One e-mail for 20 Eurocents

A long time ago, the German government presented a new idea: A reliable e-mail system, so that e-mails could be used for business communication. The name of this system is DE-mail and it is planned to include only a few certified e-mail providers.

One DE-Mail will Cost 20 Cents

However, Deutsche Post—one of the providers—now introduced they will charge your account with 20 Eurocents. Compared to a normal e-mail this is exactly 20 Eurocents more, because many e-mail providers offer accounts for free.

Compared to a standard letter with Deutsche Post for 55 Eurocents, this is much cheaper, but for only the transfer of some bits it is a lot. Of course this also depends on how many people will use the service and how many mails will be sent. Other providers meanwhile said they while make it cheaper. German ISP 1&1 mentioned 15 Eurocent, but they also added that “values of Eurocents were possible”.

Deutsche Post Failed with Lifetime e-mail

Some years ago, Deutsche Post wanted to start a service offering an e-mail account for your whole life, which also failed. The service was started in 2000 and stopped in 2005, because the “synergy effects they had hoped for did not become real”. Deutsche Post back then wanted to extend this system—for premium users—in a similar way as DE-mail by introducing “electronical certified mail”.

When the whole system did not work, Deutsche Post wanted to earn more money by offering advertisment free inboxes for paying customers. I am not sure, if POP3 was not common in 2003 or they added advertisment directly into the e-mail (like other e-mail providers do nowadays), but the idea didn’t seem to work.

Courts already Accepting normal e-mail

While the introduction of DE-mail is taking more and more time, courts are already starting to accept the normal e-mail system. This can of course be seen both positive or negative, but it is one big strike against DE-mail. If you have the choice between a free e-mail or a 20-Eurocent e-mail, both of them being legally accepted suficiently reliable, then the decision should be clear.

The Higher Regional Court Düsseldorf has accepted informational e-mails of an esteem agent as chargeable (the defendant has bought the house and therefore the treaty with the agent became legal).

A more discussable and maybe also ridiculous case is the judgement of the Regional Court Hamburg, which says that people have to anticipate written warnings via e-mail. This is of course a bit a problem, because many mails get just filtered by junk filters and the recipient does not know there should be such an e-mail.

For such cases (written warnings), a DE-mail could be useful, but who would open up an account just to wait for e-mails harming him?

Possible Surveillance

Due to several surveillance laws in the past months and years, there might be the possibility that the state wants to use this new method to gather easier access to sent and received e-mails. According to my knowledge end-to-end encryption should be supported, but only few people really use it. Therefore, the state would be able to reach business e-mails through only a few big providers.

The e-mails will be encrypted on the server, but this is only a encryption in the backend with the provider’s key. Therefore, the provider could also decrypt it easily and when the state forces the provider to do so, there is no way around it. If people use free providers then it is more complicated for the state, because he does not know all providers.

Epic Fail in German School

Many public buildings, e.g. schools, in Germany are trying to make the buildings more energy efficient. This is done by replacing windows, renovating heaters or also exchanging light systems—sometimes with a lot of drawbacks.

It is always obvious in Germany that both politicians and business managers are easily blinded by modernization. Everything that is “modern” is also good at the same time, and there is no other possibility, it just has to be good.

Modernization as Loss of Control

This can be seen very well in case of a German school at the moment. In Itzehoe, a town in Schleswig-Holstein, the administration has decided to introduce a new light system with motion sensors. Removing the light switches also took away the full control over light and darkness. This is of course a problem when there are lessons and nobody moves in the room.

The problem with modernization is that we want everything to go automatically without caring about the loss of control. It’s not wrong to try solving problems automatically, but it is wrong to forget your own influence. To give another example: Some people take a car and they think the ABS will do their job so they can drive faster. However, you should only see the ABS as a feature, not as your saviour.

In the current case the administration bought a system which cannot be controlled by light switches directly. Since the school had complained about the new system, they received a remote control—which does not work steadily. The question is: Why not only use motion sensors as a feature and include manual light switches?

Opinion of the Affected?

According to the head master of the school, the government didn’t even ask him if he wanted the new system or if there were any problems. It was just installed: What’s modern is good, how should it be different? This lack of communication has now led to a faulty system in school and interrupted lessons.

However, this is a usual behaviour: When the administration of Baden-Württemberg wanted to introduce G8, a reduction of secondary school eduction by one year, they came to schools to ask teachers, but the criticism was ignored. The system was introduced and students have to learn for their final exams in 8 years while other students had 9 years time. Moreover, there will be the double amount of alumni one year searching for university places.

Politicians have to stop thinking they knew everything better (known as the Dunning-Kruger effect), they have to return to asking experts—which does not mean only asking companies. Sometimes it even isn’t about any experts at all, but only the affected persons. Can this be so difficult?

Bundestag Puts its Hands on CD from Switzerland

Is the state allowed to buy a illegaly taken list with names of tax dodgers? This is one of the most discussed questions in Germany at the moment.

Background

According to the German government a Swiss citizen is offering them a CD with names of tax dodgers for about 2.5 million Euro. This must have been about one week ago. Why am I saying “according to the government”? You will see later. The governmental data protection officer positioned against the plans of the government to buy the CD very quickly. He said the state should not support illegal acitivities by paying money for it. Still, both chancellor Merkel and the Financial Minister Schäuble agreed on buying the CD.

Some days later, about rhe 4th of February, both lawyers of the state and of North Rhine-Westphalia came to the conclusion that the acquisition would be legal, or at least that the officials buying it and analyzing it could not be sentenced afterwards. Moreover, they even had the duty to use business secrets against tax dodgers.

