this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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I only know western countries but from those I’d say Germany and Switzerland.
It’s highly respected in Germany to have a low online profile - pay in cash, stay off online systems.
I feel it’s similar in Switzerland - just with military training, more guns, mined bridges and nazi gold.
The current german government is trying to build a surveillance state and force chat apps into adding backdoors to their encryption and the culture is shifting for the worse with stuff like tiktok still growing.
Right now I'd say switzerland is better in the privacy department (and a few other ones, but that's beside the point).
To be honest. If you’re online you should expect to be compromised. If you want to be privacy obsessed- focus on countries that allow you to be offline. That is an aspect Germany and Switzerland are a bit unique.
By comparison Scandinavia has a high degree of trust in government and everything is online and connected. It’s convenient but also - if you do not trust your data on the government’s hands - you’re not gonna like it here.
Germany allows you to be more … disconnected.
If the past two decades have shown me anything, it's that I definitely don't want my data in any government's hands.
How is scandinavia more connected? I know cash is dying out everywhere but here and that everyone's earnings are public, but those aren't too important to me. Private communication and browsing (and generally not being spied on) are what I mostly care about.
In Germany you need to do most things in person, by fax, and fill out paper forms.
In Sweden for example, you do everything online. Booking appointments, renewing subscriptions, insurance claims, getting test driving permits, renting homes.
You pretty much need this software called BankID, owned by the banks, which is used to verify your identity. It’s used literally everywhere.
If I need to pick up a parcel at the local post office, I’ll use the PostNord app to pull up a QR code and validate myself via BankID, then I scan the code at the robot which then fetches the parcel for me.
Cash isn’t really dying out here, it’s pretty much dead. Grocery stores still take cash but plenty of businesses don’t. Buses in my town stopped taking cash all over a decade ago. Even the bakery refuses cash. It’s viewed as a safety thing; if the bakery gets robbed what are they going to take? The massive appliances? Flour?
Doing bureaucracy online versus in person is just a convenience thing, German government agencies still enter your data into computer systems, they just have a massively convoluted process for it. I expect no privacy in those cases anyways.
But bankID does seem scary. A single point of failure for basically everything and centralized tracking of every transaction.
It's not a convenience thing, it's because the government fucked up the whole online thing. They started too late, they constantly miss the goals they set themselves, nobody seems to want to push things forward. It's a bit frustrating. On the other hand, yeah privacy. If you ignore that the Finanzamt can check your bank account whenever they want without you being notified about it (yes, they need a reason, still...) and Krankenkassen knowing almost everything about your health because they get the bills from your doctor.