Munich (dpa / lby) - After the judgment of the European Court of Justice on data retention, Bavaria's state government asked the federal government to use the leeway opened up by the court. Among other things, the judgment leaves open the possibility of storing IP addresses that can be assigned to a source to protect national security, fight serious crime and prevent serious threats to public security.
The Federal Government is now required to revive the storage of traffic data promptly in this context, said Bavaria's Minister of Justice Georg Eisenreich (CSU). "The leeway granted by the ECJ for the storage of traffic data, in particular of IP addresses, must be used above all to protect children from serious crimes." A lack of traffic data storage could prevent crimes from being cleared up and, if necessary, ongoing child abuse could be stopped. "Every case that cannot be cleared up and stopped is one too many," emphasized Eisenreich.
Bavaria's Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) said the data was of great importance to the investigators. "Ideologically exaggerated data protection would be misunderstood to protect offenders," Herrmann explained. In the pursuit of terrorists, arms traffickers and drug dealers, for example, IP addresses are often the most important or even the only lead. The alternative of "Quick Freeze" proposed by Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) - as the rapid freezing of data after criminal offenses have become known - is not sufficient because the important connection data have usually long been deleted at this stage.
The European Court of Justice had declared the German regulation on data retention to be incompatible with European law. A general and indiscriminate data retention of connection and location data is contrary to Union law. An exception applies if there is a serious threat to national security. General data retention of IP addresses is also permitted. The ECJ thus confirmed its previous case law.
