In Germany, there are very few leading cases that provide guidelines for employers and employees on the use and storage of personal data. This might be a consequence of the specific character of German Labour Law, which is not a comprehensive and coherent system of rules, but rather a bundle of scattered rules that were developed from a few sections of the 1900 Civil Code. When employers install computers or new programs at the workplace, the Works Council has various rights in respect of information, supervision, and control, and if the Works Council itself does not have the necessary knowledge or skills to assess the information it receives, it may ask for the help of an expert, at the employer's expense. What all of this means in practice, however, is usually that employers make the main decisions and the Works Council is only able to alter some of the details. And clearly, all of this depends on the presence of a Works Council. After lengthy discussions, the European Directive 95/46/EC on the processing of personal data was finally transposed into German law. New terminology was adopted, and the rights and duties of the parties involved were widened. Nonetheless, because German lawyers had played an important part in the process of developing the Directive itself, few major changes were required. German Public Law may also restrict the collection, storage, and processing of personal data, infringements being dealt with by the administrative or social security courts. Under labor law, employers are permitted to restrict the private use of their computing facilities but, in all but the most extreme cases, if they do not make and implement an express prohibition, then such private use will not be a lawful justification for dismissal. Despite the importance of computer technologies in everyday working life in Germany, there are very few reported cases in this area. Surveys suggest that the reason for this might be that most enterprises settle disputes about such matters at an informal and local level, without involving the law: data protection is a particularly sensitive question in Germany, and so enterprises may fear a loss of public credibility if they are perceived of as having abused computer technologies in this way
