Tech policy & human rights
Big tech accountability? Read how we got here in The Closing of the Net
In a landmark ruling, Germany's highest court orders major changes to the German data retention law, which will provide tighter protection for users' privacy. German ISPs have to delete all communications data stored to date.
Germany's highest court has ordered the law on data retention to be tighted up. This is the law which orders ISPs to store their users' communications traffic data, specifically records of email communications. This ruling by the German court is in a radical move which poses a challenge to EU law. The judgement follows a class action from 35,000 German citizens. The action was led by the German pressure group AK Vorrat, who have consistently opposed the data retention law.
The ruling states that
users should have more protection of their privacy in respect of their communications. In particular, it calls for a judicial ruling before retained data can be used, and then only if it is necessary in individual cases. The ruling puts the existing law into suspension until the changes ordered by the court have been made, and hence ISPs have been ordered to delete data which they currently store.
The German law is based on the EU Data Retention directive. The directive does not specify a judicial ruling, and is arguably weak in terms of the conditions under which retained communications data can be used. It is also badly drafted at a technical level, and was heavily criticised at the time of going through the EU legislature.
The Data Retention directive was rushed through the European Parliament under the British Presidency of 2005. It was controversial because the European Parliament ignored the recommendation of the rapporteur, Alexander Alvaro, and supported the Presidency.
Sweden, Austria and Romania also have concerns regarding the directive, and have not yet implemented it.
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This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK:England and Wales License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ It may be used for non-commercial purposes only, and the author's name should be attributed. The correct attribution for this article is: Monica Horten (2010) German court orders overhaul of data retention law http://www.iptegrity.com 2 March 2010
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Published work
- Algorithms Patrolling Content: Where’s the Harm?
- Content responsibility: The looming cloud of uncertainty for Internet intermediaries
- Freedom of Expression, Human Rights Standards and Private Online Censorship
- The Policy Challenge Of Content Restrictions: How Private Actors Engage The Duties Of States
- Internet Policy Review - The Aereo dilemma and copyright in the cloud
My Linked In profileIptegrity in brief
Iptegrity.com is the website of Dr Monica Horten. I’ve been analysing analysing digital policy since 2008. Way back then, I identified how issues around rights can influence Internet policy, and that has been a thread throughout all of my research. I hold a PhD in EU Communications Policy from the University of Westminster (2010), and a Post-graduate diploma in marketing. I’ve served as an independent expert on the Council of Europe Committee on Internet Freedoms, and was involved in a capacity building project in Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine. I am currently (from June 2022) Policy Manager - Freedom of Expression, with the Open Rights Group. For more, see About Iptegrity
Speaking engagements
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States v the 'Net?
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In 2012, I presented my PhD research in the European Parliament.
