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Germany's blanket data retention law is illegal, EU top court says

311 points by tyrion 4y ago

rad_gruchalski 4y ago
Let’s not forget: we are talking about a country where every visit to a new doctor results in having to sign a Datenschutz form in order to agree to data processing. This is a country where personal data supposed to be saint. Double standards.
dane-pgp 4y ago
I'd be interested to know if the EU law that the ECJ relied on differs from or goes further than the case law from the European Court of Human Rights that the UK is still a member of. A ruling against mass data retention in the UK could help Privacy International in their on-going case against the government for its mass surveillance and use of "bulk personal datasets". https://www.privacyinternational.org/long-read/4598/briefing-privacy-international-legal-case-bulk-personal-datasets-and-bulk https://www.privacyinternational.org/long-read/4598/briefing...
- gpderetta 4y ago
  Mass data retention and surveillance has been ruled illegal multiple times both by ECJ and ECHR (as it is in direct contravention with the right to privacy in article 8). In particular UK is still supposedly bound by the ECHR even after Brexit. Unsurprisingly, EU governments and UK in particular, do not care, and there is only so much these courts can do to enforce their judgments.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
  Doesn't sound great: "allows, for the purposes of safeguarding national security, an instruction to be given requiring providers of electronic communications services to retain, generally and indiscriminately, traffic and location data in situations where the Member State concerned is confronted with a serious threat to national security that is shown to be genuine and present or foreseeable. Such an instruction must be subject to effective review, either by a court or by an independent administrative body, and can be given only for a period that is limited in time to what is strictly necessary, but which may be extended if that threat persists" -- that is just asking for a "perma-emergency" to justify such an exception for a long time until the court can (years later) maybe decide that that goes go far.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    > just asking for a "perma-emergency" to justify such an exception for a long time For context, I thought I'd look up the current UK "National Threat Level", and it is apparently "Substantial", which is the middle value on a 5 point scale, and the lowest it has ever been since the system was introduced in 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Threat_Levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Threat_Levels
Semaphor 4y ago
Our data retention laws get overturned all the time. Usually already by our constitutional courts. Sadly our politicians don’t care much and don’t get punished, so they just try it again and again and again and usually it’s in effect for a while before the courts give judgement. I really can’t explain where Politikverdrossenheit (political apathy) comes from. edit: The last sentence is sarcasm
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  > I really can’t explain where Politikverdrossenheit (political apathy) comes from. I understand... it's simple... someone does something bad, nothing happens to them... bad thing again... nothing happens... people protest... nothing happens... bad thing again.. nothing happens... If this was some other timeline, and people brought guillotines out every couple of years and "dealt with" the "bad" politicians in "the french way", politicians themselves would be calling for jail sentances, because they'd atleast be alive in there. Otherwise, i live in a different country, and the political situation is the same.
  - petre 4y ago
    This only happens in France but without guillotines: strikes + yellow gillet protests. The Germans are too well behaved to do anything or the political process is much too civilised to employ any form of civil disobedience.
    - Tarsul 4y ago
      I think it also has something to do with that our (German) media is not as radicalised. And Germans don't like facebook, so there's probably less options/danger also to radicalise through social media. And usually the poor are not as poor as in other countries. But we will see what happens this winter.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    The reason we don’t guillotine people is because Robespierre guillotined everyone and now we know that murdering people politically is an addictive substance. Also let’s be clear, the reign of terror was an absolute shit show in every since of the word as was killing the king. 30 years of war just to have another monarchy to overthrow isn’t exactly a great move.
karlerss 4y ago
The orginal ECJ press release: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2022-09/cp220156en.pdf https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/202...
rmbyrro 4y ago
Is the ECJ kind of a Supreme Court that can overturn member state laws and rulings? I had the impression member states were 100% sovereign within the EU...
- sofixa 4y ago
  > I had the impression member states were 100% sovereign within the EU... ~80-90% depending on how you measure. The judiciary of all countries is technically under the ECJ jurisdiction. People can sue their countries, and local court decisions can be appealed to the European court structure (ECJ/ECHR). That was in fact one of the Brexit talking points, judiciary independence.
  - ectopod 4y ago
    Just to be clear, the ECHR is not an EU court and brexit Britain is still under its jurisdiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R...
    - M2Ys4U 4y ago
      And one cannot appeal a case from the court of a member state to the CJEU. Member states' courts can (in some cases must) refer specific questions of law, but that is not an appeal by any party to the dispute.
- dagw 4y ago
  ECJ can only rule on EU laws. So as such they are not overturning any German laws, just stating the the German law is not in compliance with EU regulations. What that means in practice varies a lot from case to case, but in general the EU has the power to fine members that are in breach of EU regulations. For practical reasons most EU countries want to be in compliance with EU law and will often follow ECJ recommendations and change their own laws if found to not be compliant. Also many EU countries have laws that essentially state that all their laws must comply with EU law. The other option is to apply for an explicit opt out of certain a EU regulation that you feel is incompatible with your own laws.
