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"Imprint" - "Declaration regarding Data Protection" - Gessler's Hat in Neuland

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-» Deutsche Version

"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."

George Orwell, 1984

On current occasion:

Please note the information regarding "data protection" below, before you continue to use this web site or send me any kind of data.
Thank you.

If the legal preconditions are met in your country or where you are right now, you can reach me at the following addresses:

Dr. med. Jörg-Michael Sigle

Talmattstrasse 32
CH-4125 Riehen

Mobile (CH) +41-76-276-8694

My current e-mail-adress is:
joerg.sigle_REPLACE_THIS_WITH_AT_jsigle.com

(Protection from automatically generated advertisements: Please replace the text _REPLACE_THIS_WITH_AT_ in my e-mail address with the usual sign for "AT".)

My public key with the ID 089DCAF35F15062A is provided on various public key servers.

Currently, URLs of my personal Homepage in the WWW are:
http://www.jsigle.com
http://www.jsigle.de
http://www.sigle.info

Quality-of-Life-Recorder related pages are available directly at:
http://www.ql-recorder.com
http://www.anyquest.de

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From the liberated information society to the installment of Gessler's Hats in "Neuland":
In memory of the Enlightenment, responsible citizens, true democracy, liberty, equality, brotherliness, peace etc.

Abschnitte:   Preliminary remarks    Previously assigned VAT-ID and previously responsible supervising authority    Disclaimers and exclusion of liability    Declaration regarding data protection    More important things    Epilogue    Epilation (by tearing one's hair)    The End

Preliminary remarks

All of the following information is provided according to the best of my knowledge in an attempt to respect the interests of all affected parties.

If you should notice any errors or omissions, please do not hesitate to give me a quick notice which I will be happy to accept and follow up.

In Switzerland, the legal foundation for my offerings is provided by the respectively applicable laws, and there are no special requirements for the operation of a web site. A declaration regarding data protection is only recommended, but not mandatory.

As I currently live and work in Switzerland, this rule has priority, and all information or offerings that exceed requirements by Swiss law are given or made without acknowledging any legal obligation.

For the same reason, I will not name any possibly applicable legal foundations as possibly requested by the EU GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) or the German BDSV (Bundesdatenschutzverodnung), especially as these might change depending upon the country of the actual user. Instead I merely mention globally, that various paragraphs from the EU GDPR or the BDSV or other national laws for data protection, and other national laws from various areas (Commerce, Obligations, Consumer Protection, Art, Freedom of Speech,...) might be assumed applicable from their own point of view - but I also point out several reservations or restrictions as described below.

Potential users from the EU or other countries can ask their local authorities for data protection or chambers of commerce for the actual legislation that might be termed applicable by their original legitimate governments or by the bodies to whom government tasks have been outsourced.

Information fulfilling requirements of German legislation after German politicians discovered the WWW:

I have lived and worked in Switzerland for several years. That notwithstanding:

Because regulations applicable to my pursuit of any of these activities are likely to change over time, please refer to the mentioned supervising authorities if you wish to receive detailed information about the applicable regulations.

Information provided as a response to certain other texts...

...which are considered as "law" by various people and institutions - even though their legitimation appears to be questionable at least - because a large proportion of legislation has been moved from the individual states in Europe into the hands of a commission, and thereby been removed from the citizens' control and legitimation even further than it had alredy been the case before in any of the representative "democracies" [...]:

Disclaimers and exclusion of liability
"Declaration regarding data protection"

In my personal opinion, the following information is much more relevant - and its communication should be requested by law much more urgently:

Epilogue

In case the above information should not suffice to protect me from allegations that I might violate any acutally or supposedly applicable rules - I want to point out:

First, the length and the wording of several texts - including the "General Data Protection Regulation" (GDPR) of the EU - are very obviously beyond anything that could be read, comprehended, and - with respect to several of its requirements - implemented by an individual person.

This point is supported by the fact that repeatedly, experts and politicians have decleared and discussed the inconsistency and impracticality of the rules laid out by this "law" - and that many consultants refuse to guarantee for legal security as a consequence of their consultation - and that politicians as well as experts in the field say that clarification will have to be achieved by court rulings over the coming years - while Austria started out by passing a law that is intended to limit the possible damage caused by the GDPR.

