provided by the guarantee of recourse to a court. These provisions, however, do not
set forth that the encroachments are not subject to any review whatsoever. Rather,
recourse to a court is replaced by a review of the case by agencies and auxiliary
agencies appointed by the parliament.
The right provided by Article 19.4 of the Basic Law, however, is not restricted to judicial review and judicial proceedings. If the guarantee of legal protection provided by
the right of recourse to a court is supposed to ensure the possibility of safeguarding
other material rights, this guarantee can, parallel to Article 10 of the Basic Law, require that a monitored person be informed of the monitoring activities, if this form of
granting knowledge is the prerequisite of the monitored person taking recourse to a
court (cf. BVerfGE 65, p. 1 [at p. 70]). However, Article 19.4 of the Basic Law, which
must be made more concrete and implemented by laws, does not preclude limitations
on the right that it secures.
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The obligation to destroy data that is no longer needed, which exists in principle,
must also be understood in light of Article 19.4 of the Basic Law. The guaranteed right
of recourse to a court provided by Article 19.4 of the Basic Law prohibits measures
that are aimed at and likely to frustrate the protection of the monitored person's right
of recourse to a court (cf. BVerfGE 69, p. 1 [at p. 49]). In cases in which the monitored
person strives for judicial review of state measures of information and data processing, the obligation to destroy data must therefore be reconciled with the guarantee of
recourse to a court in such a way that legal protection is not undermined or frustrated.
180
3. The fundamentally private acts of communication protected by Article 10 of the
Basic Law, including correspondence, post and telecommunication, can be further
protected by guarantees of fundamental rights that are relevant because of the content or the context of a specific act of communication. Guarantees of protection in addition to Article 10 may also be necessary in light of the impairment of fundamental
rights that might result from use of the obtained data in new contexts.
181
To the extent that the complainants engage in the press sector and to the extent that
they have claimed that they are hindered in this activity by the challenged regulations,
the freedom of the press pursuant to Article 5.1(2) of the Basic Law can be considered as an additional guarantee of a fundamental right to telecommunications privacy. The freedom of the press not only refers to the dissemination of news and opinions in the press but also includes the prerequisites and auxiliary activities without
which the press is unable to fulfil its function. This especially applies to the secrecy of
its sources of information and to the mutual trust between the press and its informants
(cf. BVerfGE 20, p. 162 [at pp. 176, 187 et seq.]; BVerfGE 50, p. 234 [at p. 240];
BVerfGE 77, p. 65 [at pp. 74-75]) as well as to the confidentiality of editorial work (cf.
BVerfGE 66, p. 116 [at pp. 130 et seq.]), all of which are imperative for the procurement and the processing of information.
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This protection, however, can only apply after the state has taken note of data and
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