6 ms·

Fwiw, there are parts of the German government who are really pro liberty, and have been actively seeking security and privacy startups relocating to Berlin. I

by rdl 12y ago

Fwiw, there are parts of the German government who are really pro liberty, and have been actively seeking security and privacy startups relocating to Berlin. I predict pretty amazing things due to ccc, the general attractiveness of Berlin as a place to live, cost (half of the Bay Area), less crappy immigration policies, and the privacy/security brand due to people like Poitras.

spiritplumber 12y ago
Also, there is the freedom of movement to consider (traveling between European countries has gotten easier; traveling between North American countries has gotten harder) and universal healthcare.
- chestnut-tree 12y ago
  Yes, travelling is a lot easier across countries in the EU - but many European countries (including Germany) issue biometric passports which require your fingerprints. If you refuse to be fingerprinted, you are unlikely to be issued a passport. The fact that people consent to this shows that we have a sometimes contradictory stance on matters of privacy and data collection. Back in October 2013, the European Court of Justice ruled that collecting fingerprints was a privacy incursion but that the greater need for security outweighed the privacy concern.
  - smoe 12y ago
    One of the reasons biometric passports spreaded so fast, was because the US required all foreign passport issued after 2006 to be biometric as specified by the International Civil Aviation Organization. Within the EU (or Schengen Area to be precise) you don't need a passport to travel. An ID which is not biometric in most countries is sufficent.
  - superuser2 12y ago
    What is the threat model for government knowing your fingerprints? There are clear issues with communications - words taken out of context could paint you as all kinds of illegal/disagreeable things and land you in jail and/or destroy your career. Metadata is pretty much exclusively useful for guilt by association. What bad things can happen if the government knows your fingerprints? What makes fingerprints any different from the other information on your passport? If the objection is that they are more difficult to fake... well, that's sort of the point. Are we afraid that someone is going to take fingerprints from the passport database and plant them at crime scenes? Use them to unlock your iPhone while you're in custody? If you already warrant that kind of special attention, authorities will have no trouble getting your fingerprints anyway.,
    - DanBC 12y ago
      > What bad things can happen if the government knows your fingerprints? What makes fingerprints any different from the other information on your passport? If the objection is that they are more difficult to fake... well, that's sort of the point. A database of fingerprints[1] should contain the prints of as many criminals as possible and as few non-criminals as possible. This reduces the possibility of false possibilities which carry a real chance of death if the police turn up to your house with guns. Those false positives also distract efforts from the actual criminals. And then there's the risk of feature creep - see also the vast misuse of social security numbers in the US. Finally: a fingerprint is pretty much the definition of personal info and so anyone collecting and storing that information should have clear regulation about the use and storage of that information. [2] also DNA. The English DNA database is scary.
      - spiritplumber 12y ago
        I agree with you on DNA, but don't forget - a fingerprint should be a username, not a password.
        eru 12y ago
        Yes, same with DNA.
      - superuser2 12y ago
        > This reduces the possibility of false possibilities which carry a real chance of death if the police turn up to your house with guns. How unreliable are fingerprints? Statistics would be interesting. DNA is pretty damn accurate, as I understand it. Containing a higher proportion of criminials does not reduce the probability of a false positive. Merely having committed a crime in the past may mean you are more likely to commit a crime in the future, but it does not make it any more likely that you have committed any particular crime under investigation. This statement only seems to work if we are okay with sending any criminal to jail for any crime, rather than the specific crime that he/she actually committed. > Finally: a fingerprint is pretty much the definition of personal info That's a purely dogmatic argument. Why is the statement that "all personal information ought to also be considered private" justified?
  - contingencies 12y ago
    many European countries (including Germany) issue biometric passports which require your fingerprints. If you refuse to be fingerprinted, you are unlikely to be issued a passport. Not true. I applied for a new German passport recently. They said "we can give you the biometric one - costs more, takes longer to process, has to be made in Germany and sent here ... or we can give you the normal one. The normal one's fine unless you want to go to 'certain' countries .. notably the US." I said give me the normal one, I've had enough of that country's immigration bullshit already. TLDR: US' fault, not Germany's.
    - smoe 12y ago
