I didn’t think there was all that much confidence there to begin with. Damn. This “Catholic abuse scandal” is a bitch.
But at least they’re still pretty confident about the healing powers of graffiti, it seems.
Wir sind Papst!
Category Archives: Hysteria
Google wasn’t home that day or something
Anti-Facebook feelings in Germany are growing these days because, well, uh, bashing Google day in and day out all day long even gets boring for Germans to do every once in a while.
An organization here called the VZBZ (Very Zesty Bitching Zealots?) said that Facebook should have to ask its users for approval every time personal information is passed on to third parties via an “opt-in” option and not continue with the “opt-out” option it uses now.
Facebook opted-out on the opt-in option, opting for the opt-out option opstead.
Meanwhile, German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner is so pissed off with the company that she says she will delete her Facebook account if it does not straighten up its act sehr pronto already. So there. That’s the end of that company.
Partly for historical reasons, Germany is particularly sensitive about privacy issues, with campaigners bristling at plans by US internet giant Google to launch its Street View service later this year allowing users to view panoramic still photos of city streets.
German anti-Scientology film false and intolerant
Say Scientologists everywhere, and like they should know.
“The truth is precisely the opposite of that which the ARD is showing (Until Nothing Remains),” said one Scientology spokesman. “This crap could have come from us,” he might have added.
Scientology – eine “faschistoide Welt” – and we (as in you) Germans should know.
You can’t depend on ANYBODY these days
Sheesh. Of all folks (or Volks, if you prefer), rumor has it that the Germans are now beginning to lose thier angst about climate change. Now, of all times. Where angst is in the air and everywhere, I mean (they’re scared of freakin’ daylight savings time for crying out loud).
According to a Spiegel survey – and Spiegel Leser wissen mehr (Spiegel readers know more) – only a piddly 42 percent of Germans lose sleep at night anymore when it comes to global warming. Pitiful, people.
Come on, now. Get with the plan, Volks. Boo! Or something.
Heute hält jeder dritte Deutsche die Prognose der Klimaforscher, nach der es langfristig immer wärmer wird, nicht für zuverlässig.
McDonald’s, Subway, it’s all Google to me
Everybody’s out to get me these days, or my data. Out to get them I mean, actually, over here in Germany.
It’s bad enough that Google is googling the very streets they live on. Now, if a German wants to open up a McDonald’s or a Subway franchise, he or she has to let these potential employers know shockingly private and even intimate matters about him or her selves.
You know, private and intimate stuff like “were you ever directly or indirectly involved in terrorist activities.”
Needless to say, everybody over here is totally empört (shocked) about the matter. No, not so much about such indiscrete questioning like this, they’re shocked that a German would actually sink as low as to want to open up a McDonald’s or a Subway franchise.
Die Bewerber haben sogar Auskunft zu erteilen, ob sie “jemals direkt oder indirekt an terroristischen Aktivitäten beteiligt” gewesen seien.
Are you sure you want to delete these files y/n?
Sicher ist sicher (better safe than sorry). At least when it comes to deleting data saved in Germany to combat terrorism and serious crime. Delete the stuff, in other words – can we delete the Street View stuff while we’re at it?
Germany’s highest court overturned a law that let anti-terror authorities save data on telephone calls and e-mails for a limited time. Now the big delete button has to get pressed – or maybe just the regular delete button, but lots and lots and lots of times.
This law is a “grave intrusion” into personal privacy rights or something and must be revised. Most likely because grave terrorism and serious crime never take place here, right? It’s nice living in Wunderland.
The ruling did not overturn the European Union anti-terrorism directive on which the law is based, but may lead to its reassessment later this year.
No scary Google-mobiles here, please
Despite a recent high-level compromise, the German Street View saga continues.
A new report, and there’s always a new report if you want one, confirms that Google’s Street View is pretty much pure evil and they (whoever they are) have to be stopped at all costs. Stay tuned.
Die Auflagen, für die sich Rechtsprofessor Thomas Dreier und Professorin Indra Spiecker stark machen, gehen teils weit über die bestehenden Absprachen zwischen Google Deutschland und der zuständigen Datenschutzaufsichtsbehörde in Hamburg hinaus.
The times they are a-changin’
Even in Germany, sort of. It’s been a long time coming (damn, a whole year already). From here…
To here.
Happy Karnival time or something. Oh yeah, it’s already over (for a lot of folks it is, anyway).
US-Präsident Barack Obama als gefallener Engel. Der Heiligenschein liegt am Boden.
Iran paranoid about Google now too
Not unlike German fears about privacy when it comes to Google’s eerie Street-View technology – while gladly developing and using Street-View-type products of their own – Iran’s freely elected government sort of is also frightened about privacy when it comes to one of Google’s other creepy technologies: eMail (and that’s e for evil). And yeah, of course I know that Google didn’t invent eMail. But still.
The Iranian powers that be (or powers that is, if you prefer) are clearly concerned about privacy matters here; keeping their own damned privacy as private as inhumanly possible, that is. Otherwise, everybody out there knows what the hell they’re up to, get it?
So now following the German example, word is out that the Iranians are actually planning to introduce a new eMail technology of their own. It’s code name is MMail, I think (GMail war gestern). Or Mullah-Mail, if you prefer.
Es ist einer der populärsten E-Mail-Dienste in Iran – doch nun will die Regierung Googles GMail-Service offenbar sperren lassen. Laut einem Bericht des “Wall Street Journal” soll stattdessen ein eigenes Mail-System aufgebaut werden.
Germans? Hysterical about Google’s Street-View?
How you figure?
That German companies like the map manufacturer Tele Atlas or the small business Panogate (sightwalk.de) in Cologne do the same damned thing that Google does – make fotos of/in cities in order to publish them in the Internet and use them for navigation systems – that doesn’t matter here. What matters here is that a particularly awful and ominous “data octopus” is doing it.
“Ob Microsoft (preview.local.live.com), der Kartenhersteller Tele Atlas oder das kleine Unternehmen Panogate (sightwalk.de) aus Köln, sie alle fotografieren systematisch die Städte dieser Welt – mal aus dem Flugzeug, mal aus dem Auto. Auch sie veröffentlichen diese Bilder im Internet oder nutzen sie für Navigationssysteme. Wenn sich die öffentliche Debatte nun auf Google konzentriert, dann wohl nur, weil sich mit diffusen Vorwürfen gegen den vermeintlichen “Datenkraken” leicht Ängste schüren lassen.”
It’s quite simple, really. Germans, just like everybody else, really love angst. Only they love it here so much that they acually spell it with a capital A. You know, with an A like they use for Amerika (sorry, US-Amerika, of course).
Fast hysterisch wirken hingegen die Warnungen vor dem Verlust der Privatsphäre. Was ist damit gemeint? Die Privatsphäre der Hausfront? Google und Co. fotografieren grundsätzlich nur das, was jeder Fußgänger auf einer öffentlich zugänglichen Straße sieht.
Observing Hermann 