8. Erosion of Civil Rights in a Digital Society—Maintaining the Democratic Society

In a situation of ever-increasing connectivity worldwide, not a week passes by in which German politicians don’t share their ideas to make “evil” cyberspace safer, better or less complicated. At first, one might think: That is a positive thing, because politicians care about the people and digitization. On the one hand, this is true. The intent of most politicians is—one can optimistically assume—to help and protect people. But, along with the constantly accelerating digital transformation of peoples’ lives, some politicians fall into blind and dangerous actions. Blind, because they forget to reflect the civil rights guaranteed by the country’s constitution. Dangerous, because these actions have the power to undermine a free and democratic society and may lead into an irreversible age of connectivity causing “transparent citizens”, a process which might remain largely unnoticed. The metaphor of “transparent citizens” stands for the negative perception of a complete surveillance of humans and their behavior by a supervising state.