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...

dvx:

A general awareness of who the Nazis were and what they actually did didn't begin to become pervasive in the public mind until the mid-60s, when the next generation came of age. You can read this fact as one of the subtexts of much public unrest in Germany in the 60s and 70s.

And the leaders of that generation are now old, in power and wants control...

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