According to the ECJ ruling: Bavaria is pushing for the retention of IP addresses

0
2
according to the ecj ruling bavaria is pushing for the.jpg
according to the ecj ruling bavaria is pushing for the.jpg

According to the ECJ ruling, almost all signs indicate that traffic data will be frozen if there is suspicion (Quick Freeze). But there are dissenting voices.

After the European Court of Justice (ECJ) again said no to general data retention without cause, the debate about alternatives in this country is in full swing. Civil rights activists, data protectionists and the Internet industry are putting pressure on the instrument, which has been controversial for years, to finally bury it and only collect connection and location data in suspicious cases. But other sounds come from Bavaria in particular.

“The leeway granted by the ECJ for the storage of traffic data, in particular of IP addresses, must be used above all to protect children from serious crimes,” emphasized the Bavarian Minister of Justice Georg Eisenreich (CSU). This data is particularly necessary in the “fight against child pornography and child sexual abuse”: “Every case that cannot be cleared up and stopped is one too many.” Also in the pursuit of terrorists, arms traffickers and drug dealers, IP addresses are often the most important or even the only lead.

Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) added: “Ideologically exaggerated data protection would be misunderstood to protect criminals. A constitutional state cannot afford that. Our investigators from the police and judiciary absolutely need traffic data such as IP addresses to combat certain serious crimes.” He will make the effects of the judgment a focus of the joint meeting of the German interior ministers and justice ministers on September 27 in Munich.

Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) had previously advocated data retention limited to IP addresses, also with a view to combating child sexual abuse. The ECJ considered such a measure to be in principle compatible with EU law.

Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) spoke in view of the verdict on twitter of a “good day for civil rights”. The ECJ has “confirmed in a historic judgment: The data retention without cause in Germany is illegal.” The federal government will therefore “quickly and finally remove this instrument from the law”.

With “Quick Freeze” there is a legally secure instrument on the table, explained the parliamentary Secretary of State for Justice Benjamin Strasser (FDP).. In this procedure, telecommunications providers should “freeze” traffic data as quickly as possible if there is a concrete suspicion of a crime, so that the perpetrators can then be identified and prosecuted. Strasser continues: Because of the coalition agreement, we should refrain from pointless debates about “relabelled, occasional data storage”.

“Data retention belongs on the dump of history,” demanded the Greens parliamentary group leader Konstantin von Notz and Helge Limburg, spokesman for legal policy. It puts all citizens under general suspicion – and has never been able to meet the security policy expectations placed in it. They described the fact that the relevant legal clauses have so far only been suspended, despite the long-established line of ECJ case law, as “a highly questionable legal policy approach”.

“We don’t see any legal or political scope for a new version of data retention – of whatever kind,” von Notz and Limburg clarified. They welcomed the fact that the Federal Minister of Justice was already working with the Ministry of the Interior on a draft law for a quick freeze regulation in accordance with the coalition agreement and the “planning of projects that was intensively coordinated between the houses”. It is overdue to get the monitoring accounts on the way, which were also agreed, and to pursue “an overall targeted security policy”.

The traffic light alliance has agreed: “In view of the current legal uncertainty, the imminent judgment of the European Court of Justice and the resulting security policy challenges, we will design the regulations on data retention in such a way that data can be stored in a legally secure manner and by judicial decision.”

SEE ALSO  New Zenfone 11 Ultra announced: Asus makes the leap to large screens to compete against the iPhone

“As the eco association of the Internet industry, we fought for this verdict for six years with our member company SpaceNet AG,” explained eco Managing Director Alexander Rabe. Now is the time for the federal government to “consistently implement its own coalition agreement and to distance itself from this instrument.” SpaceNet board member Sebastian von Bomhard said there were more suitable means like Quick Freeze “to take action against serious crime”.

Bernhard Rohleder, Managing Director of the IT association Bitkom, was confident with the judgment that “the ECJ is effectively burying data retention”. It makes no sense to continue working on this instrument. Politicians must use “other, legally compliant options for digital forensics”.

The Federal Data Protection Commissioner Ulrich Kelber tweeted: “My great wish: As of today, an end to debates about data retention without cause.” Instead, instruments should be strengthened “that help, whether preventively or in criminal prosecution” without calling fundamental rights into question.

Faeser must now consider whether she wants to continue the “failed cult” and the “failed ideology of her predecessors” in the Ministry of the Interior or do something for the victims, warned Henning Tillmann from the digital-political association D64, which is close to the SPD: He recommended the social democrat to rejoin think and implement “legally secure instruments” such as the login trap.

More than 20 civil society organizations warned on Monday under the aegis of the working group against data retention in an open letter to the traffic light coalition that logging IP addresses without cause would be “unsuitable for the protection of children and a serious encroachment on fundamental rights”.

SEE ALSO  WhatsApp will stop working from February 29: check if you are on the list

IP addresses could be used to comprehensively track the websites visited by an internet user and, as a result, their online activity, the letter said. There was a threat of the end of anonymity on the Internet and unreasonable consequences for victims of violent or sexual offenses as well as press informants. Patrick Breyer, long-time comrade-in-arms in the working group and MEP for the Pirate Party, explained: “IP addresses are like our digital fingerprints.”

“It’s time for the politicians responsible to bury data retention once and for all and instead develop alternatives that conform to fundamental rights,” emphasized Sebastian Marg from the Digital Society association, who co-signed the letter. The long-standing disputes have not only led to massive uncertainty about the current legal situation, but also shown that mass surveillance without cause is the opposite of a policy that is committed to the fundamental rights of the population.

The unprovoked logging of connection and location data “is not a constitutional investigative measure, but – no matter how you twist or turn it – a mass surveillance of the entire population that violates fundamental rights,” confirmed Padeluun from the Digitalcourage association, who helped get the ongoing constitutional complaint rolling. Politics must say goodbye to “any data retention” instead of constantly reviving it in a new guise.

Christine Regitz, President of the Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI), emphasized that the collection of traffic data without suspicion seriously interferes with privacy and unsettles citizens and the IT industry alike. “It undermines trust in secure Internet communication and thereby endangers the urgently needed digitization of business and administration.” Instead of riding on this dead horse, the federal government should urgently develop more data-efficient alternatives.


(olb)