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German Court Rules That Websites Can't Retain Logged IPs

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed Oct 03, 2007 08:58 AM
from the well-this-is-interesting dept.
Privacy
tmk writes "The local court of the Berlin district of Mitte has barred the Federal Ministry of Justice from logging IP adresses of the visitors of its website. German law prohibits storing personal data for a longer time — if not needed for accounting. German privacy activists have started a campaign Wir speichern nicht, ("we don't log your data!") which provides manuals how to turn off the IP logging on your server."
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Submission: German court: you must not log IP adresses! by tmk (712144)
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German Court Rules That Websites Can't Retain Logged IPs 50 Comments More /

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  • Wir wissen, daß Sie Adressen, Slashdot loggen. Dies heißt Krieg. Hans, bereiten das Virus vor! Widerstand ist vergeblich!

    The Germans were dismayed to report that an 'unfortunate' side effect of this ruling is that they would have to invade Poland & France to 'liberate' their servers.

    But in all seriousness, good for them. I personally think it should be left up to the administrator of the server (or whoever 'owns' the content). If you do keep it, it's evident that the government m
    • I'm no expert on German law, but it doesn't sound like they've made IP logging illegal. It sounds like the ruling states that the government can not retain IP info.

      the local court of the Berlin district of Mitte has barred the Federal Ministry of Justice from retaining personal data acquired via its website beyond the periods associated with the specific instances of use of the site.

      It sounds kinda like free speech in the US. The Constitution hasn't outlawed censorship, it only bars the government from censoring(err... to some extent). So I would guess the big question is how does German's legal system work, and how does this ruling? apply to non-state actors.

      -Rick

      • Re:Illegal? Or government limitation? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Josef Meixner (1020161) on Wednesday October 03 2007, @12:22PM (#20839793) Homepage

        It is a bit complicated. In principle the law states you are not allowed to store privacy related data without a clear cause. Just storing because you can store is not enough. Every citizen has the right to ask what data you store about him and can even ask you to delete it. Failure to do so can result in a law suite and if you store information you don't need for the agreed upon cause you will loose. That has happened to the Ministry of Justice. As German law is not based on precedent it doesn't mean anything for anybody else directly. But it can mean, you are next on the list and will face a similar law suite.

        One of the problems is, I don't see, how the IP address is a privacy related data, as a normal webmaster will not be able to connect an IP of an anonymous user with the users identity. This also is only the lowest instance of the court system, but the Ministry has not appealed (for whatever reasons).

        I am personally undecided about it, in principle it is correct, why does a website I once visit have to store my IP forever? Also the next target of the group which started the Ministry of Justice case is now going after the BKA (federal police), they put up an information page about an extremist group not much is known about called mg (for "militante gruppe"). Everyone who visits that page is logged and they try to connect your IP with the data they have to identify you. It seems they try to somehow find the "terrorists" that way. Don't laugh, they seem to actually believe that could work.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by vidarh (309115)
          In principle the law states you are not allowed to store privacy related data without a clear cause. Just storing because you can store is not enough. Every citizen has the right to ask what data you store about him and can even ask you to delete it. Failure to do so can result in a law suite and if you store information you don't need for the agreed upon cause you will loose.

          And for those who don't know: This is the case in all EU (and EEA) countries. It is a result of the implementation of the EU Data

  • The local court also opposed the view espoused by operators and some data privacy watchdogs that security reasons justify a recording regime that over short periods of time maps the behavior of all Net users and allows individual users to be picked out. Are these the same security groups and watchdogs that shout "We want TOR... We want TOR" ... Funny thing is, they can use TOR which pseudo-anonymizes their identities, then cry foul... Mapping IP addresses means nothing when it comes to tracking users:

    xxx

    • Lets say you log all connections done in bittorent and then match them against the people logging in on your government site looking for jobs.
      • Irrelevant... Unless you have a static address there is no way to differentiate who was behind that address. Even WITH a static address there is nothing to say it was you behind a machine
        • Not just address. You get things like browser id, accept formats, OS, and a bunch of other stuff that, taken together, is pretty unique to the system. It could be simple things such as email traffic, or those 5 tabs that auto-load all at once whenever you start your browser.

