of acts of telecommunication that the telecommunications partners wish to keep to
themselves, but also to the procedures by which information and data are processed
that follow the state’s taking note of protected acts of communication and the use
of the knowledge obtained therefrom (concerning the right to informational selfdetermination, cf. BVerfGE 65, p. 1 [at p. 46] already).
b) Certainly, Article 10.2 of the Basic Law permits restrictions of telecommunications
privacy. Such restrictions, however, require, as does every restriction of a fundamental right, a legal regulation that serves a legitimate aim in the public interest and respects the principle of proportionality. Article 10 of the Basic Law also places special
requirements on the parliament that particularly refer to the processing of personal
data that has been obtained through interference with telecommunications privacy.
The standards the Federal Constitutional Court developed for the right to informational self determination pursuant to Article 2.1 in conjunction with Article 1.1 of the Basic
Law, in its "Census" decision (cf. BVerfGE 65, p. 1 [at pp. 44 et seq.]), can largely be
applied to the more specific guarantee in Article 10 of the Basic Law.
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One of these standards is that the prerequisites for and the extent to which privacy
may be restricted must be clearly recognisable by an objective person in the regulations. In particular, the objective for which telecommunications privacy may be restricted must be precisely specified, naming the area of threat to which it refers. The
data collected must also be suitable and necessary for achieving the objective of the
restriction on telecommunications privacy. It would be incompatible with this principle
to create, for unspecified objectives or for objectives that cannot yet be specified, a
stock of data, the sources of which are not anonymous. Therefore, the storage and
the use of collected data is, in principle, bound to the objective specified in the law
that empowers the respective agency to take note of the collected data in the first
place.
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Acts of communication do not lose their Article 10 privacy protection because the
state has been able to learn of the existence of the telecommunications contact; the
standards established pursuant to fundamental rights apply equally to the transfer of
data and information that has been obtained by an infringement of telecommunications privacy. The protections apply all the more, as the transfer of data, as a general
rule, does not only result in an increase of the agencies or persons who are informed
about the act of communication but also leads to the fact that the data is conveyed to
a different context for altogether new uses. This after-effect of the transfer of data involves additional, possibly more serious, consequences for the monitored persons
than when registered only in its original context of use.
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Certainly, the principle of tying an encroachment on telecommunications privacy to
a specific objective does not altogether preclude the possibility that the objective for
such an encroachment might change. Any changes, however, require a statutory basis consistent in form and substance with the Basic Law. This means, inter alia, that a
change of the objectives that justify encroachments upon privacy must be justified by
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