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Protestors carried out a mock funeral for the "death of privacy"
More than 30,000 Germans filed a mass lawsuit, marked by protests, against a controversial law that allows the storing of telephone and Internet data for up to six months as part of efforts to combat terrorism.
Protests were held in German cities a day before new legislation comes into force requiring companies to retain records for six months of the to and from addresses of e-mail, time spent on the internet and phone numbers dialled by customers.
Police require a judicial warrant to search the files during inquiries into terrorism and serious crime. The law also permits telephone tapping in certain cases.
The bill, which was passed by the German parliament in November and is to go into effect on Jan. 1, is meant to aid investigations into terrorism and serious crime.
"Death of privacy"
At a rally Monday in the northern city of Hamburg, critics and activists held a mock funeral for "the death of privacy." Police said the
demonstration by 200 people passed off without violence.
In the southern city of Karlsruhe, the Working Party on Data Retention filed for an urgent injunction to stop the legislation on the grounds that it was "obviously unconstitutional."
They said the 150-page application against "surveillance without suspicion" was initially by eight people, but was backed by 30,000
who had signed petitions.
Their names would be joined to the suit after processing by a Berlin law office, making it the largest such appeal in modern German history.
"We are hoping for a quick ruling," said lawyer Meinhard Starostik leading the group. But a court spokesman said judges would not sit on
the case Monday.
The activists said they would also seek to overturn the March 2006 European Union data-retention directive that required Germany to pass the legislation.
President approves legislation
The controversial legislation was further bolstered last week when German President Horst Köhler gave it his blessing.
A spokesman for Köhler said on Wednesday, Dec 26, said that after intense examination of the law, "there was no reason to believe that it could not be signed because it was unconstitutional."
But critics of the legislation maintian that it tramples privacy rights and civil liberties, places millions of citizens under general terrorist suspicion and paves the way to a surveillance state.
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German President Köhler approved the data retention law
"We're going to fight for the fact that basic rights don't go up in smoke along with the New Year's fireworks and then finally disappear when 2008 dawns," Gisela Piltz, domestic affairs spokeswoman for the opposition free-market liberal FDP party, said last week.
She added that the data retention law "strikes at the foundation of our constitutional state." The court in Karlsruhe will now have to throw light on whether the "surveillance of millions of people in Germany" can be reconciled with the constitution, she said.
