Traffic light dispute about EU plans: Quiet rejection of chat control

Status: 12/15/2022 4:42 p.m

The EU is working on plans to monitor private chats. The Federal Minister of the Interior seemed to support the plans – to the annoyance of the FDP and the Greens. The dispute now seems settled.

By Michael Stempfle, ARD Capital Studio

Everyone agrees on the goal: the state must take measures to prevent and combat sexualised violence against children. That’s what Brussels wants, that’s what Berlin wants. However, when it came to the question of how this goal could be achieved, the Interior Minister was caught in the line of fire.

The EU Commission is currently working on a regulation with the abbreviation CSA, i.e. a regulation against “child sexual abuse”. It talks about a so-called client-side scanner. Linus Neumann from the Chaos Computer Club explains: These scanners could become mandatory for messenger services such as WhatsApp or Signal in order to scan all texts and all images on the mobile devices of all users. This is how chats are to be tapped before and after encryption.

Again there is talk of mass surveillance by the state without cause, which was assumed by US services in the context of the NSA affair. So now also through the EU? An unusual dispute has broken out behind the scenes within the traffic light as to how such a regulation can still be influenced and then implemented in national law.

A breach of the coalition agreement?

To understand: Departmental consultations are currently underway. The traffic light parties and their responsible ministers Nancy Faeser, Volker Wissing and Marco Buschmann must find a common position, which they then represent in the European Council in Brussels. The German government can only speak with one vote or abstain.

Put simply, the coalition agreement between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP states that private communication should not be scanned by the state without cause and in bulk, but that there should be a right to encrypted communication.

In the past few weeks, some members of the traffic light coalition have become concerned that the Federal Ministry of the Interior will not comply with the coalition agreement between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP in the negotiations in Brussels.

Clear rejection by the Greens and FDP

The digital and interior experts from the Greens and FDP therefore had a plan. Together with the SPD interior experts, they wanted to make a statement in order to influence the federal government’s negotiations in Brussels. Article 23 paragraph 3 of the Basic Law makes this possible, emphasize the members of the Greens and the FDP. They wanted to give the interior minister a position that she would then represent at EU level. According to their own statements, the Greens and FDP were not able to assert themselves because their internal colleagues from the SPD did not want to support the statement.

“We continue to reject so-called chat control very clearly. We take indications that the Ministry of the Interior has been negotiating differently at EU level for a long time,” said Konstantin von Notz from the Greens. Although the coalition partner SPD had been approached weeks ago, parts of the SPD blocked such a joint statement. “That We regret that such action is necessary.”

Point victory for the FDP?

The Federal Minister of the Interior has also emphasized since the beginning of the year that she is against chat controls. Yesterday, however, she confused the public when she said at the federal press conference that she wanted to “approach” client-side scanning. She added: But it’s not about installing this technology on private devices. The atmosphere was already irritated at this point: “Please don’t read into something that isn’t in there,” she grimly threw at one of the questioning journalists.

But that didn’t mean the affair was over, quite the opposite. Appeasements followed on Twitter, which made people sit up and take notice. FDP Minister of Justice Buschmann announced that there had been a “good conversation” with his colleague Faeser. The government agreed that they were clearly against chat control. According to Buschmann, unreasonable surveillance of private communications has no place in the constitutional state. Sounded friendly, but looked like a points victory for the FDP over the SPD.

Cancellation for Client Side Scanner

But then there was also a post on Twitter competitor Mastodon by SPD leader Saskia Esken: She agreed with Faeser that she flatly rejected chat control in the client-side scanner version as well. Bitter. That’s exactly what Faeser wanted to approach, as she said in the federal press conference.

From the Federal Ministry of the Interior it is now said: A coordinated position of the federal government does not yet exist. However, the first provisional position paper already shows that the Federal Government believes that the draft regulation needs to be sharpened in some places.

The Federal Government’s demand is to “exclude the use of measures that lead to a breach, weakening, modification or circumvention of end-to-end encryption by means of more specific technical requirements in the draft regulation”.

Providers should be prescribed high legal and technical requirements for the technologies to be used. This includes maintaining end-to-end encryption throughout. This means that the Federal Government and the Ministry of the Interior are now rejecting the Client Side Scanner.

irritation eliminated

The fact that the Federal Ministry of the Interior stuck to the term client side scanner until yesterday – and did so when asked in the federal press conference, although the coalition agreement practically rules this out – is attributed behind the scenes to the independent life in the responsible department of the Ministry of the Interior. They have adhered less to the current coalition agreement than to the previous agenda.

“It’s good that Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, in a conversation with Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann this morning, cleared up the irritations of the past few days,” said Parliamentary State Secretary Benjamin Strasser, FDP ARD Capital Studio. “This so-called client-side scanning undermines the confidentiality of private communication and is a serious encroachment on the freedom of 82 million innocent German citizens. We will also make this position clear at European level.”

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