On the same day estimates also saed that the state could gain between 200 and 400 million Euro by buying the CD. This would even outnumber the payments after a similar incident with data from Liechtenstein, which led to payments of 180 million Euro until now.

Swiss Journalist guesses it’s just a Bluff

Hubert Moser, journalist for the tagesanzeiger, a Swiss news paper, wrote (German) on the 5th of February, he believed the whole incident was just a bluff to make people supply an amended return.

He explains his thoughts in comparison to the last event when the state bought a CD from Liechtenstein. Back then, the acquisition was not published until the first popular tax dodger, leader of Deutsche Post Zumwinkel, was arrested. However, these days there are huge announces on what to do with the CD, if it should be bought etc. The whole event already lasts one week which could be an indication for the non-existance of the CD.

However, I am wondering why should there be reports of lawyers proposing to buy the CD when the state cannot really buy something in the end? I mean, now they have gone so far, there are not many possibilites to stop it anymore. On the other hand, politicians always can say: “Oh, no, we decided the other way round now, but we do not have reasons.” People would forget it soon.

Between Tax Haven and Banking Secrecy

In Germany countries like Switzerland and Liechtenstein are often refered to as tax havens, because taxes are lower there and they insist on the privacy of their clients. The rivalry between Germany and Switzerland was already obvious last year when the Financial Office complained about Switzerland not accepting the OECD standards against tax offences. These standards include that states exchange information about tax bodging when there is initial suspicion.

An interesting aspect is that there will be a meeting between the ministers of German speaking countries in Europe (Germany, Austria, Luxemburg, Switzerland) about the OECD-standards and the automatical information exchange within the EU. Austria does not want to participate in this exchange while there are not the same standards in Great Britain and the US. Switzerland also only negotiates about the OECD-standards, but they are not member of the EU, anyway. Considering this meeting, the current incident might be an attempt to put Switzerland under pressure in the debate about OECD-standards so that they have to accept it due to medial concentration and international attention.

The Incredibly Dangerous Swine Flu

According to the WHO (World Health Organisation) cases of the so called “swine flu” or H1N1 or “new flu” are decreasing. Since October, when some people were still claiming that there would be a horrible second strike in winter, the number of infected people became constantly smaller. Around the whole world 14,142 people have died since March 2009 due to H1N1, which means that it was much less dangerous than normal flu. The same amount of people die every year due to the common influenza according to the Robert Koch Institut. However, critics say these numbers are not to be trusted, because they are used to influence people to get vaccination.

Germany still has to buy 34 million doses

Having ordered 50 million dose rates to be able to vaccinate 30% of the inhabitants (it was expected you have to receive 2 doses) Germany was now able to reduce this amount to 34 million. Instead of having to pay 416.5 million Euro it’s now expected that they have to pay 283.2 millions. Still, the new amount will be far too much and is a gift to pharma industry, as always the government acted in fear and panic without thinking about the costs. Compared to our current debts of more than 1.7 trillion Euro (1,700,000,000,000 €) this is nothing, but of course it always accumulates.

As of 2016 the government wants to reach a balanced budget, which was almost never reached (a news paper says two times since 1950, statistics say one time). You cannot take it amiss if people do not believe that the government will be able to reach their aim. Actually, I am wondering who controls if the state does not take too many new debts and what the consequences could be: The so called Schuldenbremse is nothing different than an EU law against too many new debts, just that no superior controlling institution exists.

Council of Europa Dealing with Topic

The Council of Europe begins analyzing the connections between pharmaceutical industry and WHO. The WHO has decided on a topic leading to investments of about 18 billion dollars worldwide, while the industry prepared for such a scenario knowing that the defition of pandemia was altered in a matter to exclude death rates and only check rate of spread.

However, it is always easy to make a lot of money based on fear. When the first hysteria due to SARS began, many people started buying security kits to protect themselves. The avian flu led to researches on vaccinations and the swine flu was the best point to make money from this product.

Increasing Child Benefits — but only for the Rich

In 2009 the German government agreed on increasing child benefits by 20 € per child. Actually, they did not directly agree on increasing the child benefits by 20 €, but on increasing the child allowance which is usually used by richer people, because it leads to smaller tax rates. The normal conclusion would be that also poor families receive more money now—not with our government.

Recipients shall return 20 €

In January Hartz-IV recipients (long-period unemployed) got their usual rate, but now they will be forced to give 20 € back. This is done, because the government has forgotten to adjust the Hartz-IV rate. Right, they are even willing to put effort into not supporting the poor. This fits pretty well into the current events, since the government also agreed on subsidizing hotels—having received almost two million Euro (FDP and CSU) of a hotel owner before.

According to a lawyer people do not have to return the money in any case. He says there was a special rule which allows people to keep it if the money was already spent in the believe it was one’s own.

Federal Constitutional Court dealing with Hartz IV

Critics are even claiming the government did not even care a shit about the poor changing rates just to keep the total the same even though child benefits and Hartz-IV are different kettle of fish. Of course you can chip in with the need of saving money. Yet, you can always use this argument to reduce payments: In Schleswig-Holstein politicians want to shorten payments for the blind, because there were “other states who pay less”. Of course it would be possible to reduce the payments to a minimum with this argument.

Back to child benefits: The Federal Constitutional Court is currently dealing with the question if unemployment benefits for children are high enough and calculated correctly. The court has shown a lot of criticism in the first hearing arousing discussions if a child needs only 60–80% of an adult’s living costs.