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Berlin
The German government wants to require all Internet service providers to save information about Web users for at least six months. As an anti-terror measure, Germany already requires telephone companies to keep records of all calls, including time of call and numbers dialed. If the new legislation goes through, Internet providers will have to save e-mail addresses and user names, as well as the dates and times of all e-mails. The e-mails’ content will not be saved—although critics say that given information about who received an e-mail and when it was sent, hackers or authorities could retrieve the actual e-mail with little difficulty.
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