From the DW:
“Germany's top court upholds
murderer's right to be forgotten”
Germany's highest court said it had upheld a
complaint from a man convicted of murder in 1982 because archived reports about
the crime appeared first in internet searches for his name. In a statement
released on Wednesday, the judges ruled that while it was allowable for search
engines to provide news reports on current crimes, the justifiable public
interest in reports that made perpetrators identifiable decreased with time. The
case in question was a major news story in Germany in 1982. The man, a member
of the crew of a sailing ship named Apollonia, shot and killed two people and
severely injured another, following a row on board when the ship was in the Caribbean.
The man, then in his early 40s, was released from prison in 2002. The case
became famous enough to be turned into a book and a TV documentary aired by
public broadcaster ARD in 2004. In 1999, news magazine Der Spiegel put three
print reports from 1982 and 1983, in which the man's full name appeared, in its
freely available online archive. On becoming aware of the archive in 2009, the
perpetrator launched a legal campaign to have the reports removed. Germany's
Federal Court of Justice initially dismissed his suit, on the grounds that the
public had an interest in learning about the Apollonia murders and that his
name was inextricably tied to the events. The man argued that the internet
archive represented a violation of his privacy rights and his "ability to
develop his personality," as the court statement put it.
Decision welcomed
Lawyers and press freedom
advocates both welcomed Wednesday's statement, though for different reasons. "Even
with spectacular cases and serious crimes like murder, perpetrators have a
right to be forgotten and a new chance in society," data privacy lawyer Christian
Solmecke told DW. "That insight is equally right and just. It's only by
making it possible for past records to recede that individuals have a chance to
start anew in freedom." The ruling means that German media outlets can
still place old articles in a publically available online archive, but may also
be required to remove them if individuals demand it. According to Solmecke, a
court should decide on a case-by-case basis whether enough time has passed for
the removal of old records is warranted and how much of the record should be
deleted. "In some cases, the deletion of the whole article might be
appropriate, in others just the removal and deletion of the name of the person
in question," Solmecke said. "That would mean the article could still
be found, but the affected person would no longer be found in connection with
the crime." The German office of press freedom group Reporters Without
Borders (ROG) also praised the even-handedness of the Constitutional Court's
statement, because the judges underlined the importance of press freedom while
making such decisions. "This is a long-overdue clarification that does not
fundamentally put the protection of personal rights above the basic right to
press freedom," ROG head Christian Mihr said in a statement. "At
least for Germany, this has reduced the danger that the media's online archives
are made unusable for journalistic research by exaggerated restrictions."
Long-running issue
The issue of how internet search
engines must balance privacy rights with the freedom of information has dogged
courts in Germany and at the European level for some time. Google won a victory
in April when the European Court of Justice decided that it did not have to
apply an EU law requiring the removal of search engine results upon request
outside of EU borders. That decision came after the French data watchdog CNIL
fined Google €100,000 ($109,790) in 2016 for declining to delete sensitive
information from global internet search results. Germany's Constitutional Court
decided that though EU law was valid, in this case, it was its duty to protect
the constitutional rights of German citizens.
^ It seems the Germans continue
to place protecting those convicted of murder over their victims (something
they have done since at least 1945.) The fact that the German Constitutional
Court said that it based its decision on the fact that over time the murders lose
“justifiable public interest” shows just how wrong this decision and the whole
legal system in Germany truly is. Murder
is murder and it doesn’t matter if you kill 2 people (like the man who brought
the suit) or millions. It also doesn’t matter if the murder happened yesterday
or 70 years ago. It is decisions like this one that make the rise of
Anti-Semitism in Germany not at all surprising. If the German Constitutional Court
sides with murderers and dismisses the passage of time as some way alleviating
the crime committed then there is really no hope for modern Germany. You would
think that life would be more precious in Germany and that someone who took a
life would not be protected more than their victim(s.) ^
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