Category Archives: Law: Privacy

The ever-wonderful RISKS Digest brings warnings of Loss of Identity Theft

I was recently the executor of a relative's estate and was shocked to discover that I was able to cancel his private health insurance, his veteran's health benefits, one dozen credit cards, and all of his retirement direct deposit payments with simple phone calls. At no time did anyone ask me to prove that I was who I said I was or whether I had executor power over his estate. I simply presented a plausible sounding story, knew his social security number and his account numbers and was able to close his accounts over the phone. To make it even more interesting our last names are not even the same!

disLEXia 3000 blog reports on what sounds like a major German court decision on privacy in public places.

Court: leave unobserved areas for pedestrians
Heise is reporting that a german court just ordered a shop to stop complete camera surveillance of the sidewalk/ambulatory around their premises. The court upheld that this even is the case if the sidewalk is owned by the shop but used by the general public for passage.

In any cases there must exist a “tunnel” of unsurveillanced ground where people can pass through.

If this judgment is upheld major parts of our cities should see dismantling of thousands of cameras.

Oh, how I wish I read German! The Heise article gets mangled less than usual by the Babelfish (see extended entry), but it's still mangled. And there appear to be a court decision and a decision of Privacy Commissioners somewhere too…

For starters, I'd like to know the legal basis of this decision. Is it the German Constitution? A statute? A local ordinance? Something at the Euro-level (surely not the toothless data protection directive)?

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