      In 2008 I had to get a biometrical passport because my flight back from Costa Rica went through Miami. The passports where at a pilot phase so they were twice as expensive and only valid for 5 years. Once in Miami they didn't had the tech to read the biometrical data from the passport … 250$ for a Passport + 10$ for a phone call to the us embassy in Switzerland (yes, they only gave out information when calling their 4$/minute hotline) for 3 hours of waiting for my connecting flight. Thanks a lot. Ah, and of course they did take fingerprints from all fingers and photos for their own database.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+belt+sander+and+the+battle+for+privacy+a+body+hack http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+belt+sander+and+the+battle+fo...
      - contingencies 12y ago
        Wow, huge points for effort :)
    - pgeorgi 12y ago
      The fingerprint situation on papers is a mess: Since 2007 German passports must contain two fingerprints. They're encrypted with a key held by the German government, (claimed to be) stored on the passport only. German ID cards can contain two fingerprints. Besides being optional, the same rules as for passports apply. On entry to the USA they don't seem to actually use the fingerprint data on the passport, and they require you to give ten fingerprints plus photo. The original claim is that the US required them. By now, many countries require the data on passports. But none of them seem to read it on foreign passports, and from what I understand they're not able to. So the main reason is that the requirement exists to force countries to provider a higher baseline against forgery. Alternatively they planned to access the fingerprints, but countries couldn't agree on a common standard and ACL system, or the USA got screwed because they required "digitally stored fingerprints", which they got (hence _two_ fingerprints) - but not in a format they can actually use. I kinda like that last option ;-)
CalRobert 12y ago
Germany also is one of the only places to offer the Blue Card, which rocks. After 21 months if you can speak decent German you can live and work anywhere in the EU (except for Denmark, UK, and Ireland).
- brightsize 12y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, when going the Blue Card route, you can get a permanent residence visa after 33 months even without B1 German. The problem with the Blue Card, from my [non-German/EU citizen] perspective, is that it's a work visa, which means you must have a job offer, and one that pays at least 37K EUR annually, to get the visa. Likewise if you lose that job, you've got just a short time to find another one or get out. The Blue Card is not a visa for those expecting to work at a German startup and compensated mostly with equity. In other words, not a visa for most founders.
  - smoe 12y ago
    I guess as a founder without a significant amount of money to invest it's hard to stay in almost any foreign country. At least the Blue Card makes it at easy as possible for people, who got employed there.
    - CalRobert 12y ago
      As mentioned above, you could check out the Dutch American Friendship Treaty if you happen to be from the US.
  - CalRobert 12y ago
    I realize pay scales are different in the EU than in the US, but 37K isn't a ridiculously high burden, is it? If so I'm surprised the offices of Dublin startups aren't packed with germans because that would be considered very low for a qualified engineer. One could also check out the Dutch American Friendship Treaty if able to self-employ and likes the Netherlands.
einrealist 12y ago
There are a lot more nice places to live in Germany. Berlin is not that cheap anymore (wages in IT are probably half of that in the Bay Area). As more people move to Berlin, the costs of living will be more like those of London in 10 years from now.
- rdl 12y ago
  Berlin seems like a particularly easy part of Germany for people who don't yet speak fluent German, which probably shouldn't be underestimated.
  - merrua 12y ago
    I'm reminded of (but don't really agree with) "The Awful German Language by Mark Twain". [EN] http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html [DE link] http://usa.usembassy.de/classroom/Mark%20Twain/Mark%20Twain%20Awful%20Broschuere.pdf http://usa.usembassy.de/classroom/Mark%20Twain/Mark%20Twain%...
  - BillFranklin 12y ago
    I don't know. I live in Cologne and everyone here speaks English - so well that I haven't picked up much German.
    - yitchelle 12y ago
      Maybe so if you live right in the middle of Cologne city. We live about 20mins north of Cologne, and finds that the language barrier is very real, especially when trying to form social bonds with the local population. Having visited Berlin once, a couple of years ago. I felt that not being to speak German is less of a obstacle than in other German cities.
      - BillFranklin 12y ago
        I imagine 20mins out of Berlin the English speaking pop also goes down. Generally in German cities people speak English. 64% of the population.
BillFranklin 12y ago
A lot of security companies are setting up here - especially secure email companies: Lavaboom, Whiteout, Tutanota

by rdl 12y ago

spiritplumber 12y ago

Also, there is the freedom of movement to consider (traveling between European countries has gotten easier; traveling between North American countries has gotten harder) and universal healthcare.

