I’m German so don’t tell me about European cultural standards of privacy. There was a huge outcry in Germany when Google announced that they wanted to start St

I’m German so don’t tell me about European cultural standards of privacy. There was a huge outcry in Germany when Google announced that they wanted to start Street View there. Photographing the fronts of homes is perfectly legal in Germany (and will continue to be legal), the ability to opt-out was a concession from Google, not a legal requirement. That said, Google certainly caved in to prevent a Lex Google. I despise the official German view on data protection that found its expression in this outcry, fueled by many politicians. To me it’s nothing more than thinly veiled anti-americanism and a reduction of data protection to limiting freedom and not the state. Google’s freedom to photograph the fronts of homes or collect SSIDs is my freedom, too – at least if the law isn’t selectively enforced (and it shouldn’t be). Data protection’s main goal should be to limit the state and not my (and Google’s) freedom. That’s what I mean by failed ideology of data protection: 1) Its meaning can easily be twisted and turned and consequently it can have perverse consequences. 2) Control over data is practically impossible and we should much rather try and find ways to better arrange us with a world in which privacy is hard or impossible to achieve.