Data protection in Germany II: Recent decisions on online-searching of computers, automatic number plate recognition and data retention

This year, the population census decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) will celebrate its 25th anniversary. The celebration is a good reason to take a look back at this groundbreaking decision, which has lost none of its topicality and validity. It is also an occasion to examine the wave of new Bundesverfassungsgericht decisions, stemming from the beginning of 2008, on governmental surveillance and data protection, in particular the “online-searching” decision, the decision on license plate scanning, and the interim injunction to partly stop the enactment of the European data retention directive in Germany. This article is an attempt at helping overcome the language barrier that has prevented much of the world from understanding the depth and value of German legal theory on data protection [This article is thus following an appeal made by J. A. Cannataci, “Lex Personalitatis & Technology-driven Law”, scripted, Volume 5, Issue 1, April 2008, p. 3, via http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol5-1/editorial.asp.]. In Part I of this paper, published in [2009] 25 CLSR 84–88 we examined the population census decision and the German concept of informational self-determination. Part II below now deals with the aforementioned new decisions.