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The End of the “Woodward and Bernstein” Era? The German Constitutional Court and Journalists’ Privacy on Mobile Phones

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Marion Albers  and
Stefanie Witzke

Extract

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In a society in which communication is increasingly mediated by electronic networks the methods of police investigation change. Instead of traditional methods like questioning and plain-view surveillance, the police increasingly prefer the surveillance of communications mediated by networks. The corresponding methods offer possibilities of gaining information which were not available before. Especially if the police use them without preliminary knowledge or a base suspicion at an early stage of the investigation, these methods are characterized by their scope: they result in the collection of a lot of irrelevant information and they affect many uninvolved and innocent persons. But at the same time they may furnish exactly the evidence the police are looking for: the phone number and whereabouts of the suspect; the conversation that verifies participation in an offense. It can be no surprise that these methods have become the central methods of investigation.

Type
Public Law
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 7 , 01 July 2003 , pp. 647 - 660
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 For numbers and the increase in the use of electronic surveillance in Germany see www.datenschutz.hessen.de/f09set.htm; according to the paper “Transparenz bei der Telefonüberwachung” the number of surveillance measures has increased annually for 25 percent. See also the 19. Tätigkeitsbericht 2001 und 2002 des Bundesbeauftragten für den Datenschutz, www.bfd.bund.de/information/berichte.html. For the increase of wiretaps in the US see the Center for Democracy & Technology www.cdt.org/digi_tele/wiretap-overview.html.Google Scholar

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