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’s how much technology has changed…

Now keep in mind that much of the data that the US collected was untargeted, i.e., they did not pick specific individuals to monitor based on prior intelligence or patterns; they just monitored everyone. This was Big Data monitoring (see my earlier blog on such super massive sample sizes and statistical analysis, When N = All).

And it’s because of their Stasi history that many Germans were outraged by what was happening in the US. Which is why, at Checkpoint Charlie (a point in the infamous Berlin Wall where people could move between East and West Berlin), right below the famous line,

“You are entering the American sector.”

A German demonstrator added :

“Your privacy ends here.”

It is so ironic that Schmidt, the former Stasi guy, should now be warning Americans that:

“It is the height of naivete to think that once collected this information won’t be used.”

What he says is true but it is so ironic that a Stasi guy is saying this to “The Land of the Free”. Knowing Americans though, Schmidt might have done better to phrase the point in American-speak:

“Anything you say can and will be used against you.”

It's amusing that the US spies on its own citizens, the Russians let Edward Snowden stay in a Russian airport, and the Ecuadorians  are offering him asylum...it's a topsy-turvy world!