Media News - Tuesday, March 02, 2010
German court rules data storage law ‘unconstitutional’
Germany's Federal Constitutional Court ruled Tuesday that a privacy law
concerning the mass storage of telephone and Internet communication data
was unconstitutional and should be thrown out.
The highly controversial law, in place since 2008, required telecom
companies to store data from telephone, mobile and e-mail communication,
as well as Internet usage information, for up to half a year. That
backlog of data must now be deleted, and no further data stored.
Around 35,000 people opposed the law in Germany's largest class action
suit, among them lawyers, doctors, journalists and politicians like
Volker Beck of the Green party and Burkhard Hirsch, a member of the Free
Democratic Party (FDP). Wolfgang Bosbach, the Christian Democrat chairman of the federal
internal affairs committee, warned of the adverse consequences of the
court’s decision for the fight against terrorism. Bosbach said such data is crucial to preventing terror attacks like
those in Madrid and London in 2004 and 2005. "There are no fingerprints,
no traces of DNA [online]. If we don't have this data, then many of
these offenses will go undetected." (Deutsche Welle)
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