The German coalition parties have agreed to introduce targeted and ad hoc data preservation rather than indiscriminately retaining information on all internet connections. This political decision represents a fundamental rejection of the principle of blanket data retention of citizen’s communication data and a move towards targeted solutions.

The agreed new power is known as “Quick Freeze” and closely related to what the Court of Justice of the European Union refers to as “expedited retention” in recent judgements e.g. in joined Cases C-793/19 SpaceNet and C-794/19 Telekom Deutschland (PDF). The Quick Freeze draft law of 2022 provides for the storage (freezing) of communication data only on the basis of a suspicion and a court order. The Federal Ministry of Justice is expected to present a new draft for Quick Freeze in the near future.

MEP Patrick Breyer (Pirate Party / Greens/EFA) comments:

„This decision is a success for the civil rights movement, which has been fighting for decades on the streets and in the courts against the idea of blanket collection of the entire population’s contacts, movements and Internet connections. The agreed solution focuses on effective and ad hoc data preservation. A blanket data retention of IP records would have been a frontal attack on our right to use the Internet anonymously, which countless people depend on.

In Germany, in the absence of indiscriminate data retention, the clearance rate for internet offences has just risen significantly to 62% in 2023 (from 57%). It even reaches 87% for prosecuting ‘child pornography’. There is no evidence that countries with data retention programmes have a significantly higher crime clearance rate.

The German coalition agreement is however only a stage victory: the EU is preparing a new attempt to reintroduce EU-wide IP data retention. The EU working group #EUGoingDark, which is preparing an EU-wide reintroduction of data retention, should be disbanded.

As the parliamentary arm of the civil liberties movement, we Pirates will not relent fighting mass surveillance!”

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A document leaked yesterday by the news portal netzpolitik.org reveals for the first time which messenger and chat services are to be labelled as “high risk” according to the EU Council Presidency’s proposal of a Child Sexual Abuse Regulation. A “high risk” classification would allow issuing chat control bulk scanning orders to a provider, aimed at searching for potentially illegal chat content. The leaked document proposes that enabling “anonymous profiles or access without an account” should be considered a risk factor, as well as offering “encrypted messaging” or common interactive functionality such as direct messages, user posts or user comments. The document dates back to February, but an updated version from 10 April stipulates similar criteria.

“Privacy-friendly communication services such as Protonmail which can so far be used anonymously are to become the most extremely monitored services by imposing chat control scanning on them. So far securely encrypted messenger services such as Signal are to be turned into bugs in our pockets by imposing ‘client-side scanning’,” denounces Pirate Party Member of the European Parliament and shadow rapporteur Patrick Breyer. “EU governments want to go to war against the confidentiality and security of our digital communications as such. Everything that makes up the internet and digital communication, all of the modern reality of the internet is considered a ‘risk’ and to be combatted in the opinion of the EU interior ministers. We Pirates will not stop fighting for our fundamental right to digital privacy of correspondence and secure encryption – this is exactly why we digital freedom fighters are in the EU Parliament.”

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According to the latest draft text of the controversial EU Child Sexual Abuse Regulation proposal leaked by the French news organization Contexte, which the EU member states discussed, the EU interior ministers want to exempt professional accounts of staff of intelligence agencies, police and military from the envisaged scanning of chats and messages (Article 1 (2a)). The regulation should also not apply to “confidential information” such as professional secrets (Article 1 (2b)). The EU governments reject the idea that the new EU Child Protection Centre should support them in the prevention of child sexual abuse and develop best practices for prevention initiatives (Article 43(8)).

“The fact that the EU interior ministers want to exempt police officers, soldiers, intelligence officers and even themselves from chat control scanning proves that they know exactly just how unreliable and dangerous the snooping algorithms are that they want to unleash on us citizens,” commented Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer. “They seem to fear that even military secrets without any link to child sexual abuse could end up in the US at any time. The confidentiality of government communications is certainly important, but the same must apply to the protection of business and of course citizens communications, including the spaces that victims of abuse themselves need for secure exchanges and therapy. We know that most of the chats leaked by today’s voluntary snooping algorithms are of no relevance to the police, for example family photos or consensual sexting. It is outrageous that the EU interior ministers themselves do not want to suffer the consequences of the destruction of digital privacy of correspondence and secure encryption that they are imposing on us.”

“The promise that professional secrets should not be affected by chat control is a lie cast in paragraphs. No provider and no algorithm can know or determine whether a chat is being conducted with doctors, therapists, lawyers, defence lawyers, etc. so as to exempt it from chat control. Chat control inevitably threatens to leak intimate photos sent for medical purposes and trial documents sent for defending abuse victims.”

“It makes a mockery of the official goal of child protection that the EU interior ministers reject the development of best practices for preventing child sexual abuse. It couldn’t be clearer that the aim of this bill is China-style mass surveillance and not better protecting our children. Real child protection would require a systematic scientific evaluation and implementation of multidisciplinary prevention programmes, as well as Europe-wide standards and guidelines for criminal investigations into child abuse, including the identification of victims and the necessary technical means. None of this is planned by the EU interior ministers.”

The EU governments want to adopt the chat control bill by the beginning of June.

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