Comment by nehalem

While true in essence, I don’t think that the German society broadly shares the value of privacy to a level that warrants such excessive restrictions. It is important to note that Germany‘s tradition of data protection originates from a fear of government overreach through excessive data collection (the original constitutional court decision concerned the census). In my opinion data protection got out of hand when the same standards were applied to private entities while increasingly neglecting the proportionality test, or — less legalese — a risk benefit analysis. It is common in German jurisprudence to widen the scope of protection (‚everything‘ is personal data) but the proportionality test is strict (it’s okay to transfer personal data because the gains outweigh the risks as the data is only moderately private). I think that softening of the proportionally criterion has been influenced by a general fear that every datapoint might be somehow relevant even if there is little evidence.

(Disclaimer: Legal theory is slightly simplified, but true to principle)