I have recently read in my local newspaper “Darmstädter Echo” that in my Bundesland Hessen 50 policemen are going to be trained to fight Internet crimes. 50! Only 6 years after 9/11 – wow!
Now I understand better what I experienced last summer at my local police station in Hessen:
You have to know that I do get a lot of friendly emails and I want to thank all those people from the bottom of my heart; although most of the time I feel like being awarded for saying two and two is four.
On the other hand, there are the unfriendly ones calling me stupid, narrow-minded, naïve, inhumane, warmongering, and so on; my favourite ones in this list being “debile Christian” and “Protestant jelly-fish”. But usually they are not really threatening.
Last summer though I got an email that said: “I will stick my shit into your throat and skin you alive, you American whore.” And the regarding line read “Auschwitz denier”. First I wanted to delete it, but then I took it to the police.
Two months later I got a letter inviting me to the police station. The officer asked me if I knew who had sent the email. And I answered: “Well, no. That is why I gave it to you to find out.” He then told me that they had made two provider requests to find out who had sent the mail, but that these requests had not been successful. Because most providers keep the data for maximum three days. In case I got a similar email in the future, I should immediately take it to the police. Then I asked the – maybe too cheeky - question. What if the email arrives on a Friday afternoon, is anybody at the station to take the necessary steps? No, in that case I should come on Monday morning. And he added that each provider request costs the police 18 Euros.
I am very much looking forward to these 50 new Internet policemen. Maybe my local police station is going to get one, too.
“Kommissare fürs Internet”, Darmstädter Echo, 27. Juli 2007, ap
„Hessen: Internet-Kommissariate kommen“, echo-online, 26.07.2007, dpa:
Der hessische Innenminister Volker Bouffier (CDU) will im kommenden Jahr Polizei und Verfassungsschutz mit zusätzlichen Beamten und besserer Technik stärken. So solle jedes Polizeipräsidium ein Internet-Kommissariat erhalten, erklärte der Minister heute in Wiesbaden. Bisher gibt es solche Spezialisten nur im Landeskriminalamt (LKA). Außerdem sollen 550 Polizeianwärter eingestellt werden. Der Verfassungsschutz erhält zusätzliche Spezialisten für die Anti-Terror-Arbeit. Auf der Einkaufsliste stehen auch Geräte für das neue Gen-Labor des LKA.