"must get a judge's consent"
HMG please note.
Germany's Bundestag has voted for a new version of the data retention law that caused so much controversy in the past, with the new regulations approved by 404 to 148 votes, with seven abstentions. The new law will force telcos to store call and email records for 10 weeks, as well as metadata including information about who …
... again. And again we will spend good tax money on the Constitutional Court kicking this law into the bin where it belongs. A great alternative to paying taxes for our own surveillance, I guess.
I also think there should be prosecution of members of the Bundestag who vote yes on issues that are in clear violation of the Grundgesetz. Now that would be fun, wouldn't it?
BTW, top 8pm news story just now: the 'effin soccer corruption from 2006. Because that's what Germans truly care about.
This is two-edged sword kind of thing. If I'm a terrorist, and I get notified that the government's snooping my data, I'm out of there or I launch my dastardly plot early. Are there "safeguards" to prevent this? As for the innocent, I'm on the side of them but there is the "notify and flee" scenario.
"....If I'm a terrorist....." Don't worry, all the data (not just metadata) will be stored by the telecoms, and we already know that the NSA and GCHQ have penetrated them to the eyeballs. Four weeks is plenty of time for the Five Eyes to sift through the daily data to find what they need. Any real investigation will be conducted and concluded (with the compliance of the BND) long before a request goes to a German judge to search for the evidence the NSA will have already provided for the BND. By the time Abdul The Bomber gets notified he's already been arrested. All this law does is give German politicians the additional legal means to investigate their own citizens without having to rely on the Five Eyes for everything.
This post has been deleted by its author
As an Australian now living under much the same regime, it'd be nice to see of what benefit these data slurping schemes are. Some sort of review that says we caught XX baddies, we incorrectly invaded the privacy of YY innocents, and it only cost you the tax payer ZZ billions. Guessing the results of that equation doesn't look very favourable, and hence gets kept fairly close to the chest's of those who push these schemes through...