Germans have led a protest against government monitoring, with many Germans microwaving their identification cards in order to destroy the tracking chips, thus making the arguments pertaining to government surveillance in the United States, as well as issues of privacy in the last few years all the more real.

According to an article on Washington Post – written by Rick Noack and published in August – earlier that month, a 29 year-old man was arrested at Germany’s Frankfort Airport when authorities had discovered that the man had microwaved his German identification card. The article further describes how the man had microwaved his identification card because he “was concerned that his privacy might be violated by the microchip that has been embedded in all German IDs since 2010.”

The article further reports that, across the internet, there are numerous German websites detailing on how to properly microwave the identification cards in order to destroy the embedded microchip, as well as numerous other identity protecting tactics such as videos on how to boil German documents.

Aside from the more illegal means that Germans use to keep themselves off the grid, many citizens of Germany have been using old fashioned type writers and sending their typed documents as letters, as many Germans believe that sending letters “might make communications surveillance harder for U.S. officials,” because according to the article, the United States National Security Agency had been intercepting calls in Germany.

Noack further discusses how the German government is aware of the unpopularity of the microchip, although “several studies have refuted concerns that the microchip could be used to spy on individuals, many German’s remain cautious.”

Further proving themselves to be weary of government surveillance, many German activists for privacy fought to inaugurate in Dresden, Germany at Edward Snowden Square, honoring the American for his actions of exposing the National Security Agency’s surveillance into United States Citizens personal phones in June 2013. The article reported that Edward Snowden assisted German’s weary of government surveillance by revealing to the public that the NSA was intercepting German telephones.

The surveillance that Germany is experiencing, as the article explains, is nothing new, stemming from the fascist-era Germany, to the fall of the Berlin Wall, German citizens have spied upon by their government. This inspiration to fight back against government surveillance can possibly be seen as inspired from the United States public’s own fight for a country where we the citizens are spied upon, thereby creating more improved societies.