Comment on Backdoors that let cops decrypt messages violate human rights, EU court says
GiddyGap@lemm.ee 7 months agoI didn’t say that Germany doesn’t collect data for basic protection if its citizens and for terrorism prevention (or, some may see that as surveillance). It does. It’s just not shared in a big central system that other institutions and private companies can pull from like it is in the Scandinavian countries or the Netherlands.
E.g. if you move from on place to another in Germany, the government institutions in the two locales don’t talk to each other about that. So, for tax and social benefits purposes, you have to tell each one that you moved. The federal government is also not involved.
Aceticon@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Somehow the rest of Europe doesn’t need to get people’s IDs when SIM cards are sold “for basic protection of its citizens and for terrorism prevention”.
Also from what I’ve seen in Britain, having government entitites unable to properly cooperate AND having a disproportionatly high level of civil society surveillance are not at all incompatible.
GiddyGap@lemm.ee 7 months ago
You’re not right about the rest of Europe not needing ID for a SIM. In Denmark, you need ID. In Sweden, you need ID. In Norway, you need ID. I’m sure you need in many other countries as well.
In the US, you also need an ID to open an account.
Aceticon@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Right, I’ll grant you that - can only really speak for countries were I actually bought SIMs.
I know for sure you don’t need an ID in Portugal, Spain, The Netherlands, the UK and Canada, or at least you didn’t back when I did bought a SIM card over there.
Funny enough, the countries you listed (except Germany) are ones were somebody else was pointing out that people trust the authorities and are more ameanable to the authorities having lots of information about them.
Personally I was quite shocked that Germany, the country which had both Nazism and in some parts Communism, and were one would expect people to shy-away from anything with even the slightest wiff of Gestapo/Stasi to it, very explicit and obvious measures to make sure the authorities knew who had what mobile phone line were in place and accepted by the population.
GiddyGap@lemm.ee 7 months ago
In Germany, it’s an anti-terrorist precaution. Criminals love anonymous prepaid SIMs.
You do need ID in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain now. I think it’s the same in most EU countries. Same thing. Anti-terrorism.