They actually have to pass a new law before 2018. There's a EU directive, and the way these work is that they require the member states to pass laws implementing them, while leaving a bit of wiggle room allowing the national parliaments to fill in the details.

This specifically is still far from being a done deal. Note that it's only the secretary of the interior proposing it. That position is traditionally filled with a hard-line law-and-order politician (and even if it's a tree-hugging hippie, he somehow turns into such). There are plenty of people even on the cabinet level with different views – usually the justice minister pushes back from a civil-liberties focused position, and the social democrats whose votes are needed in parliament may also consider this one of the rare opportunities to publicly oppose Merkel's party.

After that there's the constitutional court, and then the European Union institutions also get to have their say again, and they also tend to favor civil liberties.

I'd also caution to not take the headline at face value – the public hasn't seen this draft and only gets the version filtered through interest groups. One example: dropping the right to be informed about collected data is limited to cases where this would "seriously endanger a company's business purposes". That seems to me as if it's meant to apply to specific, known situations – who knows, maybe someone asked Amazon for a printout of their data to get around the Glacier Storage retrieval fees. These exceptions would probably be nailed down to apply to the few situations where it may be sensible.

>They actually have to pass a new law before 2018. There's a EU directive, and the way these work is that they require the member states to pass laws implementing them ...

Assuming you're referring to the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), it is in fact a regulation as opposed to a directive. The difference being that directives have to be implemented at the member state level, but regulations do not. Regulations are effective union-wide once they come into force.

I thought so as well – considering they have largely changed to using Regulations. But, to quote the article:

> The law - which aims to implement European Union data protection directives, set to come into force in 2018 - was roundly condemned [...]

I thought it was something lost in translation, or just a mistake. But it turns out there actually is an accompanying directive "for the police and criminal justice sector" (Directive (EU) 2016/680).

Not quite. There's a new regulation which does much of what the old directive did, but there's also a new accompanying directive for some parts.

it works exactly like that. law by brute force. that's basically how we've got data retention laws and how the BND "reform" happened.

the government proposes laws, the bundestag approves of it and the bundespresident signs it. the bundestag is, at times, critical of things but i would have to look up an example. the bundespräsident has forever been a sheep. can't remember anybody doing anything out of order. they get "thrown out" as soon as they even only say sth critical of the political mainstream - see mr. wulf.

anything can happen anytime if they get their ppl in line. opposition is hilarious and bold and simple at most. some say it doesn't even exist. i mean, we have a government constructed of a coalition of opposing forces, the CDU and the SPD, and they're marching the same march. depressing.

anybody telling you some other text book alternative theory is just delusional. there's nothing really better at least with regards to privacy or data protection. it's a laughabke myth spread by the german industry trying to draw profits from snowden. again, depressing.

edit: i forgot one entity viewed by many as one last bastion against unjust laws: our highest court, the bundesverfassungsgericht, the constitutional court. it's regarded very highly so let me demonstrate how those judges work. case in point, data retention law (vorratsdatenspeicherung)

  court: "you'd like to save data for 12 months? that's too much."
  gov: "ok, 6 months."
  court: "that's better. agreed."
  bundespräsident: signs law

It's rare but presidents to occasionally not sign laws or defer it to the constitutional court. Horst Köhler famously did this with the law that was supposed to allow the Luftwaffe to shoot down civilian airplanes in case of a 9/11 scenario. The court of course ruled against the law.

> can't remember anybody doing anything out of order. they get "thrown out" as soon as they even only say sth critical of the political mainstream - see mr. wulf.

Wulff resigned because he fucked up big time (even if not in a way relevant for criminal law). Of course many others also fucked up big time during the Wulff affair.

Btw. when did he say "something critical of the political mainstream" that makes you think he has been forced out of office?