The legal victory for privacy was short-lived for the German web anonymiser AN.ON. Only 2 days after a German Court suspended a previous verdict to build a back door in the anonymiser, German police obtained a new court order to raid the offices.

On Friday 29 August, the Lower District Court in Frankfurt /Main gave a search warrant for the rooms of the AN.ON project at the TU Dresden to find a protocol data record. This single record had been recorded by the back door, showing the IP-address of a visitor to a specific website.

On Saturday, police officers went to the apartment of the director of the Institute of System Architecture at the Faculty of Information Technology and demanded the surrender of the data record. Apparently, police threatened to confiscate the hardware on which the anonymiser service is run, unless the data were turned over. To avoid further damage to the TU Dresden, the data record was handed over.

According to the project partners' opinion, the decision by the Lower District Court is unlawful. Since the suspension of the duty to disclose information on 27 August by the District Court in Frankfurt/Main, it was clear there was no obligation to surrender until the final decision in the main case was made. The project partners are going to lodge an appeal against this decision.

German Police proceeds against anonymity service (02.09.2003)
http://www.datenschutzzentrum.de/material/themen/presse/anon-bka_e.htm