App Detects Neo-Nazis Using Their Music 392
Daniel_Stuckey writes "German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that the country's interior ministers will meet this week to discuss use of an app developed by local police in Saxony that has attracted the unofficial name of 'Nazi Shazam.' Just like Shazam works out what song you're hearing from just a few bars, the system picks up audio fingerprints of neo-Nazi rock so police can intervene when it's being played. The whole situation sounds pretty insane to an outsider, but apparently far-right music is a big problem in Germany, where it's considered a 'gateway drug' into the neo-Nazi scene. The Guardian reported that in 2004, far-right groups even tried to recruit young members by handing out CD compilations in schools. That sort of action is illegal in Germany, where neo-Nazi groups are outlawed and the Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Minors is tasked with examining and indexing media — including films, games, music, and websites — that may be harmful to young people."
Nazis (Score:0, Informative)
Nazi's are left wing not right wing. Just like the KKK which was introduced at a Democratic convention. They would enjoy a gun free utopia that they could wreak!
Re:Far Right? (Score:2, Informative)
Political labels don't mean the same thing in Europe, amongst the American citizenry and the American Media. In particular, the American media routinely call middle-of-the-road, mainstream political views, such as wanting to reduce govt spending, "far right", "right wing", "religious extremist" or "extremist". The American media also likes to call unprincipled or left wing politicians "moderates". The American media almost never even uses the label "left wing" and observing the American media call any leftist an "extremist" is about as common as duck teeth. Hell, Obama's buddy Bill Ayers set off bombs for the express purpose of trying to overthrow the US govt. Have the media ever called Ayers an extremist?
One of the biggest problems in translating political labels between Europe and America is that there is no equivalent in European politics for someone who supports deliberately limiting the power of a central govt, what we in America call an "originalist" or a "constitutionalist". In Europe, "right wing" and "left wing" are both labels for people who support very powerful central govt. Maybe someone would say that Europeans who call for limiting govt power are "liberal", but in American politics, "liberal" means socialist or progressive. I don't know what "libertarian" means to a European. In the US, "libertarian" is frequently used to label libertines.
Re:Freedom of thought (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who's been involved with universities for a while: you cannot get arrested by campus police for trespassing on most campuses. Public universities are public property, and most places in most buildings are open to the public. (Of course, if you wander into a professor's lab without his permission, you're likely to get in trouble.) At the University of Arizona where I got my doctorate, homeless people would regularly come to the library to use the computers for internet access.
Many private universities incorporate substantial tracts of public land (they consist of buildings on public streets), or are on private land but are open campuses. Only a few campuses are truly closed campuses where visitors are not welcome; those are no different than any other private land. So I don't know quite what you mean.
Re:Freedom of thought (Score:2, Informative)
The National Socialism party was left wing.
No. It wasn't. It really wasn't. Don't take my word for it:
Nazism, or National Socialism in full (German: Nationalsozialismus), is the ideology and practice associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party and state as well as other related far-right groups. Usually characterised as a form of fascism that incorporates biological racism and antisemitism, Nazism originally developed from the influences of pan-Germanism, the Völkisch German nationalist movement and the anti-communist Freikorps paramilitary culture in post-First World War Germany, which many Germans felt had been left humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles. Prior to the emergence of the Nazi Party, other right-wing figures had argued for a nationalist recasting of “socialism”, as a reactionary alternative to both internationalist Marxist socialism and free market capitalism.
source [wikipedia.org], emphasis mine.
You're welcome to disagree, of course -- if you're a complete idiot.