German Blogosphere Makes No Difference

After the last big threat, the political decision to enable the executives to watch every single home computer, today the German Minister of the Interior, in an interview with the magazine Stern, announced (preview) that the presumption of innocence doesn't help his job to keep the Federal Republic of Germany being a safe place. (In other words -- the presumption of innocence doesn't support the war on terror.) Hence it needs to be dropped. -- That's not my conclusion but what the political reactions call it. Unfortunately, the complete interview is not yet on the web.

Apparently, the goals of the Ministry of the Interior gained attention of the mass media about a week ago. I was surprised when my mother -- person who's well informed, but only by mass media, not by web --, on Easter Monday came to me and asked me whether the Minister might went nuts. Used to being informed of what's going on in the German politics, by the web, yet a while ago, I noticed that's the attitude of the ministry, not the individual ministers. Already Ministers of the Interior of the Kohl aera I noticed to be somewhat extreme in their wishes for data, surveillance and intrusion into the individual's private sphere. Hence, I stopped following the process. At some recent point in time, it became clear to me, that as soon as I get the chance to, I might leave the country. So, I were aware, that the flames of politics of the interior were burning high and going to eat up what made up a constitutional state, but I stopped caring.
 

After the recent thrusts of Minister of the Interior, Dr Wolgang Schäuble, the political reactions showed one common denominator: The man is going to hurt the German Constitution (as this [German] Spiegel Online article indicates), the Federal Constitutional Court would stop such approaches (as can be read out of this [German] Spiegel Online article), the Judges of the Federal Constitutional Court might be the only ones who could stop the minister's attempts to remove the Constitutional State (first link: Youtube Video of an highly regarded German TV magazine; second: interview of an highly regarded German Newspaper. Both sources in German). -- The online presence of the First German TV Channel ("Das Erste") even raises the question whether the actions of the Minister of the Interior are reasonable or if that he's doing nothing but exploiting the fear of terror to build a surveillance state. -- Currently, there were more but 40 000 voters who presume the latter, but just to be safe, the channel also mentions the poll being not representative (thanks to netzpolitik.org for the link).

That denominator, to point to the Constitution and to Federal Constitutional Court -- by the idea that that instance would be the only defender of the Constitution, namely our freedom, --, most of the reader's comments I've seen today, pick up. That reminds me of the approach of 'Someone needed to do something, but noone feels like being someone, hence noone actually does something'. Additionally, it keeps out lazyness: 'Hey, we've got the Federal Constitutional Court. Why should I move?' -- And on the other hand, there are civil right activists who overused variants of that very rhethoric question already. Yet the moment one raises that question, people flip to ignore the questioner the very moment. Paranoia. -- Actually, I don't want to discuss this question in depth anymore, just came along.

Hence back to the paranoia. The long time I were sympathic with those civil right activists, I noticed most people being interested only in the subject usually had hard times to communicate their worries to people not yet that deep in the matter. And very often, people being concerned, choose to -- sometimes instantly -- create horror scenarios which could result from the recurrent thrusts of politics to invade privacy and remove freedom, and other concerns. And instantly created horror scenarios much often don't apply for the addressees or lack some cruical reasonability. And the result's the addresses call those who speak out: You're paranoid.


While the least people intuitively recognize the thread from being tracked, and most of even these are unable to make the threat comprehensible to any less educated audiences, the current demands of Germany's Minister of the Interior differ a bit, by two reasons. Once, because it's likely to be the first time since long the mass media pick up the destructive demands of the Ministry of the Interior. And the other one is, that people -- even the laymen -- intuitively can comprehend the threat originating from those demands.

Earlier this day, I left a comment to netzpolitik.org's posting about the minister's goal to remove the presumption of innocence: The threat is so obvious, even mass media only informed people accidentally meeting at the butcher's will be able to discuss the topic -- qualifiedly.

Probably, there are lots of reactions on that current Schäuble threat in the blogosphere. -- That was to be expected, and one might want to learn how many of the First German TV Channel voters originally immediately or mediately came via that netzpolitik.org to that polling page.

But I think -- that makes no difference. Not the least.

Bloggers talking furiously about the Schäuble thrust -- would end exactly at the frontiers of blogosphere. Noone outside notice. The outer world notices only because the mass media picked up the topic. As soon as they drop it, the public interest will be gone. Being blogger, being oriented towards the blogosphere only and -- furiously -- doing nothing but linking other sources and calling for action, to put it into simple words, does not make any difference.
 

Despite being highly educated and pretty well informed, I think, the bloggers need to leave the blogosphere -- at least to stay within the blogosphere only. Remind the butcher's bar example. I think, blogger's need to make their points in real life to. What's the benefit of a blogosphere who understood current political threats, but ends with the screen of the people's desktops? What's the benefit of being educated and well informed, if you're obscure in the real world?

Print's dead? -- No, I think, digital needs to go over there to catch up. Digital needs to achieve a post in real life. To be recognized by the public and take into consideration. Currently, that's the playground of mass media and prominents. But that it shouldn't. It should be a place for bloggers too. Bloggers need to grow from the web to the world. Bloggers should be acknowledged there.

      
Updates: 20070815: HTML typo fixed, spelling mistake fixed