German Court Rules Parents Have No Right to Dead Child's Facebook Account

(Reuters) — A German court rejected a mother’s demand on Wednesday that Facebook grant her access to her deceased daughter’s account.

In the ruling, which overturned a lower court’s decision, the Berlin appeals court said the right to private telecommunications extended to electronic communication that was meant only for the eyes of certain people.

Privacy remains a sensitive issue in Germany due to extensive surveillance by Communist East Germany’s Stasi secret police and by the Nazi era Gestapo. Memories of espionage were stirred anew by Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations of prying by the United States.

In the Facebook case, the mother of a 15-year-old who was hit and killed by a subway train in Berlin in 2012 had sought access to her daughter’s account to search for clues as to whether the girl had committed suicide.

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