I worked for a telecoms company in Germany. And the phone-tapping and internet-tapping facilities we had to put in place were quite... well... disturbing. And this was around 2000-2001.

As I understood it, at that time, the procedure for getting warrants to use the equipment was fairly strict. I'm not one to instinctively go for "slippery slope" arguments, but I think you can at least see that the existence of the technical facilities normalised the procedure in the minds of some politicians.

Schäuble and the Stasi epithet: I like the fact that he's becoming sensitive about it. Maybe if it is pushed more in his face he might even actually start thinking about why he's being described so...