stasi

If we're going to go Stasi on drivers, let's go Stasi on everyone.

This person doesn't even know what the Stasi is.

But please don't require people to have a Stasi 2.0/Facebook account to use your service.

> If we're going to go Stasi on drivers, let's go Stasi on everyone.

Governments are collecting more information about us that the Stasi or KGB.

The Stasi had a third of East Germans spying on the other two thirds, and to be fingered meant to disappear in the night.

Understandably Germany have a stronger emphasis on privacy, being a) a fascist dictatorship under Hitler recently, and b) half of Germany being under the Stasi also recently.

Remember when the idea of having your communications sifted through by the government you elected was restricted to the actions of the Stasi or KGB in the minds of Americans?

The problem is that technology has allowed two things: a) Secure communications channels the government can't read b) The state to monitor mass communication in a way even the Stasi couldn't using humans The notion that you should be able to communicate in a way that your government can't monitor if necessary is a comparatively new one, and one you will find an awful lot of citizens don't agree with.

The likely result most of the time is a community that spends 20 hours out of every day in various town hall meetings, byzantine tax and fee schedules, an enforcement arm that would have to rival the Stasi in order to actually work, and of course the whole thing is very susceptible to corruption.

[0] If this moves forward I'll move the company to Germany because giving any more tax-Euros to such a government would feel like supporting a Stasi like apparatus.

Sorry if this smells slightly of Godwin's law, but if the internet had been available from when the Berlin Wall went up until it came down, the Stasi would not have bothered with neighbors being informants; they would have done exactly this.

A vast infrastructure is being built to monitor what people say on the network (like the NSA's Utah Data Center) which makes the Stasi look like Inspector Clouseau, in a country quite different than the one whose Secretary of State said in the 1920's "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail".

Ok, Facebook is a modern version of the Stasi, but it's still good that third parties can't snoop on my interactions with them.

> if the state acknowledges constant surveillance, then nothing separates this from the Stasi.

(Many people disagree with me.) Firstly, let's get one thing straight: if the state acknowledges constant surveillance, then nothing separates this from the Stasi.