          If you are not a super-secretive computer freak, then just by looking at your TCPIP traffic in toto I can tell exactly who you are. And even if you are a paranoid privacy nut, I still can tell who you are based on how you are probably th

  • Conflict with logging laws? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature (593017) on Wednesday October 03 2007, @09:15AM (#20836727) Journal

    There has been a movement to INCREASE the amount of logging going and to force ISP's to maintain detailed records for long periods of their users actions. That is WAY more intrusive then a website logging your ip. You do NOT have to go to a website, you are bound to use an ISP.

    Before all the privacy loonies wake up, remember that it is perfectly normal for ALL your phone calls to be logged and it is standard practive for the police to check them, with court order, if they suspect something.

    The most common example of this is a bomb threath. The police will have a record of where the call was made from.

    This ruling makes this impossible to do the same with a bomb threath send over the internet. Wouldn't this ruling make even the most basic web policing, the blocking of ip adresses, impossible?

    This seems like an overly broad ruling that leaves a lot of web admins in trouble because they can no longer effectively manage their servers.

    Yes it is a nice counter to the european wide move to log EVERYTHING but there is such a thing as balance. Logging everything is wrong, but not being able to log anything can lead to just as much trouble.

    For all the slashdot privacy nutters I ask you this. How often have you sniggered when some scumbag was traced by online activists and had his private information published on slashdot?

  • Freedom? or Anarchy? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by El Lobo (994537) on Wednesday October 03 2007, @09:19AM (#20836787)
    People seem to cheer everytime a law helps "liberty" on the web. But is it really liberty they are promoting? Or is it anarchy? I have sympathy for those who think that not keeping the logs is good , and not having a log at all is better. I don't like either that somebody will missuse MY data (whatever that is) in this way. BUT, does it work in the real world?

    What if some users are uploading/downlöoading child pornography or other illegal material? How do I track down the motherfucker? Yes, some people will say, let everyone do whatever they want... But no, laws are laws and log files are an effective (yet, imperfect) way of keeping things in order, at a minimum. Is like having a law that says that all door locks are ilegal...

      • Is like having a law that says that I am not allowed to write in my journal about your visit to my home. There you go, the actual metaphor. The information is freely given, it's easily changed/hidden, and my web server can't force you or your browser to do anything. If you hand me a business card when you enter my home and my wife wants to scrapbook it, is that a privacy concern, or should you just not hand out business cards?
  • I am not proficient at German but I think "Wir speichern nicht" means "We save not" or we don't save.
    Corrections?
    • No no no. It means "We don't speak." It was obviously said by a group of mutes.
    • You're correct: "We don't save." "Speichern" is the verb German computer games use when you want to "save the game."

      (OT: Many translations "overdo" what is contained in the original statement. "L'etat, c'est moi" is usually translated as "I am the state", but it should really be "The state, it's me." That would carry over Louis XIV's, and the French's acceptance of, sentence fragments and the use of the accusative with "to be". Of course, he didn't actually say that, or believe it, but whatever.)
  • It doesn't sound like this is an easy law to enforce. I mean how are you going to know if someone is logging ips on their site by seeing what the server variables are set to? But then again you can always use another tool that doesn't show up so easily. This whole thing just sounds to hard to enforce to the point where it would be effective to have the law. Its not like enforcing a parking ban or anything.

  • Knock Knock (Score:5, Funny)

    by SuperCharlie (1068072) on Wednesday October 03 2007, @09:25AM (#20836887)
    Who's there?

    Denial Of Service Attack

    Denial Of Service Attack Who?

    We dont know.. we dont log that stuff..

