Data retention - the next round begins

If it were funny, it would be a “running gag”: the fetish of our so-called representatives of the people to finally enshrine the unprovoked logging of IP addresses - the so-called “data retention” - in law.

Of course, the party that stands for neither social nor modern issues and certainly not for the digitalization of Germany and is currently trying to make the Mr. Burns of our nation (Simpson fans will be able to identify him directly) chancellor is supposed to help: The CDU. You could almost laugh now if this topic wasn't a tear-jerker and simply a tic of politicians who aren't at all digitally competent and who think they can catch the bad guys on the internet more quickly.

The aim is to get one of Faeser's obvious ticks, namely the storage of IP addresses and port numbers without suspicion, through before the early federal elections on February 23. Well, everyone has their own preferences and collecting them can't be a bad thing per se if you didn't want to put every Internet user under general suspicion and make them transparent: George Orwell's dystopia described in “1984” would thus have caught up with us quite well. This Wednesday, Ms. Faeser made the following statement at the autumn conference of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA):

“I am crystal clear in my stance: we need this data,” she emphasized on Wednesday at the autumn conference of the Federal Criminal Police Office in Wiesbaden. “They are often the only way to get justice for the victims of the most serious crimes and to identify the perpetrators.”

Okay. But it is also “crystal clear” that a crude kind of victim-perpetrator reversal is taking place here and that (as is always the case at the moment) there is simply a craving for data without cause, which can neither be evaluated nor securely stored - because digital competence is not only lacking in this legislative period (ePA, anyone?). Our Minister of the Interior would therefore like to take advantage of the moment and the vacuum of the fragments of the traffic light government to quickly saddle up here and create some kind of political legacy (she won't be able to become wine queen) before possibly moving on to another important office in February - for which there will certainly be little to no qualifications on her CV.

The approach makes about as much sense as the knife ban - those who carry knives are certainly as unconcerned by it as people are by the ban on eating ice cream in shopping malls, taking dogs inside or inline skating. The metaphor is obvious, isn't it? Everyone should suffer because, under the guise of criminal prosecution, everything is simply to be bluntly tapped. Period.

“Serious criminals get away with it because we - without need - take away the tools we could use to catch them”

Our Interior Minister fails to mention that the so-called “bad guys” are not sleeping on the proverbial trees either and certainly have their own measures and instead refers to the lack of cooperation with former coalition partners such as the small and splinter party FDP: after all, Marco Buschmann once made the sensible objection of only reacting in cases of suspicion and only then freezing traffic data - but as a fellow lawyer, he was obviously alone in this assessment.

Well, for decades it has been quite normal that federal ministers simply have to have zero qualifications for their respective office (the dice in the dice cup will do the trick) - but why doesn't Nancy Faeser simply seek external expertise and have this topic considered objectively and by specialist colleagues (she has a degree in law)? Because there is a lack of interest in objectivity for various reasons? A rogue who thinks evil of it...

Ylva, reloaded?

This is where the “Ylva Johansson” effect comes to light again: (obviously) no competence, but a lot of lobbying and the will to simply push through a decree at a broad level that will irrevocably change (not only) the digital world. “After me, the deluge”, only here not at European level, but at national level. We still remember the EU, Ylva Johansson and the great solution around the lobby network of actor Ashton Kutcher and his “Thorn” troupe: they were here, of course, only in the spirit of the good cause (scanning CSAM material) as consultants and pushers from the USA for the next dystopia - here still at European level. Out of pure charity, of course, and out of concern that our photos definitely can't contain any criminal recordings - so what? Incidentally, Kutcher suddenly withdrew from Thorn last year after he stood up for an actor friend who has since been sentenced to at least 30 years in prison for two counts of rape. Surely pure coincidence and a failure of algorithms.

Spun further, every parent would then be under the permanent sword of Damocles of general suspicion, based on the classic photos of their own children that they have taken over the years, and thus have one foot in the good old “café square”. But this is certainly collateral damage, because garnished with the buzzwords “AI” and “AI”, nothing can go wrong - can it? AI is already in charge and Skynet only exists in the Terminator films!

So the question is, what is Nancy Faeser doing here? The German government had actually agreed on the “quick freeze” approach, but the Minister of the Interior is apparently ignoring this: And because there is still time, talks are currently being held with THE digital parties par excellence, the CDU/CSU - grand surveillance coalition, I hear you whisper! - and have obviously broken down open doors with the diehards. Of course, it's easy to imagine, as the absolute digital competence of the last few years from 2013 to 2021 came from the (lobby) basement of the CDU. As a decent citizen, you can't help but wonder what might happen if this party were to become chancellor - which, thanks to the removal of Boris Pistorius as the SPD candidate for chancellor instead of “Us Olaf”, is likely to turn the republic into a dystopian Springfield ruled by a Mr. Burns clone from February onwards anyway and is unfortunately not an entirely unrealistic scenario. “Digital literacy” here means holding a PlayStation controller in your hands completely wrong and believing that you are reaching some younger target group with your own fossil ideals.

Well, Ms. Faeser argues that Germany's law enforcement authorities are lagging behind other countries in terms of technology and powers - anyone who smiles and thinks of the stories surrounding digital police radio will have noticed something similar. We are generally lagging behind because the required skills are “bought” through “vitamin B” rather than professional qualifications. However, I would also like to critically question whether the USA, as is then stated, should be the current and future benchmark as an example of where countries are already further ahead - especially as the statement is of course garnished with the buzzword “AI”:

The chain of reasoning simply seems contrived and, of course, biometric facial recognition should not be missing from the “big picture” - if only, then only. But AI also wants to be fed bluntly and perhaps we will only wake up when the first misrecognitions have resulted in life sentences (there are no death sentences here) and we have realized that artificial intelligence, which has been driven through the village like a pig, is not the panacea for digital and professional incompetence.

Failure by Design

Let me put it bluntly: we're deliberately and deliberately driving Internet culture, which in Germany is often just a bandwidth issue anyway (if it still exists), up the wall. Such an idea, such an approach without real competence behind it, should be dead per se: “Failure by Design”. However, if Ms. Faeser gets the thing through, it will be a done deal and the process will be irreversible - this should be borne in mind in the whole discussion on all sides!

Data retention” is a buzzword of recent years that various so-called ‘representatives of the people’ have already tried their hand at and which - our politicians probably don't understand - will be irreversible. We are holding the digital key to the dystopia in our hands and will laughingly turn it over in the lock if the digitally incompetent (i.e. most) votes in this or the (shudder!) next government prevail. Add facial recognition to data retention and you have an absolutely powerful weapon in the hands of (sorry to all the real kids!) children who can't even begin to appreciate the power or consequences of this weapon. Precisely because they have never learned it and therefore cannot assess it - the obvious consequence: the next “gold rush” for all internet start-up weirdos who will position themselves as external advisors for the government - this has already worked wonderfully in the US elections and will certainly become the program here too.

Let's hope that the renewed preliminary attempt to quickly get the sheep in the (own) bag will also fail. Given the current government situation, however, I would not be surprised if the strings are already being pulled for the next grand coalition and nails are quickly put on the head: However, the current situation is doing a disservice to disenchantment with politics and trust in the elected individuals who are supposed to represent the interests of the people (and in my opinion they are running absolutely contrary here). In the end, it does not affect the target group, which knows how to protect itself, but ends in the uncontrolled collection and evaluation of data and, above all, places ordinary citizens under general suspicion!