In Germany, where on 9. November the data retention law well in excess of the EU was made law (the list of the culprits is available under http://eugen.leitl.org/list-of-terorists.pdf ), only a couple short weeks later, on 24. November the connection data will also be made available to civil rights owners http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/99505 so that teenage copyright terrorists and their parents may receive the full penalty of the law. Civil law, not criminal law. Banking laws have already been made transparent (but for politicians, of course, who're immune and can only be made to yield minimal and worthless information, which they resisted vigorously), and are largely used to spy on recipients of unemployment benefits. The road toll infrastructure which works by OCR of license plates is being used to nab those pesky expiring license plate terrorists. No real criminals have ever been caught, of course. The BKA freely admits they're trying to catch criminals by looking who accessed their web sites more than twice. Don't we live in truly interesting times? As usual, the sheep completely ignore this breathtaking, and asymmetrical loss of privacy and liberties. Unlike France, there's zero civil unrest. Let's see how much it takes. Please, not the showers and delousing, again. ----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave@farber.net> -----