Malte Spitz sued his German phone company, forcing it to produce more than 30,000 lines of code it had retained about Malte, including his locations and his use of his phone.  This constitutes an extraordinary look into his life and habits, including his associations with other particular people, so much so that many Germans have protested the fact that phone companies store all of this information for at least six months, and up to two years.

He points to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, asking whether this celebratory moment could have even been possible if the government of East Germany had access to such data.  In the meantime, it appears that the U.S. government is spying on its own citizens through the unbridled collection and storage of this type of data.