German Court Says Data Retention Rules Are Illegal
from the privacy-trumps dept
Around the world, law enforcement has pushed for stronger data retention rules for years, despite little evidence that it actually helps stop crimes (in fact, there's evidence that it helps to obscure important data by burying the data in tons of more data). Yet, since law enforcement and the media can team up to create moral panics, politicians usually end up passing such laws. However, over in Germany, the highest German court has ruled that the data retention law passed in 2008 is illegal, saying that "the law's erosion of personal privacy outweighed its usefulness in combating terrorism." Furthermore, the court has ordered that data retained under the law should be destroyed immediately. The court noted that the German law went well beyond EU requirements and potentially harmed the rights of German citizens by having them feel like they're under constant observation:The storage of data could "cause a diffusely threatening feeling of being under observation that can diminish an unprejudiced perception of one's basic rights in many areas,"
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Filed Under: data retention, germany, privacy
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HE went THATA way
try it ...sleep on your front porch all summer.
shower with a camera , have no privacy anywhere.
go ahead i dare you.
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Re: HE went THATA way
shower with a camera , have no privacy anywhere."
There are web sites that specialize in that actually
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Religion registration
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Re: Religion registration
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Re: Religion registration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_census_phenomenon
or possibly a Pastafarian?
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Re: Religion registration
That being said, I would still feel weird registering as Jewish. I get kinda nervous because I don't register as Catholic.
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Re: Re: Religion registration
Mandatory tithing ... whoa
That's messed up
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Re: Re: Religion registration
Most smaller religious groups (like all Evangelical churches and the Latter-Day Saints) collect their tithing independently from the government by asking their members to pay their share.
In Germany a church has to register with the state government and be officially recognized a so called Entity of Public Law in order to collect money through payroll taxes and be able to teach their religion in public schools. Most churches won't do this. Though the Latter Day-Saints are for example registered in the state of Hesse. But they do not collect any taxes.
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Perfect
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Privacy
Nice to see a sensible ruling.
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Don't be too happy
So all politicians have to do is to come up with a less broad law citing certain felonys it applies to (like terrorism) and the surveillance technology can remain in place. To top it all off the court also hinted at the idea that giving rights holders access to IP adresses to start civil lawsuits against alleged filesharers would be ok.
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Dutch situation
Currently, the proposed data retention law in NL state a term of 12 months (initially it was 18 months, the minimum stated by the EU was 6 months), and for the new public transit card they are actually keeping data for a whopping 7 years!
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Man I wish more nations cared about this!
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