A Pissed Off Germany Will Now Close This Here Listening Station

August 2, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Helections, Helplessness, Hi-tech, High Art, History, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Eavesdropping, Edward Snowden, Elections, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, NSA, Paranoia, Satire, Spying, Surveillance, Teufelsberg Leave a comment

Among others. So there, Amerika.

Who cares that these things have either already been closed down for years or no longer serve any practical purpose anymore? The German government is now going to demonstratively cancel a Cold War-era surveillance pact with the United States and Britain following concerns about their alleged electronic eavesdropping in Germany.

And who cares that this is clearly a symbolic gesture and therefore has no practical consequences for intelligence cooperation between these countries? It’s election time.

“This is a necessary and proper consequence of the recent debate about protecting personal privacy.”

The details of Anglo-American snooping on German citizens remain unclear and confusing, but many Germans have already bought the “utterly senseless narrative”, as Hans-Peter Friedrich, Germany’s interior minister, lamented this week, that “thousands of Americans are sitting down reading our e-mails and listening to our phone calls”.

Three Bad Reasons Why German Newspaper Publishers Simply Won’t Trust Google News…

August 1, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Angst, German, Germans, Germany, Google, Google News, Humor, Journalism, Journalists, News, Newspapers, Paranoia, Publishers, Satire, Schizophrenia Leave a comment

And vigorously push for any and all legislation aimed at making life for Google & Co. as difficult as newsworthyly possible. They seem to have three main bad reasons, as far as I can tell, like I said, but if you can come up with any others, please don’t hesitate to let me know:

1) The Google News aggregate makes money off said German newspaper publishers by displaying snippets of said German newspaper publishers’ stories, only… Google doesn’t make any money with Google News by virtue of the simple fact that Google doesn’t place any advertising on Google News pages so, well, there is no German newspaper publisher money here to be made off with.

2) Google shamefully steals readers away from said newspaper publishers’ publications because, uh… Google News is actually one of the major sources of traffic to these German newspaper sites so, well, it’s the publishers who are getting the readers and making the money off of Google.

3) Google needs to be controlled ever more closely with ever stricter regulation and be restricted from including any of these said news articles without a publisher’s expressed written permission to “opt in” because, well… These newspapers can already “opt out” any old time they like simply by having their webmasters do so (a simple change to the robots.txt file will suffice).

And now that all of these outraged German publishers have decided to opt in to Google News anyway – now that they have been given the choice to do so – well, that makes all of this yet another typically complex German news story all in its own write and one which of course nobody else who is not German will be able to understand just right yet.

German Newspaper Publishers Seem Not To Understand Google News

Snowden Hiding In Germany

June 25, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Hate, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hideology, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Edward Snowden, Espionage, German, Germans, Germany, Google Street View, Humor, NSA, Paranoia, Pixelation, PRISM, Satire, Traitors, Treachery Leave a comment

Or maybe he isn’t. But he couldn’t have picked a better place to go underground if he is. Germany simply doesn’t exist like other places do — not online, I mean.

One of my Berlin neighbors forced Google to pixelate the façade of my apartment building on its popular Street View service a few years ago in the name of Teutonic privacy. Whether I liked it or not, my home was pixel bombed into oblivion.

In fact, so many people have opted to blot out their houses that web guru Jeff Jarvis said at the time Germany had “digitally desecrated” its online landscape.

“Activists like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning need international support and our solidarity.”

Snowden: Enthüllungen von Anfang an geplant

No Contradiction Here

June 17, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, NSA, Obama, Paranoia, PRISM, Psychology, Schizophrenia, Spying, Terrorism Leave a comment

Not for the Spiegel, anyway. At the moment they are somewhere between…

Obama’s Soft Totalitarianism – Europe Must Protect Itself from America

and

The German Prism: Berlin Wants to Spy Too.

For those who don’t know any better, I could see how you could imagine calling this a form of German schizophrenia. For those who do know better, that’s most definitely what you’d call it.

A monitored human being is not a free human being. And every state that systematically contravenes human rights, even in the alleged service of security, is acting criminally.

Germany’s Crappy Eurovision Song Not Given The Votes It Deserved

May 19, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, High Art, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Cascada, Contests, Euro Zone, Eurovision, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Justin Bieber, Mally the Monkey, Paranoia, Pets, Politics, Satire, Songs, Voting, Whining 1 Comment

Denmark’s Loreen and 19 others sang crappy songs that took in way more votes.

Böse Zungen (malicious tongues) have even suggested that Germany’s crappy Eurovision showing last night might not be entirely the fault of its crappy Cascada entry.

“We are in a difficult situation,” Thomas Schreiber from the ARD TV über-network said. “This is clearly a political situation.”

It wasn’t like Angela Merkel was singing (she might have actually won), but “you also have to see that it wasn’t just Cascada up there, Germany was on stage, too.”

Der ARD-Unterhaltungschef deutet ein Imageproblem in Europa an: “Da stand auch Deutschland auf der Bühne.”

PS: It wasn’t all bad news for Germany this weekend, however. Justin Bieber’s monkey will now become a German citizen.

Empty Box Empty Box

April 21, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Health, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hideology, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Boston Marathon, Crime Fighting, German, Germans, Germany, Hamburg Marathon, Paranoia, Security, Terror, Terrorism 1 Comment

Hamburg police have determined that an empty box found in a subway station just before the Hamburg Marthon was scheduled to begin turned out in fact to be an empty box.