  • Banlists are now illegal? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by siDDis (961791) on Wednesday October 03 2007, @09:30AM (#20836953)
    As I understand this law is that my private server in Germany is now open for brute force attackers because I can't ban their ip address after 3 login failures? Heck I can't even break that law since everyone can easily tell that I'm using a ban list and just call the police.

    I think someone in the German government should google brute force attacks and why ban lists are good.
    • No, but you can claim that you arbitrarily disallow the access of your resources. That's allowed. It just happens to be your IP address. Or the feds'.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Bert64 (520050)
        There are 2^32 potential IP addresses, thats 4294967296... And you can decrease that number considerably by removing addresses that will never appear in internet-facing logs (127.x 10.x 192.168.x, plus all the blocks currently unallocated or reserved)...
        Unless the hash algorithm was ridiculously complex, it wouldn't take all that long to brute force, and a database of every possible hash wouldn't be all that big either, not relative to the rainbow tables used for common password hashing techniques.
  • are NOT belong to us

  • This isn't going to last (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Cleon (471197) <cleon42 AT yahoo DOT com> on Wednesday October 03 2007, @09:36AM (#20837023) Homepage
    I really doubt this is going to last, and nobody outside of Germany is going to take it seriously. Too many servers log IP addresses, if nothing else just because IIS and Apache do that by default.

    Then there is the issue of competing laws. In the US, for example, federal encryption laws require IP addresses to be logged when certain pieces of software are downloaded.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bert64 (520050)
      US laws don't apply to people living in Germany, despite what a large number of americans seem to believe nowadays.
      Similarly, German laws don't apply elsewhere, so you could simply host your website in another country, but you might have to go to the extent of having a foreign entity actually "owning" the site.
      Hosting in Germany is expensive anyway, many German companies and individuals host their sites elsewhere already.

  • So, you can't store people's IPs on your web server, but if you operate a TOR node, you do? Or only if you are ordered to by a court?

    I think I'm confused.

  • In Deutschland, we do not log IPs.
  • I think some people here got confused with the translation. It is ok to have IP's in theserver logfiles. It is not ok to store/save the logfiles with the IP's for a longer period of time.

  • Uh oh (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Acecoolco (1012419)
    My servers are in Germany, but I will continue to log.. I am hosted on Hosteurope which is actually currently under investigation by the FBI for allowing a hole to persist in their infrastructure that allows anyone to get into any server on their network...

    I already know the guy that got into my server lives in Romania, registered the domain name in Canada (Toronto), using a New York Address, with a fake credit card, and the fake business is !located in Sweden...

    So, I will continue to log for security purpo
  • If you haven't done so yet, reading and laughing about German politics is a great idea to spend some boring office hours. American Slashdot readers may already know what it's like to have a moron [wikipedia.org] rule your country, but in everything privacy-related Germany's totally unbeatable.

    April 2007. A new law about data retention has just passed the german government[1]. Called "Vorratsdatenspeicherung"[2] it forces communication providers to introduce an identification liability. As an example this means no more a
  • There is good and bad to this.

    On the one hand, it is great to see courts telling companies that they can't store every little tidbit of information about you. Too many companies (globally) retain customer credit card numbers, addresses, etc. for longer than is required for the transaction. I just got a letter from my credit card company saying that my card may have been stolen, and they issued me a new card. But they won't tell me how they know. Most likely, one of the gzillion places that retain my CC#

  • heh (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Random832 (694525) on Wednesday October 03 2007, @10:13AM (#20837605)
    That "Wir speichern nicht" site makes the argument (or, appears to, based on google translation) that keeping IP addresses for a ban list isn't useful because an IP address isn't necessarily associated with a single person - yet, if you accept that argument, an IP address isn't "personal data" of any kind at all!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mxs (42717)
      Your logic is fallacious.

      A single IP address is not necessarily associated with a single person. Correct. A -> B. This does not imply B->A in any way, shape or form.

