I'm not the OP, and I wasn't saying that Stasi literally had "truckloads of harddisks". Just that you're probably just as wrong in assuming that they had none or so little that it's not worth mentioning, as he is in assuming that they had most of their data on them.

And everyone in America forgets how pigeons have a tendency to come home to roost. Remember - they hate you for your "freedoms"!

The article submitter is asking about his specific problem. If he's an "average Joe", he's on the wrong website.

Such as?

Did you even read the articles that you've linked to? They talk about privacy issues with default settings (that is, "Express" install). If you're a regular member of the Slashdot audience, you will certainly pick "Customize" during installation anyway, and you'll get individual switches for all these things combined on the very first screen that you'll see after that, from advertising ID to Cortana. Just disable it all, and you're good to go. For bonus points, use a local user account rather than Microsoft ID.

Not necessarily. Parties like these thrive on populist rhetoric, and when they actually get power (even if it's local and limited in nature) and can't really deliver, their support plummets quickly. The only case where it doesn't work is when mainstream parties are even more demonstrably incompetent, but then the real problem is there.

Can you clarify "here"?

I have to ask: which basic rights does the distribution (as opposed to creation) of child porn impinge, that a snuff video, or, say, a video of an ISIS burning a man alive, does not?

If citizens of countries other than France pass laws that deal with this problem, then all is well and good - and you should be working to convince them to do so.

Why should other countries, the citizens of which have decided that free speech is more important, be affected by that, though?