German Constitutional Court repeals Cumulative Storage Act for telecomunications
It is probably hard to understand from the outside all the hype that the German media raised yesterday regarding the decision of the Constitutional Court. Although, on the other hand, all fans of George Orwell should be simply happy - their fears were heard and taken seriously.
It was about the so-called "Law on the accumulative storage of data." The essence of this law is that all telecommunication communication operators are obliged to store all information about the connections made for each subscriber. It sounds a little clumsy, but in fact, any call, any Internet connection is logged and stored for at least six months. For any person, you can get a complete picture of who with whom, when and for how long he talked to whom he sent soap, under what IP he entered the network and maybe even what IP he spoke on Skype. Let me remind you that in Germany, when buying a mobile phone (or rather SIM card), a person must show his passport, and the seller must provide this data to the mobile operator. Therefore, all these rules could apply to cell phones.
The need for this law arose in connection with the adoption of the relevant regulatory act in the European Union. Although the European Union does not intervene in national legislation, it issues prescriptions that are binding on all EU members. The Germans are usually exemplary subordinates and their law in many places was steeper and tougher than required by the EU regulation. At the time of entry into force, at the beginning of 2008, the law provoked a lot of protests. In the end, it came to the point that more than 35 thousand citizens felt embarrassed in their rights and filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court. Just yesterday morning I listened to several interviews with experts who did not even assume that the court decision would be so radical - many agreed that the court would issue instructions on who and when can access the stored data, how can this data be used and all that jazz. But it turned out quite differently. The court ordered to immediately stop recording data and destroy all the data accumulated to date.
At the same time, recommendations were made for lawmakers to create a new law, which include several points, including the mention that subscribers should be notified that their connection data will be stored. And it is absolutely unacceptable that the data is stored even when the subscriber is not suspected of anything specific.
The most interesting thing is that all the costs associated with the storage of information were the responsibility of the operators themselves. The largest of them, German Telecom, said yesterday that they had already begun to destroy the accumulated data.
I am firmly convinced that the new law will not take long, but nevertheless I am very grateful to the men in red capes. For the umpteenth time, they have shown that laws cannot serve as a pretext for the arbitrariness of officials.
It was about the so-called "Law on the accumulative storage of data." The essence of this law is that all telecommunication communication operators are obliged to store all information about the connections made for each subscriber. It sounds a little clumsy, but in fact, any call, any Internet connection is logged and stored for at least six months. For any person, you can get a complete picture of who with whom, when and for how long he talked to whom he sent soap, under what IP he entered the network and maybe even what IP he spoke on Skype. Let me remind you that in Germany, when buying a mobile phone (or rather SIM card), a person must show his passport, and the seller must provide this data to the mobile operator. Therefore, all these rules could apply to cell phones.
The need for this law arose in connection with the adoption of the relevant regulatory act in the European Union. Although the European Union does not intervene in national legislation, it issues prescriptions that are binding on all EU members. The Germans are usually exemplary subordinates and their law in many places was steeper and tougher than required by the EU regulation. At the time of entry into force, at the beginning of 2008, the law provoked a lot of protests. In the end, it came to the point that more than 35 thousand citizens felt embarrassed in their rights and filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court. Just yesterday morning I listened to several interviews with experts who did not even assume that the court decision would be so radical - many agreed that the court would issue instructions on who and when can access the stored data, how can this data be used and all that jazz. But it turned out quite differently. The court ordered to immediately stop recording data and destroy all the data accumulated to date.
At the same time, recommendations were made for lawmakers to create a new law, which include several points, including the mention that subscribers should be notified that their connection data will be stored. And it is absolutely unacceptable that the data is stored even when the subscriber is not suspected of anything specific.
The most interesting thing is that all the costs associated with the storage of information were the responsibility of the operators themselves. The largest of them, German Telecom, said yesterday that they had already begun to destroy the accumulated data.
I am firmly convinced that the new law will not take long, but nevertheless I am very grateful to the men in red capes. For the umpteenth time, they have shown that laws cannot serve as a pretext for the arbitrariness of officials.