Tobias Peterka, December 15, 2023, EU Digital Services Act

AfD Kompakt, December 15, 2023. 

The AfD delegation in the German Bundestag is worried about the attempt of the EU Commission to still further restrict freedom of opinion and information in the social networks. Each citizen has the right to freely express and spread his opinion and, unhindered, to inform himself from generally accessible sources. This right is also part of the EU basic rights charter. The EU Commission’s attempt to intimidate the managers of the platform “X” (formerly Twitter) by means of unsubstantiated assertions and threats does not breathe of the free and constitutional spirit of this lofty obligation. The Commission therein aims to move the platform, in anticipated obedience [vorauseilendem Gehorsam], to the deletion of user contributions which fall under the freedom of opinion. The EU “Digital Services Act” unfortunately makes possible such interventions in the freedom of opinion protected by the basic rights. Who restricts the freedom of opinion and information nevertheless endangers the foundation of democracy. 

We demand of the Federal government to comprehensively commit itself at the European level to the abolition of the EU “Digital Services Act”. 

 

[trans: tem]

Tobias Peterka, April 21, 2023, Data Mining

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/98, pp. 11855-11856.

Frau President. Right honorable colleagues.

Data are the essential currency of the digital age. This platitude is meanwhile – we have heard it – even overtaken by the Linke. In regards today’s data track which oneself each time again lays down and by means of which one is coordinated with others, the term “resource” instead of “currency” is actually more correct and therefrom also derives this term of data mining.

Is this discipline now a curse or a blessing, good for the individual or only for the powerful, for  the economy or for the state, for the well founded or only for the dull witted? Generally, it is scarcely to be thus answered. And thus also data mining in a medical connection is first dealt with predominantly in the named comprehensive report. Certainly it applies to emphasizing the enormous potential uses and for that reason the theme is initially very well suited for an exemplary assay.

Legally, we are not in completely unknown territory. Informational self-determination, creators’ rights, performance protective rights or rights of ownership, also in businesses, ultimately have bundled data as raw material for a theme. Therein also can now already be set out without problem an additional level of rights. Here in the future needs to be more precisely defined how dependence of this raw material on the further processing level is to be legally defined. Unusual in any case is the circumstance of non-consumption. Once used primary data certainly does not vanish just because secondary data is derived from it.

I want to again make clear both endpoints of the fundamentally scarcely comprehensible evaluation chain. Initially there is a concrete information, on occasion in direct reference to an individual, or traceable, and quite at the end there is a recommended action or acknowledgment on the basis of an inquiry from a many times processed global data product. In between, any refining stage is imaginable, the designation “data mining” itself thus actually still much too  briefly grasped.  

For long is neglected that private businesses here tend to completely hurry away from state actors, at least when over-bearing autocrats in the health area repeatedly present a special case. As with every technological upheaval, both failures of over-regulation on one side and wild growth on the other are in any case to be avoided. When however I look at the Corona policy of first the Merkel government and now that of the Ampel, this bad tutelage, the future in regards health data becomes for me one of angst and alarm; that, I need really say.

At least the avoidance of personal back reference [Rückbezug] is, yes, hopefully self-evident. Transparency and anonymity are also important, although only relevant rather early in the refining process. The avoidance of monopolization also becomes important at every level. For that, actually drawing up a public law body would at least be presentable, as long as this itself then did not again act as a bottleneck. Derived data products in the health area however then need, again please, to be accessible to private law ownership.

Data mining needs to be retrospectively, objectively subject to scrutiny, quite precisely. An ideological forward control, as you so gladly always do it, is on the contrary to be strictly rejected. Statistical data can indeed be based on incomplete realities. Data sets are nonetheless never therein guilty, rather the respective realities.   

Finish-refined data sets [Fertigraffinierte Datensätze] are thereby in regards to a more precise consideration a purely ethical, absolutely sterile product which would also open up enormous opportunities beyond political trench warfare. Whether you acknowledge that and really want it, I however do not believe.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Tobias Peterka, November 10, 2022, Ukraine War Tribunal

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 60/66, pp. 7679-7680.

Frau President. Right honorable colleagues.

The motion put forward by the CDU ascribes to nothing less that the enforcement of justice and cites nothing less than a judgement of the Nuremberg process. This determined, courageous leap, here well attempted, however clearly falls short, and even immediately in the second paragraph of the text which meekly yields on what is here proposed.  

