The email leak in Taufkirchen town hall is to be investigated by an IT security company. Mayor Ullrich Sander (non-party) announced this to the local council.
He had previously assured that – contrary to the allegation of his predecessor Jörg Pötke – he had never read e-mails to the town hall addresses of municipal council members. “The insane loss of trust that there would be would be intolerable for me,” said Sander. “I would never do that.” Pötke had sent an e-mail to Beatrice Brückmann (Initiative Lebenswerte Taufkirchen), using her address with the ending @ taufkirchen-mucl.de, which the town hall made available to her – like all municipal council members. As a result, the ex-mayor, according to his own statements, received an out-of-office notice in response – from Sanders’ account. Pötke concludes from this that his successor reads e-mails to council members.
As a result of the incident, the town hall submitted a voluntary report to the state data protection officer, Sander reported. He also asked his deputy Michael Lilienthal (Free Voters) to investigate the process. He reported to the municipal council about the statement by the IT manager in the town hall, according to which no changes have been made to the municipal email server since 2015. “I think it is unlikely that there was a hacker attack. And I also do not believe that there is a system behind it,” said Lilienthal. He suspects a software update from Microsoft as the cause of the puzzling email – in combination with a filter that Sander had set up shortly after he took office in 2014. This regulated that all e-mails from Jörg Pötke to the addresses of town hall employees first landed in the mayor’s mailbox. This was done “to protect employees,” said Sander. However, the addresses of the municipal council members have been excluded from this filtering, which has now been abolished.
Another incident
Jutta Henkel from the Greens reported a second incident. As a result of an email to all council members from Herbert Heigl (SPD), they received a delivery confirmation just one second after receiving it – from the mayor’s account, according to Henkel. She asked for this incident to be investigated as well. Herbert Heigl demanded the same, emphasizing: “I understand that you want to get rid of that quickly, but you have to get to the bottom of the matter.” Heigl was also astonished by instructions in the town hall, according to which the employees had to first have their superiors check emails to members of the municipal council. “Why is this taking place now, when there is a suspicion that the mayor reads incoming mails to local councilors?” Asked Heigl. “This suggests that he is now reading outgoing mail as well.” Sander rejected that: “That doesn’t belong at all to this topic.” According to the mayor, the existing “instructions as to which offices and authorities are allowed to send e-mails” primarily served to protect the council members. “So that your e-mail addresses don’t go out to anyone.”
Meanwhile, Rudi Schwab (Greens) defended the town hall chief: “I am sure that there is no system behind it – neither from the mayor nor from the administration.” Rather, he advised caution, “wherever Dr. P.’s name appears” – what is meant is ex-town hall chief Pötke. The municipal council unanimously accepted an SPD proposal, according to which an independent body should ensure that the postal secrecy is preserved on the municipal e-mail server and that any filtering or forwarding of e-mails to municipal councils is excluded. Sander emphasized: “The external company has already been commissioned.”