BlueTemplar 4y ago
In related news, the EUropean Data Protection supervisory authorities are complaining that their budget isn't being significantly increased even as the complaints they have to process have exploded in the recent years : https://euobserver.com/tickers/156038 https://euobserver.com/tickers/156038
numlock86 4y ago
Is this from the same guys who want to get rid of cryptography for the public or at least get some backdoors?
- gpderetta 4y ago
  The ECJ never 'wanted to get rid of cryptography' nor has the power to do so. It has the power to declare that such a law would violate EU treaties though.
BlueTemplar 4y ago
And laws about the data collection, collation, and usage by governments date quite a way back... For instance, the 1974 French SAFARI scandal, where the government wanted to build a centralized computer database that would collect country-wide administrative data, starting with the 400 (physical) police files, and IIRC with a single social security number for each citizen, has caused such an uproar that the project was abandoned and the data privacy regulator CNIL was soon created. (Note the totalitarianism (aka "high modernism") inherent in computers, by the way what they show tends to be accepted as truth, the way they don't have any common sense, the way their digital nature tends to classify people into strict categories, which then become set in stone by their limited capacity to forget, the way the free flow of information turns qualitative and how they give a lot of power to the State while democracies try to limit this power.) Sadly, we've recently seen its failure - caused in a big way by it being stripped of its power in 2004, leaving only a consultative (non-)power - in 2010 a law about "a general principle of information sharing between administrations" has still been created. Some notable worries are about the preceding 2007 law that authorized ethnic statistics - while personal data treatment using ethnic or racial data, and adding race and religion values in the administrative files are still forbidden - the potential of ethnic data becoming racial data is still very high. Another worry is about the genetic prints file : created in 2002 and first limited to sexual criminals, it has since been extended to a whopping 5% of the population, 87% of which have NOT (yet, quite a lot of the debate being how long these files should be kept) been condemned for the reason they got added to the file. It gets worse, and shows how quantitative can become qualitative : because genetic information is NOT independent between family members, a staggering third of the population ends up having its genetic identifiers at least partially stored in these files. A 2022 project (submission date ending 2 weeks ago) to interconnect the digital prints file with the criminal records file has mentioned a potential future project of connecting both with the generic prints file... (among others) with also a policemen-suggested requirement that "the solution be compatible with remote work [...] not requiring strong authentication".
layer8 4y ago
Note that the ruling defines a number of exemptions. See the text following “However, EU law does not preclude national legislation which” in the press release: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2022-09/cp220156en.pdf https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/202... In particular, service providers will probably still have to maintain the infrastructure to activate “general and indiscriminate” data retention on demand.
nonethewiser 4y ago
Is Germany a sovereign country if an international court presides over them? This tends to get brushed aside by people defending the EU. Isn't this a step in the direction of the EU becoming something like the United States? There tends to be a lot of double-speak on this: "That's not true" and "it's a good thing" at the same time.
- layer8 4y ago
  Germany is free to leave the EU if they don’t want to follow the accords anymore. Its being subject to EU law is voluntary.
- karatinversion 4y ago
  It is not. The whole point of the EU is to pool sovereignty for common benefit. Germany is constrained in things it can do: it cannot ban the importing of French wine, give huge subsidies to its domestic steel industry to gain market share in Europe, or stop Bulgarians entering the country. Of course, there is no EU army enforcing EU law, so a sufficiently damn-the-consequences German government could do these things, at the cost of destroying the single market.
  - radicaldreamer 4y ago
    The EU's stick is financial
- gpderetta 4y ago
  Any country that signs any form of international agreement is giving away part of its sovereignty in exchange of some benefit. It is just a matter of degrees.
shadowgovt 4y ago
Interesting that it was a German law. I was under the impression that German law was pretty conservative on data collection.
- bakuninsbart 4y ago
  In general, yes, and I think Germans are (at least in theory) much more protective of their data than others. Nonetheless, every government since the late 00s has been trying to push this through in one form or another. I suspect there is heavy lobbying from within the professional bureaucracy (including police and IC) for this. Possibly also diplomatic pressure from countries like the US.
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    Gestapo always trying to sneak its way back in silently in the background. And it's not just Germany either, it's quite annoying how backsliding into an anti-democratic surveillance state is now the default and needs to be constantly fought. Perhaps it's "always has been", it's just laughably easy to do with software these days.
  - narag 4y ago
    Don't forget the companies that provide the means to eavesdrop everybody.
sva_ 4y ago
I posted this earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32909698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32909698 I don't care about the points, just think it is a bit weird that a promotional commercial company post is now on the frontpage instead of a more neutral news site. Although now, Reuters would probably be the better source than what was available earlier today: https://www.reuters.com/technology/indiscriminate-data-retention-is-illegal-eu-top-court-says-2022-09-20/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/indiscriminate-data-reten...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 4y ago
