Digitalcourage fights back against data retention in Germany

This article was first published in EDRis newsletter EDRi-gram on 12 February 2020 – full story in German language: Bundesregierung will EU-weite Vorratsdatenspeicherung.

On 10 February 2020, EDRi member Digitalcourage published the German government’s plea in the data retention case at the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Dated 9 September 2019, the document from the government explains the use of retained telecommunications data by secret services, the question whether the 2002 ePrivacy Directive might apply to various forms of data retention, which exceptions from human rights protections apply to secret service operations, and justifies its plans for the use of data retention to solve a broad range of crimes with the example of a case of the abduction of a Vietnamese man in Berlin by Vietnamese agents. However, this case is very specific and, even if then the retained data was “useful”, that is not a valid legal basis for mass data retention, and therefore can not justify drastic incisions into the basic rights of all individuals in Germany. Finally, the German government also argues that the scope and time period of the storage makes a difference regarding the compatibility of data retention laws with fundamental rights.

Digitalcourage calls for all existing illegal data retention laws to be declared invalid in the EU. There are no grounds for blanket and suspicion-less surveillance in a democracy and under the rule of law. Whether it is content data or metadata that is being stored, data retention (blanket and mass collection of telecommunications data) is inappropriate, unnecessary and ineffective, and therefore illegal. Where the German government argues that secret services need to use telecommunications data to protect state interests, Digitalcourage agrees with many human rights organisations that activities of secret services can be a direct threat to the core trust between the general public and the state. The ECJ has itself called for the storage to be reduced to the absolutely required minimum – and that, according to Digitalcourage, can be only be fulfilled if no data is stored without individual suspicion.

Press release: EU data retention: Digitalcourage publishes and criticises the position of the German government (only in German, 10.02.2020)
https://digitalcourage.de/pressemitteilungen/2020/bundesregierung-eugh-eu-weite-vorratsdatenspeicherung

German blog article: Bundesregierung will EU-weite Vorratsdatenspeicherung
https://digitalcourage.de/blog/2020/bundesregierung-will-eu-weite-vorratsdatenspeicherung

(Contribution by Sebastian Lisken, EDRi member Digitalcourage, Germany)