zlacker

would record ethnicity

*religious affiliation

It makes sense that ethnicity would have been recorded as well, but FAFAIK the Germans mostly used the data on religious identity (i.e. which persons were a member of which church community).

>>tremon+(OP)
And that makes what difference exactly...?

>>_a_a_a+nc
They’re still doing it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax#Germany

>>civili+al
And this is a way you contribute some of your taxes to your religious affiliation

>>tremon+(OP)
The point still stands; any kind of private information like ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexuality - NONE of those are relevant to a government, and ANY of those can be used to identify and persecute people if there is a regime or law change aimed at any of those categories.

Tangentially related, it's why things like period trackers are dangerous too; the US has had a spate of anti-abortion laws, the data from those apps (if used) can be used to detect pregnancies and whether they have stopped prematurely. For example.

>>Cthulh+T31
My reply wasn't meant to refute the parent's point. I wanted to clarify because in today's society ethnicity is a much more contentious data point than religion. Given the prevalence of race-related issues in the media it makes much more sense to a present-day mind to say "maybe we shouldn't be recording ethnicity" than to say "maybe we shouldn't record a person's religion".

>>Cthulh+T31
> "NONE of those are relevant to a government"

It is in the context of taxes if you agree that regligious organizations would receive church tax from the government.

>>prmous+he1
That’s a big if!