Germany and Internet Privacy Revisited

Last year, German's Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the German Ministry of the Interior began looking at Web 2.0 platforms as a way to inform the public about criminal suspects and ask for assistance in solving crimes and apprehending suspects. A commenter on the article noted that plans were underway to allow the German police and other government agencies to not only monitor your PC for criminal activity, but also utilize a PC's installed audio and/or video peripherals to monitor your living space.

The legislation allowing that sort of extreme monitoring was actually passed in 2006 in a western German state, and gave German intelligence agencies broad-reaching abilities when it came to surveillance of alleged terrorists, including Internet use, as well as what the commenter described. On Wednesday however, Germay's Constitutional Court overturned the legislation, stating that it “violates the right to privacy and is null and void.”

Of course, the legislation was initially drafted after U.S. surveillance of online communications between alleged terrorist cells in Germany and Pakistan that discovered two terrorist plots that were supposed to be executed in Germany, and the court's decision has really only closed loopholes in it, requiring that each instance of such surveillance had to be approved by a judge, and that the information gathered could not be used if it was only applicable to private lives of suspects, and not terrorist plots.

While I'm glad to see that the German court has reined in some of the far-reaching implications of this legislation, it's disappointing to note that other countries are using the U.S. as an example of how to go about monitoring activities of it's residents with as few limits as possible.