Germany is quietly building a “huge surveillance apparatus” that risks creating a denunciation culture similar to those of the Nazis and the Stasi, one of the country’s leading historians has claimed.
“Unnoticed by the public,” Berlin is setting up a sprawling system of “tip-off points” inside companies and in government authorities that will facilitate people snitching on their co-workers, Hubertus Knabe, a historian, has warned.
Germany’s ‘whistleblower protection law’ came into force in July with the stated purpose of protecting people who report on workplace abuses.
All companies with more than 49 members of staff must now set up an office where staff can anonymously report on suspected abuses of the law without fear of retribution.
But, according to the man who ran the Hohenschönhausen Memorial on the site of the Stasi’s political prison in Berlin for close to two decades, the law is more far-reaching than simple whistleblower protection.
“The tip-off points won’t only pursue suspicions of criminality, they will also deal with misdemeanours subject to fines,” Mr Knabe wrote in an article for the Germany’s Die Welt newspaper this week.
“They will even be responsible for statements by officials that ‘constitute a violation of the obligation of loyalty to the constitution’,” he added.
Warning that “it is just a small step from tip-off to denunciation,” Mr Knabe pointed to the example of Nazi Germany where Germans fervently snitched on their...
Police have launched an investigation into alleged false accusation by Park Cheol-min, a former member of the Seongnam International Mafia. Park, ahead of the 2022 presidential election, raised al...