NEW: 🇩🇪Germany's top court says spyware severely violates fundamental rights. Bans spyware in cases with <3year sentences. Enforces tough proportionality tests on all surveillance. Restricts spyware to serious cases. Interesting development 1/

2/ The Court (@BVerfG): capturing data at the source (i.e. on someone's phone) is maximally invasive. Especially given how much of our lives happens online. They also surface the security risks to systems from this kind of surveillance.

3/ Watching Germany's highest court grapple with spyware's invasiveness & rights violations is instructive. States wielding spyware without robust legal limitations and tight judicial oversight... are almost guaranteed to be violating their citizens' basic rights.