The "Census Decision" by the German Federal Constitutional Court in 1983 guarantees the individual right to solely decide upon the disclosure and application of personal data. Exceptions are made only in the predominant general interest and require a legal basis in accordance with the constitutional principle of the clarity of norms. Until that decision, prevailing opinion held that discretion for data access should be left up to the agency in charge of the files. The new data protection must also take up the entire connection of social structural and societal-political information processing to minimize misuse by individuals and by misdirected societal crime prevention strategies. 21 notes, list of 5 selected references.