attack on the freedom
"Fight back. Is still it is not too late. " The new book by two award-winning writers and Iliya Troyanov Juli Zeh is a dramatic roll call.
"Those who give up freedom in order to gain security will end up losing both." With this quote from Benjamin Franklin Founding Father, the U.S., start Iliya Troyanov and Juli Zeh her book. Central Concern is the two are to question terms like "security" or "terrorism" with which to us online searches, surveillance cameras or fingerprints on the passport be made palatable. "Attack on freedom" is a 140 pages long plea: The last few years, rapidly increasing restriction centuries developed civil rights, Troyanov and Zeh, may not longer be tolerated:
The term "terrorist threat" concerns us now fully naturally off the tongue. Who wants to question him publicly, is threatened to be considered completely naive, or even to themselves as suspicious . Shall Take the "terrorist threat" even under the microscope. Under a threat of lawyers to understand the in-view-points of a future evil. The evil of terrorism which is directly in view, are the victims of possible attacks. So horrible these consequences in individual cases for the affected people are - if you compare the number of victims statistically with the deaths, which comes to heat stroke or the flu deceased and to the victims of a false medical treatment in hospital, no one on the idea that terrorism is the greatest threat our security was. The special horror of terrorism is that he uses in the broadest sense of politically motivated violence. This means that a terrorist crime is intrinsic to meaning. The attack on the World Trade Center was not just a mass murder of 3,000 people, but a metaphor for the desired destruction of the United States or equal to the entire "western world". At this point nests a fatal misunderstanding. The message of such attacks is not: "We will destroy you." It reads: "We urge you to self-destruction." Why is that? Because we terrorism alone can not cause any significant harm. No country in the world has ever been through attacks such as those of "Islamic terrorism" to perdition, no government was deposed in this manner. Terrorists do not have the Power of our rule of law to crush, to create our values and to change our society and life forms. You can only do it to provoke us to do it yourself. They need our involvement. They threaten us with consequences that we can only bring themselves.
The authors draw on the long road of society on human rights: You write about the Magna Carta, the French Revolution, the German Basic Law or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - and contrast this current developments in various countries. For example, when it comes to protection from arbitrary arrest, what in England in 1215 for the first time in the Magna Carta was drafted and is part of the U.S. Bill of Rights applies to the introduction of the term "enemy combatant" by George W. Bush not to every human in the U.S.. "Enemy combatants" can be arbitrarily arrested and held for an indefinite - the "war on terror" makes it possible. Interesting for Trojaniow and toe the meaning of the term conversion terrorist himself, who a few decades ago was still largely totalitarian systems used for terror against their citizens. Equally critical, the authors consider the combination of the two words "terror" and "suspect" If inflationary
people talk about "terror suspects", already indicates the language, where we are headed. Actually suspects are, in our interpretation of the law are innocent bystanders. But the first half of the word ("terror") has been in the direction of detention, torture and special courts. Since the NATO countries maintained a "war on terror" that has to be endless as a struggle against an amorphous enemy, is a 'terrorist suspect' is already a criminal who threatens our lives and our world. The word, as aggressive as his suggestion is that human rights in brackets. Than eight hundred years of basic legal history would have lost their meaning.
While the schools are still the ideas of basic rights and rule of law would be taught would find out there already taken the big conversion. Those who get up and say: "It's enough your beats broken something that can not repair anymore!", Was regarded as naive, hysterical, or even as terrorists friend.
In the first years after 11 September 2001, the newspapers full of warnings about terrorism, but there was hardly any significant public debate on the extension of state powers. Even in the eighties a planned census in Germany had triggered mass protests because many people felt to update the registration data as intolerable infringement of their personal freedom. Two decades later virtually no one protested against the fact that every citizen should be left to the State of his fingerprints, whereas it was obviously not about the forgery of passports shear nature, but rather the establishment of a European database.
Time and again, toe and Trojanow suggest: basic rights are a defense shield against state intervention. Fundamental rights are organizing principles that organize a company so that they can govern in a democratic process through their own representatives.
It is a mistake, if the individual believes that the decisions made in Brussels, Washington, London or Berlin, he had nothing to do, as long as only "terrorists" is mentioned. Anyone who only remembers his fundamental rights if he feels personally injured, has not understood either what it is about, or seen simply irresponsible.
Elsewhere, the authors warn that "it can not be inherently 'good' system, the 'good' goals is safely in times of crisis may sacrifice hard-won rights." And again: "Do you think to make these rights only on condition that the state is 'good' remains a State is certainly not better by the expansion of its powers, on the contrary - the more power it is concentrated, the greater the risk of abuse. And you will be your rights certainly do not return that day, . Where you recover it "
relentlessly sharp politicians are quoted to expose their ignorance or rhetorical paradoxes - such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel:" Actually, everything works just fine, but we still need more supervision "Or Wolfgang Bosbach, vice-chairman. of the CDU faction in the Bundestag: "online search, that's not a knife and fork and not with a telescope. For this we need the use of advanced IT technology, and as a mail can be an example "Or Wolfgang Schäuble's legendary comments to the same theme:". Under online searches meant different things that is clear. As is ... is understood as both ... telecommunications ... the ... the traffic, and the search in the systems themselves, because the technical development so be it, but since we now have almost the ... the ... the internet experts consult more closely. "Although politicians are constantly in this way that they have the tools they require no real clue comes in the population little resistance to their plans. terrorists, we are insuring always work, hidden , encrypted, anonymous and conspiratorial. "The Internet" is stylized into a realm of evil, to a "legal vacuum" that needed to be fought in general. "The Internet is the adapted devices the future, "said Juergen Ziercke, president of the German Federal Criminal Police Office. why should it close scrutiny. What, the authors toe and Troyanov, about as much sense would, as one would swear the dangers of the forest, because rooms wooden spears suspect can can.
We are to exchange our personal freedom against a specious promises of "security." The current indifference in dealing with privacy, have in the state and corporations future of us will need to allow as them, even more comprehensive introduce the means of control. Then it can be too late to resist. An authoritarian state can crush any protest in the bud, through laws that are approved today, supposedly to protect us. Defend herself. It is still not too late.
Source: FM4
