Short BIO
Dr. Gerrit Hornung, LL.M., studied law and philosophy at the University of Freiburg (1996-2001). After his first state exam, he attended an LL.M. course at the University of Edinburgh which focused on European law and European and international human rights and afterwards completed his legal clerkship in Hamburg in 2006. Since 2002, he has been a member of the “Projektgruppe verfassungsverträgliche Technikgestaltung“ (Project Group Constitutionally Compatible Technology Design, provet) at the University of Kassel, where he assumed the office of managing director in August 2006. His PhD thesis (2005) deals with legal problems of smartcards, particularly biometric identity cards and patient data cards. Additionally, he has worked in several projects in the field of data protection, electronic signatures and multimedia law. Currently, he is focussing on the legal aspects of new surveillance technologies.
CPCP Conference 2012
Hosting of the CPDP2012 panel 'eIDentity en Identity management'
CPDP Conference 20xx presentation
The Federal Constitutional Court and the Online Searching Judgement of February 27th, 2008
On 27 February 2008, the German Federal Constitutional Court delivered its decision in a case concerning an Act on online searching of computers, enacted by the Land of Nordrhein-Westfalen. The Act authorised the internal intelligence authorities to, inter alia, “secretly access information technology systems by the use of technical means”. In the reasons given for the judgment, the Court established a new “fundamental right to confidentiality and integrity of information technology systems”, which was violated by the aforementioned provision.
The opinion of the Bundesverfassungsgericht delivers guidelines not only for the online searching of computer systems, but also for other surveillance measures. Hence, the ruling is widely recognised as the most important decision on privacy and constitutional law in Germany within recent years, arguably even since the famous census case of 1983. There are numerous open questions to be addressed in future cases and in the scientific debate. The presentation will provide an overview of the new fundamental right and raise some of the most important questions as regards the national constitutional law development and the possibilities to connect it to the international privacy law debate.
On-line publications
The European Regulation on Biometric Passports: Legislative Procedures, Political Interactions, Legal Framework and Technical Safeguards, SCRIPT-ed 2007, 246 – 262, http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol4-3/hornung.asp
Ermächtigungsgrundlage für die "Online-Durchsuchung"? Verfassungsrechtliche Anforderungen und Grenzen für den heimlichen Zugriff auf IT-Systeme im Ermittlungsverfahren, Datenschutz und Datensicherheit 2007, 575 – 580, http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb7/oeff_recht/publikationen/pubOrdner/publikation_2007_hornung_online_durchsuchung.pdf
Die digitale Identität. Rechtsprobleme von Chipkartenausweisen: digitaler Personalausweis, elektronische Gesundheitskarte, JobCard-Verfahren, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2005 (PhD Thesis), http://kobra.bibliothek.uni-kassel.de/handle/urn:nbn:de:hebis:34-2007113019808