However, Article 10.1 of the Basic Law solely protects the confidentiality of specific
telecommunications events. But its protection does not extend generally to all information which relates to the telecommunications behaviour or the totality of relations
between the telecommunications service providers and their customers. In particular,
the secrecy of telecommunications does not protect the confidentiality of the circumstances of each provision of telecommunications services, such as for example the
attribution of the telecommunications numbers allocated by the service providers to
particular subscribers.
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bb) Nor does the attribution of a telecommunications number to a subscriber affect
Article 10.1 of the Basic Law even where it indirectly enables an authority to reconstruct the contents or the circumstances of specific communications events and to attribute them to a specific person. Admittedly, the attribution of a telephone number
need not be restricted to the information as to which subscriber is behind a number,
such as is the case, for example, if authorities investigate telephone numbers which
they have received as the content of notes. On the contrary, such an attribution
makes it indirectly possible to establish the individual details of the circumstances
and content of a call, for example where the content and time of a particular call which
was made from the retrieved number is known to the authority through preliminary investigations. However, neither does the possibility of obtaining such information content mean that the attribution of a telecommunications number to its subscriber is relevant in regard to Article 10.1 of the Basic Law. For in this case too, the information
on content and circumstances of the act of telecommunications in question is not obtained by the encroachment upon confidential telecommunications events itself, but
only transpires in connection with knowledge which the authority has obtained elsewhere, whether through its own investigations, whether from the statements of third
parties, in particular, for example, from notice given by a party to telecommunications.
Article 10.1 of the Basic Law protects the confidentiality of the use of the technical
medium used for transmitting messages, but not the trust between the parties to communications. The secrecy of telecommunications gives no protection against the disclosure of the content or circumstances of an act of communication by a party to the
communications (see BVerfGE 85, 386 <399>; 106, 28 <37>). On the contrary, the
mere attribution of a telecommunications number to a subscriber leaves the confidentiality of the specific communications event as such unaffected and thus does not interfere with Article 10.1 of the Basic Law.
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This applies to line identification numbers or identifiers of email accounts just as to
telephone numbers. But exactly the same applies to static IP addresses. Admittedly,
the attribution of a static IP address to a particular subscriber – more precisely, to a
network interface of the subscriber – as a rule also gives indirect information on a particular telecommunications event involving the person in question, since such addresses, even if they are static, are registered and become the subject of attributions
identifying an individual almost only in connection with specific communications
events. However, here too the conveying of information in this connection is as such
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