  Good point. We've changed the URL to the Reuters article now. Submitted URL was https://mailbox.org/en/post/european-court-of-justice-overturns-german-law-on-indiscriminate-data-retention https://mailbox.org/en/post/european-court-of-justice-overtu.... Thanks!
kurupt213 4y ago
I would think it’s also against the spirit of the bill of rights, yet here we are in America, with secret courts reviewing secret surveillance and meta data.
- aksss 4y ago
  And it's not even a secret process half the time - witness the recent conversations about CBP imaging phones of intl travellers.
omgomgomgomg 4y ago
Yet another time Germany needs external intervention measures to get in line. Time and time again, history has proven everywhere that if the population does not keep their politicians in line, they will get drunk from all the power.The people do not even vote reasonably, so it is very difficult. Have these lawmakers ever presented good results which can be attributed to their work?
- Sebb767 4y ago
  > The people do not even vote reasonably, so it is very difficult. You get three votes [0] every four to five years, where you need to vouch for someone from a short list to make all the choices to represent you. And this is actually the good case, in the US it's reduced to just two options. Deciding whether someone votes reasonably is very hard when they weigh certain decisions (and how likely politicians are to keep their promises) completely different. Just as an example, you might say that you think climate change is the most important topic overall right now, so you vote for the German Green party - except, of course, if you doubt that they'll actually change much or if you think that nuclear power is the answer, which they don't like. So you think of voting for a small party, but they'll be in the opposition at best, but most likely not even hit 5%, making your vote nothing more than a gesture completely ignored by the ruling parties. So what's the unreasonable choice here? Long story short, what I'm trying to say is that whenever I heard the accusation of people voting unreasonably, so far, the actual argument always was "people disagree with my [clearly optimal] opinion or voting strategy". [0] Local, federal and state each.
therealmarv 4y ago
hold on, what Germany wanted to do (blanket data retention) is a reality for a long time in other states in EU. There are many countries collecting for 6+ months all connection data (e.g. France or Spain). A map is in this German article from 2019 https://netzpolitik.org/2019/vorratsdatenspeicherung-in-europa-wo-sie-in-kraft-ist-und-was-die-eu-plant/ https://netzpolitik.org/2019/vorratsdatenspeicherung-in-euro... So this becomes illegal in other EU member states now too? Does anybody have any inside how this will change EU data retention in general?
- eivarv 4y ago
  It has been illegal at least since the Grand Chamber judgments on the cases of "Big Brother Watch" and "Centrum för Rättvisa" last year [0]. Though, really, the outcome was fairly predictable for anyone following the field. TLDR; Continuous "General and indiscriminate retention" is not compatible with EU fundamental rights. [0]: https://europeanlawblog.eu/2021/06/08/big-brother-watch-and-centrum-for-rattvisa-judgments-of-the-grand-chamber-of-the-european-court-of-human-rights-altamont-of-privacy/ https://europeanlawblog.eu/2021/06/08/big-brother-watch-and-...
- unity1001 4y ago
  I believe you have to retain tax-related data (customer invoices, bills, payments etc) for ~2 years or however long your local jurisdisction requires. I don't think that will go away since such laws mirror the long-standing laws used in normal accounting. This should be related to non-ecommerce related data.
- sschueller 4y ago
  We have 6 months and 10 years for tax stuff here in Switzerland too. I thought it was quite reasonable. At least there is a set date when you can and have to delete stuff. You are also not allowed to use a customer database for advertising if the customer is no longer one for more than 6 months.
int_19h 4y ago
There's a curious comment on that article from a person in support of that retention law: "Google can do that [blanket data collection], my Chinese mobile phone manufacturer too, why shouldn't the government be able to do it?" Something to ponder when we talk about data collection by private parties: like it or not, it does provide justification for governments doing the same.
- eivarv 4y ago
  No, it does not – for two reasons: - Two wrongs don't make a right: Someone behaving unethical does not excuse unethical behavior from someone else. - There is a difference in the power dynamics of the relationships: Consumer and service provider VS citizen and state. If anything, laws and right should be strengthened to explicitly ban this behavior.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    You may disagree with that justification, sure. The point is that there are people who are convinced by it.
    - eivarv 4y ago
      Whether people are convinced or not – your claim was that it provided "justification". My point is that it does no such thing – it doesn't hold up as a valid argument (which really is the bare minimum for something to even be considered as potentially true).
      - int_19h 4y ago
        "Justification", like "legitimacy", is a subjective measure.
- ghiculescu 4y ago
  You can opt out of using Google or buying Chinese phones more easily than you can opt out of being German. Governments have more unchecked power and should be held to a higher standard accordingly.
Tangurena2 4y ago
Archive link: https://archive.ph/oKMPL https://archive.ph/oKMPL
zackees 4y ago
that_guy_iain 4y ago
Germany is a weird one. On one side of things, they really like their privacy. People will routinely upload pictures to instagram where they find their faces and faces of others for pictures they posed for. I don't get it, if you posed for a picture to go on Instagram why do you need your face covered? On other side of things the goverment does more data collection and data requests than nearly every other goverment. The goverment is super willing to record everything you do. While at the same time making it illegal for you to record someone without their knowledge.
- shuuv4678igt 4y ago
  A: http://stasi-museum.de/ http://stasi-museum.de/

