Interior Minister Faeser wants to decide on the storage of IP addresses before the new election. But that is likely to mean a break with the Greens.
If the SPD wanted to alienate its last remaining coalition partner, it would be quite easy. The Social Democrats would only have to try to get the security package stopped by the Bundestag by bypassing the Greens through the Bundestag and the mediation committee. Although this seems quite unlikely at the moment, Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) is outwardly sticking to the idea of deciding on the storage of IP addresses regardless of suspicion.
Faeser recently expressed corresponding plans at the autumn conference of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in Wiesbaden. “I am crystal clear in my position. We need this data,” said the minister in her speech, explaining: “In the analogue world, the police have access to the population registers. In the digital space, this is not the case without IP address storage. And I want to emphasize that again, incomprehensible to me.”
Faeser blames FDP
According to Faeser, it was unfortunately not possible to reach an agreement on the necessary improvement in this legislative period, “especially because of a coalition partner. (…) If it had been up to me, we would have implemented the mandatory storage long ago, but others prevented it. But I’m not giving up yet, we still have a little time. In this respect, there will also be a proposal from me.”
These statements are strange in several respects. Faeser gives the impression that only the FDP has blocked data retention. However, the Greens’ current policy programme (PDF) continues to state: “Mass data retention without cause as well as inadmissible interference with the confidentiality and integrity of IT systems comprehensively undermine fundamental rights and are the wrong political path.”
Controversial ECJ requirements on data retention
In addition, there are fundamental differences between access to an official population register and the storage of IP addresses without cause. Of course, IP addresses are necessary to determine the identity of a person who has left traces on the Internet via the inventory data of the providers.
But in the analogue world, it is not recorded on a massive scale who visited which place and when without cause. This is possible in Chinese cities via comprehensive surveillance, but not (yet) in Germany. It is not without reason that the highest courts such as the Federal Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) set high hurdles for the mass and unjustified storage of connection data.
IT experts also take a different view of the assessment that the ECJ has generally permitted the storage of IP addresses with its latest ruling. This is because it was important to the court that published IP addresses are only linked to the identity of the person concerned, but not to possible content that was accessed or uploaded via this address. A legally secure procedure such as the quick-freeze solution could have been decided long ago without Faeser’s resistance.
Last but not least, Faeser’s reference to the fact that there is still “a little time” is a certain exaggeration.
