The draft for a law to “adapt the constitutional protection law”, which the federal government launched on Wednesday, meets with serious concerns. “There is a risk that the extent of state surveillance in practical application will exceed what is tolerable for a democracy”, warned the Federal Data Protection Commissioner Ulrich Kelber. The initiative contains many shortcomings and goes hand in hand with massive encroachments on privacy.

Not only the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), but all federal and state secret services are given the authority to use state trojans to listen to messenger communication via WhatsApp, Signal or Threema, as well as Internet phone calls and video calls. As part of a “Quellen-TKÜ plus”, the agents are also allowed to access saved chats and emails.

Moratorium required “The Courts have shown a clear need for reform in the laws of the intelligence services, “says Kelber. “Instead of tackling these urgent reforms, new monitoring options are to be created.” This is the wrong way to go, says the SPD politician. He repeated his call for a “security law moratorium” and called for “an independent scientific analysis” of the existing monitoring competencies.

The government put the “denial” with the draft Kelber complained that the scope of information collection “when accessing IT systems is not clearly defined. As a result, there is a risk that the source telecommunications monitoring will become an even more extensive, clandestine online search, “which is actually not supposed to be introduced”. Furthermore, the requirements for the use of state Trojans correspond roughly to those in the police sector. This violates the constitutional separation requirement between police authorities and secret services.

“Another scandalous idea” The chairman of the society for Freedom Rights (GFF), Ulf Buermeyer, senses “another scandalous idea” in the initiative: “Providers should be obliged to help the secret services to hide Trojans in their customers’ downloads,” he tweeted. What looks like a Windows update could soon be malware from the security authorities. Especially in the case of “uncontrolled secret services”, the boundaries of the rule of law would be exceeded.

Buermeyer is referring to the planned new paragraph 2 of the G 10 law Intelligence surveillance linked to the reform. According to this, providers of telecommunications services would have to support the “authorized bodies” in “bringing in” “technical means” for the source TKÜ and redirecting the communication to them. Details should be able to be determined by ordinance.

Loss of confidentiality and integrity The eco-Association of the Internet Industry is running against this compulsion to cooperate with the secret services Sturm. In practice, the obligation to forward “suspicious” data packets to the authorities would result in disproportionate cuts in their business models not only for companies, it says. There was also the threat of “fundamentally considerable losses in the confidentiality and integrity of digital communication”.

“This law will endanger IT security on the Internet, if not a loss of trust and a clear step backwards for all digitization processes in society and economy “, fears eco board member Klaus Landefeld. This