The creeping access to the private: The progressive loss of freedom of citizens

If you honestly ask yourself how much protected privacy is left in your own home, you will quickly come across an uncomfortable truth. The supposedly safe apartment is more and more like a transparent room in which state specifications, digital recording and permanent assessment are imperceptibly spreading. What used to be considered an untouchable core of personal freedom is becoming todaytacitly on the field of experimentation for always new interventions. The state no longer acts as a reserved guarantor of rights, but as a suspicious observer who combs through every area of life according to deviations from the norm. In this way, freedom becomes a controlled relationship piece by piece, in which the citizen is only allowed to do what is not expressly objected to.

From citizen to taught subject

Instead of acting as a servant of the people, the state has turned into a self-righteous overseer who treats his citizens like unreliable students. Every everyday action is morally charged and politically evaluated, as if the behavior of people had to be pushed in the right direction by constant steering. Heating, shopping, living, mobility, leisure -Everywhere, regulations, prohibitions and duties are penetrating into areas that were once reserved for personal decision-making. This rage of the rules is packed with melodious justifications so that anyone who resists against it is immediately considered unsolidar or unreasonable. A state that should trust, becomes a system that is of deep distrust of its ownlet citizens guide.

The incapacitated everyday life

This incapacity is particularly evident in the private life. Under buzzwords such as safety, health or consumer protection, an administrative logic has emerged that treats adults like insane children. What you consume, how to spend your free time, what offers you use is regulated, commented on and evaluated more and more closely. Instead of spaceBeing responsible for personal responsibility is shaped according to pedagogical ideas until only an official ideal remains. The individual learns to no longer ask himself what he wants himself, but only what is allowed, desirable or expected. Freedom shrinks to the role of a residual item, which in case of doubt is sacrificed to the next regulatory attack.

The transparent man as an administrative object

Once a deterrent idea of the transparent citizen has turned into a sober administrative routine. Income, wealth, consumer behavior, living situation, health data, digital traces – all of this is collected, networked and poured into profiles. Man is sorted, categorized and classified as a data collection, as if he were a case in a file instead of afree individual. While maximum disclosure is required of citizens, government processes and responsibilities remain in the shade. The asymmetry is brutal: Total transparency below, dense walls of fog at the top. Anyone who moves in this system does not have the feeling of being supported by a service provider, but of being measured by an authority that is suspicious at all timescorrected.

The facade of digital modernity

On the outside, all of this presents itself as a modern, digital administration that supposedly makes everyday life easier. In practice, however, people experience an absurd spectacle of overloaded portals, incomprehensible forms and technical hurdles. What is touted as progress turns out to be a bureaucratic maze that eats up time, nerves and trust. While simpleServices hardly function reliably, and the networking of data stocks is growing ever closer. The official benefit remains meager, while covert access to information is constantly being expanded. This gives the impression that digitization serves people less than for administration, which is getting deeper insights into their lives.

Invisible profiles, visible consequences

The closer the data sources are connected, the more complete the invisible profiles that are created over every citizen. An image is formed from tax files, registration registers, sick data, usage statistics and electronic identifiers that go far beyond what was ever conceivable in the past. Man is considered a risk, cost factor or chancellery case, not asSovereign subject with a claim to withdrawal and secrets. Decisions on funding, controls or suspicious moments can be based on the basis that the person concerned neither knows nor can understand. The individual loses not only influence on the interpretation of his person, but also the opportunity to effectively evade unjust classifications.

From service promise to gang structure

The politically responsible people have perverted the potential of digitization by using it primarily for monitoring and control. Where there was once talk of simplification, closeness to the citizens and transparency, there are additional duties, proof orgies and access barriers today. New identification marks, ever more detailed reporting obligations and technical compulsory connections are expandingState access to everyday life down to the smallest details. The citizen does not experience the administration as a partner, but as a control body, which always demands more than it is willing to do itself. The ideal of a lean, serving administration has become a cumbersome control structure that harass people instead of exertioning them.

The creeping campaign for cash

How arrogant this course has become is particularly evident in dealing with cash. Officially, it’s about combating crime and illegal business, but practically every cash paid amount is overridden with a touch of suspicion. Cash is pushed back, more limited, more awkward, while digital payment methods are aggressively promoted or actually enforced. anyPayment leaves a trace, every small output ends up in data sets, every spontaneity is logged. With the backing of cash, one of the last ways to deprive the economic action of mass illumination disappears. The citizen not only loses a means of payment, but a piece of lived anonymity.

The reversal of fundamental legal principles

The formula that who has nothing to hide is nothing to fear, is nothing more than an attack on the foundation of a liberal order. Instead of starting the presumption of innocence, this thinking treats every person as a potentially suspect who is supposed to permanently demonstrate his harmlessness. Privacy is no longer understood as justice, but as suspectsrequirement to be carefully examined. If you draw boundaries, if you don’t want to reveal everything, who evades control, you grow into a problem in this climate. In this way, a society is formed in which open self-exposure is made into a norm and restraint is a signal for supposed guilt.

The moral club as a tool of rule

This reduction in freedom is accompanied by a moral narrative that devalues any criticism instead of taking it seriously. Those who defend their rights, who demands privacy or denounce state encroachment are often portrayed as unsolidarity, unfashionable or selfish. Instead of factual discussion, rhetoric dominates that morally labels dissenters andurging out of the accepted discourse. In this way, the public space for real debates is getting narrower, while formal participation is further conjured up. The result is an inner adaptation: Many people prefer to remain silent than to be exposed to the risk of being pilloried.

The slow collapse of freedom

This creates an overall picture that is more frightening than it seems at first glance. The loss of freedom does not happen through an open coup, but through a series of supposedly reasonable, well-founded individual measures. Each may seem small for itself, but together they result in a massive intervention in self-determination, privacy and personal responsibility.The citizen is downgraded from the creative subject to the managed object, which at best works without interference and is sanctioned in the worst case. Anyone who accepts this development as inevitable tacitly accepts the end of a real free culture. And if you only wake up when the cage is visible, you will find that the bars have beenwere previously closed.