Germans acquire the right to informational self-determination
The West German census planned for the spring of 1983 was intended as a “total census”. Not just restricting itself to a simple count of the number of West Germans, the government planned to collect a range of information that would be helpful with many areas of policy making. Census agents making their rounds were therefore trained to ask about things like nationality, employment and even how people travelled to work.
A significant number of people were unsettled at this level of government curiosity, and a range of citizens’ initiatives called on householders to boycott the census. Some individuals and groups even lodged constitutional complaints against this plan. Handing down its ruling on 13 April 1983, the Federal Constitutional Court temporarily suspended the implementation of the Census Act. In its final judgement, issued on 15 December 1983, the court came to the conclusion that a number of provisions of the Census Act interfered significantly – and without sufficient justification – with some of the fundamental rights enshrined in the West German constitution. Striking down the law as unconstitutional, the court ruled that data collection techniques that did not enable citizens to “know who knows what about them, when and on what occasion” could not be permitted. The government had to wait until 1987 to carry out a modified census. The judgement on the fundamental right to informational self-determination that emerged from the dispute is now considered a milestone in German data protection law.
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