Tuesday, August 6, 2013

What makes a German a German?

Our friends at the German "foreign" spy service supplied to the NSA the famous 500 million records the kid told us about.

German citizens are being told that the data are cleaned up so that no personally identifying data of Germans are handed over for eternal storage, which we define as anything between three days and eternity.

The nagging question, of course, would be exactly what is being "cleaned" and what are the error rates?

Reassuringly, if your email provider domain ends with .de, your data are not handed over, the German press reported.

The K-Landnews TheEditor, the he or she or it with the steel trap mind, went:  cool, so a terrorist with a .de address is safe, and the German teen who signs up for Facebook is not?

As we reported earlier, the K-Landnews had to take drastic workplace safety measures after the violent bouts of laughter threw us off the cheap office chairs which grace our high-tech hangout.

The pressing question to define who constitutes a "German" in the eyes of the new semi-feudal lords exacerbated the safety issues when TheEditor asked Google search 'define German' and received

ger·man  

/ˈjərmən/
Adjective
(of a sibling) Having the same parents: "my brothers-german".

Crap. Germaine, but still crap.

After much laughter, we made our own definition: hard drinking, fast driving, export oriented, and completely helpless central Europeans of German descent or holders of German passports.

Hm. Crap. Germaine, but still crap.

The futile quest to define Germans for spies had the potential to disrupt the harmony in our newsroom but we were saved by the trusted British!

There is another row with Spain about Gibraltar! Thank you, thank you!

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