In the original text of the GDPR, the first verb of the first sentence appears after 31 pages of text (after ca. 100 pages in another PDF, possibly a draft). This should exceed the capabilities of most readers - and this feature alone makes this text completely unsuitable as a law. Readability is a prerequisite of comprehensibility, and comprehensibility is a prerequisite for clarity of norms. Some constraints of applicability (e.g. "more than 250 employees", "only occasionally") are immediately rendered pointless by the fact that almost every business contact will lead to the collection of a name or an e-mail address - and these are explicitly termed "Personal data". Consequently, every one man shop and every club will process personal data "regularly", and not merely "occasionally" - and thereby be required to implement the full monty set out by the GDPR. The entitlement to obtain information about any stored information also causes a variety of questions regarding its feasibility (what, if a non-customer requests disclosure of personal data stored about him - whereby he basically advances to a business contact - but the question came in via e-mail, the answer would still require "legitimation", and consequently verification whether some e-mail address belongs - or has ever belonged - to a certain person?!) - Finally, this legislation requests its applicability effectively for the whole world - etc. pp.

Legal security is definitely NOT a product of such "laws".

 

Other possibly applicable laws from the EU or Germany give a similar impression:

I recall the responsible ministery in Germany providing an example for some newly required declaration of customer rights - which turned out to be insufficient and not protect its users from cost intensive calls to order by legal firms. - I recall the - mildly put - crazy idea that the wording "in Textform" (in text form, or by written down words, normally used in contrast to orally) should only be fulfilled by anything printed onto paper, or written in a printable e-mail - but not by anything written in an equally printable web site. - I recall repeated attempts to free the providers of network access from responsibility for content - and hardly effective limitations of costs of legal calls for copyright infringements - repeated legislation requesting general data preservation by providers in ways repeatedly termed unconstitutional by the Bundesverfassungsgericht - the infamous "stop sign" campaign by "Zensursula" - the completely absurd announcement that "Internet" be "Broadcasting", designed to secure the cash influx from unreasonably high "brodcast fees" in the future as well as to enable control over Internet content and its publishers by adopting access restrictions, licensing and authorities from the old broadcasting setting, even though any technical reasons that would once have justified all this, were now absent. - I recall the "cyber security" and "cyber rapid deployment force" of the Bundeswehr - the "Gesundheitskarte", "De-Mail" and the "e-Perso" (whoever wants a translation, please look it up in your favourite search engine...) - and whatever else of unbelievable things there were.

I consider this erratic activity, with repeatedly broken and unconstitutional laws, participation in a number of wars around the world, and other blatant deficiencies in very central parts of the political system, to be a direct consequence of a lack of true democracy: The complete absence (!) of any true control, of any true accountability, results in political measures which are oviously not motivated by competence and striving to fulfill the true needs of the people. Instead, I'm astonished either by the truly unbelievable success of some lobbyists - or, in the other extreme, by what obviously crazy ideas are actually pursued again and again - and I cannot decide whether this is simply caused by populism, or by an unfortunate combination of profound ignorance with the never ending need for publicity.

Moreover, the resulting court rulings reveal some tendency favouring nitpicking or wiredrawn interpretations over common sense and over the language understood by normal human beings.

All this has already caused my emigration from Germany to Switzerland. By means of the GDPR, however, the lawmakers from Germany and the EU - with their doubtful legitimation and poor craftsmanship - come after me again.

Consequently, I want to ask: Is it allowable at all, that - first - some random representatives of the people relocate the process of legislation to outside of their country, and thereby further away from any possibility of their people controlling it? And is it allowable at all, that any "commission", that was created out of thin air and some economy association that had been very suitably tailored for such purposes, takes over more and more of the original government functions from the countries - then passes laws without any effective control - and then pronounces these laws to be applicable world wide (!) for anybody offering a web site or a service? - And sets out punishments which go far beyond any exclusion from access to their own market - punishments, which could very easily completely destroy even middle sized enterprises? Punishments, which leave smaller businesses, individuals, or clubs in every single case in a situation where they can absolutely not predict the consequences - which may be located anywhere between the impact of a traffic ticket and complete loss of one's livelihood ("up to 20 Mio. EUR or 4% of gross annual turnover, whatever may be higher")? - And all this effectively without a working legal recourse, as the costs (both money, time, energy, consequences) of a related lawsuit can hardly be estimated, and could probably not be born by small entities or individual persons anyway.

Consequently, I think that these "rules" came together in the most questionable and undemocratic way, they were presented in miserable quality with regard to their form and content, and any claim of legitimacy should already be null and void, as basic requirements for legislation are obviously not met (missing legitimation, missing readability, missing clarity of norms, completely unpredictable punishments appearing inadequately high, impracticality and missing feasibility, overwhelming number of rules etc.).