      The site actually doesn't make that argument, however. It makes the argument that an IP address is not permanently associated with a single person and easily changed for most (most ISPs here assign you a different IP on each login, out of a pool of millions; and most ISPs here do not allow connections to stay connected for longer than 24 h
  • I beg to differ. I have it from a reliable source that the Nazi's didn't log IPs either! The German government is *clearly* evil.

  • Don't mess up with the context. (Score:3, Informative)

    by burni (930725) on Wednesday October 03 2007, @10:32AM (#20837963)
    The context is that the http://www.bmj.bund.de/ ( german version of the DOJ )
    started to log ip-addresses of people who had accessed public information dealing with
    a terrorist group called "millitante Gruppe".

    (
    "Militante Gruppe" / ('militant group')

    - german leftist/communist/(anarchist?)
    - anti-global

    terror group

    till now no human causalties were recorded, terrorist actions mostly targeted unmanned police cars, or cars of right winged politicans in the city of Hamburg, using molotow cocktails,

    The BKA ( german version of the FBI ) is investigating the incidents since 2001,
    and they lack in information.
    )

    The information was placed intended to inform the public about the signs of identification the
    group has been used in the past, to engage whistleblowers who may have recognized suspicious things helping the police to identify the persons behind this terrorist group.

    But in contrast the visitors ip's were logged and further investigation was done by the 'BKA',
    this includes identify the persons which accessed the page using their ip addresses,
    with no further evidence such as visiting a governmental public information site,
    such actions probably are illegal.

    From the judgement were some non-offical guidancelines derived,
    I will try to translate them as properly as I can.

    The judgement deals not with IPs in detail, there is a term
    "Internet-Nutzungsdaten" this can also be a profile of use,
    and the german privacy laws try to protect the people from
    being tracked, and so profiled.

    GER Leits&#228;tze (nicht amtlich):
    ENG guidancelines ( non offical ):

    a.)
    GER Anbieter von Telemedien im Internet d&#252;rfen nicht systematisch die Kennungen (IP-Adressen) GER der Nutzer ihrer Dienste protokollieren.

    ENG Provider of internet content and service shall not log signs of identification (ip-addresses)
    ENG of users systematically.

    b.)
    GER Zur Entscheidung von Streitigkeiten &#252;ber die Verarbeitung von Internet-Nutzungsdaten durch GER eine &#246;ffentliche Stelle ist die ordentliche Gerichtsbarkeit berufen.

    ENG Anytime an offical judge must decide in disputes concerning the processing of
    ENG  ?InternetUserProfilingData? through a governmental organisation

    c.)
    GER Kann zwar nicht die speichernde Stelle, aber ein Dritter eine Angabe der Person des
    GER Betroffenen zuordnen, so ist das Datum personenbezogen.

    ENG If the Content Provider (logger) is not able to resolve the person of interest through the IP
    ENG but a third person (ISP) is able to do so, the date is also to be recognized as personal data

    NONTRANSLATIONJUSTMYSAYING  .. and so shall not be logged at all.

    GER Die von einem Internet-Zugangsanbieter tempor&#228;r zugewiesene Internetkennung (dynamische IP-GER Adresse) stellt nicht nur f&#252;r den Internet-Zugangsanbieter, sondern auch f&#252;r Anbieter von GER Telemedien im Internet ein personenbezogenes Datum dar.

    ENG The dynamic IP address assigned by the ISP, is to be treated as personal data,
    ENG for both the ISP and the content provider,

    ????? it can be seen as a personalised private date/datum.

    From my point of view - I'm not a lawyer - but I understand a.) as if you recognize
    missuse you are allowed to log the data of the missusing parties,
    it's just not allowed to log and store every access over the
    period of use ('.. d&#252;rfen nicht systematisch ..')

