alt Hacker NewsEuropean here, giving my two cents on how this looks from the other side of the Atlantic. Heh
In my country there are laws stopping agencies doing a simple SQL join between two databases, even within the same government agency. There is a separate agency that handles the requests when agencies want to join information.
I am not an expert in the matter. But my gut is telling me that our experiences with east Germany and Stasi left a scar.
It can quickly turn into a real nightmare, and there for there are check and balances to make it slow. It’s deliberate inefficiency.
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This sort of thing already exists in America for cases where Americans actually care about privacy: the gun tracing system is forced to be on paper.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/s-just-insanity-atf-now-needs-2...
Guns are constitutionally protected in a way that humans aren't.
That's putting it mildly. What it really looks like is a fast descent into madness.
Which law are referring to? I work in such an agency and I’ve never heard of such a thing
It's not inefficiency. You don't drive 200km/h on city streets, although you can. Limits exist for the safety of others and you.
Very few countries have as strong executive branch as the USA.
When it comes to government spending though, shouldn’t the public have a right to know precisely, with dollar-level accuracy what they are being asked to pay?
As far as the experiences of the Stasi and previous German governments, it must not have too much of a scar: Germany still asks people to register their religion — ostensibly for tax purposes, but if I recall correctly, Germany had a problem in the past with having a list of all people in a specific religion.
European here. Governments in Europe, even ones that have GDPR on their books, literally act as oppressively as they want to act: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users' encrypted accounts [1]
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/07/apple-e...
> check and balances to make it slow. It’s deliberate inefficiency.
It’s an important thing about free countries that is seldom appreciated: aspects of their governments are designed to be tar pits, on purpose. It’s a way of restraining government.
I have a personal saying that touches on something adjacent. “I like my politicians boring. Interesting government was a major cause of death in the twentieth century.”
When I think of governments that are both interesting and streamlined I think of the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, Stalin era USSR, Maoist purges, etc.
> It’s deliberate inefficiency.
Inefficiency is a useful property of many systems [0,1]. Current cultural obsessions around the word are a burden and mistake, and the word "efficiency" now feels rather overload with right-wing connotations.
still, Germany arrests citizens for calling a politician an idiot.
Which country and what law are you referring to?
Laws rarely include technical language like SQL joins.
I think the advantages of this in a digital age are vastly overblown. If an extremist government comes to power they won't care and they can just do the SQL join. Let it go to court, the extremist government will decide anyway so the outcome is already predetermined.
Compare this to a physical storage of paper documents that need to be SQL joined, the effort required is several magnitudes more.
What it is good for is data breaches, it effectively limits the data that can be leaked at once.
What you're describing is very similar to what most large enterprise companies do: layers upon layers of red tape and convoluted regulations for the sake of "security."
This is a big reason they can’t get anything done or retain talent.
Government is no different.
European democracies have been dying from the same sclerosis their legacy multinationals have.
The US is going through actual change. The outrage over things not being done as they always have is nonsensical.
Do you know why in Portugal they have 4 different ID numbers?
It is like that to prevent the state from persecuting people on the base that it is hard for a branch of the government to figure out who is someone based on a number from a different branch.
Do you know why they want to prevent the government from persecuting people?
Because it has already happened, and the portuguese don't want it to happen again.