this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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I'll give you an interesting example of how a similar Past get reflected differently in different countries.
Germany is one of the few countries in Europe were if you buy a SIM card for your phone (pay as you go, so without a contract) you are obligated by Law to present your identification and it all gets recorded.
Now, remember, Germany had not one but TWO secret polices, the last one (the Stasi, in East Germany only) having been not long ago and being well known for their wiretapping of phones.
Meanwhile my own native Portugal also had a dictatorship about half a century ago, as did next door Spain, and in these countries (and I expect in other similar ones such as Greece and most of Eastern Europe, but I can't say for sure) there would be a veritable outcry if any politician merely suggested mandatory registration on purchasing of a card for your phone or in fact any other such measure with even the mere whiff of being only useful for surveillance. Portugal even has quite strong banking secrecy laws compared to the rest of Europe and a Judicial System with lots of levels of checks and counter-checks (which, unfortunately, makes it quite slow) in reaction to the lack of Due Process of the Fascist dictatorship.
The Portuguese were the ones who kicked out the Fascists, whilst in Germany foreigners were the ones who kicked out the Fascists (and the fall of Communism was the consequence of events far away from East Germany) so maybe that's what dictates just how much and how deep the rejection of the ideas of the old dictatorship will go in a country which was once Authoritarian.
Meanwhile in America, people don't bat an eye at handing over RealID for the most minor purchases (not to mention SIM cards), which is then scanned into a government-connected database, backdoored tech and Amazon Ring.