Germany's federal justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, has reportedly expressed concern over Apple's practice of compiling data on users of its new iPhone. The company has been termed the latest technology giant to fall afoul of the country's stringent privacy laws.
iPhone 4, the latest version of Apple's smartphone, was recently launched in the German market. Under German law, it is illegal to collect personal data without an individual's permission - whether it be geographic location or web traffic. The justice minister has asked Apple to notify state data protection authorities about the kind of data it was gathering. Also, Apple has been asked to clarify the time for which data is being stored and for what purpose.
In a recent statement, Apple said that iPhone 4 provides its users in Germany with the option to deny the transfer of any personal information to third parties. However, in the user manual for the new phone circulated in Germany, Apple has said that it reserves the right to forward data like the geographic location of individuals to other companies.
German privacy laws are observed to be among the strictest in Europe. The country has its own enforcement agencies to levy fines and take action in privacy matters. The cases are usually handled by a data protection or consumer protection authority. It was at the request of a data protection supervisor in Hamburg that Google was forced to disclose in May that it had improperly collected 600 gigabytes of personal data while it gathered information for its Street View map archive. The disclosure set out investigations in 12 countries, including Germany, the US, Spain and France. European regulators are now pressing Google to hand over the data it had improperly collected on their citizens.
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