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YouTube logo: "Personal data in police databases"
Photo: Dado Ruvic / REUTERS
Google has filed a lawsuit against an important amendment to the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) before the Cologne Administrative Court. The federal government had previously decided that companies such as YouTube, Facebook or Twitter must report certain content to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). This is intended to combat criminal content such as hate speech, swastikas or depictions of child abuse on social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter more efficiently. If, for example, company employees suspect that a posting by a user is a criminal offense, in addition to the post, they must also forward user data such as the IP address to a central office at the BKA.
This regulation can be found in a newly created article §3a of the NetzDG and came into force at Easter.
However, the obligation to forward data to the BKA does not apply until February 1, 2022. The social networks were already obliged by the Network Enforcement Act to promptly delete criminal content.
So far, however, data has not been automatically passed on to authorities in these cases.
(Read in more detail here how the BKA central office is supposed to work and in which cases the procedure applies).
Google feared data protection violations
Google's lawsuit is specifically directed against the new central office at the BKA, which is a core part of Justice Minister Lambrecht's package of measures against hate crime.
As confirmed by the Cologne Administrative Court, a lawsuit and an application for urgent legal protection were received there on July 16.
The plaintiff is therefore Google's European parent company Google Ireland Limited.
The lawsuit is directed against the Federal Ministry of Justice.
Even if Google is looking at an important aspect of the new version of the NetzDG, the company is not interested in stopping the entire law.
"We support the goals of the Network Enforcement Act and efficient criminal prosecution," said a Google spokesman for SPIEGEL.
In a blog post, the company emphasizes that it has been responding to requests for information for many years and that it has been working with German authorities to prosecute and avert danger.
The BKA central office would, however, be in conflict with data protection, the German constitution and European law.
"Users who publish legitimate content must therefore fear that their personal data will be stored in police databases," writes Sabine Frank, who is responsible for public policy at the Google subsidiary YouTube, among other things.
The criticism is aimed at ensuring that the processes of the new BKA central office function in such a way that the BKA only checks whether the contribution is actually punishable after the data has been transmitted by a company such as YouTube.
Frank complains that there is no constitutional control in the new regulation and that "comprehensive databases" with personal data could be created at the BKA.
In addition to Google, various civil society organizations had criticized different aspects of the law.
According to SPIEGEL information, other social media companies had at least considered lawsuits in advance.
There had already been a dispute about a regulation on the transfer of inventory data in the law, which would apparently have been unconstitutional.
However, the regulation was changed with a repair law in such a way that there should no longer be a constitutional violation.
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