Federal Council pushes for IP data retention

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Today, the Bundesrat passed a resolution calling on the Federal Government to introduce a one-month storage obligation for IP address assignments at Internet service providers. In addition, providers who distribute an IP over several end devices using NAT should also be required to store the port number and its assignment to a subscriber.

The state representatives hope that this will improve the success of investigations by law enforcement authorities, particularly in cases involving the sexual abuse of children. "Without minimum storage of IP addresses, the investigation of the crime in these cases depends on the coincidence of which Internet access service the unknown perpetrator used and whether this Internet access service voluntarily stored the assignment of this IP address to a user ID," the states' draft bill states. Currently, Internet service providers store IP addresses for very different lengths of time – ranging from not at all to several weeks. At the same time, the storage obligations for location data in the Telecommunications Act, which are also currently not applied, are to be deleted.

"Child abusers have no right to data protection"

Hesse tabled the motion in April. Its Minister President Boris Rhein (CDU) said this morning in the plenary session of the Bundesrat: Since September 2022, 38,000 cases against criminals have not been pursued because there has been no IP address storage. In view of what the European Court of Justice has declared permissible, this is an unacceptable situation: "Child abusers have no right to data protection." The appalling acts were a mass phenomenon, said Rhein, referring to the investigations into the Elysium platform with a total of 111,000 users. It was pure coincidence that Elysium could be shut down by one of the storage providers.

"There is no alternative to a statutory minimum retention of IP addresses," said Rhein. "The so-called quick freeze procedure is not the lowest common denominator, but a fraudulent label. What is not stored cannot be frozen." The internet should not be a lawless space and data protection should not be a protection of offenders, said Rhein.

Saxony's interior minister hopes for integration in security package

Saxony's Interior Minister Armin Schuster, also a CDU member, emphasized that the minimum retention periods were also necessary to combat terrorism. It was a question of gaps in the investigators' capabilities due to a lack of legal foundations. The planned attack in Castrop-Rauxel in 2023 was only prevented with great luck: Because the suspect's IP address had been transmitted to the BKA by US authorities within less than seven days. It was about a qualitatively new level. According to Armin Schuster, he has been fighting for data retention for 15 years and would be delighted if this Bundesrat proposal were to be integrated into the federal government's security package, which is currently the subject of intense debate – otherwise it would not be one.

The proposal also contains a further change: instead of "publicly accessible telecommunications services" as before, the federal states now want to oblige "publicly accessible internet access services for end users". In addition, the federal states want to abolish the fees to be paid by investigating authorities to providers for providing information in accordance with the Justice Compensation Act if traffic data from data retention has to be used for this purpose. There was no response to the points raised in the plenary session of the Bundesrat. The initiative was adopted by a majority in the state chamber and will be officially forwarded to the federal government and the Bundestag.

BMJ sticks to its no

A spokesperson for the Federal Ministry of Justice, led by Marco Buschmann (FDP), said at the request of heise online that it sees no reason to move away from its previous position of rejecting data retention: "In particular, there is no reason to question the rejection of data retention." Mass storage of IP addresses without cause would be a far-reaching encroachment on fundamental rights and therefore entail considerable legal risks. "Its practical added value compared to the quick freeze procedure has not been proven, it would run counter to the clear agreement in the coalition agreement and there is no political majority for it within the federal government," said the spokesperson for the Federal Ministry of Justice. The Federal Government will follow the usual procedure for the Bundesrat proposal. This means that the Bundesrat initiative has no chance.

(mki)