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GERMANY-DEATH-INTERNET-FACEBOOK
Parents can inherit dead daughter’s Facebook account: German court
KARLSRUHE, Germany, July 12, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Germany’s top court ruled
Thursday that Facebook should grant a grieving mother access to her dead
daughter’s account, in a landmark judgement for how social network data is
treated after its owners pass away.
Judges at the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe found that the
daughter’s contract with Facebook was part of her legacy and should be passed
on to the mother, giving her full access to the daughter’s account including
her posts and private messages.
“The contract covering a user account with a social network is transferred
to the heirs of the original owner of the account,” they said.
Those heirs “have a claim on the network operator for access to the account
including communications data,” the ruling continued.
The mother has battled Facebook through a years-long series of appeals
after her 15-year-old daughter was killed by an underground train in 2012.
She hopes the data will shed light on whether the death was an accident or
a suicide.
As well as offering emotional closure, court documents show, the
information could clear up whether the train driver is owed compensation —
as he might be if the daughter did kill herself. – Diary or data? –
The mother argued the contents of her daughter’s Facebook account are
legally identical to a private diary or letters that might be inherited by
loved ones after a person’s death.
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 a 2017 decision, backed Facebook’s
argument that “privacy in telecommunications is guaranteed by Germany’s Basic
Law (Constitution)” — for the daughter as well as for the people she
exchanged messages with.
Now the Constitutional Court has found that “a person sending a message can
be sure that [Facebook] will only make it available to the account they
selected” as recipient of the message.
But the way Facebook works means “there is no assurance that only the owner
of the account and no third parties will find out about the account’s
contents,” the judges added.
What’s more, “even legal relationships with highly personal content are
transferred to the heirs” after someone’s death, the judges said, citing
explicitly the examples of “analogue documents like diaries and personal
letters”.
Even the European Union’s latest and strictest data protection rules, known
as GDPR, does not stand in the way of the transfer, they added, as “the
regulation only protects living people”.
– In memoriam –
Facebook did not immediately comment on the ruling Thursday when contacted
by AFP.
The social network at present offers only two options to relatives when a
user dies.
One allows them to turn the 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.
BSS/AFP/ARS/1641 hrs