Burden and Relief: German Data Protection

CK - Washington.   On July 3, 2009, the federal diet in Berlin passed executive-sponsored data protection and data audit amendments that impact seriously on employers and data services providers, including data merchants and polling companies. Advertisers working with data merchants will need to disclose their data sources. Use, storage and collection of personally identifiable data will depend even more on consent. Providers of agreements seeking such consent must highlight the terms of consent. Advertising with self-collected customer data will remain legal. The bill also admonishes data collectors to adhere to principles of sparsity and responsibility. For instance, the use of pseudonyms and anonymization of data will become more important. With less information collected, data protection burdens shrink. The bill is an almost incomprehensible jumble and some portions seem ripe for challenge in court. The background information from the various parliamentary committees is useful: Text 16/13657 of July 1, 2009, Text 16/12011 of February 18, 2009. The data aud…