You will get caught, Germany is insane about fining people for torrenting (like 1000 Euros, just insane amounts). This is actually one solid use case for running your traffic through Tor or a non-German VPN. You don’t really have an option honestly.

Snowden was the kickoff for me. Once I saw how the NSA was collecting virtually all internet data, storing it in Utah for future decryption efforts, I knew we actually lived in 1984 times. Assange also had a strong impact, demonstrating that the free speech “protections” of liberal democracies were empty lies.