Notwithstanding these problems, I do neither want to shut down my web site or my professional work - nor simply ignore the deficiencies laid out and obtain some alibi security by simply adding some 40 page standard text. That would not be read by any normal visitor anyway - which may apply to these thoughts just as well, but at least they promote a true concern in an original text.

Instead, I attempt to lay out the most important points regarding data protection in truly understandable language - but also point out the above deficiencies and limitations.

 

Epilation (by tearing one's hair - the only thing to do after the preceding Epilogue)

A long time ago, some people have written a romantic, slightly out-of-this-world booklet. It says:

        Artikel 20
        (1) Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland ist ein demokratischer und sozialer Bundesstaat.
        (2) Alle Staatsgewalt geht vom Volke aus.
        Sie wird vom Volke in Wahlen und Abstimmungen
        und durch besondere Organe der Gesetzgebung,
        der vollziehenden Gewalt und der Rechtsprechung ausgeübt.

        Artikel 20
        (1) The Federal Republic of Germany is a democratic and social federal state.
        (2) All governmental power originates from the people.
        It is executed by the people through elections and votes
        and through special organs of legislation,
        of the executive and of jurisdiction.

Nowadays, very different people write texts like this one:

        THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION,

        Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union [...],
        Having regard to the proposal from the European Commission,
        After transmission of the draft legislative act to the national parliaments,
        Having regard to the opinion of the European Economic and Social Commitee,
        Having regard to the opinion of the Committee of the Regions,
        Acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure,
        whereas:

        
        [ca. 31 pages of text with ca. 173 paragraphs]
        
        HAVE ADOPTED THIS REGULATION:
        
        [ca. 57 pages of text]

        (Capitalization as in the original source.)

Apparently, the passage regarding the god-given privileges of the souvereign has recently been left out - but even then, this text of the GDPR has very obviously originated from a completely different star than the text of Art. 20 GG above.

It is especially clear that all governmental power now flows exactly in the opposite direction of what the Grundgesetz had once defined:

        It does not originate in the people any more - but in a proposal from the "European Commission".

        And even the national parlaments do merely get some "transmission of the draft legislative acts" at some point in time.

This "European Commission" also combines the functions of "executive" und "legislative" - as it has the sole "initiative right" in the EU-"legislative" process. Which means that without its will, or against its will, there will be absolutely no new "EU-law" at all - and if desired, this executive can draft their own laws exactly to their own needs. If need be, then by repeated attempts - or in combination with laws the parliament definitely wants to have - as has already happened - or as last-minute-addendums in some unimportant looking paragraph. Ultimately, and in some way, the "acceptance" by the "parliament" will be achieved, and should nothing else work, the election rules might be changed.

The members of this "Commission" however, are not designated by the people. But by national governments. - And at least in Germany, the national government is not designated by the people either - but by the parliament - but only formally, because actually, the "creation of political will" originates alltogether in the political parties (including the nomination of all candidates with real chances to get elected into parliament, or to become a minister, prime minister, chancellor, president, or whatever else).

But even this is merely formally true - because in reality, all this takes place in small inner circles of leaders within the parties - quite regularly the same persons who also belong to the actual governments - and thereby the same people, who have created the institutions and staffing modalities in the EU in such a way, that they can now conveniently man the single body according to their very own preferences, which has executive AND legislative power accross all the EU.

Therefore, in the EU, all governmental power does now truly originate exactly at the point - which has the greatest distance anywhere in Europe from any possible influence of all the ordinary people.

And as a result of such a reversal of the setup defined by the Grundgesetz into its opposite - and consequently, of the planned democracy into an actually living oligarchy, where the last occuring exchange takes place into executive or supervisory boards of large companies - these modern European oligarchs write extremely long texts of "law", including endless details to regulate chit-chat, and are neither free of contradictions, nor can be implemented in a technically consistent way. And just today, they shall require anybody who offers any service anywhere in the world, to give direction to their customers or addressees at every first contact with regard to their "personal data rights". Which is quite curios already if you know, that in Germany, legal counselling by laypersons has normally been prohibited for decades [...]

Very obviously, somebody did not sufficiently heed the following warning when designing the EU - or they used it straightforwardly as their blueprint:

        Alle Staatsgewalt geht vom Volke aus.
        Und kommt nie wieder zurück.

        All governmental power originates from the people.
        And never ever returns.

Nothing could fit better to describe the way from the promise in the German Grundgesetz to the reality in German governments and finally in the EU.

