Stoppt die Vorratsdatenspeicherung! reports on a decision by the Administrative Court of Wiesbaden in Germany.

The Administrative Court of Wiesbaden has found the blanket recording of the entire population’s telephone, mobile phone, e-mail and Internet usage (known as data retention) disproportionate.

The decision published today by the Working Group on Data Retention (decision of 27.02.2009, file 6 K 1045/08.WI) reads: “The court is of the opinion that data retention violates the fundamental right to privacy. It is not necessary in a democratic society. The individual does not provoke the interference but can be intimidated by the risks of abuse and the feeling of being under surveillance [...] The directive [on data retention] does not respect the principle of proportionality guaranteed in Article 8 ECHR (pdf), which is why it is invalid.” [...]

In early March, the Federal Council of Germany (Bundesrat) also warned that the proposed “storage of all Internet usage data without a specific cause or with blanket coverage violates” the Constitution.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 and is filed under Anonymity, Civil liberties, Identification, International, Security, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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