Do not sacrifice civil liberties carelessly

After SpaceNet filed a lawsuit in 2022 against blanket data retention without cause and for an unlimited period of time and was even upheld by the ECJ, it only took three years for this controversial measure to be pushed forward again. At that time, it was about a ten-week retention period; now the period has been doubled. At that time, the IP addresses of users were to be stored, but now the port numbers of the services used are also stored, which not only increases the amount of data tens of times over, but also the information disclosed. The previous draft of data retention was not legally compliant, which raises the question of how this can now be the case in the tightened version.

The draft bill is characterised by a lot of actionism. However, data retention is not suitable for fighting crime effectively across the board. Of course, the relevant criminal structures know exactly how to effectively conceal their online movement profiles. There are already far more effective measures for all the types of crime listed, for which data retention is supposedly helpful. In cases of concrete suspicion, a great deal is already possible with the involvement of the courts. Surveillance and logging of suspicious activities may also be possible for much longer than the three months required here.

In particular, the inclusion of port numbers, for which the IP address of the other party is also required, allows much further conclusions to be drawn about types of communication, contacts and movement profiles, which means that it is only a small step to the creation of personality profiles. Once again, all citizens are subject to surveillance, and the measure is still unprovoked, comprehensive and unlimited in time. What was once definitively illegal is now being tightened up - this is paradoxical, especially as today's technical possibilities allow even more intrusions into personal privacy, especially since the triumph of AI. And the costs are borne equally by all citizens, because even if they are initially imposed on the providers, this ultimately leads to the costs being passed on to the customers.

Overall, technological progress must of course find its way into law enforcement, because criminal structures must not be technically superior to the state. In any case, citizens' rights and their freedom remain a very important asset that must not be sacrificed lightly and ultimately pointlessly.

Further information on the subject of data retention and the role of SpaceNet AG can be found here.