Yes, put forward is a Russian war of sudden aggression according to articles 1 and 3 of the corresponding definition of the United Nations. No one disputes that and no one wants to sugar-coat that. Yet the so-called security of world peace will now be assigned, according to article 24 of the UN Charter, to the helplessly outdated construct of the Security Council in which Russia possesses a right of veto. We all the more cannot proceed at the much too late established International Criminal Court; since there, China and Russia have, by definition with the U.S.A. as three similar veto powers, withdrawn themselves from trouble. The U.S.A. would even be prepared to liberate its own citizens from the Hague by means of a commando mission.

Thence now this apparent solution of a dilemma by a special tribunal: What of its apparent value shall exactly, legally lead to where? The tribunal for Yugoslavia was at the time validated by the Security Council and thereby found itself entirely within the executive power [Vollzug] of the UN Charter. That will plainly not work here, since Russia is against it. Thus a court beneath the actual level of the UN, sustained by a pair of intermediary powers? Certain actions can be internationally represented if that is wanted, yet to completely ignore fundamental, real factors – that seldom leads to success and always damages one’s own credibility.

Clearly, this special tribunal would initially not directly and substantially affect us as do the economic sanctions. Yet wherefore then have we in the West lauded and spread with gusto the principle of world law? Would it not be much more honest to deliberate the elaboration of war crimes in the Ukraine directly before national courts? Naturally in regards to both warring parties. The cooperation problem then would not be pettier and, all the same, not all perpetrators would be in custody.

One thing however is definitely presumptuous: To believe we could, by means of a tribunal decision, direct the president of an atomic power. The only two instances of who would be in a position to direct Putin are the Russian oligarchs and the Russian people. Whether these consider doing that is however their decision alone.

The presently proposed special tribunal would be a nice-looking covering

            Vice-president Aydan Özoğuz: Please come to a conclusion, Herr colleague.

without effective content, the proverbial Potemkin village. We should not erect that. We should preferably leave that to others.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

  

 

Tobias Peterka, March 5, 2021, Consumer Loans

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/215, p. 27182.

Generally in the first instance, we are sceptical in regards guidelines from Brussels. This is meanwhile simply a matter of experience. That these as a requirement are less decisive than are the EU’s decrees, yields for us in Germany mighty little; since by means of the so-called gold-plating, that is, the excess fulfillment of requirements, we as a rule happily restrict ourselves to above what is due.

In regards the previous implementation of the consumer credit guidelines presently here in focus, the legislature however wants, exceptionally for once, to save itself, and perhaps even the consumer, a little work. Information concerning consumer loans can of course in reality assume a volume which in the best case will be filed away by the borrower, yet is scarcely read through. The so-called cascade reproof in the law should really save text and paper. It is, according to a decision of March of last year of the EuGH [European Court of Justice], inadmissible.

The clarity of the information in my opinion also speaks to that. Not every citizen gladly reads in the evening over a glass of wine or a cup of coffee prohibition boxes in the legal formulation conveyed by the EU. Here, the first judgment’s implementation, so far as the the EuGH  is authoritative for us, is clearly to be agreed to.

The tradition of model [mustergültigen] information surrounding consumer law, and thus this appendix with models, is to be expressly welcomed; a possible European legal cancellation is to be rejected.

The questions of state liability or a new basis for restitution according to the ZPO [code of civil procedure] will certainly not be taken up here by the Federal government. Yet this is always fungible: Every kowtow before the EuGH which is not made, is good exercise for strengthening the backbone.

            Stefan Schmidt (Greens): Hui!

Furthermore, as is known, a judgment from 2019 should be implemented to explicitly extend to special costs not dependent on term within §501 of the BGB [civil code] – to the benefit of consumers, at least in regards to previous repayment. Clearly, the banks and the savings banks are shooting at this regulation. They want a limitation to the so-called costs directly connected to the issue of the loans.

I also find it at least interesting that the Ministry has certainly not packed up all comments on this on its home page. There, of course, banks and savings banks bring up the example that a borrower’s building insurance must be repaid by one-third as a contractual obligation of the bank; thus, around the corner if occasion arises, proportionally. Admittedly, this would be questionable. The insurance coverage is on an entirely different level of performance and has already furnished an objective use to the borrower.

Otherwise, one formulation of §501 would have been, in my opinion, more clear; the Federal government in regards the factual circumstance for a revocation instruction, has retreated…Yet consistency is perhaps too much to ask for in the simultaneous implementation of two equivalent judgments.

For all that, a differentiated development of the law in connection with a new §501 of the BGB can then certainly be relied upon. German courts of course can clearly do that better than the EuGH. Absolutely illogical costs, the quasi-contract, and thus combined contracts, would be feigned – as in the aforementioned example – and ought then be refused by means of case law [Rechtsprechung]. Clarity as a service performance: This is apparently necessary.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]