http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2010-03-02-german-overturn-law-data_N.htm
BERLIN — Germany's highest court on Tuesday overturned a law that let anti-terror authorities retain data on telephone calls and e-mails, saying it marked a "grave intrusion" into personal privacy rights and must be revised.
The court ruling was the latest to sharply criticize a major initiative by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government and one of the strongest steps yet defending citizen rights from post-Sept. 11 terror-fighting measures.
The ruling comes amid a Europe-wide attempt to set limits on the digital sphere in the name of protecting privacy. That includes disputes with Google over photographing citizens for its Street View maps and a vote against letting U.S. authorities see European bank transfers to track down terror cells.
The Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the law violated Germans' constitutional right to private correspondence and failed to balance privacy rights against the need to provide security. It did not, however, rule out data retention in principle.
The law had ordered that all data — except content — from phone calls and e-mail exchanges be retained for six months for possible use by criminal authorities, who could probe who contacted whom, from where and for how long.
