Germany - a citizen has "a guarantee of confidentiality and integrity in information-technology systems"

you'll notice that THIS one ain't getting any coverage in the u.s... wonder why...?

A verdict by Germany's highest court this week on the controversial question as to whether the government has the right to sift remotely through a citizen's hard drive has not only pointed the way for an upcoming federal law. It has done nothing less than establish a new "fundamental right" for the 21st century, according to German observers. Now that the court has spoken ..., lawmakers and police have some idea of where a person's "private sphere" starts and ends -- even if the suspect is surfing a wireless connection, outdoors, on a laptop.

Until now, the legal status of a person's hard-drive data while doing something so harmless was incredibly vague. The new verdict sets guidelines for how far the government can intrude in Germany. And it establishes a civil right that may not be so clearly defined anywhere else in the world.

The German Constitutional Court ruled Wednesday that a surveillance law passed in 2007 in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia gave police and state officials too much power to spy on citizens using "trojan horse" software, which can be delivered by e-mail and used to scan the contents of a hard drive.

Not only did the law violate the right to privacy, the court said, but it also violated a basic right for a citizen using a computer with an Internet connection to "a guarantee of confidentiality and integrity in information-technology systems."

leave it to the europeans to show us the way...

ya also gotta love it... "even if the suspect is surfing a wireless connection, outdoors, on a laptop..." i'm assuming that the use of the word "suspect" is deliberate, meaning that even a suspect has the right to protection from unauthorized, secret spying...

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