Coming Soon – There is a German word that can end a conversation before it starts: Datenschutz. It translates as “data protection”, but in Germany it is less a legal term than a reflex. People tape over their webcams and refuse to give a phone number just to sign up for something. In 2010, more than 244,000 households asked Google to blur their homes on Street View.

Where does this instinct come from? How much of it goes back to the Gestapo and Stasi files, and how much to the census protests of the 1980s? Why did Germany’s highest civil court rule in 2022 that Facebook could not force some users to use their real names? How does Datenschutz show up in daily life, from doorbells to Google Maps reviews? And what happens when a country this protective of its data lives on an internet built on collecting it?

 

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