Constitutional Borderlining

[jkow]

Let me just phrase this naive thought of mine: "I thought it was the first duty of our government to hold up and protect the constitution and all rights granted to the people in there."

How is it even possible that the German constitutional court has to constantly deal with the latest trash our law makers are producing? Of course it's good to know that there's still one instance holding up the values of our constitution, but what about the others? Our parliament is openly discussing as how far they can go to close the even smallest hole of civil rights that our constitution is not explicitly protecting. What do you think?

• Online access to people's computers,
• video surveillance in appartments/houses,
• video surveillance of public spaces,
• license plate scanners,
• internet and phone connection data logging,
• ...

OK you may think, that's to catch criminals and terrorists. Some even want to use it to detect minor misdemeanors. But surveillance also covers friends of criminals and terrorists. And also people who just happen to be arround criminals and terrorists. And actually those are no criminals and terrorists, they are suspects. And since most terrorists don't appear publicly until they've done something, a whole lot of people are considered suspects; just to prevent anything bad from ever happening. And their friends and whoever is around them is being watched. Closely. There is no more privacy for them.

There's probably a lot we can learn from history, but one of the most obvious realizations is: There is no such thing as absolute and guaranteed safety. Never has been and never will be! We've had dictators who really cared to not let anything happen, but their dictatorship went down and was replaced eventually.

What we are to protect most is not our lives but our rights and freedom that make up our lives. I know this is old. So what? Our government-in fact many governments in the world-is working hard to free us of our civil rights, trying to gain total control of anything that happens in this country. And apparently the constitutional court is the last instance that hasn't fallen. But who knows for how long. And who knows if our constition is even good enough to protect us from that kind of governmental violence we're facing nowadays.