the dangers that are to be recognised with the help of telecommunications monitoring; and (2) how probable is their occurrence.
bb) Telecommunications privacy is seriously impaired by the challenged regulations.
220
It is not the case, however, as argued in the first constitutional complaint, that with
the challenged regulations the parliament has completely eliminated the telecommunications privacy secured by Article 10 of the Basic Law. The challenged regulations,
thus, have not affected the essence of the fundamental right and are therefore in
compliance with Article 19.2 of the Basic Law. "Global and generalised monitoring"
with respect to foreign surveillance, which is prohibited by the Basic Law, is also not
permitted by the challenged regulations (cf. BVerfGE 67, p. 157 [at p. 174]). The challenged regulations also do not permit a screening of all the telecommunications contacts of specific holders of fundamental rights that is not bound to certain prerequisites. Rather, monitoring and recording pursuant to the challenged regulations is
limited legally as well as factually.
221
The limitation is, first of all, apparent from the fact that, pursuant to sentence 1 of
§ 3.1(1) of the G 10 Act, only wireless international telecommunications traffic is subject to monitoring. Monitoring measures do not extend to domestic telecommunications traffic. Restrictions of telecommunications privacy may include line-bound traffic
only in order to recognise the threat of an armed aggression, but not concerning the
other threats which have been newly incorporated into the law (§ 3.1[3] of the G 10
Act). Wireless traffic, i.e. traffic that is transmitted via microwave or satellite, presently
amounts to approximately ten per cent of the entire telecommunications traffic but
will, according to the independent, court-appointed expert Professor Dr. Wiesbeck,
continually increase due to technological progress.
222
Whether a specific act of communication takes place via line-bound or wireless
telecommunications systems, is, according to the experts' statements, determined
automatically depending on the capacity and capacity utilisation of the transmission
routes and is therefore unpredictable for the communication partners as well as for
the Federal Intelligence Service. For these reasons alone, comprehensive screening
is not feasible, at least as far as the international telecommunications traffic is concerned. It is true that in any telecommunications contact abroad, the individual engaged in this contact must be aware of the possibility that the contact is screened by
the Federal Intelligence Service. Such a screening will in actuality, however, only
rarely occur.
223
As far as international wireless telecommunications contacts are concerned, the
probability of screening is further diminished by the circumstance that, according to
the information given by the expert Professor Dr. Wiesbeck, the uplink can, for technical reasons, only be observed to a limited extent so that, essentially, only the downlink is covered by monitoring efforts. According to the expert, it is technically possible
to combine both communication elements, but this would require a large-scale co-
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