(Time) For most of this week, Germanwings airlines has struggled to answer questions about the mental health of one of its co-pilots, Andreas Lubitz, who stands accused of crashing a plane full of passengers into the French Alps on Tuesday, killing everyone on board. But a stubborn set of legal barriers has hindered their search for information: Germany's data protection and privacy laws.
Carsten Spohr, the head of Lufthansa airlines, the parent company of Germanwings, was not even able to answer basic questions about the co-pilot's medical history during a press conference held on Thursday. He could not say, for instance, whether Lubitz had taken a break from his flight training due to illness. "In the event that there was a medical reason for the interruption of the training, medical confidentiality in Germany applies to that, even after death," Spohr explained. "The prosecution can look into the relevant documents, but we as a company cannot."
That is because privacy protections in Germany are among the most stringent in the world.