By Scribe
Yesterday, there was a major victory for privacy. Â Unfortunately, it was not in the US. Â The German Constitutional Court threw out as unconstitutional a law which required storage of all flavors of electronic data on everyone. Â Further, they required that the databases which had been built to comply with that law be erased. Â Immediately.
The decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court has huge implications. Â In it, the Court decided that privacy of users and their communications was more important than the speculation of the government which supported a law requiring retention of all electronic communications for some time (6 months, IIRC) in a form easily accessible to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Â Moreover, the decision was predicated on the German Constitution, and threw out the law requiring data retention as unconstitutional. Â Finally, the Court required that the databases heretofore created under that law, be erased “immediately”.
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