If your estimates were correct, Germany was a police state , just as these " lousy little island " ( I mean the UK ) , or half of Europe. No, the problem lies deeper. It is because , as the citizens law enforcement officers saw (image of them) , and how it is today.
Then , police officers are exposed to a lot of stress. They are verbally insulted , spat upon , physically assaulted , and sometimes killed. And yet they are supposed to work professionally . This is not always possible. Here in Berlin attracted a great attention in the case last year . Before the " Red Town Hall " ( there ruled the reigning mayor of the city-state of Berlin) with a fountain .A naked man armed with a knife got in it . He was , as was later proved , mentally confused. A police patrol asked the man to leave the fountain, which the man refused with threatening gestures with the knife. The police called her colleagues for help. There were posted around the fountain total of 12 police officers. First, the officers tried to calm the man, but when he attacked a police officer with a knife, shot the officer. The family sued the police . These were acquitted rightly , as it was an emergency situation. Police officers are allowed to shoot, when your life, or that of another person is in danger.
Being exposed to stress is no excuse.
We had a Polish vacationer here who was stuck in part of the airport terminal for hours and became agitated. When the police responded they almost immediately tasered and subdued him which killed him. 25 seconds is not nearly long enough to make any kind of professional assessment.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/taser-video-shows-rcmp-shocked-immigrant-within-25-seconds-of-their-arrival-1.652207
How about an 82 year old man in a hospital bed, once again the RCMP almost immediately went to aggressive tactics with a taser.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/rcmp-subdue-hospitalized-man-82-with-taser-1.770386
Then there was the case of Ian Bush who was shot in the back of the head while in police custody as well as another, there's a disturbing pattern here.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/w5-investigates-when-the-rcmp-pulls-the-trigger-1.449233
Three men dead. All killed by RCMP officers in British Columbia. And all RCMP constables involved in their deaths cleared -- without any criminal charges.
Internal RCMP investigation reports obtained by W5 show that in all these cases the B.C. Attorney General's ministry had evidence that contradicted statements of the Mounties involved, yet chose not to prosecute them. Those decisions made by the B.C. Criminal Justice Branch have left the families of the victims wondering if the RCMP is beyond justice.
I'm posting this as someone who's known or been related to Mounties for most of my life. There seems to be a real culture of contempt building in our police forces that has nothing to do with serving the public...which raises the question who are they serving.
After the Mounty who killed Ian Bush was "cleared", they posted him to the detachment in the city where I lived. It was sobering seeing a man with a gun who you knew the evidence indicated had murdered another person and got away with it.
And I really don’t think cops can blame stress for subjecting an American citizen to 14 hours of anal probing or for stopping a Florida man over 250 times and repeatedly arresting him for trespassing at his place of work.
These are Gestapo tactics, not genuine policing, and we really don’t need to live in states where the government has access to everything we do, say or even think. That’s not a free and open society, that’s hell.
There has been a number of recent publications regarding governments in US, CA, AU, UK, NZ and several others are changing their legislation to mandate Internet Service Providers to collect and keep metadata. Computer metadata is basically information about files or computer activity. The main argument is that it should help combat crime & terrorism and that metadata does not contain information that has been transmitted (aka content of an email). Here are a couple of examples of metadata: 1) email metadata - contains date & time, time zone, IP addresses of sender and recipient (IP addresses can identify both parties later on), type of attachments, size of attachment and text, language used in the email, name of the email application used to send an email, when the email has been retrieved form the server, email addresses. 2) MS Word document - date & time, size, version, author’s name, when document has been opened, for how long has it been edited, by whom, computer user name etc etc. Combining this data with visited websites by the user (medical, political etc) makes it a very powerful surveillance mechanism. Grouping (profiling) people by their web browsing habits, email communication and combining this data with other government records … It isn’t just the US becoming a police sate.
The Mormons are not the government and there is no law against them collecting genealogical information. The government, on the other hand, knew it was againstbthe law to demand that private entities share their information with the government, though they did demand it illegally from Google, Verizon and Microsoft and god knows where else. Unfortunately, Google, Verizon and Microsoft handed it over even though they should have known they were under no obligation to do so. They acted like sheep to the slaughter and helped put the American people in jeopardy. They know where their bread is buttered.
My point was that data collection on private citizens by governments OR other nongovernmental agencies has a deep history and now in the electronic era it's far simpler to track someone via email, text, Facebook, on line purchases, hacking, and cell phones. So, it's almost impossible for John Q to hide his/her thoughts and actions from either a private company OR the national government. Couple that with desire of the public to be protected from criminals, i.e. Fear and the the NSA gets a free hand to do as it pleases. Privacy isn't private any more unless you want to give up all those services and gadgets that plug you into, well life. Ok, it's illegal for the NSA to data collect and I agree that measures should be taken to prevent this snooping on private citizens. Now, so what's the solution? I'm not being facetious I'm asking for answers.
Cap't Jack
If your estimates were correct, Germany was a police state , just as these " lousy little island " ( I mean the UK ) , or half of Europe. No, the problem lies deeper. It is because , as the citizens law enforcement officers saw (image of them) , and how it is today.
Then , police officers are exposed to a lot of stress. They are verbally insulted , spat upon , physically assaulted , and sometimes killed. And yet they are supposed to work professionally . This is not always possible. Here in Berlin attracted a great attention in the case last year . Before the " Red Town Hall " ( there ruled the reigning mayor of the city-state of Berlin) with a fountain .A naked man armed with a knife got in it . He was , as was later proved , mentally confused. A police patrol asked the man to leave the fountain, which the man refused with threatening gestures with the knife. The police called her colleagues for help. There were posted around the fountain total of 12 police officers. First, the officers tried to calm the man, but when he attacked a police officer with a knife, shot the officer. The family sued the police . These were acquitted rightly , as it was an emergency situation. Police officers are allowed to shoot, when your life, or that of another person is in danger.
It's not an estimate Witch, it's History. I know you studied it in school because it is mandatory in Germany. And no, Great Britain wasn't a police state in the same time period as the Third Reich. And if memory still serves me Bobbies are only allowed to carry guns in extreme emergencies. Now, as to your anecdote yes the police are under intense stress because they deal with life and death situations on a daily basis. The pay is lousy, it's a thankless job with few benefits and lately it has attracted military vets who react the way they did on streets in Iraq. This may account for the abuses that keep popping up at least here in the U.S. Practically every cop I know has a military background with combat experience. Also, and I'm not an apologist for bad behavior by the police, the press uses superlative cases of power abuse to sell the news. Granted these cases should be brought to light and the offenders punished, but there are literally thousands of police officers doing the job they are paid to do, namely protect people from criminals. One possible solution to the problem of abuse is careful psychological screening of recruits to weed out the racists, gun nuts, sociopaths, political extremists, any anyone with extreme PTSD. That's a start at least. Then have every police officer wear a camera to record any incident. Also fire any officer guilty of chronic abuse of authority. What we don't want to do is tie their hands completely. A classic example of this is the way the White House intruder was handled. He shouldn't have been allowed to make it past the fence.
Cap't Jack