Data retention laws alter human behavior

Kreativraschen has an English language blog entry on how Germany’s new data retention law is altering human behavior when it comes to using telecommunications systems, such as the phone. Germany enacted a data retention law that requires telecommunications companies to log who called who and store that information for six months so that law enforcement could use the data if they needed to.

The Forsa institute did a survey of a little over 1000 people to see how the data retention law altered their behavior if any. Their results are very interesting.

* 73% know about the data retention
* 11% said that they had already abstained from using phone, cell phone or e-mail in certain occasions
* 6% believe to receive less communication since the beginning of the data retention
* 52% said they probably would not use telecommunication for contacts like drug counselors, psychotherapists or marriage counselors because of data retention
And the sad fact: 48% still think that data retention is a necessary step for crime prevention.

Source: Kreativraschen

What is interesting is one of the side bar comments on the entry about people not calling their therapists, which can be bad depending on how much the person under therapy is in trouble mentally or emotionally. There is also the argument that beyond crime, this information can be used to determine what journalist broke what story, and that if using the phone, journalists should not be doing so when contacting confidential or private contacts.

In all this is an interesting survey, well worth taking a look and dumping it into babel fish to get the full translation and the full impact.

Tags: germany, data, retention, law, user, habits, altered