The German Constitutional Court has ruled that police officers and intelligence officials have too much access to people’s personal mobile phones and Internet data. Winnings for privacy activists, the court ordered the government to change the relevant laws to better protect the privacy of German citizens.
Current data access laws are unconstitutional
The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe ruled on Friday that police and intelligence officials have excessive access to people’s personal telephone and Internet data. The court ruled that current laws governing a manual procedure for obtaining information on subscriber data are unconstitutional and the privacy of German citizens should be better protected. Reuters described:
The court ruling is a victory for privacy activists who had said there were not sufficient limits on when and why federal police or domestic intelligence can access the names and addresses or even e-mail passwords and mobile phone PINs of users.
One of the lawsuits on which this decision is based was filed in 2013 by Katharina Nocun and Patrick Breyer of the Pirate Party with approximately 6,000 joint prosecutors. The court ruled that the authorities were allowed access to the data for reasons that did not meet the threshold of legal interest, and current laws violated citizens right to privacy on the phone and on the Internet.
According to the court, “Neither the existing laws regulating under which circumstances telecoms companies such as Deutsche Telekom can hand over the data, nor the ones determining why investigators can request such data, are in line with Germany’s Constitution,” the publication conveyed.
This decision means that the German Telecommunications Act and several other laws will need to be revised. The court ordered the legislators to amend the laws by 31 December 2021.
Friday’s decision followed another by the constitutional court that Germany’s Constitution protects the privacy of internet users living outside the country. The court ruled in May that the Federal Intelligence Service is bound by the Constitution when surveilling foreigners’ telecommunications. Noting that their current process of collecting and analyzing such data is unconstitutional, the court ordered that the unconstitutional parts of the law be rewritten by the end of 2021.
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