German high court throttles government net snooping
Surveillance law is verboten
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Germany's highest court set tough new restrictions on the government's ability to intercept internet communications in a landmark ruling that said data stored on computers was covered under constitutional guarantees to personal privacy.
"Collecting such data directly encroaches on a citizen's rights, given that fear of being observed ... can prevent unselfconscious personal communication," presiding judge Hans-Juergen Papier said, according to the Associated Press.
The decision, issued Wednesday by Germany's Federal Constitutional Court, struck down a law adopted in 2006 in the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia. It gave intelligence agencies wide-ranging powers to monitor criminal suspects' PC use.
But the judges went on to set limits for a separate federal law governing secret services' ability to surreptitiously install spyware on suspected terrorists' PCs. Such surveillance software could be allowed only in cases where "rights of supreme importance" were at stake, and even then, a judge would have to approve it. What's more, intelligence agencies would not be allowed to use information gleaned from the software if it was limited to people's personal lives.
"Given the gravity of the intrusion, the secret infiltration of an IT system in such a way that use of the system and its data can be searched can only be constitutionally allowed if clear evidence of a concrete threat to a prominent object of legal protection exists," Papier wrote.
The IT industry applauded the decision.
"Now we have a basis for future debates on security and information technology," said Bernhard Rohleder, head of the BITKOM association. ®
COMMENTS
@Luther
A 'Proper' school is here assumed to be the same as the other boys and girls go to, to mix with a normal cross-section of others. Granted they're never perfect, and in some cases home-ed can improve the quality, but within the class of "normal" you can pay more and get more. Public examinations are another requirement, GCSE's in the basics, the baccalaureate etc.
what i object to on many grounds is home-indoctrination, there is no escape from the bonkers religious confines, no outside contact to determine if the child is being abused, or failing to "thrive", and basically the child, who must at some point be brought into society at large, knows only a very narrow viewpoint.
Sure there are those who say all state education is indoctrination, but fooling all of the people all of the time? - its a lower risk compared to this.
not sure about metaphysics as theories etc - look at the agreement between theory and measurement on for instance microwave background anisotropy, try the image search first, or the link:
http://www.answers.com/topic/cosmic-microwave-background-radiation?cat=technology
you tell me where on your scale towards fact this should go?
@ kevin
What makes a "proper" school?
A building? A regime which covertly propagandizes while it teaches? One that teaches metaphysics as theories, theories as facts, and only half the facts and conceals the other side? One that doesn't teach useful things like how compound interest works?
As the Gestapo man said to the pig....
Ve haf vays of making you pork !!
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