Information Super-highwaymen

Guten tag, ladies und gentlemen. My name is Herman und I originate from that piece of Germany we used to be calling the GDR - that's the democratic republic, even though we didn't have the vote. But who needs it anyway?

Anyhow, I have come here today because I am talking to you about the wonderful successes of your information gathering systems you have built in the West. Now, I speak as a man who should know thing or two about information gatherings. You see, I used to be working for that much misunderstood organisation known as the Stasi. Boy in those days did we have our works cut out for us? We had to co-opt hunderts of thousands of helpful citizens in order to build our profiles of the enemies of the state. We were documenting the every movements, the loves, the passions, the predilections of these people. It was sehr pain-staking task und it took many, many man hours, I can be telling you.

But now you in the West have built something that is zoh infinitely better at information gatherings und retrievals. Das ist called "information superhighway" und everybody, yes, everybody love using it. On your social network site for examples, you are extremely delighted to reveal all of your innermost secrets. You are telling the whole worlds your names und addresses, where you are working, who you are in love with, where you like to go clubbings, where you will be going on holidays, what kind of food you eat, what kinds of peoples you meet, your political und religious affiliations, your fears, your hates, und, nowadays, even where you are in the world at any given time of the day or night.

Wow! This is simply wunderbar! You know, I am so envious, so, so envious. Ich could become positively addicted to so much informations. Never in our wildest dreams did we think zie ordinary citizens would volunteer this kind of details. If only we had your superhighways in our day, life at the Stasi would have been so much easier. We could have done the work of hunderts of thousands of men mit one mainframe computer. Ya! You can believe it. Ein single mainframe computer! What is even more spiffing, as you peoples like to say, is das information is not only available to the peoples in your countries but to peoples everywhere in the world. Ein computer official in Beijing can even access all your secrets. Now that really is information revolution. Ya?

Now of course I must be qualifying these enthusiasms of mine to some extents. Because of course, not all informations are available, the more is the pity! Das officialdom und many, many companies do not like to be posting all these kinds of sensitive informations for everyone und Uncle Tom Cobley to be seeing. Nein! It is simply not zee done thing when it is real, real sensitive stuffs that might be having some kind of monetary impacts or something like that for example. But then Rome was not built in ein day. Und, let's face it, even some of this important stuff can be accessed by cyber-hackers if es ist totalische necessary.

Anyway at least it seems that for the time beings the ordinary citizens do not have so many of these monetary concerns because they are regularly falling victims to the cyber-scams und the credit card frauds. And can you believe it, they are even telling the burglars on the social networking sites when they are going on holidays and vacating their homes und stuff. So, the future ist looking sehr good, sehr, sehr positive indeed. These super-highways are music to the ear of an old Stasi man like myself. As we once used to be saying back in those good old days: Your information ist our information, und our information ist our information!