Postal secrecy

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Postal secrecy describes the German version of the democratic basic right to secrecy of letters . In addition to this, it is like the secrecy of telecommunications in Art. 10 para. 1 Basic Law enshrined and its violation by criminal law § 206 of the Criminal Code sanctioned.

According to the legal definition of Section 39, Paragraph 1 of the Postal Act and Section 206, Paragraph 5, Clause 1 of the Criminal Code, “the details of the postal traffic of certain natural or legal persons and the content of postal items ” are subject to it. According to Paragraph 2, “anyone who provides postal services on a business basis or participates in them” is obliged to do so. The duty "continues even after the end of the activity through which it was established".

This means that its scope of protection is broader in terms of subject matter as well as in terms of time or process more narrowly than in the confidentiality of correspondence, which only protects closed written messages that contain externally visible recipient information; because it basically includes all mail items from the acceptance of the item by the postal company to its delivery to the recipient.

Restriction of postal secrecy

Restrictions on postal secrecy are subject to legal reservation . The G-10 law on the restriction of the secrecy of letters, post and telecommunications standardizes exceptions for the intelligence services of the federal states , the Federal Intelligence Service , the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Military Counterintelligence Service . The G10 Commission monitors the application of these measures .

Second, the Postal Act itself determines in Section 39 (4) exceptions to the breach of the confidentiality of letters as part of postal confidentiality, “as far as the actions described there are necessary to 1. check the existence of tariff requirements for low-cost mail, 2. the content of damaged mail to secure, 3. to determine the recipient or sender of an illegible mail item, who cannot be identified in any other way, 4. to avert physical dangers that a mail item poses to people and things. "

In addition, Paragraph 5 regulates exceptions to the secrecy of the detailed circumstances of the postal traffic: "Messages about the postal traffic of a person are permissible insofar as they are necessary in order to assert claims against this person in or out of court that arose in connection with the provision of a postal service or to enable criminal offenses to be prosecuted which were committed in the postal service to the detriment of a postal company. "

Thirdly, according to Section 99 StPO , the seizure of mail and telegrams is permissible in certain cases that are in the custody of persons or companies that provide postal or telecommunications services on a business basis or participate in them. Affected persons are to be notified of this measure according to § 101 StPO as soon as this can be done without endangering the purpose of the investigation, public safety , life or limb of a person and the possibility of further use of a non-openly investigating officer. However, this notification does not always take place in practice; there is a de facto enforcement deficit .

The basic right of Article 10 of the Basic Law can also be restricted by other federal laws. In addition, some state laws allow the restriction of Art. 10 GG.

history

For their regular messenger facilities, many princes and cities issued messenger orders, in which the messengers were sworn to maintain the confidentiality of letters and threatened high penalties. In the Prussian postal regulations of August 10, 1712, Section VIII, Section 4, "withholding, vomiting or handing over to someone else's hand" is made a punishable offense. First of all, the delinquent had to compensate for the damage incurred and was also fined 100 thalers.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the preservation of postal secrecy was poor. So-called “ Black Cabinets ” were created. During the transition from the absolutist to the constitutional form of government, public opinion insisted that the inviolability of the confidentiality of correspondence should be recognized in the constitution as a fundamental right of citizens. In the Prussian constitutional document of January 31, 1850, it says: “The confidentiality of letters is inviolable. The restrictions necessary for criminal investigations and in cases of war are to be determined by legislation ”. The people were reassured, but these passages were neither included in the Prussian Postal Act of June 5, 1852, nor in the accompanying regulations. Neither the constitution of the North German Confederation of July 26, 1867, nor the constitution of the German Empire of April 16, 1871 contained any provisions on the basic right to confidentiality of letters. For this purpose, § 5 of the Postal Act speaks of the confidentiality of letters, but this is understood to mean postal confidentiality. The secrecy of letters is understood as the right to the inviolability of any locked message, protected in Section 299 of the Reich Criminal Code . Opening a locked message that is not intended for his knowledge is a criminal offense. A postal power of attorney authorizes a third party to receive and open his mail, the content is thus intended for his knowledge.

In the imperial constitution of 1919, postal secrecy was declared a fundamental right for the first time. Article 117 of the Weimar Constitution stipulates that postal secrecy is inviolable.

1918

By order of December 16, 1918, postal operations could be resumed. At the same time, letter censorship was introduced. While traffic within the occupied territories was subject to few restrictions, the post, telephone and telegraph service between the occupied and non-occupied territories was only permitted in the most important administrative matters, in terms of railways and utilities. Censorship offices were immediately set up in the Belgian, British, American and French zones of occupation. It was not until the end of 1924 that the Allied occupying powers stopped monitoring the mail on the Rhine and Ruhr.

1933

With the ordinance of the Reich President for the protection of the people and the state of February 28, 1933, the postal, telegraph and telephone secrecy is abolished. In addition to the restriction of personal freedom, the right to freedom of expression including the freedom of the press, the right of association and assembly, there were encroachments on the secrecy of correspondence, mail, telegraph and telephone, orders for house searches and confiscation as well as restriction of property outside of the usual legal limits for this are permitted.

