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I recently visited a hospital in Berlin. I ended up next to a screen with a live ECG from someone in another room. This alone seemed slightly questionable, both
by jaynetics 7y ago
I recently visited a hospital in Berlin. I ended up next to a screen with a live ECG from someone in another room. This alone seemed slightly questionable, both due to privacy reasons and because it ran in some weird modified Internet Explorer.
Then the ECG was interrupted by Windows Update.
- tnolet 7y agoWeirdly enough, Germany in general is very very privacy conscious. In Berlin even more, due to DDR hangover.
- briandear 7y agoYet they still have people register their religion choice. Ostensibly it’s because of taxes, but given Germany’s history, a government list of everyone and their religion can’t be good. Germans care about privacy, but they have seemingly a foolhardy trust of government.
- catalogia 7y ago> "Yet they still have people register their religion choice. Ostensibly it’s because of taxes" Stupid question maybe, but do Germans actually comply with that law? Even the ostensible justification seems weird; why should religious beliefs be relevant to taxes owed?
- detaro 7y agoBecause the state helpfully pulls in "membership fees" for the churches through the tax system. Really stupid system, but little political will to get rid of it.
- ptaipale 7y agoOne may call it stupid, but such a system, particularly collecting the membership dues for the Lutheran protestant churches, is in place in very many of the most-advanced nations in the world with highest rankings of human development, press freedom, strong welfare state, good public health and so on. Is that a coincidence? I think it is not, although it is obvious that the mechanism doesn't work like "start collecting membership dues for Lutherans and you'll have a great welfare state". Rather, it's the current outcome of a long historical development.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoI think you mean guilt from ww2 and also some of the sectarian episodes in Germanys Past - Bismarck locking up a large proportion of the Catholic clergy is one example not well known
- ptaipale 7y agoI think WW2 is just a passing episode in this development, as different countries fared differently in the war but this long-standing development has ended in rather similar outcomes. Overall, it's that the secular society picked up from the administration structures and practices built by (mostly Protestant) churches. WW2 guilt did not stop Austria from applying this law for collecting church dues (for the Catholic church) after WW2, even if the practice was in fact brought to statute books by Adolf Hitler in 1939.
- ptaipale 7y agoThey do; church membership dues are part of general taxation (if you are a member of the church). Same arrangement in Nordics (dk, fi, is, no, se). Church membership is not mandatory, but membership of the national church or churches comes with a tax.
- ptaipale 7y ago"A government list of everyone" is certainly considered a good thing in most North European countries. Religion would not have to be there, but a population register is taken for granted, and is considered an essential service of the government. Things like "registering to vote" are alien, and considered a weak point in democracy in the U.S. and U.K.
- jaynetics 7y agoI often feel that the main result of this privacy consciousness is that it adds to the impression caused by the OP, that is, one of being behind technologically. E.g. when you can't do administrative tasks online or have to fetch and send some info from and to four different government agencies because they're not allowed to pass it among each other. But who knows, maybe I'll be thankful for the extra work one day when other societies are wholly ruled by brainwave scanners and social credit systems.
- MrMorden 7y agoAn organization still using Windows 95 favors privacy just as much as the GOP favors small government.
- swebs 7y agoObviously not if they're still running Windows everywhere.