Change my view: What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If agents of the state have the right to look up citizens, then surely citizens have the right to look up agents of the state.

You assume that state and citizens are equal. One has right to set law, gather taxes, mandate force, conscript into army and spy. The other has right to remain silent (unless asked a question).

In a democracy, the actions of the state are actions of its citizens.

This sort of thing, if on a larger scale, might freak politicians out a bit and help get some privacy and security legislation on the table. Maybe.

or just greater consequences (fines, imprisonment) so even legitimate uses-cases (whistle blowers?) are scared to say anything.

live what you preach. if you have nothing to hide, politicians?

Yikes, please don't do that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Why ? The German state, like a lot of states I imagine, demands everybody give up their address, work, car details, children's records to an armed force controlled by these people that definitely doesn't always act in their interest. Especially not if you're a foreigner or immigrant.

They also share these details where they SHOULD NOT be allowed to go. For example, to the electricity monopoly, schools, IRS, ... and without consulting anyone on the matter, or allowing judicial oversight. Apparently both options are too expensive.

So yes "let's see how they like it". Entirely agreed.

We give up our address, work, car details, children's records to a government that we, the people, indirectly control by means of democratic process.

Not every populace thinks of themselves and their government as we and them. To some it's just us.

Granted, sometimes the people we put in charge fuck up, either because there was no clear signal from the populace since few people cared or because opinions of politicians and the populace diverged since the last election.

And when I feel proportionally (relative to the amount of people sharing my views) represented, I have no reason to call the Government them.

Might be different in a system where you need to get at least 50% of the votes to get any representation at all and where that same system has managed to maneuver itself into essentially only having two parties.

> We give up our address, work, car details, children's records to a government

While a comprehensive list is near impossible, you missed some of the information they can gather, from companies via (secret) subpoena/warrant, or directly: Your location via license-plate readers/cell-phone tracking/facial recognition, credit card transactions, who you talk with on your phone, which web-sites you visit, what you printed via tracking dots, etc. If you attend a protest, or try to organize a union, it's easy to know (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43507728). Looks less benign now.

More importantly for this conversation, we skipped a step - is there harm in being spied on? We are assured that no, we can trust them, only criminals should worry. Yet when the tables are turned, and we can spy on the powerful, this rhetoric disappears, all hell breaks loose, and a bunch of state/trade secret laws, non-disclosure agreements, espionage acts, computer-hacking prosecutions, and takedown requests appear.

Edit: Your point about 'us and them' vs. 'we' is good, but it's not enough. Compare it to getting put in prison - thinking of the government as 'us' doesn't make you any better off behind bars. Spying is supposedly different, since they tell us it's harmless. But they sure don't act like it when it's applied to them.

Since I don't live in the UK and nobody was really mentioning that place, I'm not sure what, if anything, to take away from your response.

Because the example of the harm of spying is not from Germany, my entire response is invalid?

Sometimes the people in charge fuck up?

They're running a streak of fuck-ups and while different parties run different ideas, I want none of the current politicians running a country.

The problem is, that there is no "sack the heads of all parties and start new without those problematic persons so we can get a new start" option to vote for.

But yes, the typical person does not care...

On the other hand, the government will always stay them. They purely live off work others do. They have no incentive to improve since they do not need to generate income, they simply "take" what they need from the rest of the population.

Any kind of streamlining or efficiency improvement will just kill jobs of their political buddies.

> The problem is, that there is no "sack the heads of all parties and start new without those problematic persons so we can get a new start" option to vote for.

Why not? New parties replacing established parties does happen now and again in various countries. Recent example: 358 city/municipal councilors, 4 mayors, incl. mayor of Prague, etc. by the Czech Pirate Party (founded 2009).

Even more often than that established parties tend to revise their positions when a new party threatens them, essentially trying to absorb some of their viewpoints and votes. Recent example: various right wing parties like the German AFD (founded 2013) or UK's UKIP have been hugely influential.

Either way it means voters are heard in some way.

Now you might be talking from experience about some specific country, but in that case it would be helpful of you to mention which one.

I think it depends on how much your country advanced in freedom, basic rights etc

Democracy and democratic process itself is required but not enough.

The mentioned twitter account is https://www.twitter.com/_0rbit

"This account has been suspended" it says.

Only the far-right party was spared. This smells of Putin all the way.

Nope, also the known CIA agents from left parties were spared.

And the German is too good to be from Russian agents.

You realize that most Russians speak at least two languages fluently. In fact, I usually have a better time talking to people with Russian accents in English than most other nationalities.

This claim is... very detached from reality. Source: lived there for 20+ years.

Yes, I do. But it's still easy to recognize native germans

To the downvoter: See, I was right.

Can you elaborate, both on who the known CIA agents are, and that they were spared? Sources would also be appreciated.

Of course not. But it should be trivial to subtract the two known sets and check who is missing.

Care to provide the set of CIA agents? It's not known to me. I'd also be grateful for the set of doxxed politicians/people. I haven't tried digging for it yet, but my experiences with the media lead me to believe they won't bother to provide an actual list.

Which known cia agents?

If true, then this is the bigger story here. Meddling in other states via backdoor means.