The increasingly authoritarian German government is trying to infringe on citizens’ privacy on a whole new level.
On August 13, news outlets Der Spiegel and RND saw a draft reform proposal detailing how the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) may soon be permitted to covertly enter and search homes.
Based on the proposal, German police would be authorized to conduct secret searches of targets’ homes as well as install spyware on targets’ mobile devices, including computers or smartphones, Russia Today (RT) reported.
Citing a German Interior Ministry spokesperson, Der Spiegel stated that the government proposal was catalyzed by “Islamist terrorism” as the trigger for the proposal.
"From our perspective, it is entirely natural that security authorities must have corresponding powers to address this," Der Spiegel quoted the spokesperson as saying.
At the moment, house searches are only permitted if German authorities notify the target about the reasons and goals of the search, according to Article 13 of the German Constitution, which safeguards the inviolability of the home. Exceptions are only permitted in cases of danger.
Likewise, the vice-chair of the Greens in the Bundestag, Konstantin von Notz, justified the proposal, alleging that in these “serious times” the BKA requires modern investigative powers, RT reported.
At the moment, house searches are only permitted if German authorities notify the target about the reasons and goals of the search, according to Article 13 of the German Constitution, which safeguards the inviolability of the home. Exceptions are only permitted in cases of danger.
If passed, the draft proposal could remove existing limitations, thus enabling covert searches. In response, critics have slammed the proposal as a breach of privacy and a potential abuse of lawfare.
For one, Mika Beuster, the president of The German Journalists Association (DJV) lambasted the planned change, stating that “all journalists researching in security-relevant areas will be affected.”
“Covert entries resemble the methods of police states, not free democracies,” Beuster said, as per the Der Spiegel report.
Furthermore, Bundestag member Manuel Hoferlin declared that the Free Democratic Party does not back “Stasi 2.0,” alluding to the infamous state security service of East Germany and stated that the recent government proposal was alarming.
Notably, the German Defense Ministry was a laughing stock earlier this year when it encrypted a press statement on leaked military communications with the password “1234”. Based on a report by RT, the ministry notified visitors that they could access a recording made by Defense Minister Boris Pistorius simply by entering the password “1234”. With such blatant security lapses, it is no wonder why the German Defense Ministry (at least publicly) says it needs to beef up “security measures”, a claim that is laughable in this context. Also, the German government has decided that “security” can be enhanced if it searches citizens’ homes.
Additionally, radical leftist Nancy Faeser, Germany’s Interior Minister, banned the government critical “Compact” magazine for allegedly “inciting hatred” and “aggressively propagating the toppling of the political order.”
Strikingly, in a post on X, Faeser stated that the magazine “agitates in an unspeakable way against Jews, Muslims, and against our democracy. Our ban is a hard blow to the right-wing extremist scene,” slamming the magazine as “a central mouthpiece of the right-wing extremist scene.”
In response, constitutional law professor Volker Boehme-Neßle, decried Faeser’s move, stating:
“There has never been such an extreme violation of press freedom in Germany. If Nancy Faeser remains in office, it says a lot about the government and its respect for the constitution, freedom and democracy.”
Fortunately, for “Compact”, a court order on August 14 lifted the government ban, humiliating Faeser. Yet what is disturbing is that besides Faeser, various other German lawmakers supported the ban on “Compact”, based on a report by Apollo News.
Many German voters do not buy the government’s balderdash any longer, and voted for the AfD in the recent elections in Thuringia and Saxony.
In contrast, German public broadcaster NDR has been intransigent in maintaining its false claims about a high-stakes meeting in Potsdam in 2023 between members of the anti-globalist opposition AfD party, the right-wing Identitarian Movement, and the center-right CDU. Interestingly, the NDR’s stubborn stance in not retracting its claims is despite a court ruling in Hamburg forbidding NDR from rehashing falsehoods.
When left-wing and state funded news outlet Correctiv alleged that participants at the aforementioned Potsdam meeting had purportedly devised a scheme to deport millions of migrants, including those with German citizenship, news outlets like NDR rehashed such falsehoods.
Subsequently, constitutional law expert and legal representative of the Eurosceptic AfD (Alternative for Germany) party, Ulrich Vosgerau, filed a legal suit against Correctiv and other publications that parroted falsehoods. Despite NDR getting notified that it had been transmitting falsehoods about the Potsdam meeting, the outlet refused to correct its fake news.
Predictably, Germany’s leftist government has remained mum about NDR’s false reporting, while continuing to portray the AfD as “far-right”, showing the degree that it is bent on enforcing its leftist ideologies at the expense of truth.
Nonetheless, many German voters do not buy the government’s balderdash any longer, and voted for the AfD in the recent elections in Thuringia and Saxony. Despite voter sentiments, the out-of-touch German elite in the country’s “traffic-light coalition” government will likely continue to infringe on citizens’ privacy, tolerate migration-linked violence or attribute violence to “climate change”, construct a cordon sanitaire around the AfD as well as villainize the party as “far-right”.
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