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German High Court Limits Data-Mining

By Jeralyn, Section Foreign Affairs
Posted on Tue May 23, 2006 at 11:16:25 AM EST
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I can't read German, but a lawyer who reads TalkLeft can. This just in today. The German high court has sharply limited data-mining as an invasion of citizen privacy. His translation of the news article, with his explanation in brackets:

The Federal Constitutional Court [located in Karlsruhe, their highest court] has drastically limited the possibilities and opportunities for dragnet/grid/screening searches (data-mining) and thereby rolled back limitations on people's civil liberties in the fight against Terror.

In a decision made public today, the justices stated that foreign policy tensions or a collective threat level such as after the attacks of 9/11/01 do not suffice to permit the dragnet/grid/screen searches. In that connection [i.e., post 9/11] in Nordrhein-Westfalen the data pertaining to more than five million men were reviewed/scrutinized in detail. The justices found that officials [seeking to do data-mining] must have/put forward concrete grounds to believe there will be foreseeable attacks in Germany. While electronic/data privacy advocates and politicians from the Greens, FDP and Left Party greeted the decision, the Bavarian Interior Minister Beckstein called it a black day for the War on Terror.

Original news item (Bavarian Radio):
17:00 Uhr: Karlsruhe schränkt Möglichkeiten der Rasterfahndung ein

In other German news (no link yet), the writer Gunther Grass has spoken out against the US policy on the War on Terror and torture, calling them war crimes and the government officials war criminals. He also criticized the British government for its going along with the US and for it not making more efforts to stop torture in US prisons in and out of Iraq.

But the lead news in Germany today is that the Government for the first time in 170 years, put a death sentence on a wild bear.

Update: Kevin Drum shares his thoughts on this.

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    German High Court Limits Data-Mining | 5 comments (5 topical)
    Re: German High Court Limits Data-Mining (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Tue May 23, 2006 at 12:51:38 PM EST
    I do wish people would stop calling it data mining, which disguises what it really is. Whether you listen, screen, filter, datamine, search, lookup or query the data - or just print it out and paste it into a collage - it's illegal for the government access the data in the first place, without a warrant. When people call it "datamining," they implicitly suggest that there are some uses that may be justified and other uses that may not. Datamining is just a use. The Constitution makes no distinction about use. If the government installed taps directly on your phone, and called it datamining, would that make it okay? Would it matter to you whether a computer or a live person was screening your calls?

    Re: German High Court Limits Data-Mining (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Tue May 23, 2006 at 01:06:18 PM EST
    So the Germans are ahead of us on individual rights. That's a little scary. B

    Re: German High Court Limits Data-Mining (none / 0) (#3)
    by scribe on Tue May 23, 2006 at 03:19:02 PM EST
    I read this earlier, and then it dawned on me: data-mining (or whatever you call it) to find suspects can't be so damn secret after all. I mean, the Germans let their Courts decide the legality of their program. Imagine that - judicial independence and executive branch/police officials actually having to litigate the issues and obey a Court and not being able to hide it in secret! Three, no four, more ways they're ahead of 'murca. (Every time I think on it, I come up with another way....)

    Re: German High Court Limits Data-Mining (none / 0) (#4)
    by squeaky on Tue May 23, 2006 at 03:56:17 PM EST
    scribe-
    Three, no four, more ways they're ahead of 'murca. (Every time I think on it, I come up with another way....)
    They have learned history's lessons. Checks and balances are important. Removing them by inciting fear in the name of national security, aka nationalism, is a slippery slope. It doesn't take long for once normal well meaning people to give up all their rights, out of fear, to a madman with megalomaniacal dreams of controlling the world. The promise: to make them safe from those bent on destroying them. I always found it ironic that the apparent savior maintains his power by terrorizing everyone about terrorists. Bring 'em on. Fanning hatred for the homeland in order to cultivate nationalism seems to work well for these types. Unfortunately, as the Germans know, the last act is always a really big downer.

    Re: German High Court Limits Data-Mining (none / 0) (#5)
    by lewke on Wed May 24, 2006 at 09:10:47 AM EST
    [quote]Whether you listen, screen, filter, datamine, search, lookup or query the data - or just print it out and paste it into a collage - it's illegal for the government access the data in the first place, without a warrant.[/quote] I can't read german, but from the translated portions this doesn't seem to be limited to phone records. It seems to be saying that any sort of statistical analysis to identify criminals is prohibited, which would include tax records, etc.

    German High Court Limits Data-Mining | 5 comments (5 topical)