Status: 04/15/2023 09:16 a.m
The reporting office for criminal content has been active on the Internet of the Federal Criminal Police Office for more than a year. Since then, according to a spokesman, she has checked around 7,500 cases of hate and hate speech online – but not on the major platforms.
According to a media report, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has investigated thousands of tips of hate on the Internet. The Central Reporting Office for Criminal Content on the Internet (ZMI), which has existed since February 1, 2022, checked almost 7,500 cases of hate and hate speech online by the end of March this year, a BKA spokesman told the editorial network Germany (RND).
Accordingly, around three quarters of the reported content was “criminal relevant”. “In around 77 percent of the cases finally processed, the ZMI of the BKA was able to identify a local law enforcement agency in a federal state, so that the alleged authors of this content could be investigated from there,” it said. The Federal Criminal Police Office therefore had no information about the progress of the further investigations.
The ZMI started its work in February 2022. The figures mentioned relate to the period up to the end of March 2023.
Networks obliged to report
According to the Network Enforcement Act, digital networks are obliged to report criminal content that, for example, constitutes incitement to hatred, to the BKA and not just to delete it. In January 2022, the BKA had therefore expected around 150,000 new criminal proceedings per year.
However, Google, Meta, Twitter and TikTok have filed a lawsuit against individual provisions of the law and, according to the BKA spokesman, “have not yet submitted any reports of criminal content to the BKA”. The 7,500 cases were forwarded to the ZMI from other bodies, such as “Hessen gegen Hetze”.