Big Brother Goes West
With all the noise and outrage over the US government’s tapping into all the major Internet companies to gather data, it was interesting to see the reaction in Germany . Yup, in Germany, not the US. And this was before they discovered that the US had spied on EU consulates! Wolfgang Schmidt, a former lieutenant colonel in the erstwhile Stasi, spoke wistfully about the kind of surveillance the Americans got caught doing: “You know, for us, this would have been a dream come true…So much information, on so many people.” Now you might think, sure, the Internet allows for so much more data to be collected, no wonder the Stasi would have loved it. But you would only be partially correct. Because even the technology to surveil (is that even a word? But you get the meaning, right?) back then was primitive. How primitive? Well, the equipment only allowed Schmidt’s department to tap 40 phone lines at a time. If he wanted a new guy tapped, he would have to drop an existing guy! That’...