Hamburg - German leftists and liberals who oppose police
access to telecommunications records demonstrated Monday and said
they had filed a petition by 30,000 people for a constitutional-court
review of the practice.
The protests were held a day before new legislation comes into
force requiring companies to retain records for six months of the to
and from addresses of e-mail, time spent on the internet and phone
numbers dialled by customers.
Police require a judicial warrant to search the files during
inquiries into terrorism and serious crime.
Libertarian groups, citing the telephone snooping in totalitarian
states, angrily opposed the data-retention legislation when it was
passed. Unlike many countries, Germany has not let police use such
data for decades.
At a rally Monday in the northern city of Hamburg, opponents held
a mock funeral for 'the death of privacy.' Police said the
demonstration by 200 people passed off without violence. Organizers
claimed 500 attended.
In the southern justice capital of Karlsruhe, the Working Party on
Data Retention filed for an urgent injunction to stop the legislation
on the grounds that it was 'obviously unconstitutional.'
They said the 150-page application against 'surveillance without
suspicion' was initially by eight people, but was backed by 30,000
who had signed petitions.
Their names would be joined to the suit after processing by a
Berlin law office, making it the largest such appeal in modern German
history.
'We are hoping for a quick ruling,' said lawyer Meinhard Starostik
leading the group. But a court spokesman said judges would not sit on
the case Monday.
The activists said they would also seek to overturn the March 2006
European Union data-retention directive that required Germany to pass
the legislation.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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