WEBER AND SARAVIA v. GERMANY DECISION
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connections could be monitored deliberately in order to avoid such dangers
(section 3(2)).
98. As to the limit on the duration of telephone tapping, the Court notes
that pursuant to section 5 of the G 10 Act (which was not amended by the
1994 Fight Against Crime Act), the maximum duration of monitoring
measures to be fixed in the order was three months; the implementation of
the measure could be prolonged for a maximum of three months at a time as
long as the statutory conditions for the order were met.
99. Moreover, the procedure to be followed for examining and using the
data obtained was regulated in detail in section 3(3)-(5) of the amended
G 10 Act. In particular, section 3(3) and (5) laid down limits and
precautions concerning the transmission of data to other authorities; these
were further strengthened by the Federal Constitutional Court in its
judgment in the instant case.
100. As to the circumstances in which recordings may or must be erased
or tapes destroyed, the Court observes that section 3(6) and (7) and
section 7(4) of the amended G 10 Act set out in detail the procedure for the
destruction of data obtained by means of strategic monitoring. The
authorities storing the data had to verify every six months whether those
data were still necessary to achieve the purposes for which they had been
obtained by or transmitted to them. If that was not the case, they had to be
destroyed and deleted from the files or, at the very least, access to them had
to be blocked; the destruction had to be recorded in minutes and, in the
cases envisaged in sections 3(6) and 7(4), had to be supervised by a staff
member qualified to hold judicial office.
101. Having regard to the foregoing, the Court concludes that the
impugned provisions of the G 10 Act, seen in their legislative context,
contained the minimum safeguards against arbitrary interference as defined
in the Court’s case-law and therefore gave citizens an adequate indication as
to the circumstances in which and the conditions on which the public
authorities were empowered to resort to monitoring measures, and the scope
and manner of exercise of the authorities’ discretion.
102. Therefore, the interferences with the applicants’ right to respect for
their private life and correspondence as a result of the impugned provisions
of the amended G 10 Act were “in accordance with the law” within the
meaning of Article 8 § 2 of the Convention.
(b) Purpose and necessity of the interferences
103. The Government argued that the impugned interferences with the
secrecy of telecommunications for the various purposes listed in
section 3(1), second sentence, points 1-6, pursued a legitimate aim. They
were necessary, in particular, in the interests of national security, public
safety, the economic well-being of the country, and of the prevention of
crime. The applicants did not comment on this issue.