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.
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
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
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS