19 March 2008 14 views  Print  Email This

Germany’s Constitutional Court puts the brakes on the federal government’s ability to monitor it’s internal threats, thanks to class action lawsuits.  Sound familiar?

Germany’s highest court has dramatically limited the scope of a German data-collection law which politicians said would help prevent terrorist attacks.

The law gave the federal government broad access to stored telephone and internet data — including e-mail addresses, length of call and numbers dialled — for a six-month period. In the case of cell phone calls, service providers could potentially save data on the location calls were made from.

The law went into effect in January. But on Wednesday the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe issued an injunction against it, declaring parts of the law unconstitutional pending further review.  Full story from Spiegel Online…

I appreciate my privacy too, but in today’s world we need to acknowledge that we must have someone out there keeping an eye on the bad guys…