German judges were to rule yesterday on Facebook users’ “digital legacy,” or the fate of their private data after they die, in a case pitting the Silicon Valley giant against the grieving parents of a teenage girl.
After the 15-year-old was killed by an underground train in 2012, her parents asked Facebook for access to her data and message history, hoping they would shed light on whether the death was an accident or a deliberate suicide.
After the firm refused, the couple in 2015 won a first court case to gain access to the data, only for a Berlin Appeals Court to overturn the ruling.
Now the question has reached Germany’s highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.
As well as seeking emotional closure, the parents hope the information contained in their daughter’s account will clear up whether the train driver is owed compensation, as he might be if her death was a suicide, court documents showed.
INHERITANCE?
The parents say that the contents of their daughter’s Facebook are legally identical to a private diary or letters that might be returned to loved ones after a person’s death.
Judges at the court of first instance in Berlin agreed that the contract between the deceased and Facebook was covered by inheritance law, including the digital content created on the account.
In any case, parents of a minor have a right to know when and with whom their daughter had communicated, they added.
However, the Berlin Appeals Court in its decision last year backed Facebook’s argument that “privacy in telecommunications is guaranteed by Germany’s Basic Law [constitution].”
The judges also backed the firm’s belief that people who exchanged messages with the daughter were also entitled to protection of their private digital communications.
Only two options are offered to relatives when a Facebook user dies: The first is turning their page into a “memorial” allowing people to post their condolences, but with no access to the deceased’s private messages, while the other allows relatives to ask Facebook to delete the dead person’s account.
PAST CASES
Germany is far from the first nation to see moral and legal battles over how to deal with digital data whose owners have passed away.
Apple in 2016 resisted attempts by the FBI to force it to unlock an iPhone belonging to one of two people who had carried out a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, in December 2015.
However, the company was more open to an Italian father who in 2016 asked it to unlock a phone belonging to his child who had died of cancer, allowing him to recover memories and photographs.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
The US government has banned US government personnel in China, as well as family members and contractors with security clearances, from any romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens, The Associated Press (AP) has learned. Four people with direct knowledge of the matter told the AP about the policy, which was put into effect by departing US ambassador Nicholas Burns in January shortly before he left China. The people would speak only on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a confidential directive. Although some US agencies already had strict rules on such relationships, a blanket “nonfraternization” policy, as it is known, has
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
OPTIONS: Asked if one potential avenue to a third term was having J.D. Vance run for the top job and then pass the baton to him, Trump said: ‘That’s one,’ among others US President Donald Trump on Sunday that “I’m not joking” about trying to serve a third term, the clearest indication he is considering ways to breach a constitutional barrier against continuing to lead the country after his second term ends at the beginning of 2029. “There are methods which you could do it,” Trump said in a telephone interview with NBC News from Mar-a-Lago, his private club. He elaborated later to reporters on Air Force One from Florida to Washington that “I have had more people ask me to have a third term, which in a way is a fourth term