German court overturns data retention law.

• Position: PRIVACY

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Germany's highest court has ruled that the country's law enforcement agencies cannot collect and retain phone and e-mail records sent and received by German citizens.

The Federal Constitutional Court determined the law violated every German citizen's inalienable constitutional right to engage in "private correspondence" without fear of state surveillance. The court also concluded the law represented a "grave intrusion" into individuals' privacy rights.

The ruling effectively reverses a law that allowed the government to collect and retain records of citizens' communications. The court called the law unbalanced and partial because it failed to balance privacy rights with national security responsibilities.

The court also ruled that data retention itself is neither wrong nor unconstitutional, but that the existing law was badly written in that it permitted state agencies to go too far. The court said, "The disputed instructions neither provided a sufficient level of data security, nor sufficiently limited the possible uses of the data, and such retention represents an especially grave intrusion to individual liberty."

It ordered that access to subscriber data can now be obtained only by court order and then only if there is evidence of...