The creation of this completely new Empire out of nothing - or ITS occupation, if you think the original creators of the idea should really have had good motives - with a completely free design of its institutions and relations, and finally complete control over all visible material values and laws almost everywhere in Europe - with an even larger distance of its legislative and executive from any democratic control by any European people than before - may very well be seen as the ABSOLUTELY LARGEST coup in recent world history.

The new entity was also equipped with little modesty: Two cities to be used for "Parliament" (doubling the requireing ressources, needing regular moves - but without double benefit). Add in double "compensation", subject to 8% to 45% "community tax" only - which means the same as "tax free" would at home. [...] [...]

And more recently: The ESM - endowed with several hundred billion EUR of money that suddenly flew to it. Free from all responsibilities, taxes, duties. All decisions secret, immunity for all actions. No personal liability or responsibility at all, no competition, no contact with any free or regulated market or any other objective measure of success. No real product! And nevertheless very comfortable salaries - as far as they become known at all - between 64.000 and 324.000 EUR - subject only to an "internal tax at the ESM" - and tax-exempt in their home countries. And neat titles on top of that: "Gouverneurs' council", "Directorate". Well, this image resembles an (absolute!) state much better than a public authority.

The design comes, of all people, from the most commendable of all ministers of finance. Who was constantly modest and the ideal example in correctness (keywords: doping, political party donations...), and therefore became the superior of all those tax-and-revenue offices, who create the exact opposite for 60 million Germans, of what he creates for himself. - To dare sketching such a feat: Wow. - Out of this very position: Wow again! - But to really get that thing: Only WOW WOW WOW!

That such things fail to provoke an outcry (uproar, general strike, ...) of Joe Public every day, shows the success of the original strategy of blunting of his senses by immodesty from day one - sweetened by chances to get an occasional "gifted" InterRail ticket or a small or large packet of monetary aids.

That however the same club, who invents such hundred-billion-Euro-constructs as self-service shops or personal playgrounds, requires all working people in Europe to inform their customers, that they now have the right to have their personal data deleted, and that name and e-mail address already belong to personal data - can only be perceived as satire.

To the credit of those who reign and benefit in these ways, one must concede, that their method can only work for, and is completely dependant upon, a wealth of "lawyers" and "competitors", who all stand ready to deploy it for their own good, and to the disadvantage of their fellow human beings:

No matter whether they fight for EU-"money" (which they paid themselves beforehand, multiple times, as taxes) - or use up their creativity to forge new phantastic interpretations from legal texts in the courts - or whether they pay rather expensive consultants to write data-sub-processing-agreements or certificates, rather than for working airport technology: In any case, none of those affected will remain sufficiently quiet after such a law has been tossed into the arena, to recognize, which Valient Little Tailor is really just throwing stones from high in the trees down onto the noses of both sleeping giants. And even one who still might understand, can make no use of that knowledge - when at the first opportunity, his next "competitor" or simply a random "lawyer" will immediately come over, to smack him their newly delivered club right across his head - for the sake of their own profit.

But that's just how they work, these famous "Western values" - and Machiavellis master apprentices.

.
.
.

To make it clear especially to the Germans among the betrayed Europeans, how far away you are from a true democracy: Once more regarding Art. 20 GG (2):

All power in the state originates from the people. It is executed by the people in elections and votes...

Well: How often in all of your life have you, personally, been able to participate in such a popular vote - in your hometown, your district, your Bundesland (State), or the Bundesrepublik (Federal State), or the EU? And how often was this popular vote - just to make sure - still labeled "non binding" from the start? And how many questions that directly affected you, where decided in the same time without your participation? And how often have you been denied a popular vote, even when all or many other countries in the EU got one?! - And that occured with questions of which importance? - And how often - especially regarding your relation to official institutions - have you been better off or worse after such decisions than before?

Do you remember? Whereas the Grundgesetz expressly demands the participation of the people through votes - in real life you have been expressly excluded even when the two most important authorities of your state were outsourced - and thereby withdrawn from the last tiny bit of control by the people, and even by the national parliament: Namely the one institution, which determines the amount of money in circulation and thereby its value (and the value of your work, and your assets) - and the one institution, which makes the laws.