  • No legal consequences for others... yet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by r3f4rd30n (1030822) on Wednesday October 03 2007, @11:20AM (#20838787)
    It has to be noted that this decision does not necessariliy affect anyone apart from the parties involved in that particular case. German courts are not bound to decisions other courts made; there is no such thing as 'case law' in the german legal system. I'm pretty confident that 'regular' logging will continue to be alright; the analysis of user behavior is the critical fact here, at least that's how I read it. Still, every single law concerning the internet seems to be utter nonsense as of late; however, since noone in the government seems to understand how that whole computer-thingy works, that's hardly surprising. And on a sidenote: The Grundgesetz (*) states in article ten that "The privacy of correspondance, posts, and telecommunication shall be unviolable" - so far so good, however that does only affect the relationship between people and the state, not purely private relationships. I'm in law school, and I recently learned that the "Article 10 is not that important anymore since the Dt. Post and Dt. Telekom became private corperations and are not directly controlled by the state anymore." * http://www.bundestag.de/htdocs_e/parliament/function/legal/germanbasiclaw.pdf [bundestag.de]

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Nos. (179609)
      Sorry, but federal law trumps you. If this is the law in Germany, and you're breaking it, you're committing a crime.
    • You are living in a country. You are a (permanent/temporary) guest. You have to obey by the laws of the country. If you want to keep logging you could leave the country and be on your way.

      Yes, this applies to everything else as well.
      • You are living in a country. You are a (permanent/temporary) guest. You have to obey by the laws of the country

        I thought Americans were exempt from having to obey the local laws of other countries... [wikipedia.org]

        /facetiousness
          • So the informational content of your original post was what? The TC was saying why the laws are morally wrong. Your response was ... Germany will enforce them anyway? So? How is that responsive?

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Bert64 (520050)
              Governments don't have to make their laws "morally right"... They just need to be able to enforce them, and that means ensuring that the people who oppose those laws are not well armed or numerous enough to remove you from government.

    • Re:Idiocy (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Obvius (779709) on Wednesday October 03 2007, @09:07AM (#20836603)
      Yes, but by the time you've told me that's your policy, you've already logged me.
      • It should be assumed.

        Do you walk in to a store and complain when you find out that your face has been recorded by a CCTV camera? Visiting a website is the online equivalent of going on to someone else's private property.

        • Do you walk in to a store and complain when you find out that your face has been recorded by a CCTV camera?
          If they don't have a sign at the door saying they have cameras? Damn right I do, as that would be an illegal practice for the store (in Sweden). Furthermore, they require a permit for the camera(s).
          • And what about recording your own phone conversations without the consent of the person on the other end of the line? Is that too illegal? (it isn't here in Canada, and I'm glad)

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Alphager (957739)

                And what about recording your own phone conversations without the consent of the person on the other end of the line?
                Legal.
                not in germany.

                • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                  by neoform (551705)
                  Why would/should it be illegal?

                  If I'm allowed to look at someone talking to me and hear what he/she has to say, am I not allowed to record that transaction?

                  Where do you draw the line as to recording?

                  No Video?
                  no Audio?
                  No Photos?
                  No Drawings?
                  No Writen notes?
                  No Mental recollection of the dialog?
                  No Remember the persons face?

                  The whole concept of denying someone the right to record personal transactions is ludicrous. If I run a website and someone access it, I have every right to record that person's IP address an
      • Anyway, did you ever visited a website that explicitly told you what data the kept on you?
    • One of my rules in my home is that I can forcibly rape you. My home == my rules. The government is abusing its power by arresting me, the person knew the rules when they entered my home, not my fault they were underage or changed their mind.
        • Course then you can get into other weird areas.... how about brining in the concept of a "Safe word" thats a stand in for stop. Such a person could agree to participate in acting out a rape scene "with no safe word".

          Then I have to wonder how the law even deals with it.

          Here in MA, so I have heard, there are no provisions that allow for consensual beating. So Spanking your spouse, or beating him/her with a whip, crop, or paddle is abuse, whether its consensual or not. This is a bit of a problem for the local
    • I agree. This is like saying that Caller ID should be illegal... when someone calls you, you should have no way whatsoever to find out where they were calling from. Ridiculous.

      Not only that, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to call an IP address "personally identifiable information."
    • Yes, there's no place like 127.0.0.1

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