Jan Freeman writes The Word column for Ideas.
Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based writer, editor, and multimedia
producer.
Christopher Shea writes the Critical Faculties column for Ideas.
 Send the Brainiac bloggers a
comment on a post.
  Week of:
November 11
Week of:
November 4
Week of:
October 28
Week of:
October 21
Week of:
October 14
Week of:
October 7
Mind the gap
Shop talk What he learned in the newsroom Mr. Boffo lays an eggcorn Curse of the mummy's tummy More in Word Watch  |
« Penalty-kick mind games | Main | Thinking of moving? » Friday, April 6, 2007That said...Berlin may be be a boomtown or getting there, but there are still some here who retain a wistful nostalgia for the days of a command economy and other forms of state monitoring and control. After a report in Der Spiegel (I think this is it), Germany's interior ministry has confirmed that its head, Wolfgang Schaeuble, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, has proposed a far-reaching plan to establish firm control (surveillance?) over the citizenry. From the sloppy UPI report: Schaeuble plans to expand surveillance within the context of the fight against terrorism. He wants to increase the preventive means of the Federal Criminal Police Office, or BKA, by making major bugging and data-trawling operations easier to conduct. BKA agents should [sic] be allowed to conduct preventive criminal data searches and secret online searches of private computers; moreover, the interior minister wants to store the data of Germany's toll system to help prevent and solve criminal and terrorist acts [can you solve an act? I say sic]. Edathy rejected in particular Schaeuble's plan to have fingerprints, which in the future will be saved in a chip in citizens' passports, stored with [sic] federal registration offices. Germany's left wing isn't lovin' it. Posted by Evan Hughes at 01:55 PM
|
