A German law taking telecoms companies to retain client data is a breach of EU legislation, a European court ruled Tuesday, egging the justice minister to covenant an overhaul of the rules.
enterprises Telekom Deutschland and SpaceNet took action in the German courts challenging the law that obliged telecom companies to retain guests’ business and position data for several weeks.
The case headed to the European Court of Justice( ECJ) in Luxembourg, which ruled against German legislation.
” EU law precludes the general and magpie retention of business and position data,” the court said in a statement, attesting to its former judgments on the issue.
The Federal Administrative Court, one of Germany’s top courts, had argued there was a limited possibility of conclusions being drawn about people’s private lives from the data, and sufficient safeguards were in place.
But the ECJ said the German legislation, which needed business data to be retained for 10 weeks and four, applies to a” veritably broad set” of information.
It” may allow veritably precise conclusions to be drawn concerning the private lives of the persons whose data are retained. and, in particular, enable a profile of those persons to be established.”
The stated end of the law was to make serious felonious offenses or help specific pitfalls to public security. Still, the court said that similar measures weren’t permitted on a” preventive base”.
Still, it said that in cases where an EU state faces” serious trouble to public security” that’s” genuine and present”, telecom providers can be ordered to retain data.
Such an instruction must be subject to review and can only be in place for a period supposed necessary.
Following the advertisement, Justice Minister Marco Buschmann hailed a” good day for civil rights”.
” We’ll now, fleetly and definitively, remove data retention without cause from the law,” the minister wrote on Twitter.
Data sequestration is a sensitive issue in Germany, and its courts have in the once issued rulings aiming to limit security services’ access to people’s data.
Buschmann is from the liberal FDP party, which has made data protection a crucial plank of its programs.