James Delahunty
3 Mar 2010 15:31
The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany has overturned a controversial law that retained communication data between citizens for anti-terrorism purposes. The court called the law a "grave intrusion" of citizen's privacy in its decision. The ruling is a blow to Chancellor Angela Merkel's government, which was displeased with it.
The Court said that the law needed to be revised, and that it did not correctly balance privacy rights for German citizens with measures to protect them from harm. Under the law, communication data by e-mail or phone was retained for possible use by law enforcement agencies, but the content of the communication wasn't itself retained.
Nearly 35,000 Germans had appealed to the court to overturn the law that stemmed from a Europe-wide data retention plan formed under the UK's EU Presidency term. Just the previous year, London had been the target of several terrorist attacks.
"The disputed instructions neither provided a sufficient level of data security, nor sufficiently limited the possible uses of the data," the court said, adding that "such retention represents an especially grave intrusion."
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, the country's top security figure, expressed disappointment at the court's decision. "It would be inappropriate to criticize a ruling by the constitutional court, but I have to say that it does not instill happiness," he told reporters.