The german parliament has passed a law on data retention. In brief, the law obliges Telcos, ISPs and Mail-Providers to retain data for six months.

"Data" is your name, the mere fact that you have a contract. Data is as well that you were connected to the internet. When, how long, with which IP address. That you called this and that mobile Phone number. That you tried to call it. That you sent a sms. That you connected to your mail server. When.

All this data is urgently needed by investigators to fight terrorism.

Well. As actually few terrorists have a residential DSL line in germany, the data pool comes in quite handy to track down people who commit as evil crimes as sharing music. We fully understand that, the music industry needs to protect their cold-war business model. Of course it's not lawful to copy music and give it to somebody else. But if anybody claims that it's a crime in the range of murder, I would be surprised.

What remains as a fact is that the privacy of every person communicating in or with somebody in germany is from the 1st of January 2009 on nonexistent anymore. For six months, whoever is interested will be able to analyze your network, track down where you have been (net-wise) and when.

That's not the end of the world, but it's a very significant turning point. Privacy Laws in germany have been set up to protect people from a state which wants to know too much. We had those states, two in the last century, and the constitution was a foundation to ensure civil rights - free speech, democracy, liberty.

It was - because it's been given up on November 9th by the parliament.

What does that mean for the future of the internet?