German telco wants “debate” on privacy

Telefonica Deutschland’s O2Dn.DE chief executive called for a debate about data privacy in Germany.

Well, when Thorsten Dirks says “debate” what he wants is a good way to monetise customer data and since German law will not let him, he wants to debate it.

Data privacy is a sensitive issue in Germany due to memories of Communist East Germany’s Stasi secret police and the Nazi era Gestapo. Dirks said that while people are right to scrutinize any attempt to make money off their data, they are handing over data voluntarily to companies such as Google and Facebook.