law is not an absolute affair.
  - samstave 11y ago
    The problem is that there is no probable cause for blanket license plate scanning per se - but there are certain cities that mandated ACTUAL companies to install license plate scanners/cameras on their private buildings to scan all cars driving by - then forced companies to try to keep this secret. That should not be legal.
    - germanier 11y ago
      In Germany? Do you have a source for that?
      - samstave 11y ago
        No, California, US
zdkl 11y ago
Whenever I read "crimes against the state" I get scared about the intentions of those in a position to determine what falls into this category
- Xylakant 11y ago
  Well, in germany that usually is meant to be "Verbrechen gehen die freiheitlich demokratische Grundordnung", that is anything that tries to overthrow the order of the state or the immutable paragraphs of the constitution. The problem is more that the restriction to crimes against the state gets lifted. The definition is actually fairly strict.
SturgeonsLaw 11y ago
This is really the key point with regards to mass surveillance, isn't it? It's not about protecting citizens from harm, it's about entrenching the existing power structure.

creshal 11y ago

That's their usual shtick. The same was used to legitimize blanket license plate scanning (now used for speeding tickets) and data retention laws (mainly used for drug trafficking). "Life-threatening danger" my ass.

TheCoreh 11y ago
> The same was used to legitimize blanket license plate scanning Was that ever illegal? The license plates are publicly displayed and visible, and you could already put people on the field watching and manually noting the license plates down, or even put cameras and look at the footage later. The only thing that changes is the economics of making it automated, no?
- germanier 11y ago
  German courts routinely differentiate between things done automatically at high-speed and the same action performed manually. While the former is theoretically equivalent to the latter, in practice it's impossible to do large-scale data evaluation by hand so it's not reasonable to judge them by the same criteria. Additionally, in Germany the state and the people are barred from using certain kinds of information in mass even if they had been publicly displayed. Just as a more concrete example, I'm not allowed to point a camera out of my window and film the things happening at the lively public street below me 24/7. A single short clip of the general area on the other hand is completely fine.
- Xylakant 11y ago
  In Germany any kind of data collection must be backed by a cause. So automated license plate scanning was illegal since it allows creation of movement profiles by the state, something that is very much frowned upon. Putting fixed cameras up and filming the public is not legal either in Germany - you can't have a surveillance camera pointed to public space, for example filming the boardwalk in front of your house. Whether dashcams are legal is still contested [1]. Whether large=scale manual collection would be legal is an interesting question which has - to the best of my limited knowledge - never been put to the test :) [1] a fairly ok high level summary in german: https://www.adac.de/infotestrat/ratgeber-verkehr/verkehrsrecht/Dashcam/Situation%20in%20Deutschland.aspx?ComponentId=219667&SourcePageId=202144 https://www.adac.de/infotestrat/ratgeber-verkehr/verkehrsrec...
  - gist 11y ago
    > you can't have a surveillance camera pointed to public space Interesting so a business for example can't have a camera monitoring outside (or inside) the place of business for security purposes? Can they apply for an exemption and is it normally granted?
    - germanier 11y ago
      They can monitor their inside place (if there is a clear sign there) and and also their door from the outside (as long as the public street isn't filmed). Videos have to be deleted quickly and can only be used for theft prevention purposes. Exemptions can't be granted by the government and courts will usually decide against business owners that violate those rules.
    - detaro 11y ago
      You can monitor your own property if you inform properly (post notices, renters have to agree, ...) > Can they apply for an exemption and is it normally granted? No. If your camera monitors public space (streets, sidewalk, ...) it either has to be so far in the distance that it can't identify people or cars, or you have to block these parts of the image (either physically, or by blanking those parts of the signal before they are recorded. Many cameras allow to put black boxes over parts of the image in firmware)
      - germanier 11y ago
        > You can monitor your own property if you inform properly Even that is restricted. For example it is not allowed to video monitor your employees in almost all cases. To use video surveillance you have to have a legitimate reason and even then the rights of you and the ones being filmed need to be carefully balanced.
        detaro 11y ago
        true, i was maybe generalizing a bit to much.
    - 11y ago
- barrkel 11y ago
  Pervasive automated license plate scanning is a qualitative change. It's one thing to have a chap by the side of the road writing numbers into a piece of paper; it's another thing entirely to track most of the routes of all vehicles in a city. You can't trivially extend the principle of one to permitting the other, since it's not feasible to flood an entire city with spotters with notepads.
- 50CNT 11y ago
  But then the process of something becoming automated can be a pretty deciding factor. Say a policeman overheard you talking about something that is illegal in public, and decides to investigate. Fine and dandy. Say the government mounts microphones in all public places, and does sophisticated speech recognition on it to find people talking about illegal things. In principle, that is very similar to a policeman overhearing a conversation, in scope, it isn't. That capability opens up terrifying possibilities.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >Was that ever illegal? The license plates are publicly displayed and visible Well, you are also publicly visible when you walk around the town, but police following you around all the time without a reason/warrant is illegal (at least that's the case in my country, it should be in yours too if it's not). Second, something being "publicly displayed" and "allowed to be scanned automatically by government (or another party), catalogued and stored for millions of people" is not the same thing. >The only thing that changes is the economics of making it automated, no? No, it's the "mass surveillance of citizens whereabouts" that's the illegal part that is/should be illegal. Even if it was to be performed manually by people. Now, one could say that it's just the "economics" that changes, but beyond that, the economics are also an enabler. If it wasn't for automated scanning it would impractical to even do it, so what changes is the very possibility of this happening. One didn't need to make non-automated license plate scanning illegal because it wasn't practical to perform it in the first place. Sure, it could happen at low scale, with "spies" manually writing e.g. all the plates parked in an area, or whenever a particular car passes from a particular street. But it wasn't practical or widespread enough to make sense to single out and ban as a practice. The law is not an absolute affair.
- samstave 11y ago
  The problem is that there is no probable cause for blanket license plate scanning per se - but there are certain cities that mandated ACTUAL companies to install license plate scanners/cameras on their private buildings to scan all cars driving by - then forced companies to try to keep this secret. That should not be legal.
  - germanier 11y ago
    In Germany? Do you have a source for that?
    - samstave 11y ago
      No, California, US

zdkl 11y ago

Whenever I read "crimes against the state" I get scared about the intentions of those in a position to determine what falls into this category

Xylakant 11y ago
Well, in germany that usually is meant to be "Verbrechen gehen die freiheitlich demokratische Grundordnung", that is anything that tries to overthrow the order of the state or the immutable paragraphs of the constitution. The problem is more that the restriction to crimes against the state gets lifted. The definition is actually fairly strict.

SturgeonsLaw 11y ago

This is really the key point with regards to mass surveillance, isn't it? It's not about protecting citizens from harm, it's about entrenching the existing power structure.