311 points by tyrion 4y ago

Let’s not forget: we are talking about a country where every visit to a new doctor results in having to sign a Datenschutz form in order to agree to data processing. This is a country where personal data supposed to be saint. Double standards.

dane-pgp 4y ago

I'd be interested to know if the EU law that the ECJ relied on differs from or goes further than the case law from the European Court of Human Rights that the UK is still a member of. A ruling against mass data retention in the UK could help Privacy International in their on-going case against the government for its mass surveillance and use of "bulk personal datasets". https://www.privacyinternational.org/long-read/4598/briefing-privacy-international-legal-case-bulk-personal-datasets-and-bulk https://www.privacyinternational.org/long-read/4598/briefing...

gpderetta 4y ago
Mass data retention and surveillance has been ruled illegal multiple times both by ECJ and ECHR (as it is in direct contravention with the right to privacy in article 8). In particular UK is still supposedly bound by the ECHR even after Brexit. Unsurprisingly, EU governments and UK in particular, do not care, and there is only so much these courts can do to enforce their judgments.
tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
Doesn't sound great: "allows, for the purposes of safeguarding national security, an instruction to be given requiring providers of electronic communications services to retain, generally and indiscriminately, traffic and location data in situations where the Member State concerned is confronted with a serious threat to national security that is shown to be genuine and present or foreseeable. Such an instruction must be subject to effective review, either by a court or by an independent administrative body, and can be given only for a period that is limited in time to what is strictly necessary, but which may be extended if that threat persists" -- that is just asking for a "perma-emergency" to justify such an exception for a long time until the court can (years later) maybe decide that that goes go far.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  > just asking for a "perma-emergency" to justify such an exception for a long time For context, I thought I'd look up the current UK "National Threat Level", and it is apparently "Substantial", which is the middle value on a 5 point scale, and the lowest it has ever been since the system was introduced in 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Threat_Levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Threat_Levels

