Justice determines that parents can access the Facebook of their deceased children

Justice determines that parents can access the Facebook of their deceased children

The parents hoped to understand the circumstances of his brutal death - accident or suicide - by seeking writings that would explain if the young woman wanted to end her days

The German justice system made public this Thursday a long-awaited opinion on the "digital inheritance", giving the reason to two parents who demanded that Facebook access the account of their deceased daughter.

The parents went initially to Facebook, in vain, to retrieve the contents and conversations of their daughter in the social network, before she was run over by a subway car in Berlin, at age 15, in 2012.


The parents were waiting to understand the circumstances of his brutal death-accident or suicide-by looking for writings that would explain if the young woman wanted to end her days. Facebook alleged that access to the data of the adolescent could violate the private contents of other users who communicated with her.

The parents, for their part, invoked the fact that the contents that appear in the Facebook account of their daughter are legally identical to the intimate diaries or letters that can be delivered to relatives after a death, as if it were an inheritance.

The Federal Court of Justice of Karlsruhe, supreme instance in deciding this Thursday on this matter, estimated that the data that Facebook intends to protect belong in reality to a "user account" and not to a "specific person" and that we must wait « to that, at a time in the course of their life, third parties access this account », with or without the authorization of the initial owner.

This legal and ethical dilemma was raised before the German courts three years ago. In 2015, in the first instance, the court agreed with the parents. The Berlin court considered that the contract signed between the Internet user and Facebook was within the scope of the succession, including the digital contents published in the account.

 As the deceased was a minor, the parents had the right to know when and with whom they communicated on Facebook, they had also considered the judges.

But two years later the Court of Appeal of Berlin adopted the reverse position and joined the US giant's argument about respect for private life. This Court recalled that "the secret of telecommunications is guaranteed by the German Basic Law" and also applies to the contents of Facebook accounts.

The people with whom the young woman was in contact can also aspire to the protection of this digital correspondence, of a private nature, added the Berlin magistrates.

"The problems of confidentiality of data are not affected because the regulation only protects people alive" ruled on Thursday on this point the judges of the Federal Court. This issue of digital inheritance, which raises an ethical and legal problem, has already been raised in other countries.

In 2016, Apple waged a battle with the FBI, which wanted to force him to unlock the Iphone of one of the two authors of the San Bernardino bombing, committed in California the previous year. On the other hand, Apple was more cooperative with an Italian father, who asked in 2016 for the release of his son's iPhone, who died of cancer, to recover photos and memories.