JOURNALISTS LOSE CASE IN GERMANY

The German Constitutional Court ruled today that police can use information from journalists' phone calls to capture suspects. I gave some background on this case last year, here. According to an article in Berlin's Tagesspiegel, here, the main justification for the court's nod in the direction of police investigative tactics was the nature of the crimes involved: one of the prisoners was wanted for terrorist acts (that lay 30 years in the past) and another was wanted for various kinds of fraud. In addition, the court said that there was little dispute about the evidence that these individuals were, in fact, involved in serious crimes and that the journalists were, in fact, in contact with these individuals. The ruling seems to be fairly narrow: only in cases where the identity of the individuals is clear, and the evidence against them is great, can the police use this kind of information.

One nice thing about the German Constitutional Court is that it provides press releases, complete with copies of the relevant statutes. Of course, that makes the Court seem less like the cryptic Voice From On High and more like another policymaking body. I'm all for that.