And if you should really, e.g. in Baden-Württemberg, have had the opportunity to participate in a popular vote for a whopping one to four times in a human's lifetime - of which three discussed the merger of the two parts of the state, some after years of fighting in courts, and EXACTLY ONE SINGLE PLEBISCITE IN 72 YEARS!!! (AND COUNTING) asked your opinion regarding a factual issue - and even that happened only, after One had his eyes shot out because he wanted to exercise his rights as a citizen - shot out by the "Friends and Helpers" of a prime minister ("Freunde und Helfer" - of the normal citizen - used to be a friendly term once applicable to the police in Germany) - a prime minister, who was so uncannily democratic that he, should the need arise, might possibly handle a deal "under friends" worth several billions, and to the disadvantage of the state, neatly and quietly past parliament... - AND, after taking the additional precaution of declaring this so called "plebiscite" as "non-binding" (!) - Well, my dear, thereby especially democracy-blessed Fellow-Baden-Württembergers: When have you personally been presented the last question for a popular vote in simple, non-misleading language, that really hit the core of the issue, and where arguments for either option were explained in clear, comprehensive, thruthful depiction, and you did not have to feel a few years later that you had been completely betrayed?

Now, do you think it is especially democratic, if you first are not asked anything of relevance at all for 66 years - and then, when it finally happens just once - in the one and only "non-binding" (!) popular vote regarding a factual issue that you ever experienced - you merely got ... the wool pulled over your eyes?

What a relieve, that now - instead of wasting any energy to correct such little problems, especially as they have turned out very comfortable for the governing ones over the last 72 years - someone finally ensures, that all professionals, self-employed, small businesses, and clubs will regularly tell you about your rights regarding disclosure and revocation of consent in data protection. - All this, while "the state", at the same time, requires you to provide biometric photos for id cards, and your fingerprints, and installs universal access to all id card data including your fingerprint and picture, cameras with automatic face recognition and wide area tracking, deploys license plate recognition and tracking, requests that cars can be localized and remotely controlled at any time, orders regular storage of data from your communication at providers even without any accusation or any judge being asked, deploys mass mobile phone localization e.g. to follow up (!) the participation in demonstrations, orders the continuous tapping and forwarding of half or all of the Internet traffic towards the NSA, the development and deployment of the "Bundes-Trojaner" (=government issued malware), has unlimited authorities granted by the new bavarien police law, produces spontaneously inflammable inmates where needed, or people who unhappily stumble with their faces right into the walls while in police custody, or a student who was accidentally shot by 12 bullets from behind, or a psychiatric patient who was shot for hopping into a fountain, or an obvious stroke patient that was rather tested for drug abuse than correctly treated for 8 hours, or new legislation requiring a crucifix in every state office in Bavaria - alltogether things that apparently have been illegal or infamous all too long. All that while the credibility of most politicians extends from the floor almost up to the feet - and is exactly matched by the culture seen in political discussions.

Yahoo, on the other hand, implements advertising opt-out by letting you flip 318 switches - one per ad-partner, and Google presents the settings to disable their core business in a similar way - neither simple, nor stable, nor completely usable without an account. Microsoft lets you grant them an all-in right to access any file under Windows 10 as well as the right to display advertisements or to perform up- or down- or crossgrades at any time - and in the course of such upgrades, resets privacy settings in various places - naturally only to fight off any threats, the same motivation that is probably behind the ads on their "lock-screen". - And Facebook just so collects the data from WhatsApp, that were meant to never leave that company. And WhatsApp collects the phone numbers and names of all contacts from the mobile phones - which also reveal who has relations to whom - even if most of them would not use WhatsApp at all. - All of that, just because it's really simple and everything is so nice and colourful around here.

And yet, the largest collectors and dealers of personal data probably remain: The residents' registration office, the tax and revenue office, the social security funds (keywords: "broadcast fee", "church tax", "allowable expenses", "Gesundheits"-Karte [=Health insurance membership card with some added data collection coup]) - and the NSA and the BND - but the happy data-collecting-, eavesdropping-, and sharing-party of all institutions with some affiliation to the government is naturally excluded from the protection offered by laws like the GDPR.

It's really handy, isn't it, when you can simply make your own laws just to your liking - without any disturbance by the people affected... :-)

 

The End

"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."

George Orwell, 1984

This quotation stands at both the top and at the bottom of this page. Please note my greetings to the Gessler's Hat that have been inserted in between, and have a very careful look at my additions regarding the difference between the modalities of data protection ordered for normal people vs. demonstrated by governments from this point of view.

And then, really try to find out (or ask "Your elected representative"), whether you might have any entitlement to a fix or free replacement from any side - and how you might be able to enact the respective claims.

But mind you - this applies not merely to the EU GDPR - but much more importantly to one invaluable thing, that has hitherto been comprehensively and by multiple steps "outsourced" and cheaply sold - this is your fake "democracy".

Good luck with any attempt to get the real thing instead - I hope you will succeed!

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Woopie This Web page was prepared by myself,
and so were all included graphic elements.
© 1996-2022 Jörg-Michael Sigle

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