Semaphor 4y ago

Our data retention laws get overturned all the time. Usually already by our constitutional courts. Sadly our politicians don’t care much and don’t get punished, so they just try it again and again and again and usually it’s in effect for a while before the courts give judgement. I really can’t explain where Politikverdrossenheit (political apathy) comes from. edit: The last sentence is sarcasm

ajsnigrutin 4y ago
> I really can’t explain where Politikverdrossenheit (political apathy) comes from. I understand... it's simple... someone does something bad, nothing happens to them... bad thing again... nothing happens... people protest... nothing happens... bad thing again.. nothing happens... If this was some other timeline, and people brought guillotines out every couple of years and "dealt with" the "bad" politicians in "the french way", politicians themselves would be calling for jail sentances, because they'd atleast be alive in there. Otherwise, i live in a different country, and the political situation is the same.
- petre 4y ago
  This only happens in France but without guillotines: strikes + yellow gillet protests. The Germans are too well behaved to do anything or the political process is much too civilised to employ any form of civil disobedience.
  - Tarsul 4y ago
    I think it also has something to do with that our (German) media is not as radicalised. And Germans don't like facebook, so there's probably less options/danger also to radicalise through social media. And usually the poor are not as poor as in other countries. But we will see what happens this winter.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  The reason we don’t guillotine people is because Robespierre guillotined everyone and now we know that murdering people politically is an addictive substance. Also let’s be clear, the reign of terror was an absolute shit show in every since of the word as was killing the king. 30 years of war just to have another monarchy to overthrow isn’t exactly a great move.

karlerss 4y ago

The orginal ECJ press release: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2022-09/cp220156en.pdf https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/202...

rmbyrro 4y ago

Is the ECJ kind of a Supreme Court that can overturn member state laws and rulings? I had the impression member states were 100% sovereign within the EU...

sofixa 4y ago
> I had the impression member states were 100% sovereign within the EU... ~80-90% depending on how you measure. The judiciary of all countries is technically under the ECJ jurisdiction. People can sue their countries, and local court decisions can be appealed to the European court structure (ECJ/ECHR). That was in fact one of the Brexit talking points, judiciary independence.
- ectopod 4y ago
  Just to be clear, the ECHR is not an EU court and brexit Britain is still under its jurisdiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R...
  - M2Ys4U 4y ago
    And one cannot appeal a case from the court of a member state to the CJEU. Member states' courts can (in some cases must) refer specific questions of law, but that is not an appeal by any party to the dispute.
dagw 4y ago
ECJ can only rule on EU laws. So as such they are not overturning any German laws, just stating the the German law is not in compliance with EU regulations. What that means in practice varies a lot from case to case, but in general the EU has the power to fine members that are in breach of EU regulations. For practical reasons most EU countries want to be in compliance with EU law and will often follow ECJ recommendations and change their own laws if found to not be compliant. Also many EU countries have laws that essentially state that all their laws must comply with EU law. The other option is to apply for an explicit opt out of certain a EU regulation that you feel is incompatible with your own laws.

BlueTemplar 4y ago

In related news, the EUropean Data Protection supervisory authorities are complaining that their budget isn't being significantly increased even as the complaints they have to process have exploded in the recent years : https://euobserver.com/tickers/156038 https://euobserver.com/tickers/156038

numlock86 4y ago

Is this from the same guys who want to get rid of cryptography for the public or at least get some backdoors?

gpderetta 4y ago
The ECJ never 'wanted to get rid of cryptography' nor has the power to do so. It has the power to declare that such a law would violate EU treaties though.

BlueTemplar 4y ago

And laws about the data collection, collation, and usage by governments date quite a way back... For instance, the 1974 French SAFARI scandal, where the government wanted to build a centralized computer database that would collect country-wide administrative data, starting with the 400 (physical) police files, and IIRC with a single social security number for each citizen, has caused such an uproar that the project was abandoned and the data privacy regulator CNIL was soon created. (Note the totalitarianism (aka "high modernism") inherent in computers, by the way what they show tends to be accepted as truth, the way they don't have any common sense, the way their digital nature tends to classify people into strict categories, which then become set in stone by their limited capacity to forget, the way the free flow of information turns qualitative and how they give a lot of power to the State while democracies try to limit this power.) Sadly, we've recently seen its failure - caused in a big way by it being stripped of its power in 2004, leaving only a consultative (non-)power - in 2010 a law about "a general principle of information sharing between administrations" has still been created. Some notable worries are about the preceding 2007 law that authorized ethnic statistics - while personal data treatment using ethnic or racial data, and adding race and religion values in the administrative files are still forbidden - the potential of ethnic data becoming racial data is still very high. Another worry is about the genetic prints file : created in 2002 and first limited to sexual criminals, it has since been extended to a whopping 5% of the population, 87% of which have NOT (yet, quite a lot of the debate being how long these files should be kept) been condemned for the reason they got added to the file. It gets worse, and shows how quantitative can become qualitative : because genetic information is NOT independent between family members, a staggering third of the population ends up having its genetic identifiers at least partially stored in these files. A 2022 project (submission date ending 2 weeks ago) to interconnect the digital prints file with the criminal records file has mentioned a potential future project of connecting both with the generic prints file... (among others) with also a policemen-suggested requirement that "the solution be compatible with remote work [...] not requiring strong authentication".

