Post v.21

Interesting article from Spiegel Online:

A ruling against government surveillance of personal computers, delivered this week by a German court, has set a precedent: Computer users have the right to trust their IT equipment. What sounds wonkish could affect many aspects of life in the 21st century.

The German Constitutional Court ruled Wednesday that a surveillance law passed in 2007 in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia gave police and state officials too much power to spy on citizens using "trojan horse" software, which can be delivered by e-mail and used to scan the contents of a hard drive.

Not only did the law violate the right to privacy, the court said, but it also violated a basic right for a citizen using a computer with an Internet connection to "a guarantee of confidentiality and integrity in information-technology systems."

The different levels are interesting. From a general stand point the rolling-back of any state-related power over the individual is a positive. Given the unfortunate rarity of that type of event in this day and age makes it a cheerworthy event.

In a more specific interest is the timing of this roll-back of state-related power. Oddly enough, while the German Constitutional Court is officialy limiting (let us not kid ourselves that the state itself will truly honor this lofty judgment/ideal) the power of intrusion on the individual by the German state, the German state is simultaneously trampling the privacy concerns of other citizens by traffiking in the use of stolen banking information (eg. Liechtenstein). While the specifics of both cases differ, it is the rights of the individual which are whip-sawing in Germany. No idea as to the legal relevance of each case to one another, but the general relevance is indeed keen.

Leaving aside the sanctity of personal freedoms and privacy what does Germany today say in the area of privacy for the individual? A cold-eyed realist would say, at the very time this legal ruling disallows the German government from intruding on the personal privacy concerns of individuals seeking to unleash death and the destruction of property by means of terrorist actions, the German government is currently (and happily) intruding on the personal privacy concerns of individuals seeking to preserve and conserve their hard-earned incomes and wealth from the tax-craving machine of statism.

As currently constituted, the German state cannot snoop on the terrorist but can steamroll the capitalist. Unfortunately, those who politically advocate the never-ending 'good' of the state being involved in all aspects of all people's lives rarely discern a difference between the two.