However, if the box had not been empty, no one would have had any video footage of the person who had placed it there because, as you can see, surveillance cameras are still black (as in evil) in Germany.

In light of the Boston Marathon bombings, a new German “debate” about increasing the number of surveillance cameras has begun once again but will lead to nowhere fast as usual.

Kurze Aufregung im Umfeld des Hamburg-Marathon: Die Polizei hat am Sonntag einen verdächtigen Gegenstand in einem U-Bahnhof in der Innenstadt untersucht.

Guy Paid To Warn Germans About Too Much Video Surveillance Warns Germans About Too Much Video Surveillance

April 17, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Crime Fighting, Data Protection, Fear, Frank Zappa, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Paranoia, Satire, Video Surveillance 1 Comment

This guy and millions of other Germans, too (although they don’t get paid and therefore do it for free).

Datenschutzbeauftragten (data protection officers) are just that way over here, whether they’re Datenschutzbeauftragten or not.

It doesn’t matter that most of this video surveillance might be taking place for a reasonable reason (like crime prevention/fighting – think Boston Marathon), there is clearly a pathological fear of being watched in play over here (and not just over here, either). It’s a sign of the times, I guess. I know. It’s only paranoia (but I like it).

Oh. This suddenly reminded me of some old lyrics (sort of) to Frank Zappa’s Didja Get Any Onya?

…Years ago in Germany when I was a very small boy, zere was a lot of people standing around on ze corners asking questions: “Why are you standing on ze corner, acting ze way you act, looking like you look? WHY DO YOU LOOK THAT WAY?” And they ask me and I only would say: “I don’t . . . I don’t know, I’m just standing ’round ze corner waiting here . . . just in . . . in ze evening, and . . . and it’s so nice outside . . . the night is so nice . . . why . . . are you just asking these questions . . . ”

“Offenbar scheint eine notorische Neigung zu bestehen, Nachbarn zu überwachen. Und eine pathologische Befürchtung, überwacht zu werden.”

Germans Concerned That Facebook Makes Them Even More Predictable Than They Already Are

March 12, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Health, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Facebook, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Paranoia, Privacy, Satire 1 Comment

A recent study entitled “Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior” has some 80 millian German privacy advocates terribly concerned that Facebook might even be more revealing than they already feared it was.

The study has uncovered, for instance, that the vast number of users with female first names are in fact women. What is more, users who post pictures of themselves on Facebook run the very real risk of revealing to everyone their racial background. And perhaps creepiest of all was the discovery that the so-called “Facebook likes” a user “likes” with his or her Facebook like button reveal to the entire world just what it is said user “likes.”

This brings with it many sinister implications, of course. Unscrupulous data miners could deduce, for instance, that men who regularly like posts and pictures about beer are very likely to like beer themselves. Women, say, who actively like all things Barack Obama (especially after the first four years) are most definitely Democrats. And the list just goes on and on and on.

It is unclear at the moment what the privacy advocates will be able to do to curtail this flagrant invasion of privacy but at least most have agreed not to like it.

Mein Geschlecht, meine Hautfarbe, meine Drogen.

German Security Officials Now Ready To Consider Introducing More McDonald’s Restaurants

December 17, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hi-tech, High Art, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Big Brother, Bombings, Bonn, CCTV, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, McDonald's, Paranoia, Satire, Security, Surveillance, Terror, Terrorists 1 Comment

After the German city of Bonn narrowly escaped a deadly bombing last week – and unable to locate the suspected radical Islamist perpetrators due to a lack of recorded surveillance images – German authorities are now ready to consider intensifying the use of CCTV surveillance in Germany by dramatically increasing the number of McDonald’s restaurants allowed to open for business here.

“Violent criminals could be deterred and crimes and planned attacks more quickly cleared up with increased McDonald’s video technology in public spaces,” one Interior Ministry spokesman said. “I mean, like we’ve got to do something now, don’t we?”

The only surveillance images that could help the police in the hunt for the Bonn perpetrators come from the McDonald’s fast food chain. Unlike Deutsche Bahn, the McDonald’s restaurant on Platform 1 did record activity with its surveillance cameras.

Ronald McDonald Sees All

December 13, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Big Brother, Bombings, Bombs, Bonn, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, McDonald's, Paranoia, Satire, Surveillance, Terrorism, Terrorists Leave a comment

You can run, suspected terrorist types, but you can’t hide from the Golden Arches.

After discovering and destroying a “highly dangerous” explosive device at Bonn’s central train station, German police are now patting themselves on the back for having already made their first arrest in the case, all thanks to the dreaded (in Germany) security camera footage in use there.

No, not the footage from the security cameras aimed at the platform where the device was found – there was no coverage there – this footage came from the security cameras used at the central station’s US-Amerikan McDonald’s restaurant.

You know, die totale Überwachung (the total surveillance) state and all that? Germans don’t like that kind of stuff for some reason (that terrorist suspect dude doesn’t like it much either, I bet). It has to do with data privacy or Google Street View or something. I forget.

Would you like fries with that?

Zwar appellieren Datenschützer, bei der Überwachung öffentlichen Raumes die Verhältnismäßigkeit zu wahren. Doch etwa in Ballungszentren Großbritanniens hat man sich an flächendeckende Kamerapräsenz längst gewöhnt – und davon kann die Polizei häufig profitieren.

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Tag Archives: Paranoia