German ISP Forced To Delete IP Logs

An anonymous reader writes "A German federal court decided today that T-Online, one of the largest ISPs in Germany, was obligated to delete all IP logs of a customer upon request to guarantee their privacy. From the article: 'The decision (German) does not mean that T-Online is now obliged to delete all their IP-logs, the customers first need to complain. But, if they ask T-Online to delete their IP-logs, the ISP has no other choice than to comply. A lawyer from Frankfurt already sketched a sample letter (German) to make this process easier.'"

Comments

The way it should be.

[rolyatknarf]

There's not a chance in hell that anything like this would ever happen in the United States. I hope it works for the Germans. This is the way privacy should be treated. The people have rights.

Re:The way it should be.

[KnuthKonrad]

Germany takes privacy laws to the extreme, in my opinion.

As a admin, working for a german company in Germany, I know that our privacy laws are a PITA.

As a german citizen, living and working in Germany I think our privacy laws are way too relaxed.

That said, I very much welcome the decision of the court. We had a couple of similar decisions lately. And one always got the impression that the judges not only talking about the very case they had to handle, but that their sentence was also aimed at our politians to show them how german courts think about the EU data retention act. This one can't be trialed in Germany yet, as it hasn't become german law as of now. So this seem like a warning about what to expect when that gets taken to court, once it made it into german law.

But no privacy in the land of the free

[Salvance]

I wonder why the average American (or Brit) doesn't demand the same level of privacy that many of the mainland Europeans now have? While some other freedoms (e.g. speech,press) are more limited in countries like Germany, there appears to be a strong right-to-privacy movement backed up by the government.

Sure, our media and government pay lip service to privacy issues, but the reality is that our government wants to increase monitoring in the name of fighting terror. Compare this story of Germany forcing the ISP to delete logs for a customer to this one outlining yet another argument by US officials to require ISPs to maintain even more user data.

I'd hate to see us to become a 'surveillance society' like Britain has. Unfortunately, we seem to be quickly heading down that path, particularly since our citizens haven't yet raised up to demand greater freedom.

Re:But no privacy in the land of the free

[foobsr]

some other freedoms (e.g. speech,press) are more limited in countries like Germany

Any source? Just curious, as I am living in Germany and did not really realize.

Also:

Press Freedom Index 2006

CC.

Re:But no privacy in the land of the free

[Jugalator]

He may be considering hate speech laws, but then, on the other hand, is he considering free speech zones in the US, and so on? I'm hesitant to call freedoms more limited in countries like Germany for this reason, especially with the actions GWB has taken in the US lately.

Not quite as good as it looks

[njdj]

The original article points out that keeping logs is incompatible with existing German law. But the law will soon be changed, because Germany will have to comply with an EU directive mandating that logs be kept for at least 6 months. Germany has already asked for an extension of the deadline to comply with this, but the strong likelihood is that the German privacy laws will be changed to comply with the EU-mandated snooping.

EU pols and bureaucrats are as hostile to personal privacy as US pols and bureaucrats.