layer8 4y ago

Note that the ruling defines a number of exemptions. See the text following “However, EU law does not preclude national legislation which” in the press release: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2022-09/cp220156en.pdf https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/202... In particular, service providers will probably still have to maintain the infrastructure to activate “general and indiscriminate” data retention on demand.

nonethewiser 4y ago

Is Germany a sovereign country if an international court presides over them? This tends to get brushed aside by people defending the EU. Isn't this a step in the direction of the EU becoming something like the United States? There tends to be a lot of double-speak on this: "That's not true" and "it's a good thing" at the same time.

layer8 4y ago
Germany is free to leave the EU if they don’t want to follow the accords anymore. Its being subject to EU law is voluntary.
karatinversion 4y ago
It is not. The whole point of the EU is to pool sovereignty for common benefit. Germany is constrained in things it can do: it cannot ban the importing of French wine, give huge subsidies to its domestic steel industry to gain market share in Europe, or stop Bulgarians entering the country. Of course, there is no EU army enforcing EU law, so a sufficiently damn-the-consequences German government could do these things, at the cost of destroying the single market.
- radicaldreamer 4y ago
  The EU's stick is financial
gpderetta 4y ago
Any country that signs any form of international agreement is giving away part of its sovereignty in exchange of some benefit. It is just a matter of degrees.

shadowgovt 4y ago

Interesting that it was a German law. I was under the impression that German law was pretty conservative on data collection.

bakuninsbart 4y ago
In general, yes, and I think Germans are (at least in theory) much more protective of their data than others. Nonetheless, every government since the late 00s has been trying to push this through in one form or another. I suspect there is heavy lobbying from within the professional bureaucracy (including police and IC) for this. Possibly also diplomatic pressure from countries like the US.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Gestapo always trying to sneak its way back in silently in the background. And it's not just Germany either, it's quite annoying how backsliding into an anti-democratic surveillance state is now the default and needs to be constantly fought. Perhaps it's "always has been", it's just laughably easy to do with software these days.
- narag 4y ago
  Don't forget the companies that provide the means to eavesdrop everybody.

sva_ 4y ago

I posted this earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32909698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32909698 I don't care about the points, just think it is a bit weird that a promotional commercial company post is now on the frontpage instead of a more neutral news site. Although now, Reuters would probably be the better source than what was available earlier today: https://www.reuters.com/technology/indiscriminate-data-retention-is-illegal-eu-top-court-says-2022-09-20/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/indiscriminate-data-reten...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dang 4y ago
Good point. We've changed the URL to the Reuters article now. Submitted URL was https://mailbox.org/en/post/european-court-of-justice-overturns-german-law-on-indiscriminate-data-retention https://mailbox.org/en/post/european-court-of-justice-overtu.... Thanks!

kurupt213 4y ago

I would think it’s also against the spirit of the bill of rights, yet here we are in America, with secret courts reviewing secret surveillance and meta data.

aksss 4y ago
And it's not even a secret process half the time - witness the recent conversations about CBP imaging phones of intl travellers.

omgomgomgomg 4y ago

Yet another time Germany needs external intervention measures to get in line. Time and time again, history has proven everywhere that if the population does not keep their politicians in line, they will get drunk from all the power.The people do not even vote reasonably, so it is very difficult. Have these lawmakers ever presented good results which can be attributed to their work?