1945

By law No. 76 of the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces concerning "Post, Telephone, Radio and Broadcasting" with the associated "Censorship Regulations" in 1945, all communications in Germany were subjected to Allied control. After the "Law No. 5 of the Allied High Commission on the Press, Broadcasting, Reporting and Entertainments" of September 21, 1949 had partially repealed these provisions, Law No. A 14 of the Allied High Commission of 15 February 1951 she was completely open. To protect the security and reputation of the Allied forces, there was a special authorization since 1949. This last possibility of postal surveillance was also abolished by the German Treaty of 1952. Nevertheless, until 1968, 300 million letters from the GDR and other socialist states had been destroyed in the utmost secrecy without a legal basis , as research by the historian Josef Foschepoth has shown. Among other things, the five-brochure ruling served as the basis for this .

1968

The emergency laws passed in 1968 formed a legal basis for the surveillance of telecommunications and postal traffic. The law on the restriction of the secrecy of letters, mail and telecommunications regulated the powers of the German intelligence services with regard to Article 10 of the Basic Law. In addition, the Federal Government made several administrative agreements with the Western Allies that allowed the Western Allies' secret services continued access to the mail of the German citizens. These administrative agreements were classified as secret until 2012.

GDR

Hot air gun used by the Stasi to open letters
The customs administration removed a prospectus from the Rheinhausen ironworks from a package

The violation of postal secrecy was formally punished in the GDR in §135 and 202 StGB (GDR) . Nevertheless, a systematic control of all mail from or to the Federal Republic or West Berlin was carried out by Department M of the Ministry for State Security (MfS). This worked together with the Deutsche Post of the GDR . Post control operated under the cover designation "Department 12" or "Dienststelle 12".

The postal control of the MfS began in 1950 with three units and a few dozen employees and was continuously expanded. At the end of 1989, the division had ten departments with almost 2,200 employees. The importance that the SED attached to postal control was evident from the fact that the head of the department, Rudi Strobel , had the rank of major general and since 1982 had been under an area of ​​responsibility that was headed directly by Erich Mielke .

In the 1980s, the MfS opened around 90,000 letters and 60,000 parcels a day. If the MfS found money or valuables when opening, these were occasionally stolen and added to the state budget of the GDR. In the period from 1984 to 1989, the MfS received around 32 million DM in this way.

literature

  • Manual dictionary of the postal system ; 2nd Edition; Pp. 520-525
  • Aschenborn - Schneider = The law on the postal system of the German Reich together with the basic provisions on the constitution of the German Reichspost, 2nd edition. Julius Springer, Berlin 1928; P. 134 ff.
  • Niggl II = German postal law. Volume 81 of the Post and Telegraphy Collection in Science and Practice; 2nd Edition. RvDecker's Verlag (G. Schenck), Berlin 1931; P. 120 ff.
  • Schuster = postal law practice; Erich Herzog, Goslar 1950; P. 50 ff.
  • Archives for the postal and telecommunications system. Edited on behalf of the Federal Minister for Post and Telecommunications; Post Office Frankfurt (Main) 1
    • 1949; P. 65
    • 1951; Pp. 122 and 278
  • Werner Steven, Konrad Meyer: Post censorship during the occupation of the Rhineland and the Ruhr area after the First World War. Self-published by W. Steven, Braunschweig 1991.
  • to § 206 StGB: Wolfgang Joecks : Criminal Code Study Commentary. 6th edition, Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53845-2 .
  • Horst Deinert , Kay Lütgens: Support and mail. In: BtPrax . 2009, pp. 212-217.
  • Josef Foschepoth : Post censorship and telephone surveillance in the Federal Republic of Germany (1949–1968). In: ZfG . 57, 2009, pp. 413-426.

Web links

Wiktionary: Postal secret  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Federal law, which restricts Article 10 of the Basic Law
  2. ↑ Josef Foschepoth, Journal of History: Post Censorship and Telephone Surveillance in the Federal Republic of Germany (1949-1968) (PDF; 188 kB), May 2009
  3. ^ Supervising state FRG: postal secrecy undermined under Allied control. Background.de, November 22, 2012, accessed October 25, 2013 .
  4. ^ Thomas Gutschker, Marie Katharina Wagner, Markus Wehner : America is allowed to eavesdrop on Germans. faz.net, July 6, 2013, accessed October 25, 2013 .
  5. ↑ StGB (GDR)
  6. ↑ See service instruction no. 3/85 on the political-operational control and evaluation of mail by Department M of the MfS on democie-statt-diktatur.de , an offer from the Stasi records authority .
  7. ^ Hanna Labrenz-Weiß: MfS manual: Department M: Post control. The Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic; Berlin 2003 ( Memento from October 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Cf. Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us - About the glossing over of the SED dictatorship . Berlin 2007, p. 83.
  9. ↑ Cf. Jens Gieseke : German Democratic Republic . In: Lukasz Kaminski, Jens Gieseke (Hrsg.): Handbook of the communist secret services in Eastern Europe 1944–1991 - analyzes and documents. Scientific series of the BStU, Vol. 33, Göttingen 2009, pp. 199–264, here p. 221.
  10. ↑ See Christoph Schaefgen: Ten years of coming to terms with state injustice in the GDR . In: Neue Justiz 1/2000, pp. 1–5.