The chairman of the German policemen’s union is begging for 2000 ‘Cybercops’ and has said that “The internet is the biggest crime scene in the world.” Hold the phone! (or the router, as the case may be)
This just can’t be allowed to fly. Saying that the internet is the biggest crime scene in the world is like saying that public land is the biggest crime scene in the world. I’ll grant that many crimes are easier on the internet, like perhaps fraud, and there are others that seem to exist pretty much exclusively by virtue of the internet, like hacking into government computers. Many crimes, some very serious, are very difficult, if not impossible, to perpetrate online. I’m thinking of heinous stuff like murder, rape, assault, human trafficking – sorry, I mean slavery - and the like. Hell, if $1000 is going to be robbed either by a guy with a shotgun and a balaclava in a liquor store or by some faceless organized crime syndicate online, I’d still prefer it to happen online because nobody gets near a shotgun. True, there is almost, kind of such a thing as a cybermurder, but I would still argue that such cases are exceptions that prove the rule (I know of only the one so far).
How the police want to monitor internet communication is unclear, but I don’t see why this issue should be treated any differently than postal communication, whose inviolability is a constitutional right in Germany. The internet is another public space, and it has a (huge) red light district, casinos, pickpocketting rings, and drug labs in addition to all of the stored and shared knowledge and discourse. You can’t have the rose without the thorns, and of course where there are thorns, there are also pricks.
*The German pejorative euphemism for a police officer is “Bulle” (bull), equivalent to the English “pig”, but, you know, more flattering for the cop.
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