Many German offices keep a list of colleagues’ birthdays, so that people can congratulate each other. In 2019 the Bavarian State Commissioner for Data Protection set out the rules for such lists in public bodies. The lists are Akte der kollegialen Beziehungspflege, acts of caring for relations between colleagues, and not official business. The only legal basis is therefore the employee’s consent, and it must be voluntary. The commissioner recommends listing only the day and month and leaving out the year of birth.
data protection
Your Private Number Stays Private
The district of Greiz in Thuringia reorganized the standby service of its public health office. Staff were to be reachable on weekends and public holidays, also on their private landline and mobile phones. Some employees refused to give their private mobile number and received written warnings. On 16 May 2018 the Thuringia State Labor Court ruled that the warnings had to be removed from their files. According to reports on the court’s press release, the court called the duty to hand over the number einen erheblichen Eingriff, a serious intrusion. An employee who can be reached at any time kann so nicht zur Ruhe kommen, cannot come to rest. It did not matter how likely a call actually was.
A Handbook That Grew to 2,550 Pages
In 1995 the German federal office for information security, the BSI, published its first IT-Grundschutzhandbuch, a handbook of standard security measures for computer systems. It began with 18 modules and 200 measures. At the end it had 58 modules and 720 measures, and it had grown from 150 to 2,550 pages. In 2006 it was split up into standards and catalogues, and in October 2017 the catalogues were replaced by a new compendium. Organizations can be certified on the basis of these written measures.
Street View
Google launched Street View in twenty German cities in November 2010. Before the launch, residents could ask Google to blur their house. Google received 244,237 such requests, equal to 2.89 percent of households in the twenty cities. For about twelve years afterward, Google did not update its German Street View images.
Grades Are Not Read Aloud
In Saarland, a teacher may not read out a pupil’s grade in front of the class. A decree of the state education ministry of 9 July 2024 says this applies to all types of school, for reasons of data protection and teaching. In secondary schools, an anonymous distribution of grades may be shown only for written tests in core subjects. In March 2026 the state’s data protection commissioner, Monika Grethel, set out the conditions under which announcing individual grades in class could be lawful at all.
The Census That Was Stopped
West Germany planned a census for the spring of 1983. Numerous citizens’ initiatives called for a boycott. On 13 April 1983, the day after the first hearing, the Federal Constitutional Court suspended the census law. On 15 December 1983, it declared many of the law’s provisions void and set out a new basic right, the right to informational self-determination. A society in which citizens can no longer know wer was wann und bei welcher Gelegenheit über sie weiß, who knows what about them, when and on what occasion, would not be compatible with it. The census was partly redesigned. Personal data were separated from the questionnaires, and the forms were revised. It took place in 1987, with the reference date of 25 May.
The Warning App That Changed Course
In April 2020, the federal government and the state premiers backed a design for the German coronavirus warning app that would store contact data centrally. On 24 April 2020, the Chaos Computer Club, the German Informatics Society and other organizations published an open letter to the government: Das von Ihnen präferierte Konzept für die App ist nicht der richtige Weg. (The concept you prefer for the app is not the right way.) In the night to 26 April, the government gave in. That morning it said it now preferred a decentralized approach, with contacts stored only on the phones. Linus Neumann, one of the Chaos Computer Club’s spokespeople, called it a sehr gute Entscheidung, a very good decision. The source code was published openly in May. The app was released on 16 June 2020, and it had 6.5 million downloads by the next day.
Germany and the Love of Privacy
This unwillingness to discuss private time with colleagues reveals both the German distaste for small talk, but also the German desire for privacy.
Germans have a clear and robust sense of what should be in the public domain and what should not, and although there are exceptions for good friends, finding out what your colleagues get up to outside of work requires military grade interrogation techniques.
With waterboarding out of the question, I am left with little recourse other than to linguistically trap colleagues into giving away small details of their lives. The excruciating process of trial and error can last for years, until one day a colleague feels comfortable enough to actually tell you directly what they get up to when not at work.
Germans hand police too much data, court rules
German authorities have too much access to people’s internet and mobile phone data and laws must be rewritten as they are unconstitutional, a court says.
The federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe has ruled that the privacy of Germans should be better protected.
Police investigating crimes or trying to prevent terror attacks are currently allowed to access names, addresses, birth dates and IP addresses. They are not entitled to access data involving connections to other people.
However, campaigners challenged the existing laws, and the judges agreed police should only be allowed such access if there was a specific danger or suspicion of a crime. Current laws violated the right of citizens to phone and internet privacy, they ruled.
Privacy is a significant concern for Germans for historical reasons, dating back to the all-pervasive Stasi intelligence service of the old East Germany and the vicious Gestapo of the Nazi era.
Police Have Too Much Access to People’s Data, German Court Rules
The Constitutional Court said that the current laws did not do enough to protect personal privacy in the digital realm.
July 2020. BERLIN — The German police and intelligence agencies have excessive access to citizens’ mobile and internet communications, the country’s Constitutional Court said on Friday, ordering the existing laws to be tightened.
It was the latest decision by the court to support personal privacy over public security concerns in the digital sphere, which, taken together, have made the country a world leader in protecting personal privacy.
Critics charge that the string of court decisions could hinder the ability of security services to prevent crimes and terrorist attacks.