Comment by PavlovsCat
12 years ago
> Non-EU residents on German soil are subject to summary arrest and deportation
And where are the statements saying other countries shouldn't deport illegal aliens? My post asked about exceptionalism, openly stated, did it not?
> German domestic wiretapping laws are basically that the executive gets to spy on anyone on German soil without judicial oversight AND outside of Germany [..] The BND does not just have the right to spy on anyone, but it can summarily arrest anyone, intervene in any investigation without question (so they could, for example, kill someone, then take over the investigation, no questions asked). [..] Germany and France are transmitting everyone's internet usage to an organisation so it could sue them for copyright infringement in an automated fashion.
Uhhhh.... sources for all that please.
> Can anyone please explain to me why, if there's outrage about the NSA, why isn't there 10x the outrage about EU practices ?
Maybe the lack of abducting people and torturing them, or killing them with drones has something to do with it? And still, there isn't a month without demonstrations against some of the stuff you mentioned, like Vorratsdatenspeicherung. Other stuff is either flat out wrong or widely unknown, your posting of sources will decide that..
As for the torture thing :
http://strasbourgobservers.com/2010/07/06/389/
Given this article, I think it's safe to say that people get tortured to varying degrees by the German police on a weekly basis at least. Like the US, in the vast majority of cases the police do this for very good reasons.
As for a basic introduction to German wiretapping law:
https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/germany/ii-surv...
Also you act surprised ? Why ? These laws are the "roughly" same across the EU. Generally a certain degree of violence, even what might be considered torture (but not outright "real" torture. Violence against an arrested person, ie. hitting them or so, even things like denying food/drink when it's not life threatening) is allowed in the EU to protect the institutions (parliament, government, ...) (but only for "existential" threats that threaten the institution itself, not just, say, the building), and to protect the lives of others.
what about
- "the executive gets to spy on anyone on German soil without judicial oversight"
- "The BND does not just have the right to spy on anyone, but it can summarily arrest anyone, intervene in any investigation without question"
- "Germany and France are transmitting everyone's internet usage to an organisation so it could sue them for copyright infringement in an automated fashion"
?
from the link you posted, emphasis mine:
> "According to a 2003 survey, 75 percent of conducted telephone wiretapping actions violated the law. In most instances of wiretapping, law enforcement agencies did not inform the subjects after the eavesdropping took place, contrary to what is stipulated by the law. [..] In April 1998, Article 13 of the Constitution (Grundgesetz) that provides for the inviolability of private homes was amended in order to allow police authorities to place bugging devices in private homes (provided there is a court order)."
I wasn't "acting surprised", I was asking for sources, and now I kind of have to call bullshit on a lot of the stuff you said.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Germany#Torture
Yup, bullshit. And at any rate nowhere near comparable to the US, where people are afraid to close Gitmo because the people were so badly mistreated they might turn on them. So why would I be "10 times more" outraged? Maybe because I, as a German/EU citizen, am more directly responsible for the stuff going on here - granted. But otherwise? Get real. Have you even READ the first article you posted?
> "The Court stated that “[t]orture, inhuman or degrading treatment cannot be inflicted even in circumstances where the life of an individual is at risk” and –under its assessment of the alleged violation of art. 6 – “[b]eing absolute, there can be no weighing of other interests against article 3."
How does this make you conclude that "people get tortured to varying degrees by the German police on a weekly basis at least"? That's just saying stuff, in the hope some of it will stick. Boo.
I think you're confusing multiple things here. Guantanamo is not the same category as police torture in Germany by police forces. Guantanamo would be comparable to German soldiers guarding a prison in Afghanistan and arresting people there. Do you really need sources to convince you that German "prisons" in Afghanistan (and maybe other countries) exist and operate independently of both German law (because it isn't German citizens getting locked up) and local law ? I also don't think it very far fetched that the "rights" of prisoners in those prisons are not getting respected at all by (amongst others) German soldiers.
So you should only compare German police using torture Police, FBI or DEA or some department like that using torture inside America on American citizens. There I think it's much, much less clear that the rate of torture in Germany is higher or lower than the rate used by American law enforcement agencies. I'd guess the rate in Germany would be lower, but not that much, simply because America has many more regions where heavy violence against the police happens very often.
As for what the BND does, is it really so hard to find ? http://www.globalresearch.ca/germanys-intelligence-service-b... http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/04/german-... ...
(note that information they forwarded, they obviously collected first, so yes, it does in fact prove the BND spies on all German citizens as part of normal operations)
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i remember the Gäfgen v. Germany case quite well. that's because it got a ton of media coverage, here in germany. i don't recall anything of the sorts happening before, or after this case. add to that the fact that the suspect was only 'threatened' with torture, suggesting that the german police resort to torture on a weekly basis, is a very far stretch.