Tuesday, December 15, 2009

There's This Little German Law

There’s this little law that got passed in Germany in 2008....that requires every telephone and provider company to “store” all numbers called and all web sites visited...for six months. So they keep this log of your IP and then attach every single site to that log. Yes, it could go into the tens of thousands.

The consolidated government at the time....thought this would be great for getting people caught by the cops eventually. The telephone and providers hated it....because it means they have to track this information and then store it. It adds up.

There are presently....over sixty separate legal questions now pending on the law....and it’s at the Supreme Court of Germany.

Most folks think that eventually....the Supreme Court will throw out the law but some media folks have voiced the idea that the Court might view this as a moment to change the perception of privacy. If they say sites visited and phone numbers called....are not private....then a vast and mighty door gets opened.

The curious thing that I see....is that the phone companies and providers.....are sitting there with a vast treasure trove of data on people. All I need to do...is hack into it....and then start to track down some critical people to ask if they’d like numbers they called to be released. I could probably make a million a week....with such a list.

How much protection is being offered to this “list”? No one is sure.

How much protection was required by the law? That never was specified.

How much pain could one guy with 50,000 pages of copied lists create?

For some reason, I’m thinking this really wasn’t thought much about or conceived.

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