On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 12:38:01PM +0100, Wilfried Woeber wrote:
I am wondering how German Citizens are dealing with the fact that *many* Hotels and other accomodation businesses *require* to take a copy of an official ID Document, in many cases due to local regulations to establish and track identity of travellers?
Most Germans probably don't know that they violate the law when copying personal ID cards (not do most really care about data protection). I refuse to let people take copies of my ID card. I wasn't sent away yet in any hotel. Revenue trumps convenience (I never heard of any legislation requiring to take COPIES of ID cards... but some hotel receptions try to speed up filling out forms by just copying the ID card).
Or is this law only applicable to German Citizens being physically present in Germany?
I'm not aware of any such constraints, that would make no sense. And again: as personal ID copy is not the ONLY means NCC is "offering", it's a non-issue. Please please don't focus on this aspect, it's a non-problem. The real problem is the lack of alternatives that are compliant to data protection principles and not unduely burdensome. As some folks put it: we're not dealing with nuclear launch codes here. Best regards, Daniel -- CLUE-RIPE -- Jabber: dr@cluenet.de -- dr@IRCnet -- PGP: 0xA85C8AA0