Warning: East Germany's Stasi is back

The Stasi, the East German secret police agency, was one of the most reviled and feared institutions of the East German communist government.

And it's back, at least in spirit, reports Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

That's according to columnist and analyst Judith Bergman, who describes for the Gatestone Institute a new oppressive law that has allowed the return of "the old German police state."

The law "requires social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to censor their users on behalf of the government."

"Social media companies are obliged to delete or block any online 'criminal offenses' within 24 hours of receipt of a user complaint – regardless of whether the content is accurate or not," Bergman writes.

"While such policies would doubtless have earned the German authorities many points with the old Stasi regime of East Germany, they more than likely contravene the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) to which Germany is a party, as well as the case law of the European Court of Human Rights," she writes.

The new law, which took effect Oct. 1, 2017, obligates social media companies to "delete or block" any material about which a complaint has been filed, but it was not fully enforced until Jan. 1.

Immediately, she says, Twitter suspended the account of the deputy leader of the Alternative for Germany party (AfD), Beatrix von Storch, for 12 hours.

Her offense was tweeting the following in response to a New Year's greeting issued in Arabic by the Cologne police: "What the hell is happening in this country? Why is an official police site tweeting in Arabic? Do you think it is to appease the barbaric, gang-raping hordes of Muslim men?"

On New Year's Eve of 2015-2016, more than 1,000 mainly Muslim men sexually assaulted around 1,200 women in Cologne, Bergman explains.

"Von Storch also had her Facebook account suspended for repeating her tweet there. Facebook told her that her post contravened German law, as it constituted 'incitement to hatred'," Bergman writes.

Then Cologne police filed charges against von Storch for "incitement."

For the rest of this report, and more, please go to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.