chestnut-tree 12y ago
Yes, travelling is a lot easier across countries in the EU - but many European countries (including Germany) issue biometric passports which require your fingerprints. If you refuse to be fingerprinted, you are unlikely to be issued a passport. The fact that people consent to this shows that we have a sometimes contradictory stance on matters of privacy and data collection. Back in October 2013, the European Court of Justice ruled that collecting fingerprints was a privacy incursion but that the greater need for security outweighed the privacy concern.
- smoe 12y ago
  One of the reasons biometric passports spreaded so fast, was because the US required all foreign passport issued after 2006 to be biometric as specified by the International Civil Aviation Organization. Within the EU (or Schengen Area to be precise) you don't need a passport to travel. An ID which is not biometric in most countries is sufficent.
- superuser2 12y ago
  What is the threat model for government knowing your fingerprints? There are clear issues with communications - words taken out of context could paint you as all kinds of illegal/disagreeable things and land you in jail and/or destroy your career. Metadata is pretty much exclusively useful for guilt by association. What bad things can happen if the government knows your fingerprints? What makes fingerprints any different from the other information on your passport? If the objection is that they are more difficult to fake... well, that's sort of the point. Are we afraid that someone is going to take fingerprints from the passport database and plant them at crime scenes? Use them to unlock your iPhone while you're in custody? If you already warrant that kind of special attention, authorities will have no trouble getting your fingerprints anyway.,
  - DanBC 12y ago
    > What bad things can happen if the government knows your fingerprints? What makes fingerprints any different from the other information on your passport? If the objection is that they are more difficult to fake... well, that's sort of the point. A database of fingerprints[1] should contain the prints of as many criminals as possible and as few non-criminals as possible. This reduces the possibility of false possibilities which carry a real chance of death if the police turn up to your house with guns. Those false positives also distract efforts from the actual criminals. And then there's the risk of feature creep - see also the vast misuse of social security numbers in the US. Finally: a fingerprint is pretty much the definition of personal info and so anyone collecting and storing that information should have clear regulation about the use and storage of that information. [2] also DNA. The English DNA database is scary.
    - spiritplumber 12y ago
      I agree with you on DNA, but don't forget - a fingerprint should be a username, not a password.
      - eru 12y ago
        Yes, same with DNA.
    - superuser2 12y ago
      > This reduces the possibility of false possibilities which carry a real chance of death if the police turn up to your house with guns. How unreliable are fingerprints? Statistics would be interesting. DNA is pretty damn accurate, as I understand it. Containing a higher proportion of criminials does not reduce the probability of a false positive. Merely having committed a crime in the past may mean you are more likely to commit a crime in the future, but it does not make it any more likely that you have committed any particular crime under investigation. This statement only seems to work if we are okay with sending any criminal to jail for any crime, rather than the specific crime that he/she actually committed. > Finally: a fingerprint is pretty much the definition of personal info That's a purely dogmatic argument. Why is the statement that "all personal information ought to also be considered private" justified?
- contingencies 12y ago
  many European countries (including Germany) issue biometric passports which require your fingerprints. If you refuse to be fingerprinted, you are unlikely to be issued a passport. Not true. I applied for a new German passport recently. They said "we can give you the biometric one - costs more, takes longer to process, has to be made in Germany and sent here ... or we can give you the normal one. The normal one's fine unless you want to go to 'certain' countries .. notably the US." I said give me the normal one, I've had enough of that country's immigration bullshit already. TLDR: US' fault, not Germany's.
  - smoe 12y ago
    In 2008 I had to get a biometrical passport because my flight back from Costa Rica went through Miami. The passports where at a pilot phase so they were twice as expensive and only valid for 5 years. Once in Miami they didn't had the tech to read the biometrical data from the passport … 250$ for a Passport + 10$ for a phone call to the us embassy in Switzerland (yes, they only gave out information when calling their 4$/minute hotline) for 3 hours of waiting for my connecting flight. Thanks a lot. Ah, and of course they did take fingerprints from all fingers and photos for their own database.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+belt+sander+and+the+battle+for+privacy+a+body+hack http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+belt+sander+and+the+battle+fo...
    - contingencies 12y ago
      Wow, huge points for effort :)
  - pgeorgi 12y ago
    The fingerprint situation on papers is a mess: Since 2007 German passports must contain two fingerprints. They're encrypted with a key held by the German government, (claimed to be) stored on the passport only. German ID cards can contain two fingerprints. Besides being optional, the same rules as for passports apply. On entry to the USA they don't seem to actually use the fingerprint data on the passport, and they require you to give ten fingerprints plus photo. The original claim is that the US required them. By now, many countries require the data on passports. But none of them seem to read it on foreign passports, and from what I understand they're not able to. So the main reason is that the requirement exists to force countries to provider a higher baseline against forgery. Alternatively they planned to access the fingerprints, but countries couldn't agree on a common standard and ACL system, or the USA got screwed because they required "digitally stored fingerprints", which they got (hence _two_ fingerprints) - but not in a format they can actually use. I kinda like that last option ;-)

