German Court Curbs Data Storage Law

The German government seems to have managed to run into a road block…the courts. With a raft of, well, interesting legislation coming out of the German government of late it really comes as little surprise that the German court has jammed a stick in their spokes.

From Reuters:

A reaction to bomb attacks in Madrid and London in the last few years, the law obliges telecom firms to keep a record of who contacted whom, and the time and location of calls.

The Federal Constitutional Court ruled data may be stored, but details may only be transferred to investigators in the event of inquiries into serious crime.

The decision was the latest in a series of rulings against tighter security measures introduced by Chancellor Angela Merkel and previous governments and it drew praise from civil liberty campaigners who want greater data protection and privacy rights.

“The grand coalition (of Merkel’s Christian Democrats and Social Democrats) should finally draw the lesson of these verdicts and stop crossing the limits of constitutionality on citizen rights,” said Claudia Roth from the Greens party.

The data in question was originally supposed to be retained by ISPs for six months. No word on who would’ve had to foot the bill on the cost of the additional storage if the bill had passed.

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Posted by Dave Lewis on March 19, 2008. Filed under Legal Aspects,Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.