Censorship in the name of freedom

The Swiss data protection commissioner Hanspeter Thür is suing Google before the country's Federal Administrative Court over its street-mapping service Street View, which provides a virtual tour of the streets of certain Swiss cities. Thür wants Google to make vehicle number plates and private gardens unrecognisable on its online service. The conservative weekly Die Weltwoche criticises Thür's court action: "Data protection, a German invention, originated from experiences with the Nazi regime and was intended to protect citizens from the encroachments of a threatening state. But the institution has long since been decoupled from its original purpose. While German tax investigators snoop around the accounts of respectable citizens, hoards of data protection agents are probing the private sector. The protection idea serves mainly as an alibi from which above all criminals benefit. For the average citizen data protection is for the most part irrelevant. … Data protection always entails censorship, as Hanspeter Thür's action against Street View illustrates."

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