Advertisement

Update: parents can access dead daughter's Facebook, German court rules

AFP/DPA/The Local
AFP/DPA/The Local - [email protected]
Update: parents can access dead daughter's Facebook, German court rules

Facebook must grant the parents of a dead girl access as heirs to their daughter's user account, which had been blocked for five and a half years, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) ruled on Thursday.

Advertisement

At the pronouncement of the verdict on Thursday morning, presiding judge Ulrich Herrmann said that letters and diaries are also passed on to heirs, and that there is no reason to treat digital content differently. The parents have now taken over the account, which has officially ended for their daughter.

After the 15-year-old was killed by an underground train in 2012, her parents first asked Facebook for access to her data and message history, hoping these would shed light on whether the death was an accident or a deliberate suicide.

After the firm refused, the couple won a first court case in 2015 to gain access to the data, only for a Berlin appeals court to overturn the ruling.

The question then reached Germany's highest court for civil law, the BGH. As well as seeking emotional closure, court documents show, the parents hoped the information contained in their daughter's account will clear up whether the train driver is owed compensation - as he might be if her death was suicide.

Diary or data?

The parents argued the contents of their daughter's Facebook account are legally identical to a private diary or letters that might be returned to loved ones after a person's death, exactly like an inheritance.

Judges at the court of first instance in Berlin agreed that the contract between the deceased and Facebook was covered by inheritance law, including the digital content created on the account. And parents of a minor in any case had a right to know when and with whom their daughter had communicated, they added.

But the Berlin appeals court, in its 2017 decision, backed Facebook's argument that "privacy in telecommunications is guaranteed by Germany's Basic Law (Constitution)".

What's more, the judges backed the firm's belief that people who exchanged messages with the daughter were also entitled to protection of their private digital communications.

Prior to the ruling, only two options were offered to relatives when a Facebook user dies. The first is turning their page into a "memorial" allowing people to post their condolences, but with no access to the deceased's private messages. Otherwise, a form allows relatives to ask Facebook to delete the dead person's account.

Germany is far from the first country to see moral and legal battles over how to deal with digital data whose owners have passed away.

In 2016, Apple resisted attempts by the FBI to force it to unlock an iPhone belonging to one of two people who had carried out a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California in December 2015.

But the company was more open to an Italian father who in 2016 asked it to unlock a phone belonging to his child who had died of cancer, allowing him to recover precious memories and photos.

More

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also