Here are some details about the latest case, the law and why human rights groups and tech analysts are concerned.
What happened in the WhatsApp case?
In March this year, a judge sentenced 22-year-old law student Junaid Munir to death for sharing derogatory pictures and videos of the Prophet Mohammad over WhatsApp. A 17-year-old co-accused was given a life sentence.
Both of the accused denied wrongdoing.
Self-ID bill would make it easier to change legal gender
Trans rights groups warn of personal data privacy risks
Authorities say data will be deleted after one-off check
BERLIN - A self-determination bill that would make it easier for transgender Germans to change legal gender is moving closer to a parliamentary vote after years of delays, but trans rights advocates fear the legislation poses data privacy risks.
The long-awaited self-ID bill, which seeks to replace the 43-year-old Transsexuals Act and follows similar laws in other countries, is on track for a vote in the coming weeks in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, where the governing coalition holds a majority.
Besides the questions over the bill's data provisions, the draft law has been criticised by gender-critical thinkers who say self-ID potentially endangers women in single-sex spaces.
Trans rights campaigners, while broadly welcoming the self-ID bill, have also accused the government of including discriminatory limitations, such as exceptions for legal gender change during wartime and for asylum seekers.
Here's what you need to know.
What does the bill say about personal data?
Under the terms of the self-ID bill, when someone changes legal gender, their personal details will be transferred automatically to security and law enforcement bodies including the federal police and two of the country's three intelligence agencies to check for any past record.
The data that will be shared with the state agencies will include their surname, their previous and new first name, their address and their previous and new legal gender.
Once the security check is passed, the data would be immediately deleted from the agencies' systems, according to the text of the draft legislation. If a record is found, the personal details do not have to be deleted.
Police registers of LGBTQ+ people are a sensitive topic in Germany, a country where registers of suspected homosexuals gathered by security bodies have been documented since at least the 1860s, reaching a height in 1934, when the Nazi Gestapo centralised the so-called "pink lists".