Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 29, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Oliver Süme, Executive Board Member for Law and Regulation at the Association of the German Internet Industry (eco) e.V., explains:
„Now what the internet industry warned about from the beginning is happening: The retained data arouses ever new desires. The Legal Affairs Committee of the Bundesrat is demanding that the data also be handed over to private companies for the fulfilment of civil-law information claims, e.g. in cases of copyright infringement. After the retained data was made usable for ever new purposes in the course of the legislative process, that would be a quantum leap in the expansion of access. The information about who telephoned whom and when, sent an e-mail or was on the internet allows far-reaching conclusions about personal circumstances. Its use must therefore remain restricted to the purpose of investigating serious criminal offences and providing information to law-enforcement authorities.“
The original justification for accumulating huge quantities of sensitive data about the communication connections of all citizens was the fight against terrorism and organised crime. However, they may now additionally be used for averting danger, by intelligence services, and to investigate even less serious criminal offences. An even further expansion of the use of the data by private companies, as the Bundesrat is now additionally demanding, would be highly problematic under constitutional law and would result in an explosive increase in requests for information.
Background: The associations of the music and film industries are demanding that access to retained data not be restricted to use for law-enforcement purposes. They hope to be able to use the data to pursue copyright infringements. The enforcement law currently under parliamentary deliberation will for the first time also introduce civil-law obligations for providers to supply information to rights holders. In doing so, the rights holders’ lobby wants to achieve a direct claim to information without judicial oversight. If the restriction on the use of the data and the requirement for judicial approval were lifted, private parties would even have easier access to the retained data than state bodies.
