German government wants e-mail and social media passwords to help fight hate speech

[steven36]

A new German draft law against right-wing extremism and hate speech, the Federal Government has also agreed on a new authority claim to passwords for online services. This emerges from a draft speaker presented by the Federal Ministry of Justice on Friday. In future, authorities can, under certain conditions, require services such as Google or Facebook to obtain passwords for customer accounts.

 

 

The background is that the state may currently monitor telephones, but not, for example, communication via Internet services such as Whatsapp. With the package of laws, the federal government is also responding to the attack in Halle, in which a perpetrator wanted to shoot Jews and Muslims and killed two people. However, not only messaging services like Whatsapp fall under the planned regulation, but all Internet services. The Internet industry association Bitkom and civil rights activists are terrified.

 

"Disclosure of confidential passwords without a judge's decision, automated forwarding of IP addresses – we are amazed that such proposals are supported by the ministry that is particularly committed to data protection," commented Bitkom CEO Bernhard Rohleder. He means Federal Minister of Justice Christine Lambrecht (SPD).

Clear violation of IT security standards

A spokesman for the ministry weighs down: Passwords are part of the inventory data even under applicable law and could "be asked for in a specific investigation under the direction of a public prosecutor," said a spokesman. In addition, for data security reasons, passwords would have to be “stored in encrypted form on a regular basis and cannot be released unencrypted”, the new regulation does not change this.

 

It is correct that even according to the requirements of the Federal Office for Information Security for Cloud Certification (PDF), passwords must be stored in encrypted form – Google has such certification. However, there are providers with lax certainty and the regulation would affect all providers, even small ones. It also seems conceivable that the legal regulation will force companies to create prerequisites for giving passwords unencrypted, which would be a clear violation of IT security standards.

 

The technology companies even assume that authorities do not even need a judge's decision to interfere with the digital interior of a user account. This is how Bitkom sees it in its opinion. One is uncertain on request. The innumerable references in the draft law between the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Telemedia Act and the Federal Criminal Police Act are quite impenetrable.

 

The opposition is silent

The Federal Ministry of the Interior narrowly referred to the Federal Ministry of Economics on Friday because it was responsible for the Telemedia Act. This is noteworthy since the Federal Criminal Police Office should be able to access the passwords in the area of responsibility of the interior department in the future. The Federal Ministry of Justice, in turn, reports that the judge's reservation remains untouched.

 

When comparing the draft bill with today's rules of the Code of Criminal Procedure, despite all the complexity, the conclusion is indeed that the judge's reservation remains – whereby criminal law experts point out that the approval by the judge in mass business is generally not a problem.

 

So far, there has been little criticism from the opposition. Only the Green legal politician Renate Kunast – even politically active against hate speech – warns, The Grand Coalition chose means against right-wing extremism that “deeply interfere with civil rights”. It is relieved that dangerous right-wing extremism comes into the focus of the authorities at all and that they are no longer blind in the right eye, says Kunast of the F.A.Z.

 

However, the draft raised questions. "Under the guise of fighting right-wing extremism, should the security authorities now gain access to information that has always been wanted?" Asks the legal politician. The intended extension, above all to the password, raised technical and constitutional questions. "We now need very precise and serious advice on the law in the Bundestag, otherwise it will end up in Karlsruhe anyway and will surely be lifted there."

 

Source

[karman]

For them is hate speech if I' am sad or worried about this action.