Sebb767 4y ago
> The people do not even vote reasonably, so it is very difficult. You get three votes [0] every four to five years, where you need to vouch for someone from a short list to make all the choices to represent you. And this is actually the good case, in the US it's reduced to just two options. Deciding whether someone votes reasonably is very hard when they weigh certain decisions (and how likely politicians are to keep their promises) completely different. Just as an example, you might say that you think climate change is the most important topic overall right now, so you vote for the German Green party - except, of course, if you doubt that they'll actually change much or if you think that nuclear power is the answer, which they don't like. So you think of voting for a small party, but they'll be in the opposition at best, but most likely not even hit 5%, making your vote nothing more than a gesture completely ignored by the ruling parties. So what's the unreasonable choice here? Long story short, what I'm trying to say is that whenever I heard the accusation of people voting unreasonably, so far, the actual argument always was "people disagree with my [clearly optimal] opinion or voting strategy". [0] Local, federal and state each.

therealmarv 4y ago

hold on, what Germany wanted to do (blanket data retention) is a reality for a long time in other states in EU. There are many countries collecting for 6+ months all connection data (e.g. France or Spain). A map is in this German article from 2019 https://netzpolitik.org/2019/vorratsdatenspeicherung-in-europa-wo-sie-in-kraft-ist-und-was-die-eu-plant/ https://netzpolitik.org/2019/vorratsdatenspeicherung-in-euro... So this becomes illegal in other EU member states now too? Does anybody have any inside how this will change EU data retention in general?

eivarv 4y ago
It has been illegal at least since the Grand Chamber judgments on the cases of "Big Brother Watch" and "Centrum för Rättvisa" last year [0]. Though, really, the outcome was fairly predictable for anyone following the field. TLDR; Continuous "General and indiscriminate retention" is not compatible with EU fundamental rights. [0]: https://europeanlawblog.eu/2021/06/08/big-brother-watch-and-centrum-for-rattvisa-judgments-of-the-grand-chamber-of-the-european-court-of-human-rights-altamont-of-privacy/ https://europeanlawblog.eu/2021/06/08/big-brother-watch-and-...
unity1001 4y ago
I believe you have to retain tax-related data (customer invoices, bills, payments etc) for ~2 years or however long your local jurisdisction requires. I don't think that will go away since such laws mirror the long-standing laws used in normal accounting. This should be related to non-ecommerce related data.
sschueller 4y ago
We have 6 months and 10 years for tax stuff here in Switzerland too. I thought it was quite reasonable. At least there is a set date when you can and have to delete stuff. You are also not allowed to use a customer database for advertising if the customer is no longer one for more than 6 months.

int_19h 4y ago

There's a curious comment on that article from a person in support of that retention law: "Google can do that [blanket data collection], my Chinese mobile phone manufacturer too, why shouldn't the government be able to do it?" Something to ponder when we talk about data collection by private parties: like it or not, it does provide justification for governments doing the same.

eivarv 4y ago
No, it does not – for two reasons: - Two wrongs don't make a right: Someone behaving unethical does not excuse unethical behavior from someone else. - There is a difference in the power dynamics of the relationships: Consumer and service provider VS citizen and state. If anything, laws and right should be strengthened to explicitly ban this behavior.
- int_19h 4y ago
  You may disagree with that justification, sure. The point is that there are people who are convinced by it.
  - eivarv 4y ago
    Whether people are convinced or not – your claim was that it provided "justification". My point is that it does no such thing – it doesn't hold up as a valid argument (which really is the bare minimum for something to even be considered as potentially true).
    - int_19h 4y ago
      "Justification", like "legitimacy", is a subjective measure.
ghiculescu 4y ago
You can opt out of using Google or buying Chinese phones more easily than you can opt out of being German. Governments have more unchecked power and should be held to a higher standard accordingly.

Tangurena2 4y ago

Archive link: https://archive.ph/oKMPL https://archive.ph/oKMPL

zackees 4y ago

that_guy_iain 4y ago

Germany is a weird one. On one side of things, they really like their privacy. People will routinely upload pictures to instagram where they find their faces and faces of others for pictures they posed for. I don't get it, if you posed for a picture to go on Instagram why do you need your face covered? On other side of things the goverment does more data collection and data requests than nearly every other goverment. The goverment is super willing to record everything you do. While at the same time making it illegal for you to record someone without their knowledge.

shuuv4678igt 4y ago
A: http://stasi-museum.de/ http://stasi-museum.de/