CalRobert 12y ago

Germany also is one of the only places to offer the Blue Card, which rocks. After 21 months if you can speak decent German you can live and work anywhere in the EU (except for Denmark, UK, and Ireland).

brightsize 12y ago
If I'm not mistaken, when going the Blue Card route, you can get a permanent residence visa after 33 months even without B1 German. The problem with the Blue Card, from my [non-German/EU citizen] perspective, is that it's a work visa, which means you must have a job offer, and one that pays at least 37K EUR annually, to get the visa. Likewise if you lose that job, you've got just a short time to find another one or get out. The Blue Card is not a visa for those expecting to work at a German startup and compensated mostly with equity. In other words, not a visa for most founders.
- smoe 12y ago
  I guess as a founder without a significant amount of money to invest it's hard to stay in almost any foreign country. At least the Blue Card makes it at easy as possible for people, who got employed there.
  - CalRobert 12y ago
    As mentioned above, you could check out the Dutch American Friendship Treaty if you happen to be from the US.
- CalRobert 12y ago
  I realize pay scales are different in the EU than in the US, but 37K isn't a ridiculously high burden, is it? If so I'm surprised the offices of Dublin startups aren't packed with germans because that would be considered very low for a qualified engineer. One could also check out the Dutch American Friendship Treaty if able to self-employ and likes the Netherlands.

einrealist 12y ago

There are a lot more nice places to live in Germany. Berlin is not that cheap anymore (wages in IT are probably half of that in the Bay Area). As more people move to Berlin, the costs of living will be more like those of London in 10 years from now.

rdl 12y ago
Berlin seems like a particularly easy part of Germany for people who don't yet speak fluent German, which probably shouldn't be underestimated.
- merrua 12y ago
  I'm reminded of (but don't really agree with) "The Awful German Language by Mark Twain". [EN] http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html [DE link] http://usa.usembassy.de/classroom/Mark%20Twain/Mark%20Twain%20Awful%20Broschuere.pdf http://usa.usembassy.de/classroom/Mark%20Twain/Mark%20Twain%...
- BillFranklin 12y ago
  I don't know. I live in Cologne and everyone here speaks English - so well that I haven't picked up much German.
  - yitchelle 12y ago
    Maybe so if you live right in the middle of Cologne city. We live about 20mins north of Cologne, and finds that the language barrier is very real, especially when trying to form social bonds with the local population. Having visited Berlin once, a couple of years ago. I felt that not being to speak German is less of a obstacle than in other German cities.
    - BillFranklin 12y ago
      I imagine 20mins out of Berlin the English speaking pop also goes down. Generally in German cities people speak English. 64% of the population.

BillFranklin 12y ago

A lot of security companies are setting up here - especially secure email companies: Lavaboom, Whiteout, Tutanota