Germany set to restrict its Freedom of Information Act

Won't this require citizen to provide ID and therefore citizens asking difficult questions could become a target for retaliation?

"SPD will block this" is contradicted by SPD already voting for the identical Berlin version weeks ago.

First phrase in the article: "Shortly before the German parliament's summer recess, lawmakers approved a whole series of reforms." Sounds like "done and dusted" to me. The Bundesrat (the second chamber of the parliament) also approved, er... something, but it's not clear to me if it's just the health measures or also the rest. What's left is for the Bundespräsident to sign it, but that's a formality.

And yes, no idea why the SPD is so on board with this - some measures, like having to provide a medical certificate from the first day of an illness (which in practice means you have to go see a doctor personally on the first day of sickness), are definitely not going to increase the dismal approval ratings of this government. So, for example, if you're prone to migraines, until now you would have simply called in sick for a day, now you have to drag yourself to the doctor, only for them to tell you (after potentially hours of waiting) "oh, you do look very pale and sickly today, you probably do have a migraine, here's the certificate"?!

A country in decay..

Lol, do you seriously think the 'alternative' would be any more progressive when it comes to freedom of information (or government transparency in general) once they'd be in power?

Rumour goes that too many high ranking fraudulent CDU-politicians were exposed with this (Philipp Amthor and Jens Spahn for example).

Recently there was a days long blackout in the middle of winter in Berlin due to a left-extremist attack on power line infrastructure [1]. This was mainly because all those critical infrastructure information is publicly accessible. I can imagine the goal is to prevent such critical information being publicly available in the future.

Also, there was big scandal from then health minister of Germany [2] and the information came out through various media out lets. I can imagine the politicians wants to prevent that happening in the future as well, so the corruption would go undetected (this is just my opinion)

[1]- https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-blackout-how-dangerous-are-left... [2] - https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-german-govt-suffers-defeat-in...

The problem is not to restrict it to German citizens, but removing it for everything which is not a citizen, like civil rights organizations, environment organizations, and everyone else who has a legit interest to check on the governments work.

It's not just foreign nationals that would be barred from issuing requests but non-profit organizations as well. Also, the cap on fees would be eliminated, further increasing the barriers for people wanting to issue requests.

What is the rationale to restrict it to citizens? Do you prefer a more open or more closed society?

How about the us citizen who is a permanent resident in Germany? German family? Business partners?

This is a minor point. It gives the government broad power to reject any request, associations and media outlets are excluded, it costs more and the mandatory REDACTION OF NAMES is undercutting accountability completely.

Yea, I don't give a shit wether only citizen should be able to request data.

It excludes organisations and increases fees. So, if say Amnesty or Greenpeace (two NGOs opposing this act) want to FoI something, they have to get a German citizen to do it for them, possibly at considerable expense - and you bet if they try to compensate them, it'll be "foreign interference" and an excuse for suppression.

Like GDPR, the existence of FoI laws give government agencies a reason to develop systems to quickly and effortlessly give people the access they're entitled to. Given the existence of such systems (analogous to the "data takeout" systems businesses must have for PII), giving access to foreigners as well should be unproblematic. It's supposed to be public information in the first place, roadblocks have no place.

I dont think so, they want to repeat it, security-force should be implemented like in east-Germany, capitalism like in west-Germany and the wall is now in the Ukraine build with dead bodies instead of stone.