> Privacy is very important to Germans. They have learnt from experience that it is very dangerous to centralize identifying information within the hands of a single ruling entity.
Never mind that this is very close to Godwining the discussion: There is a world and then some of difference to telling a private company your real name and being physically forced to detail the ethnicity of your entire family to the government.
It's also rampant survivor-bias (although the name of that bias is awfully inappropriate in this context). Plenty of countries did (and still do) plenty of registration of citizen's private data without subsequently mass murdering them.
The comment you replied to was certainly not a reference to Nazi Germany at all. Germans understand that a privacy-related reference to german history is usually a reference to the former state of East Germany which was famous for massive surveillance.
Never mind that this is very close to Godwining the discussion: There is a world and then some of difference to telling a private company your real name and being physically forced to detail the ethnicity of your entire family to the government.
It's also rampant survivor-bias (although the name of that bias is awfully inappropriate in this context). Plenty of countries did (and still do) plenty of registration of citizen's private data without subsequently mass murdering them.