Before conference
Bavaria: Maximum powers in the fight against child abuse
A chief inspector sits in front of an evaluation computer during investigations into child pornography and sexual abuse. photo
© Arne Dedert/dpa
On Tuesday, the interior and justice ministers will meet in Munich for a conference. Right at the top of the agenda are the consequences of the most recent EU judgment for the protection of children here.
Before the conference of interior and justice ministers, Bavaria calls on the federal government to make maximum use of the legal leeway in the fight against child abuse and child pornography.
Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) is “careless when he slows down our investigators in fighting these serious crimes,” said Bavaria’s Minister of Justice Georg Eisenreich (CSU) of the German Press Agency in Munich.
The European Court of Justice had set narrow limits on the storage of telecommunications data to investigate criminal offenses in Germany. It ruled on Tuesday that the currently suspended regulation in Germany is incompatible with EU law. However, the court explained that it would be possible to retain IP addresses in order to combat serious crime.
requirements
Eisenreich – currently chairman of the conference of justice ministers – asked Buschmann to “use the leeway granted by the European Court of Justice – in particular for the storage of IP addresses”. Every case of child abuse that cannot be cleared up and stopped is one too many.
Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) also emphasized that the obligation for service providers to store IP addresses for successful investigations is “an important aspect”: “The European Court of Justice has again expressly approved this to combat serious crime,” said the chairman of the conference of interior ministers the dpa. “It would be an absurdity and a mockery for the victims if we in Germany didn’t use this option due to misunderstood data protection.”
Buschmann described the decision as historic and spoke of a “good day for civil rights”. He also announced that he wanted to “quickly and finally remove data retention without cause from the law”. Whether the entire traffic light government is in agreement on this remains to be seen. SPD Interior Minister Nancy Faeser was recently open to greater powers for the security authorities.
This is exactly where the state ministers want to start at their joint conference in Munich on Tuesday, as Eisenreich and Herrmann emphasized. “We have to fight child abuse and child pornography even more. That is our central issue,” said Herrmann. The Bavarian ministers also criticized the “quick freeze” procedure favored by Buschmann: “Presenting the quick freeze procedure as a real alternative to storing IP addresses is either deliberate window dressing or ignorance. Any data that is not available is irrelevant don’t make sure either.” In the case of suspicion, certain data should only be backed up on a judicial order.