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Germany's highest court ruled Wednesday that the state was allowed
to spy on Internet communications where it could prevent loss of
life or an attack on the country.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's left-right government
welcomed the decision by the Constitutional Court and said it paved
the way for more sophisticated security surveillance.
"It will be studied and used as a basis to
draft a new law about how Internet surveillance can be conducted and
will be conducted," government spokesman Thomas Steg said.
The court overturned a controversial law adopted
in the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia in 2006 that gave
intelligence agencies wide-ranging powers to hack into terror
suspects' computers.
"The law violates the right to privacy and
is null and void," the court said in a statement.
It added that Internet surveillance risked being
a greater intrusion on privacy than telephone tapping and that it
therefore had to close loopholes in legislation that did not take
into account new technology and the central role it played in
people's lives.
But it ruled that in principle introducing
software onto suspects' computers to facilitate surveillance could
be allowed in cases where "rights of supreme importance"
were at stake.
The court said that in each case, the
surveillance had to be approved by a judge, and that even then
intelligence agencies would not be allowed to use the information if
it pertains strictly to people's private lives.
The head of the federal police, Joerg Ziercke,
said the court's decision would help authorities combat the threat
of terrorism.
"The decision is clear -- liberty and
security are not mutually exclusive but one must vigilantly maintain
the balance between them," Ziercke told AFP.
The court ruling came in response to a legal
challenge to the North-Rhine Westphalia legislation brought by a
left-wing opposition politician, three lawyers and a journalist.
That legislation had the support of hawkish
Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a member of Merkel's Christian
Democrats, who has repeatedly called for Germany's security services
to be given "a clear legal basis to fight increasingly
professional terrorism."
His ministry warned earlier this month that Al-Qaeda
has ordered its operatives to carry out attacks in Germany, adding:
"We are worried that we will not be able to foil every
plot."
Schaeuble's hand has been strengthened by the
discovery of two suspected extremist plots in Germany in the past
two years -- one to blow up passenger trains and another to bomb US
installations.
Authorities reportedly learnt of the second plot
thanks to US surveillance of Internet communications between
Pakistan and Germany, reinforcing calls here for German authorities
to be given similar powers.
The Christian Democrats Wednesday said the court
ruling would be written into law "as soon as possible."
The Social Democrats, partners in the country's
ruling coalition government, have protested that the Internet
surveillance as set out in the regional law could lead to abuses of
privacy.
The party on Wednesday welcomed the "clear
guidelines" set by the Constitutional Court, while the
opposition Greens called the ruling "a slap in the face for
Wolfgang Schaeuble."
The notion of stepping up security powers has
long been a vexed one in Germany because of the abuses committed by
the Nazi and communist East German regimes.
But Germany has been on tenterhooks about
extremism since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States,
which were in part plotted on German soil.
-- AFP
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