I would have tried either to run away, or to fight back. Given that these were armed cops in a state that obviously lacks respect for civil rights against police interference, either of those courses of action probably would have been unfortunate…

:D

Things like this are the reason my city is plastered with stencils of Schäuble’s face and captions like “I’ll get you all!” or “Stasi 2.0″.

LOL! In a strange way this makes me a bit homesick…

Since some stupid kids had a knife fight on Hamburg’s famous red-light boulevard (the Reeperbahn) it’s now forbidden to carry weapons there.

So what?

bavaria is only one state (so called “free state”) of the 16 german states. and it’s the most conserative one. every federal state has it’s own little gov, but there is always the federal gov above that, legislating for all 16 states (with delegates from all states). but every federal state may determine how to implement some of the bills decided in berlin. nevertheless there is no law in any german ferderal state allowing spying on their citizens by malware.

like said by ZIMMERPFLANZE above there are many plans from mr.schaeuble (minister for the interior) to spy on germans by releasing trojans etc.. that was big news here in germany. fortunately many organisations like the CCC, GI or FIFF made the public aware of the problem (data privacy) and so mr. schaeuble had to put that plan back in his (top) drawer. but it’s not over yet: noone knows what happens behind the scenes, as we can see from that bavarian issue.

It makes me worry about the state of security on the Internet. The #1 problem to date has been Windows boxes that are misconfigured, unpatched, and generally trivial to take over remotely. But how much worse will the situation get when our governments decide they have an interest and a fat budget dedicated to deliberately hurting the security situation because they need vulnerabilities to be able to install their spyware?

any Germans care to comment?

Sure…I wish Bavaria would be at the edge of the continent, break off and become some middle-of-major-ocean island. Most Bavarians would like that, too, I think.

I live in Australia now, but I think I felt more alien those few times I went to Bavaria. It’s good for tourist postcards, though.

In regards to the Trojan…it’s the brainchild of interior minister Schäuble and it is a federal issue – however, it’s been so heavily contested that it’s been put on hold and will need a decision by the German “constitutional court” (not sure whether that is the right translation).

In this case Bavaria has again decided that the rest of Germany can get lost and decided to try to implement it themselves and don’t bother with all that constitutional baggage.

Sounds familiar? If GWB would be German, he’d be in the CSU, which only exists in Bavaria.

Oh, and all that Lederhosen and chicken dance stuff you might have in your school books…blame Bavaria ;)
Sure…I wish Bavaria would be at the edge of the continent, break off and become some middle-of-major-ocean island. Most Bavarians would like that, too, I think.

I live in Australia now, but I think I felt more alien those few times I went to Bavaria. It’s good for tourist postcards, though.

In regards to the trojan…it’s the brainchild of interior minister Schäuble and it is a federal issue – however, it’s been so heavily contested that it’s been put on hold and will need a decision by the German “constitutional court” (not sure whether that is the right translation).

In this case Bavaria has again decided that the rest of Germany can get lost and decided to try to implement it themselves and don’t bother with all that constitutional baggage.

Sounds familiar? If GWB would be German, he’d be in the CSU, which only exists in Bavaria.

Oh, and all that Lederhosen and chicken dance stuff you might have in your school books…blame Bavaria ;)

Anyway, I should add that the CSU is Bavaria’s very right of center political party.

I am not sure who the Bavarian government wishes to spy on (everyone?). I just don’t see the point when anyone serious will use one time pads and be done with it.

And yes, Bavaria is a very, very right-of-center type place. You’d think looking at the Alps all day might put people in a better mood than that. But unfortunately they’re not the only ones. Since some stupid kids had a knife fight on Hamburg’s famous red-light boulevard (the Reeperbahn) it’s now forbidden to carry weapons there. “Weapons” including your trusty Leatherman, *and* my x-acto I tote around in my model-building supplies.

And don’t even get me started on the raids that happened before the G8 summit last spring. Including storming peoples’ workplaces, which of course got them fired. And taking dirty clothing for smell samples. A famous, and famously insane Stasi tactic, incidentally…

So yeah, as much of a paradise Europe is in some ways, it sure isn’t perfect.

Cory covered them a while ago:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/06/07/us-branch-of-piratae-.html

But Skype is a bad thing all around, because it is proprietary
(non-free, non-libre, non-freedom-respecting) software. (See
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html for the definition of free
software.) In fact, you don’t know that Skype’s developers haven’t
put in a back door to intercept your calls. All you know is that, if
there is one, the Bavarian police don’t know about it. Maybe only the
NSA knows about it.

Ethically speaking, putting a Skype number in your email
is the same sort of thing as saying “Use Windows”.

-Richard Stallman

When I was there some years ago, I was exposed to the Bavarian police’s powers of arbitrary search and seizure:

While I waited for a train, about three men approached the man waiting next to me on the platform, showed police IDs, and demanded to search his possessions. They went through his backpack, all his pockets, and his backpack. He didn’t seem anything like as upset as I would have been at this.

On the train he explained to me that this was normal procedure – the police can stop and search anyone, without a warrant or any reasonable grounds to suspect him of anything. He didn’t like it of course, but he felt there wasn’t much he could do – it was allowed.

Not long after that, I walked from the campground I was staying at to the nearby gas station to get some snacks. On the way back, an unmarked car pulled up, and three guys in (frankly seedy-looking) street clothes got out and demanded to search our stuff (I was with two fellow campers). They didn’t even show their police IDs until I asked to see them. They searched all our bags, our pockets, and went through our wallets. All the while it was “stand along the fence. Keep your hands in plain sight”.

I asked these cops how it was legal for them to search us, and they again explained that they needed no more grounds than that we were young, were staying at a campground, and were coming back from a gas station, where we could potentially have met a drug dealer – in other words, they felt like stopping us, and there was no law to stop them. They also said that this would not be possible in any other German state.