At least once a month, the German Federal Constitutional Court (their version of the Supreme Court) comes up with an interesting finding on court challenges. ARD (the public TV network, Channel One) tells part of this story.
If you aren't aware of it.....as you would travel through Hesse, Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg....there are these cameras over the autobahn, and they collect license plate numbers. It feeds them automatically into a data collection system, and if there is a 'flag' (stolen vehicle) in the mix, then it says something to the cops within seconds.
Well....some folks decided this was illegal and challenged it in court. Today, the Federal Constitutional Court stood up and said that this collected data can only be allowed under strict limits. Apparently, with the current method, it's just not correct (thereby unconstitutional).
But then the Court said they'd give the three German states a chance to each write their own correction (revising their state constitutions), and fix the problem. It's not clear how this would occur, but I would take a guess that the cameras will stay in place.....collecting data.....and comparing only against stolen vehicle data or short-term collection data.....and delete everything else after 24 hours.
What drove the opposition? It's not clear, but a lot of Germans have a privacy violation conflict with the government. They don't want their photos taken in public.....they don't want their house shown on Google-Earth....they don't want bus cameras taking their pictures....they don't want facial recognition done at train stations, etc.
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