Friday, July 5, 2019

Joana Cotar, June 27, 2019, Data Defense Law


Joana Cotar
Adaptation of the Data Defense Law
German Bundestag, June 27, 2019, Plenarprotokoll 19/107, p. 13293

[Joana Cotar is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the central German state of Hessen. She is a communications manager and since 2016 has been the AfD’s social media manager. She here responds to the Merkel government’s proposal to adapt or reconcile its controversial NetzDG, Internet Enforcement Law of 2017, with the European Union’s DSGVO, the General Data Protection Regulation. Cotar on several occasions has called for the repeal of the NetzDG. Horst Seehofer (CSU) is currently the German Interior Minister.]

Right honorable Frau President. Worthy colleagues.

It is 1:19 AM and we at this late hour debate and dispose of a law of nearly 500 pages which concerns 154 amendments to technical rules and which is additionally garnished with a pair of resolution motions.

            Patrick Sensburg (CDU/CSU): You have not thought that so much will be done!

And all that in nine minutes!...That alone is bewildering!

You have packed into this data defense adaptation law as much as possible as well as unessential legislative amendments which actually have nothing to do with the adaptation of the DSGVO.

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): So where were you in committee?

We are able to completely look through this omnibus law neither in parliament nor in public and I put it to you that that is precisely your intention. As Herr Seehofer so frankly admitted: “Laws must be made complicated so as not to attract attention”. Thus in this adaptation law you are attempting to downplay a storage of reserve data which has no clearly defined time limit. You give data processing positions an expanded authority by which you replace the concept of “blocking” of data sets with “reduction”. In your DSGVO equivalent, blocking properly corresponds to the right to cancel. You apparently here indeed do not initially take into consideration that can or shall be physically canceled; you only reduce. You thereby show that you have in general no interest in withdrawing data from the clutches of administrative authorities or other institutions.

Also, census authorities can further casually pass on to other places the data of a citizen. Reductions on the part of the citizen of data processing are scarcely feasible.

Concern yourselves with the fact that, with the adaptation of the IHK [chamber of commerce] legislation, offices which have in some way at some time collected data may permit this also to be casually forwarded. Data, once it lands in the big pot, remains therein. The same goes for the adaptation of the Handwerk regulation.

The obligation to commission a data defense delegate shall in the future apply to a minimum of 20 employees. That sounds initially like a relief for business but that alters nothing of the fact that business must nevertheless maintain data defense – even without an advisor who is familiar with it.

The account will not balance. It would be better to push for conclusively placing the “one size fits all” assessment of the DSGVO on the test stand and here attain real improvements for the Mittelstand, ladies and gentlemen.  

I could continue with my reckoning –

            Reinhard Houben (FSP): Preferably not.

- but I have yet only a few seconds of speaking time. What is clear is that the AfD will reject this law. One thing in the coalition’s motion “To Reconcile Data Defense and Freedom of Opinion” has actually surprised me, since it sounds very familiar to me. For good reason: It namely takes up precisely what the AfD had already demanded at the beginning of the year in its motion, “To Secure the Free Expression of Opinion”.

            Sebastian Steineke (CDU/CSU): To secure! Don’t you believe that we are so 
            desperate!

            Volker Ulrich (CDU/CSU): Secure nothing!

Then, our motion was rejected by all other delegations here in this house. I rejoice that the coalition has here apparently gained an insight and has changed its opinion. Which once again goes to show: The AfD works! I am grateful for that and wish you good night.




[Translated by Todd Martin]