Internal politicians of the Union have proposed a change in the law in order to be able to act better against hackers in the network. Specifically, it is about the reintroduction of the offense "Advocacy of crime", which was abolished in 1981.
"The influencing role that aggressive posts on the Internet play in politically motivated crimes becomes more and more obvious," says a letter to Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU), which the CDU deputy Alexander Throm had already written in October. The letter was also signed by Group Vice President Thorsten Frei and the interior politicians Mathias Middelberg, Armin Schuster and Michael Brand.
It is important to send "clear signals to the active Hetzer," writes Throm in his letter, according to the German Press Agency. He justified this demand among other things with findings from the murder case Walter Lübcke. The Kassel government president had been shot in June. The Attorney General is based on a right-wing extremist background.
Strobl: "Out of unfortunate words can become sinister deeds"
As another example, Throm called a sticker with the face of the Hitler assassin Claus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg and the slogan "Merkel longer in power than Hitler ... and no Stauffenberg in sight".
Baden-Württemberg's Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU) backed the demand of the Bundestag members. He said, "Truth is, bad words can become sinister acts, so this initiative is absolutely right."
A response by the Interior Ministry to the push of the Union politicians is still pending. The Scientific Service of the Bundestag had stated in the summer of 2018 that a corresponding proposal had been rejected in 1989 on the grounds that the regulation repealed in 1981 had hardly led to convictions. However, the letter to Seehofer states that the situation has changed fundamentally since then due to the possibilities of spreading hate on the Internet.