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German Prosecutors Think It’s Funny People’s Homes Are Being Raided And Their Devices Seized Because They Said Stuff On The Internet

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German Prosecutors Think It’s Funny People’s Homes Are Being Raided And Their Devices Seized Because They Said Stuff On The Internet
www.techdirt.com /2025/02/18/german-prosecutors-think-its-funny-peoples-homes-are-being-raided-and-their-devices-seized-because-they-said-stuff-on-the-internet/
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German Prosecutors Think It’s Funny People’s Homes Are Being Raided And Their Devices Seized Because They Said Stuff On The Internet
www.techdirt.com /2025/02/18/german-prosecutors-think-its-funny-peoples-homes-are-being-raided-and-their-devices-seized-because-they-said-stuff-on-the-internet/
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16 comments

  • Related: Simply liking a post can be punishable by law in Germany (German source)

    • Pretty fascinating. English translation:

      Just Liking Can Be Punishable

      08/22/2022 by Lars Sobiraj Reading time: 3 min.

      Simply liking other people's posts on Facebook and similar platforms can be punishable under certain conditions, according to the Meiningen Regional Court.

      Whether the like is punishable depends on whether the liked post itself contained criminal content. This emerges from a decision by the Meiningen Regional Court (LG Meiningen, Decision of 08/05/2022, 6 Qs 146/22).

      Background: A Facebook user from Thuringia had liked another user's post. The case concerns the murder of police officers in the Kusel district on January 31, 2022. The author wrote as a title "Not a single second of silence for these creatures."

      The Meiningen public prosecutor's office then obtained a search warrant for the apartment, car, and person who had liked the post. By liking the post, the Facebook user had committed both the defamation of the memory of the deceased under § 189 of the Criminal Code and the rewarding and approval of criminal acts under § 140 of the Criminal Code, according to the application.

      The police hoped to find evidence such as smartphones or PCs to analyze the storage media. They were also allowed to search the suspect's cloud storage.

      After the raid, the accused hired Berlin criminal and media lawyer Ehssan Khazaeli. Khazaeli filed a complaint against the search warrant. He sharply criticized the decision: "By liking a post, it remains clear that it is someone else's post – there can be no talk of 'making it one's own,'" he stated yesterday. One cannot attach one's own intellectual statement to a mere like.

      He also argued that his client had not approved of any crime. While it was tasteless to comment on the murdered police officer's funeral in such a way, Khazaeli does not consider his client's action criminally relevant.

      A constitutional complaint is to be filed against both decisions next month. "This isn't about the individual case, but about the fundamental question of whether merely liking on social media can be punishable," said attorney Ehssan Khazaeli. This approach is not an isolated case. We had previously reported about a search warrant issued because of a like on Twitter.

      However, the Meiningen District Court's view was supported by the Meiningen Regional Court. The original user's post was considered a defamation of the memory of the deceased under § 189 of the Criminal Code, according to the judgment. The judges view the like as an expression of approval of the author's statements on Facebook. By doing so, the searched person publicly showed that they shared the opinion of the person who defamed the funeral of the killed police officers.

      The media would also evaluate particularly public-facing posts based on how many likes they receive. The more attention a posting receives, the greater the likelihood that it will also be covered in the media.

      @macniel@feddit.org What's your feeling on this one? You said "Who do you suppose are the people suffering a 6:00am door-knock?" and then got extremely indirect about answering the question, but it sounds like what you were implying is that they deserve it and the law is doing its job. Do you think this person deserves to be charged for this as well?

      • Do you think this person deserves to be charged for this as well?

        I mean, if a "like" on facebook is interpreted as it is "liking someones post and or comment" and that post or comment dehumanized a dead police officer (or the entire force), then yes, I think its more than justified.

  • Mmmh I don't know if that Tim Cushing has any grasp on what was actually going down. The Andy Grote case though is factually right though, he is indeed 1 Pimmel.

    The comment on " February 18, 2025 at 11:53 am" is full on the money though.

    I’m going to have to step in here….

    I was born and raised in Germany, to a US Army officer and a German lady. At 12 years of age, the family was posted to the US, where Dad retired due to medical problems.

    So I know how Germans think. And yes, it’s been a long time since I physically visited my home country, but I still have several friends and a bit of family there. (And thanks to Al Gore, I now have an internet to keep up with them.) But here’s the crux of what’s going on, and it slides a bit sideways toward Elmo, as you’ll see. Bear with me, it gets a bit long here.

    In short, the so-called ‘Alt-Right’ has been growing for the last three decades, and perhaps a bit longer. Ever since Trump 1.0, Europe, and Germany in particular, has been getting agitated from with by the same assholes as show up here – mean-spirited and highly dysfunctional assholes masquerading as adults, who want nothing more than for society to let them act like reprehensible assholes. (These are the very people that Elmo can manipulate with ease.)

    So now let’s dig a bit behind the 2018 law, shall we? Without going to the internet, what would you guess is the average of the average lawmaker in Germany? Time’s up, here’s the answer: A majority of them are direct 1st or 2nd generation descendants of survivors of World War II. They have been inculcated since birth to know that the war took place, that millions of loved ones were killed, and that in the end, it was all pointless.

    That’s the reasoning behind such laws, now lets look at the so-called ‘victim’s of the Lower Saxony “goose-steppers”, to paraphrase the intent of both this article and the 60 minutes interview.

    Who do you suppose are the people suffering a 6:00am door-knock? Hint: it ain’t the adult children and grandchildren of those survivors I mentioned above. They’re the great-grandkids, and I’d take a bet that more than a few of them were not born in Germany, they’re either 1st or 2nd generation immigrants or refugees from somewhere outside of the EU.

    These are the impressionable ones that, upon learning a different language, they undoubtedly also learned some of the local political beliefs from various sources, both formal and informal.

    Yes, there are cross-overs in both age groups, lawmakers and lawbreakers alike. But this is the general outlook.

    tl;dr:

    The last bet you’ll ever want to place is betting that the general populace of Germany wants another Hitler. They remember what the US did to them, and they certainly know what the US is capable of doing now. And while Trump 2.0 will likely not say anything about Germany’s laws being overbearing, you can bet that the world as a whole will keep a focused eye on what’s happening on this front.

    Also, techdirt? Where every anonymous commentator is marked as a coward? I don't think its a credible "news" portal.

16 comments