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]
